Flipping the world upside down: Using eye tracking in virtual reality to study visual search in inverted scenes

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Image inversion is a key tool for studying visual perception, but typically uses 2D computer screens.
• Its effects in more naturalistic, immersive environments remain under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of scene inversion on visual search in 3D virtual reality.
• To examine how participants' gaze, head movements, and memory strategies are affected in immersive settings.

Main Methods:

• Utilized virtual reality (VR) to create immersive 3D indoor scenes.
• Implemented scene inversion within the VR environment.
• Employed eye tracking to monitor gaze and head movements during visual search tasks.

Main Results:

• Scene inversion significantly impacted gaze and head movement metrics, excluding fixation durations and saccade amplitudes.
• Search efficiency decreased in inverted scenes.
• Surprisingly, participants did not increase memory usage (search time slopes) to compensate for the added difficulty.

Conclusions:

• Disruptive effects of image inversion extend to naturalistic VR environments.
• Despite performance decrements, participants did not rely more heavily on memory, suggesting complex adaptive strategies.
• Investigating classic paradigms in VR is crucial for understanding real-world human behavior and visual cognition.