Pupil diameter as a biomarker of effort in goal-directed gait
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Pupil diameter as a biomarker of effort in goal‑directed gait Mohammad R. Saeedpour‑Parizi1 · Shirin E. Hassan2 · John B. Shea1 Received: 29 June 2020 / Accepted: 28 August 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Subjects’ eye movement behavior related to cognitive effort during gait was measured as subjects walked to perform low and high cognitive load tasks. We found that all pupil diameter measures, fixation durations, and the proportion of blink duration changed significantly during gait as a function of task load. In contrast, the number of fixations, saccade durations and travel time did not change significantly as a function of task load. Findings showed that pupil diameter was the best predictor of task load during one’s gait preceding the performance of the task. While other studies have demonstrated the importance of eye fixation characteristics during gait, our findings showed that eye measures related to pupil diameter were better at detecting cognitive load while walking to perform a task compared to eye fixation data. We also found that cognitive effort was not limited to just the performance of the task, but that it was also exerted during one’s gait preceding the performance of the task. Therefore, the additional attention demand caused by an increase in task complexity may result in less attentional resources being available to adequately handle distractions (such as obstacle avoidance) while walking to perform the task. Consequently, this may increase the likelihood of falls in those individuals with lower attentional capacity. Keywords Eye tracking · Pupil diameter · Cognitive load · Goal-directed gait
Introduction It has long been known that eye tracking behavior can be a useful indicator of the relative extent of processing demands within a task from moment-to-moment and, moreover, between tasks (Hess and Howell 1988; Kahneman et al. 1969; Porter et al. 2007). An increase in task complexity has been associated with an increase in cognitive load, and this is reflected by the effort to perform a task as measured by eye movement behaviors (Fitousi and Wenger 2011; Piquado et al. 2010). There are four major eye movement behaviors (fixations, saccades, blinks, and pupillary responses) that are likely to reveal distinct information about cognitive effort in response to mental task demand. Wang et al. (2014) showed that task complexity in web applications can moderate
Communicated by Francesco Lacquaniti. * Mohammad R. Saeedpour‑Parizi [email protected] 1
Department of Kinesiology, School of Public Health, Indiana University, 1025 E 7th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
School of Optometry, Indiana University, 800 E Atwater Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
2
fixation behavior. Şendurur et al. (2020) showed that task complexity had an effect on both the number and duration of fixations. Saccades are rapid eye movements that arise when fixation on one object is moved to another (Goldberg and Kotval 1999). While visual information is n
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