Digit-tracking as a new tactile interface for visual perception analysis

Guillaume Lio, Roberta Fadda, Giuseppe Doneddu, Jean‐René Duhamel and Angela Sirigu ()
Additional contact information
Guillaume Lio: Institute of Cognitive Science Marc Jeannerod, CNRS
Roberta Fadda: Azienda Ospedaliera Brotzu
Giuseppe Doneddu: University of Cagliari
Jean‐René Duhamel: Institute of Cognitive Science Marc Jeannerod, CNRS
Angela Sirigu: Institute of Cognitive Science Marc Jeannerod, CNRS

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Eye‐tracking is a valuable tool in cognitive science for measuring how visual processing resources are allocated during scene exploration. However, eye-tracking technology is largely confined to laboratory‐based settings, making it difficult to apply to large-scale studies. Here, we introduce a biologically‐inspired solution that involves presenting, on a touch‐sensitive interface, a Gaussian‐blurred image that is locally unblurred by sliding a finger over the display. Thus, the user’s finger movements provide a proxy for their eye movements and attention. We validated the method by showing strong correlations between attention maps obtained using finger-tracking vs. conventional optical eye‐tracking. Using neural networks trained to predict empirically‐derived attention maps, we established that identical high‐level features hierarchically drive explorations with either method. Finally, the diagnostic value of digit‐tracking was tested in autistic and brain‐damaged patients. Rapid yet robust measures afforded by this method open the way to large scale applications in research and clinical settings.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13285-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-13285-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-13285-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().