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The intent of this paper is to provide an introduction into the bourgeoning field of eye tracking in Virtual Reality (VR). VR itself is an emerging technology on the consumer market, which will create many new opportunities in research. It offers a lab environment with high immersion and close alignment with reality. An experiment which is using VR takes place in a highly controlled environment and allows for a more in-depth amount of information to be gathered about the actions of a subject. Techniques for eye tracking were introduced more than a century ago and are now an established technique in psychological experiments, yet recent development makes it versatile and affordable. In combination, these two techniques allow unprecedented monitoring and control of human behavior in semi-realistic conditions. This paper will explore the methods and tools which can be applied in the implementation of experiments using eye tracking in VR following the example of one case study.

Additionally, different experimental paradigms require the analysis of different types of eye movements; for instance, smooth pursuit movements, blinks or microsaccades, which themselves cannot readily be evaluated by using spatial accuracy or precision alone. To obtain a more comprehensive description of properties, we developed an extensive eye-tracking test battery, described in our paper. In 10 different tasks, we evaluated eye-tracking related measures such as: the decay of accuracy, fixation durations, pupil dilation, smooth pursuit movement, microsaccade classification, blink classification, or the influence of head motion.

Therefore, we designed a large virtual city, comprised of over 200 houses, and evaluated spatial knowledge acquisition after city exploration with an interactive map following one and three 30-min exploration sessions. We tested subjects’ knowledge of the orientation of houses facing directions toward cardinal north, of orientations of houses facing directions relative to each other and pointing from one house to another. Our results revealed that increased familiarity after extended exploration with the map improved task accuracy.

Collaborating with others may or may not result in higher task performance than if one were to complete the task alone (i.e., a collective benefit). A recent study on collective benefits in perceptual decision‐making showed that dyad members with similar individual performances attain collective benefit. However, little is known about the physiological basis of these results. Here, we replicate this earlier work and also investigate the neurophysiological correlates of decision‐making using EEG. In a two‐interval forced‐choice task, co‐actors individually indicated presence of a target stimulus with a higher contrast and then indicated their confidence on a rating scale. Viewing the individual ratings, dyads made a joint decision. Replicating earlier work, we found a positive correlation between the similarity of individual performances and collective benefit.

In this paper, Sütfeld et. al compare virtual reality and text-based assessments, analyzing the effect that different factors in the methodology have on decisions and emotional
response of participants. We present two studies, comparing a total of six different conditions varying across three dimensions: The level of abstraction, the use of virtual reality, and time-constraints. Our results show that the moral decisions made in this context are not strongly influenced by the assessment, and the compared methods ultimately appear to measure very similar constructs. Furthermore, we add to the pool of evidence on the underlying factors of moral judgment in traffic dilemmas, both in terms of general preferences, i.e., features of the particular situation and potential victims, as well as in terms of individual differences between participants, such as their age and gender.

In this conference paper, Peter König et al. discuss embodied cognition in the human brain from perspectives of spatial cognition, sensorimotor processing, face processing, and mobile EEG
recordings. The argument is based upon experimental evidence gathered from five separate studies.
Study 1) demonstrates that spatial orientation of houses is primarily learned in an action-oriented way.
In study 2) it is shown that cortical representations of facial viewpoints traverse a distinct sequence, expressing different encoding schemes at different latencies. Study 3) is a benchmark test of mobile EEG systems. Study 4) uses Independent Component Analysis of EEG data showing that in cognitive tasks some independent components systematically relate to sensory processing as well as to action execution. The ongoing Study 5) is a real-world application investigating face processing during natural visual exploration in a fully mobile setup.
The findings support the assumption that cognitive processes are rooted in the body's interactions with the world. Thus to understand cognitive processes it is needed to consider the (inter)actions in the natural environment.

https://pipa.projekteverwaltung.de/

benefit. The present review by Wahn et al. integrates findings from previous studies for two types of joint control - "distributed control" and "redundant control" - to determine common principles and explain differing results.

Interestingly, they found that when control is distributed, individuals tend to outperform dyads or attain similar performance levels. For redundant control, conversely, dyads have been shown to outperform individuals. The authors suggest that these differences might be explained by the possibility to freely distribute control in line with individual capabilities, enabling them to maximize the benefit of the available skills in the group.

In comparison, Right-to-left readers demonstrate a stronger variation in their visual exploration habits. Here, Afsari et al. studied four factors that might affect these interindividual differences such as age, gender, second language proficiency and the age when the subjects acquired their second language. The results don't demonstrate any significant effects of these factors on the horizontal spatial bias. The hypothesis suggests that the power of reading direction habit is strong enough to manipulate horizontal spatial bias.

- A review on group benefits in joint perceptual tasks, the influencing factors, and how to measure it.

Humans often collaborate in perceptual tasks to achieve a higher performance
than performing the same task alone (i.e., attain a group benefit). In this
review, Wahn et al. identify factors that influence collaborative strategies
and the extent of group benefits in two frequently investigated joint
perceptual tasks: visuospatial tasks and decision-making tasks. They also
provide a framework of measures to assess group benefits in perceptual
tasks.