Inferring attentional states from gaze and pupil size during free viewing

Our ability to focus attention is crucial for information processing and task performance. It is characterised by a moment-to-moment fluctuation. This fluctuation varies across the lifespan and cohort; it characterises a range of clinical conditions such as ADHD and dementia. As it currently stands, an objective measure of shifts in attention state is lacking. This project aims to model and empirically test these fluctuations using gaze metrics and pupillometry. Attention fluctuations can be conceptualised as shifts between exploitative and exploratory modes of information processes, associated with the interaction between the default model network and dorsal attention network (Esterman, Rothlein, 2019). Exploitative eye moments focus on a small area within a scene, while exploratory movements seek distant unsampled areas. As informational reward diminishes during exploitation, exploration value increases, creating an oscillatory state. The goal of the project will be to validate this model by using eye movements during visual tasks in which the reward structure is well-known, and free-viewing tasks where fluctuations between attentional states will be inferred using gaze patterns, pupillometry and cortical electrophysiology (EEG).