MRI: Acquisition of a Gaze-Contingent Eye-Tracking System

在Major Research instruments的支持下，将获得眼动追踪系统（SR Research EyeLink 1000 Plus）。这个项目是建立在德雷克大学（爱荷华州得梅因）的一名视觉认知研究者和六名决策科学研究者组成的跨学科团队的基础上的。通过整合视觉认知领域的成熟技术，该系统使团队中的决策科学研究人员（经济学、市场营销、会计学、精算科学、信息管理）能够以比决策科学研究领域通常采用的眼动追踪方法更精细的分辨率检查决策过程中涉及的认知机制。该系统允许研究人员调查先于意识反应的信息处理机制。该项目不仅旨在使学生更容易获得视觉认知研究的实际应用，而且还向决策科学领域的学生介绍处理通过系统实证调查获得的新数据的科学方法。因为决策科学唯一关注的是个人如何根据可用信息做出最佳选择，一些决策科学家专门使用预先存在的数据。研究小组还认识到，通过单一部门招募学生到研究实验室的流行方法在接触到代表性不足的学生群体方面存在局限性。为了促进多样性、公平和包容，学校建立了多种机制来招收和支持广泛的学生。本项目所追求的问题包括：(1)人们在记忆维持过程中可以施加多少注意力控制（视觉认知），(2)呈现营养信息的不同方式如何影响人们的食物选择决策过程（市场营销），(3)机会缺乏如何不同于资源稀缺影响人们的认知机制(经济学：(4)如何通过强大的感知和认知操纵来优化流行的调查方法（即选择实验）（环境经济学），(5)自愿披露的财务信息的视觉特征如何将投资者被误导的机会降至最低（会计学），(6)当个人倾向于停止处理大量披露信息时，以及如何将难以理解的部分可视化将简化人们对产品的理解（精算学），以及(7)如何在电子商务环境中提高关键信息的搜索效率（信息管理）。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With the support from Major Research Instrumentation, the eye-tracking system (SR Research EyeLink 1000 Plus) will be acquired. The project is built upon the interdisciplinary team of one visual cognition researcher and six decision science researchers at Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa). By integrating the well-established techniques in the visual cognition field, the system enables decision science researchers in the team (economics, marketing, accounting, actuarial science, information management) to examine cognitive mechanisms involved in decision-making processes with a finer resolution than eye-tracking methods typically employed in the fields of decision science research. The system allows researchers to investigate information-processing mechanisms that operate prior to conscious response. The project is designed not only to make real-world application of visual cognition research more accessible to students, but also to introduce students in the decision science field to a scientific approach of dealing with novel data acquired through systematic empirical investigations. Because decision science is uniquely concerned with how individuals make optimal choices based on available information, some decision scientists work exclusively with pre-existing data. The research team also recognizes that popular methods of recruiting students to the research lab through a single department has its limitation to reach out to underrepresented student populations. To promote diversity, equity and inclusion, multiple mechanisms to recruit and support a wide range of students are built in.The questions pursued in the present project range across (1) how much attentional control one can exert during memory maintenance (visual cognition), (2) how different ways of presenting the nutrition information shapes one's decision-making process of food choice (marketing), (3) how the lack of opportunities affects one's cognitive mechanisms differently from resource scarcity (economics: psychology of poverty), (4) how a popular survey method (i.e., the choice experiment) can be optimized with powerful perceptual and cognitive manipulations (environmental economics), (5) how visual features of the voluntarily disclosed financial information can minimize the chance that the investors can be misled (accounting), (6) when individuals tend to stop processing the massive amount of disclosure information, and how visualization of the difficult-to-understand section would ease one's comprehension of the product (actuarial science), and (7) how search efficiency of the crucial information can be enhanced in the e-commerce context (information management).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.