Relations between eye gaze and cognitive factors in a transportation task using remote control

We investigated eye movement in a transportation task using remote control. Participants controlled two sets of joysticks to move a toy excavator and a toy truck monitoring the task process through video displays. They repeated the task ten times. At an early stage of skill acquisition, the participants tended to look at both task related objects (e.g., material to transport and the shovel) and the course (e.g., ground and wall), but did not look much at obstacles (trees). At a late stage of skill acquisition, the participants tended to look at the course, other than related objects or obstacles. However, fixations to related objects did not decrease in ldquolook aheadrdquo fixations or fixations prior to manipulation of the joystick. It can be said that as humans acquire a skill, the positions of the related objects are learned so they did not actually look at these objects when they manipulate joystick. We came to a temporal conclusion that the participants might allocate ldquocovert attentionrdquo or attention without gaze to these related objects and obstacles for better performance.