Skills-Transfer and Gaze Strategies Studied by Eye-Tracking: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The ability to comprehend and interpret visualizations has garnered increasing attention in recent years. Individuals with specialized knowledge and experience in a particular field exhibit distinct patterns in how they perceive, process, and retain information related to that area. Extensive research across various domains has demonstrated that expertise confers perceptual and cognitive benefits in engaging with domain-relevant information. Eye-tracking methodology has provided significant insight into some of the perceptual mechanisms underlying performance differences between experts and novices in various professional settings, including aviation, car driving, medicine, arts, cartographic research and sports. The opportunity to access tacit expert knowledge, to improve efficiency of task performance and potentially to enhance safety measures has gained growing attention over the past years. This article conducts a systematic literature review to consolidate literature describing the application of gaze behavior as an adjunct tool to traditional teaching methods. Building on the proposed conceptual framework, we systematically reviewed the training potential of eye movements. Our results reveal that gaze-trained individuals exhibit a performance advantage over traditionally trained counterparts and that the impact and feasibility of expert skills transfer through gaze behaviors are moderated by different factors. We summarize the benefits of using expert gaze as a visual cue (e.g. EMMEs) in terms of attention-modeling processes, human performance and safety in work environment.