Inefficient eye movements: Gamification improves task execution, but not fixation strategy

Decisionsaboutwheretofixatearehighlyvariableandofteninefficient. Inthecurrentstudy,1 we investigated whether such decisions would improve with increased motivation. Presented with2 two boxes in varying distances, participants had to choose where to fixate to detect a discrimination3 target, which would then appear in one of the boxes once they fixated a box. To maximize their4 chances of being able to see the target, participants would simply need to fixate between the two5 boxes when they were close together, and on one of the two boxes when they were far apart. We6 “gamified”thistask,givingparticipantseasy-to-trackrewardsthatwerecontingentondiscrimination7 accuracy. Their decisions and performance were compared to previous results that were gathered in8 the absence this additional motivation. We used a Bayesian Beta Regression model to estimate the9 size of the effect and associated variance. The results demonstrate that discrimination accuracy does10 indeed improve in the presence of performance-related rewards. However, there was no difference11 in eye movement strategy between the two groups, suggesting this improvement in accuracy was12 not due to the participants making more optimal eye movement decisions. Instead, the motivation13 encouraged participants to expend more effort on other aspects of the task, such as paying more14 attention to the boxes and making fewer response errors.