Eye Tracking Impacts of an Irrelevant Self-View Singleton

The following study was conducted to determine whether an irrelevant singleton (i.e., viewing oneself) has an impact on (1) on behavioral performance, i.e., target response accuracy and speed and (2) on eye tracking metrics (total dwell time within the self-view singleton area of interest) on a centered attentional blink (AB) task, which included 18 trials per lag (1, 3, 5, & 8). This experiment employed a within-subjects design with self-view (with two levels: on and off) displayed in a counterbalanced fashion (total of 144 trials). The self-view singleton included a live video of oneself when it was on and an avatar (like Zoom) when it was off. Results revealed a classic AB pattern, indicating that the manipulation of the task worked. In terms of self-view impacts on behavioral performance, we found that self-view on or off did not significantly influence target response accuracy or response times. However, eye tracking data revealed that participants had a higher total dwell time (on the self-view singleton when it was on compared to when it was off. Higher total dwell time when self-view was on did not lead to performance interference. Post-hoc analyses will be conducted on the percentage of time participants spent on the self-view singleton and on the AB task at a trial level. Future research should explore adjustments to task difficulty and self-view placement, incorporate more ecologically valid tasks (e.g., Zoom lectures), and include singleton of someone else’s face. This experiment suggested that self-view can attract attention, even when it is unrelated to the primary task, but it did not affect performance with an AB task. However, it is possible that its impacts may differ in other tasks. Overall, the experiment shed light on how often people may look at themselves in remote meetings (classroom or work) with their cameras on.