Changes in Visual Attention Allocation During Psychomotor Skill Training in Laparoscopic Surgery: A Longitudinal Eye Tracking Study

This study examines how visual attention evolves with performance and differs by learning rate in a simulated laparoscopic task. Eye-gaze data were collected from twenty-nine novices recruited to practice the peg transfer task in the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery program until reaching proficiency or completing six training sessions. Results suggested that participants increasingly directed their gaze toward future target locations as their completion time decreased. Participants who became proficient sooner exhibited earlier and more frequent use of feedforward gaze behaviors compared to those who took longer or never reached proficiency after six sessions. These results suggest that developing proactive visual control may be critical for efficient psychomotor skill acquisition.