Liu Congcong, Herrup Karl, Goto Seiko, Shi Bertram E
HKUST Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong.
Nagasaki University, Japan.
J Eye Mov Res. 2020 May 13;13(1). doi: 10.16910/jemr.13.1.6.
Previous research has shown that exposure to Japanese gardens reduces physiological measures of stress, e.g. heart rate, in both healthy subjects and dementia patients. However, the correlation between subjects' physiological responses and their visual behavior while viewing the garden has not yet been investigated. To address this, we developed a system to collect simultaneous measurements of eye gaze and three physiological indicators of autonomic nervous system activity: electrocardiogram, blood volume pulse, and galvanic skin response. We recorded healthy subjects' physiological/behavioral responses when they viewed two environments (an empty courtyard and a Japanese garden) in two ways (directly or as a projected 2D photograph). Similar to past work, we found that differences in subject's physiological responses to the two environments when viewed directly, but not as a photograph. We also found differences in their behavioral responses. We quantified subject's behavioral responses using several gaze metrics commonly considered to be measures of engagement of focus: average fixation duration, saccade amplitude, spatial entropy and gaze transition entropy. We found decrease in gaze transition entropy, the only metric that accounts for both the spatial and temporal properties of gaze, to have a weak positive correlation with decrease in heart rate. This suggests a relationship between engagement/focus and relaxation. Finally, we found gender differences: females' gaze patterns were more spatially distributed and had higher transition entropy than males.
先前的研究表明，置身于日式园林中能够降低健康受试者和痴呆症患者的压力生理指标，例如心率。然而，受试者在观赏园林时的生理反应与其视觉行为之间的相关性尚未得到研究。为了解决这一问题，我们开发了一个系统，用于同时收集眼动注视数据以及自主神经系统活动的三个生理指标：心电图、血容量脉搏和皮肤电反应。我们记录了健康受试者在以两种方式（直接观看或观看二维投影照片）观看两种环境（一个空庭院和一个日式园林）时的生理/行为反应。与过去的研究类似，我们发现受试者直接观看这两种环境时生理反应存在差异，但观看照片时则没有差异。我们还发现了他们行为反应的差异。我们使用几种通常被视为注意力投入指标的注视度量来量化受试者的行为反应：平均注视持续时间、扫视幅度、空间熵和注视转移熵。我们发现，注视转移熵（唯一一种兼顾注视空间和时间特性的度量）的降低与心率的降低呈弱正相关。这表明注意力投入/专注与放松之间存在关联。最后，我们发现了性别差异：女性的注视模式在空间上分布更分散，且转移熵高于男性。
