Jeroen Benjamins

Utrecht University | UU · Department of Social Sciences

Researchers using eye tracking are heavily dependent on software and hardware tools to perform their studies, from recording eye tracking data and visualizing it, to processing and analyzing it. This article provides an overview of available tools for research using eye trackers and discusses considerations to make when choosing which tools to adop...

In human interactions, gaze may be used to acquire information for goal-directed actions, to acquire information related to the interacting partner’s actions, and in the context of multimodal communication. At present, there are no models of gaze behavior in the context of vision that adequately incorporate these three components. In this study, we...

Introduction Nudging is a promising intervention technique that supports people in pursuing their healthy eating goals. Recent research suggests that, despite previous assumptions, disclosure of the presence of a nudge does not compromise nudge effectiveness. However, it is unknown whether attention to a nudge affects nudge effects. We assessed the...

According to the proposal for a minimum reporting guideline for an eye tracking study by Holmqvist et al. (2022), the accuracy (in degrees) of eye tracking data should be reported. Currently, there is no easy way to determine accuracy for wearable eye tracking recordings. To enable determining the accuracy quickly and easily, we have produced a sim...

Background As snacking can be considered a cornerstone of an unhealthy diet, investigating psychological drivers of snacking behaviour is urgent, and therefore the purpose of this study. Socio-economic position (SEP) and stress are known to affect many behaviours and outcomes, and were therefore focal points in the study. Methods In a cross-sectio...

How well can modern wearable eye trackers cope with head and body movement? To investigate this question, we asked four participants to stand still, walk, skip, and jump while fixating a static physical target in space. We did this for six different eye trackers. All the eye trackers were capable of recording gaze during the most dynamic episodes (...

Eye contact is essential for human interactions. We investigated whether humans are able to avoid eye contact while navigating crowds. At a science festival, we fitted 62 participants with a wearable eye tracker and instructed them to walk a route. Half of the participants were further instructed to avoid eye contact. We report that humans can flex...

The outbreak of COVID‐19 has turned out to be a major challenge to societies all over the globe. Curbing the pandemic requires rapid and extensive behavioural change to limit social interaction, including physical distancing. In this study, we tested the notion that inducing empathy for people vulnerable to the virus may result in actual distancing...

In this paper, we present a review of how the various aspects of any study using an eye tracker (such as the instrument, methodology, environment, participant, etc.) affect the quality of the recorded eye-tracking data and the obtained eye-movement and gaze measures. We take this review to represent the empirical foundation for reporting guidelines...

Background Few studies have assessed the use of dietary supplements, anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) and selective androgen receptor modulators (SARM) in male gym users. The comparison of physical appearance with others on social media and the exposure to fitness-related content on social media (i.e., image-centric social media use) may have a p...

In urban environments, humans often encounter other people that may engage one in interaction. How do humans perceive such invitations to interact at a glance? We briefly presented participants with pictures of actors carrying out one of 11 behaviors (e.g., waving or looking at a phone) at four camera-actor distances. Participants were asked to des...

Background Boundary extension (BE) is a phenomenon where participants report from memory that they have experienced more information of a scene than was initially presented. The goal of the current study was to investigate whether BE is fully based on episodic memory or also involves semantic scheme knowledge. Methods The study incorporated the re...

While many people declare an intention to eat and snack more healthily, a large body of research has found that these intentions often do not translate into actual behavior. This failure to fulfil intentions is regularly attributed to the obesogenic environment, on which basis it is assumed that changing the food environment may lead to more health...

As humans move through parts of their environment, they meet others that may or may not try to interact with them. Where do people look when they meet others? We had participants wearing an eye tracker walk through a university building. On the way, they encountered nine "walkers." Walkers were instructed to e.g. ignore the participant, greet him o...

A wealth of cross-sectional studies found a link between sleep deprivation and food-related outcomes like energy intake and BMI. Recent experimental studies suggest that this link is causal. However, the mechanisms through which sleep deprivation influences intake remain unclear. Here, we tested two prevailing hypotheses: that sleep deprivation lea...

Samenvatting Veel mensen willen graag gezond snacken, maar vinden het lastig om dit voornemen in de praktijk te brengen. Dat komt omdat ze voortdurend geconfronteerd worden met ongezonde snacks als ze op weg zijn naar school, werk of andere activiteiten. In het project Food in Motion hebben we onderzocht of gezond snacken gemakkelijker wordt door h...

Nudges have gained popularity as a behavioral change tool that aims to facilitate the selection of the sensible choice option by altering the way choice options are presented. Although nudges are designed to facilitate these choices without interfering with people’s prior preferences, both the relation between individuals’ prior preferences and nud...

People repeatedly encounter response conflicts (i.e., self-control dilemmas between long-term and short-term goals). A longitudinal study was conducted to investigate how resolution of response conflict develops over time. Participants pursued a long-term goal. The design entailed pre- and post-measurements, as well as daily/weekly measures using a...

Although many people intend to eat healthily, their actual snacking behavior is often marked by a high consumption of calorie-dense, unhealthy snacks. One reason for this discrepancy may be that people tend to associate unhealthy food with tasty food, preventing them to follow up on their healthy snacking goals. To support people in snacking more h...

When striving for long-term goals (e.g., healthy eating, saving money, reducing energy consumption, or maintaining interpersonal relationships), people often get in conflict with their short-term goals (e.g., enjoying tempting snacks, purchasing must-haves, getting warm, or watching YouTube video’s). Previous research suggests that people who are s...

Human crowds provide an interesting case for research on the perception of people. In this study, we investigate how visual information is acquired for (1) navigating human crowds and (2) seeking out social affordances in crowds by studying gaze behavior during human crowd navigation under different task instructions. Observers (n = 11) wore head-m...

We present GlassesViewer, open-source software for viewing and analyzing eye-tracking data of the Tobii Pro Glasses 2 head-mounted eye tracker as well as the scene and eye videos and other data streams (pupil size, gyroscope, accelerometer, and TTL input) that this headset can record. The software provides the following functionality written in MAT...

Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a sensory phenomenon commonly characterized by pleasant tingling sensations arising from the back of the head and accompanied by feelings of relaxation and calmness. Although research has found ASMR to have a distinct physiological pattern with increased skin conductance levels and reduced heart rate,...

Self-control is considered a crucial capacity that helps people to achieve important objectives in the face of temptation. However, it is unknown to what extent self-control is a stable disposition that is unaffected by how often people engage in self-control, or more like a skill that develops and grows over time. In the present study, we employed...

Background: Insomnia disorder is the second most prevalent mental disorder, and it is a primary risk factor for depression. Inconsistent clinical and biomarker findings in patients with insomnia disorder suggest that heterogeneity exists and that subtypes of this disease remain unrecognised. Previous top-down proposed subtypes in nosologies have h...

Study Objectives Mechanisms underlying the distress of hyperarousal in people with insomnia remain enigmatic. We investigated whether insomnia impedes the overnight adaptation to emotional distress. Methods We induced the distressful self-conscious emotion of shame four times across three consecutive days by exposing 64 participants to their often...

Accurate tests of cognition are vital in (neuro)psychology. Cancellation tasks are popular tests of attention and executive function, in which participants find and ‘cancel’ targets among distractors. Despite extensive use in neurological patients, it remains unclear whether demographic variables (that vary among patients) affect cancellation perfo...

When mapping eye-movement behavior to the visual information presented to an observer, Areas of Interest (AOIs) are commonly employed. For static stimuli (screen without moving elements), this requires that one AOI set is constructed for each stimulus, a possibility in most eye-tracker manufacturers' software. For moving stimuli (screens with movin...

Purpose: Eye movements recorded with mobile eye trackers generally have to be mapped to the visual stimulus manually. Manufacturer software usually has sub-optimal user interfaces. Here, we compare our in-house developed open-source alternative to the manufacturer software, called GazeCode. Method: 330 seconds of eye movements were recorded with th...

Highlights - Cancellation tasks are useful clinical tools that probe many cognitive modules - We used cancellation tests on 523 participants of different ages, sex, and education - We provide cancellation task norm scores for indices computed from a big sample - Cancellation indices include attention bias, processing speed and search organisation -...