Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This study explores eye-markers for sub-categories of cognitive load. Experiments were conducted on 63 participants using Image Sliding Puzzle (ISP). NASA-TLX was administered post task completion as a measure of cognitive load. Total scanning duration, total fixation duration, fixation count and total saccadic duration were found to be significant, which is consistent with pre-existing literature. Next, we investigated whether sub-categories of cognitive load (mental demand, temporal demand, perceived performance, effort, and frustration) can be distinguished by characteristic eye-metrics. Our findings reveal signature eye-markers for specific sub-categories of cognitive load. Further, we explored the link between perceived performance and actual performance and established that mean fixation duration, peak velocity, mean saccadic duration, and skewness in saccadic velocity were significant markers for both objective and subjective markers of performance. To our knowledge this is the first study to compare the task-evoked eye measures for sub-categories of cognitive load.