Ice hockey spectators use contextual cues to guide predictive eye movements

Together with collaborators from York University, Canada, psychologists from JLU Gießen show how ice hockey spectators predict where the puck is going.

Eye movements are an integral part of human visual perception, and minimal delays are important to follow dynamic events in the visual scene. The ability to do so has been demonstrated in situations where we are in control, for example, when we are making a sandwich or tea. But what about scenes with complex dynamics that we do not control or directly take part in, like a hockey game we are watching as a spectator? The scientists use carefully annotated hockey videos to show that the brain is indeed able to exploit the semantic context of the game to anticipate the continuous motion of the puck, leading to eye movements that are fundamentally different than when following exactly the same motion without any context. The paper has been published in Current Biology.

Goettker, A., Pidaparthy, H., Braun, D. I., Elder, J. H., & Gegenfurtner, K. R. (2021).
Ice hockey spectators use contextual cues to guide predictive eye movements.
Current Biology, 31(16), R991-R992.

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