Action Representation and Focus of Attention in the Perception of Intentions, Events and Objects

This project investigates the impact of movement expertise on visual perception of the environment when we observe objects, interactions or events. Our focus is on the specific interplay between eye movement parameters and the quality of mental representations during the selective perception of action-relevant information.

By measuring visual attention patterns of experts and novices, we analyze how different levels of movement expertise affect the relative influence of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms during the perception of complex actions. We hope that the resulting insights can contribute to better informed designs of human-machine interfaces, humanoid robots and intelligent systems.