Studying attention to IPCC climate change maps with mobile eye-tracking

Secondarily, the study also explored potential differences in visual engagement with scientific versus aesthetic stimuli, providing preliminary insights into how people process information- oriented maps compared to visually expressive artworks, while recognising that engagement in lab-based engagement may differ from that in museum environments. While eye-tracking cap- tures gaze in an agnostic way, it is often assumed that distinct pre-attentive (commonly associ- ated with bottom-up processes) and attentive (commonly associated with top-down processes) mechanisms exist. Arguably, our research primarily focuses on bottom-up responses, where participants’ gaze is likely driven by factors such as the visual saliency of the maps, reflecting early, pre-attentive processing, but also influenced by top-down factors like prior knowledge on the issue. To approximate the viewing conditions that the public may encounter in muse- ums or classrooms, we compared solitary viewing conditions to social conditions, where two individuals looked at the same item at the same time. Here, we tested climate change maps as projected data from the IPCC, and included two artworks, to examine differences between viewing patterns aimed at gathering information versus aesthetic appreciation. We aimed to evaluate the utility of mobile eye-tracking as a tool for collecting data on a large scale outside of lab settings, such as during exhibitions, public events, and in educational settings. Ulti- mately, understanding public behavioural responses, such as visual attention to climate change

visualisations, can yield insights that enhance design strategies, making visualisations more explanatory and inclusive. 2. Methods 2.1 Participants This study initially recruited 50 participants through convenience sampling. Three recordings were excluded because the gaze mapping algorithm failed to normalise fixation data, and three additional participants did not provide questionnaire responses. The final sample included 47 participants for gaze analysis and 44 for questionnaire responses (33 females, 8 males, 1 non- binary, 2 unspecified; MAge = 20.93 years, SDAge = 4.14 years, RAge = 18–37 years). Participants, primarily students and staff from Royal Holloway, University of London, were recruited via online platforms and campus flyers. All participants provided written informed consent. The research protocols were certified by the researcher in accordance with the self-certification guidelines provided by the Research Ethics Committee at Royal Holloway, University of London (approval ID: 3527-TFJT002, 2022-12-02). The study was conducted in compliance with the ethical standards outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. The recruitment period spanned from 05/12/2022 to 05/03/2023. Corrective lens inserts were provided for participants requiring glasses where possible, but data from those with high prescriptions or other unusable recordings were excluded. Partici- pants were assigned to either single-viewing (N = 35) or paired-viewing conditions (N = 12, six pairs). Unequal group sizes reflected the practical challenges of recruiting pairs, resulting in

more participants in the single-viewing condition. Participants received £5 or course credit as compensation. 2.2 Stimuli and materials This study utilised two sets of stimuli (maps and artworks), divided into two sequentially con- ducted parts. The experiment was conducted in the available space of the Virtual Reality (VR) Lab at the Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London (although partic- ipants did not use VR). The primary stimuli for Part 1 consisted of ten world maps displayed on a 17-inch laptop monitor (Dell Alienware 2019), depicting global climate change projec- tions, including near and far future scenarios for five key measures: mean temperature, sea PLOS ONE Studying attention to IPCC climate change maps with mobile eye-tracking PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316909 January 10, 2025 3 / 17