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

and the lower section the scale. On average, participants spent four times as much time view- ing the main map compared to the scale at the bottom. This 80–20% relative dwell time differ- ence was interestingly consistent across both viewing conditions and remained relatively stable when broken down by individual maps (see S5 Table). 3.2 Descriptive statistics for paintings Similar to the analysis of the maps, descriptive statistics for the two paintings were calculated, averaging across stimuli. Sample sizes were 35 for the single viewing condition and 12 for the paired viewing condition, with each of the two stimuli viewed under both conditions. This resulted in a total of 70 observations for the single viewing and 24 for the paired viewing conditions. Initial visualisation using cumulative heatmaps for the paintings indicated a pronounced central tendency consistent with the layout of the artworks. The first painting, being more fig- urative with numerous elements, exhibited diverse focal points such as faces and bodies, result- ing in a more dispersed gaze pattern across both X and Y axes. In contrast, the second painting, which is more abstract and centrally composed, showed gaze dispersion primarily concentrated at the centre and one particular area on bottom-right (albeit gaze dispersions were not further plotted). These differences highlight how compositional elements influence visual attention as indexed by cumulative fixations. For a detailed view of these attentional dis- tributions, refer to Fig 3, showcasing the heatmaps of the paintings.

In comparing single and paired viewing conditions (NSampleSingle = 35, NStimulusSingle = 70 and (NSamplePaired = 12, NStimulusPaired = 24), the total fixation duration, or dwell time, averaged about one minute per painting, with some variation within each condition and slightly shorter durations in the single condition compared to the paired: MSingle = 56.97 s (±2.40), MPaired = 72.09 s (±5.30). The number of fixations, or fixation count, was relatively lower in the single Fig 2. Box plots of gaze metrics for maps. Box plots illustrate five gaze metrics across all maps (single-viewing in light grey and paired-viewing in dark grey): (a) total fixation duration (s), (b) normalised fixation duration (%), (c) fixation count, (d) average fixation duration (ms), and (e) proxy scanpath length (pixels). Whilst total fixation durations were comparable between conditions, paired viewing showed higher fixation counts, shorter average fixation durations, and longer scanpaths. Each plot displays the range (excluding outliers), interquartile range, median, and mean (triangle overlay). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0316909.g002 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 8 / 17