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Revealing Cognitive Load in Visuo-spatial Switching Processes via Pupillometry

Renato Orti

Created on November 7, 2025

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Revealing Cognitive Load in Visuo-spatial Switching Processes via Pupillometry

Renato Orti, Ph.D.
Affiliation:
Invited by:

Explore insights

3rd of December 2025 - Tobii Webinar "Beyond gaze: Understand cognitive load with eye tracking"
Visuo-spatial switching processes

Switching between egocentric and allocentric reference frames

Outline & Resources

Hidden cognitive load?

Cognitive effort less detected by behavioural measures like Accuracy and RTs

No need to take notes: the entire presentation will be availabe on my website within the next 24 hours:

How to measure cognitive load

Cognitive pupillometry an outstanding way to measure cognitive load

https://sites.google.com/view/renato-ortiphd/events/public-engagement

Pupil dilation meaurement

How we designed and carried out a pupillometry study to uncover the cognitve load

Takeaways

Suggestions and future directions

Egocentric the fork is in front of me.

How we encode spatial information

In daily life we encode and represent spatial positions in memory using a system of cooordinates, known as Frame of Reference (FoR). These reference frames are typically anchored to either:

- our body (Egocentric): spatial relations relative to me

- an external object (Allocentric): spatial relations relative to another object/environment

Allocentric: the fork is close to the pasta.

McNamara, 2002;

Paillard, 1991

We switch between reference frames

Due to the natural complexity of our surrounding environments we need to frequently switch between egocentric and allocentric FoRs:

Egocentric the fork is in front of me.

Allocentric: the fork is close to the pasta.

Burgess, 2006; Ruggiero et al., 2018

The cognitive demands of (visuo-spatial) switching

Task switching generally produces a switching cost: performance on a new task is impaired due to interference from the previous one (e.g., writing an e-mail while taking a call).

Visuo-spatial switching processes also exhibit a switching cost: the currently adopted reference frame affects the adoption of the other one (e.g., egocentric over allocentric).

Switching cost even more evident in aging: visuo-spatial switching processes are more challenging, in particular when the adoption of an allocentric reference frame is required.

Rogers and Monsell, 1995; Harris et al., 2012; Morganti, Stefanini and Riva, 2013

Overlooked cognitive load in visuo-spatial switching

A core question regards the source of switching cost in visuo-spatial switching processes: - is the switching cost due to the 'switching mechanisms' (i.e., the effort of the transition itself, regardless of direction) OR - is it due to differential computational demands of adopting one specific spatial representation (e.g., allocentric)? Traditional measures such as Accuracy and RTs cannot quantify the cognitive load (CL) behind visuo-spatial switching procsses.

Need for a physiological measure to truly isolate the source of the CL in visuo-spatial switching processes

Kahneman & Beatty, 1966

Measuring the CL: the Pupil as a Window

  • General Allocentric Cost: adopting Allocentric spatial representations produce significantly higher cognitive load (CL) compared to the Egocentric ones (in switching and non-switching).
  • Directional Cost Revealed: the switching cost is directional, with the transition from Allocentric → Egocentric imposing the highest CL.
  • The source of the interference: directional cost driven by the initial reference frame, which interferes with the successful adoption of the subsequent one.

How we measured CL

Visual Angle

Setting

Block Design

Measure their size on the retina

Control for environmental light

Control conditions and stimul order

Photometer

Eye Tracking

Measure of stimuli luminance

Record pupil size variations

#1 Time of Interest (TOI) Regions of Interest (ROI) Pupil size data pre-processing started with the defintion of TOI (when look at pupil size) and ROI (where participants had to look at)

#4 Block averaging and pupil dilation time course

#2 Blink reconstruction Missing and invalid data (due to blink or partially obscured pupil by eyelids) were recovered through linear interpolation.

Pupil-size data were extracted and pre-processed through the Tobii Pro Lab software according to the most recent pupillary methods guidelines.

#3 Baseline correction Pupil dilation during the first 50 ms after the trial onset was used as baseline. This baseline was then subtracted from all subsequent measurements.

Mathôt & Vilotijević, 2022;
Steinhauer et al., 2022

Pupil Size-data

In a nutshell

Pupil Dilation complement behavioural measures (i.e., Acc, RTs) quantifying the CL behind cognitive processes.

Control for Environmental/Stimuli Luminance to avoid artifacts in pupil dilation.

Use Jittered ISI/IBI to prevent spurious alignment between pupil dilation and stimuli presentation.

In visuo-spatial switching (and non-switching) processes the higher Cognitive Load (CL) derives from the starting reference frame: CL in Allo-Ego and Allo-Allo > Ego-Allo, EgoEgo.

Follow Pupillary Best Practices for robust pre-processing pipelines of raw pupil-size data.

Leverage Cognitive Load data to optimize UX/UI and reduce cognitive strain and fatigue.

Thank you for the attention

A special thanks to Tobii for inviting me to this webinar!

This presentation will be availabe on my website within the next 24 hours:

https://sites.google.com/view/renato-ortiphd/events/public-engagement

Photo taken in Naples on the 20th of December 2024

renato.orti@unicampania.it

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Experimental Flow

A block design was used for stimulus presentation and four blocks were presented: 2 Non-Switching (Ego-Ego, Allo-Allo) and 2 Switching (Ego-Allo, Allo-Ego). Jittered inter-stimulus interval (ISI) (3-5 sec) and jittered inter-block interval (IBI) (25-35 sec) were adopted.

  • Prevent spurious alignement between physiological signals (pupil dilation) and fixed task timing using jittered ISI and IBI.

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Visual Angle

The visual angle of the projection spanned horizontally for about 1.8° and vertically for around 1.57° resulting in a foveated stimulus projection. This visual angle was designed to ensure that all objects spatial position were within the fovea.

  • Maximize Visual Acuity
  • Precise Attentional Focus

Readily available free online resources exist.

Stimuli

The luminance of the stimuli was kept constant (mean luminance across stimuli = 10.5 lux). Stimuli luminance has been measured via a photometer. This rigorous control ensures that any observed changes in pupil diameter are due to cognitive processing and not the pupillary light reflex.

  • Rigourous Stimuli Uniformity

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Setting

The experiment took place in a soundproof room to minimize external distractions with the stimuli being presented in front of the participants on the wall via a video projector (projection meas.: 116×76 cm; resolution: 1024×768 pixels). Crucially for pupillometry, the luminance of the setting was strictly controlled and matched with that of the stimuli (mean luminance: 9.3 lux) to isolate changes in pupil diameter due only to cognitive load.

  • Strict Luminance Control

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Eye Tracker

Continuous measurements of both left and right pupil changes were recorded by means of the wearable head-unit eye tracking system Tobii Pro Glasses 2, with a sampling rate of 100 Hz. The Tobii Pro Lab Software was used to manage and extract pupil-size data.

  • Eye-tracker calibration

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