2026-09-10T09:44:59Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:27572 2026-09-10T05:38:43Z ddc:004 open_access

Using Social Cues for Wayfinding: An Eye-Tracking Study of Attention Allocation and Evidence Accumulation in a Virtual Reality T-Intersection (Short Paper) Qiao, Yu Campagnoli, Carlo Manley, Ed Social navigation wayfinding eye tracking virtual reality evidence accumulation attention In synchronous weak social wayfinding, route decisions are shaped in real time by others’ behaviour, yet the sampling and integration of social information during decision-making remain poorly understood. We investigated whether attention to pedestrians in a virtual-reality T-intersection reflects evidence accumulation preceding route commitment. Participants navigated scenes containing avatar crowds in which crowd size, proportion of credible others, directional majority, walking speed, and movement style were manipulated in an incomplete within-subjects orthogonal design. Continuous eye tracking measured attention to social cues, the destination landmark, and the surrounding scene. Results showed that gaze was directed predominantly toward social cues, whereas direct inspection of the landmark was rare. Among the manipulated factors, movement style and walking speed produced the clearest, though small, effects on fixation–saccade dynamics. Crucially, social gaze rose sharply early in the trial and then declined gradually before route commitment, suggesting that participants initially sampled social evidence and progressively reduced inspection as the decision unfolded. These findings indicate that social navigation involves accumulating and integrating others’ behaviour over time rather than simply following them. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Yu Qiao and Carlo Campagnoli and Ed Manley 2026 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 393, 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.28 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-275723 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.28 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode