[论文解读] Problem difficulty and waiting time shape the level of detail and temporal organization of visual strategies in human planning

Mattia Eluchans, Giovanni Pezzulo|arXiv (Cornell University)|Mar 20, 2026

AI-based Problem Solving and Planning被引用 0

一句话总结

该研究考察问题难度和等待时间如何影响注视、光标行为与规划在一个基于图的二维路径任务中的表现，揭示更高难度会增加视觉覆盖与重新规划，而等待时间则改变注视–路径一致性出现的时机。

ABSTRACT

Planning entails identifying sequences of actions to reach a goal, yet we still have incomplete knowledge of how problem constraints, such as difficulty and available time, influence the visual strategies supporting plan construction, both in terms of coverage of the to-be-executed plans and its temporal organization. To fill this gap, we recorded participants' cursor and eye movements in a multi-target problem solving task on a grid. We manipulated two orthogonal dimensions: problem difficulty, by introducing the novel construct of misleadingness, which measures how nodes' distances on the grid diverged from their relative position along the solution, and waiting time, by allowing participants either to act immediately or wait before moving. We found that difficulty significantly affected both performance and gaze: harder problems reduced success rates, required more corrections and pauses, elicited longer pre-movement inspection that provided higher coverage of the to-be-executed plan, and more re-fixations. When participants could start immediately, they did so without fully consolidating their plan. This led to more pauses and backtracks, but also to more precise gaze-cursor alignment during execution, suggesting improved online control compensating for incomplete planning. With increased planning time, greater difficulty led participants to achieve a better temporal alignment between pre-movement visual inspection and cursor movement during execution. Overall, our results suggest that problem difficulty increases the visual coverage of the upcoming plan, whereas time availability shapes the extent of replanning during execution and determines whether gaze-path coherence emerges before movement or only during execution in difficult problems.

研究动机与目标

• Investigate how problem constraints shape visual strategies used for plan construction.
• Examine how difficulty and waiting time affect gaze coverage and temporal organization of planning.
• Determine how gaze and cursor data reveal planning stages before and during execution.
• Assess whether and how planning is consolidated before movement and how replanning occurs during execution.

提出的方法

• Use a two-dimensional grid-based ThinkAhead task with 60 problems solvable within 60 seconds each.
• Manipulate difficulty via misleadingness, a metric of mismatch between solution ordering and graph distance.
• Manipulate waiting time by requiring a 19-second wait before movement in one block.
• Record eye movements (EyeLink 1000+) at 2000 Hz and cursor trajectories at 60 Hz.
• Preprocess gaze data to map fixations to graph nodes and compute coverage and coherence with the planned path.
• Apply linear and generalized linear mixed-effects models to assess effects of difficulty and waiting, including mediation analyses to separate direct and gaze-mediated effects.

实验结果

研究问题

• RQ1 How do problem difficulty and waiting time affect success rates and planning-related gaze behavior?
• RQ2 How does gaze coverage and coherence relate to the executed path under different task constraints?
• RQ3 Does time available for planning change the temporal alignment between pre-movement inspection and cursor movement?
• RQ4 To what extent do fixations before and during execution align with the eventual plan, and how does this coherence change with difficulty?
• RQ5 Do gaze patterns mediate the impact of difficulty on planning quality?

主要发现

• Harder problems (high misleadingness) reduce success rates and increase pauses and backtracks.
• Higher difficulty leads to longer pre-movement visual inspection and greater coverage of the upcoming path.
• Waiting before movement reduces view-time exceedance and shifts timing of gaze–path coordination.
• Backtracks increase with difficulty and decrease with longer initial view times, indicating planning that benefits from upfront inspection.
• Time constraints and difficulty interact to shape the amount of replanning during execution and the emergence of gaze–path coherence.
• Mediation analyses show that longer initial gaze can partially mitigate the disruptive effect of difficulty on planning quality.