Fork in the road: how self-confidence about terrain influences gaze behaviour and path choice

Decisions about where to move occur throughout the day and are essential to life. Different movements may present different challenges and affect the likelihood of achieving a goal. Certain choices may have unintended consequences, some of which may cause harm and bias the decision. Movement decisions rely on a person gathering necessary visual information via shifts in gaze. Here we sought to understand what influences this information-seeking gaze behaviour. We had participants choose between walking across one of two paths that consisted of images of terrain commonly found in either hiking or urban environments. We manipulated the number and type of terrain of each path. We recorded gaze behaviour during the approach to the two paths and had participants rate their self-confidence about walking across each type of terrain as though it was real. Participants did not direct gaze to the path with greater visual information, regardless of how we quantified information. Rather, we show that a persons self-confidence about their motor abilities predicts how they visually explore the environment with their eyes as well as their choice of action. The greater the self-confidence about walking across one path, the more they directed gaze to it, and the more likely they chose to walk across it. Overall, our results reveal a key role of a cognitive factor (self-confidence) in decision-making during a natural, movement-related behaviour.