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5. Discussion
In this section, the main results of the study are presented in relation to the
hypotheses; the methodological considerations and conclusions are also presented. Four eyetracking measures were analyzed: total visit duration, total fixation duration, visit count, and
fixation count. The four measures were analyzed in order to gain a better general
understanding of gaze behavior.
Fixation count is the number of visits to an AOI. Visit count is a similar measure,
but it differs in that it includes the total number of visits to an AOI including those that do
not result in fixation. In the study, fixations were defined as greater than or equal to 100 ms.
In the process of choice, visit count is seen as suggestive of the initial and later phase (Ares,
Mawad, Giménez, & Maiche, 2014) and can be interpreted as indecision or vacillation
between AOIs. The eye-tracking measure, which seems to have been most used in previous
eye-tracking studies investigating preference is the total fixation duration (Baschnagel,
2013; Snyder, Hurley, Tonkin, Cooksey, & Rice, 2015; Vu, Tu, & Duerrschmid, 2016;
Zhang & Seo, 2015). Total fixation duration measures the total amount of time for which
fixation on an AOI occurs. Total fixation duration seemed to be the most appropriate
measure for the current research, as it has been linked to preference and choice formation
(Atalay, Bodur, & Rasolofoarison, 2012; Chandon, Hutchinson, Bradlow, & Young, 2009;
Schotter et al., 2010; van der Laan et al., 2015). Total visit duration is similar to total fixation
duration but differs in that it includes the duration of all fixations on the AOI and can be
similarly interpreted.