The Eye–Head Mover Spectrum : Modelling Individual and Population Head Movement Tendencies in Virtual Reality

Hu, Jinghui and Sidenmark, Ludwig and Lee, Hock Siang and Gellersen, Hans (2026) The Eye–Head Mover Spectrum : Modelling Individual and Population Head Movement Tendencies in Virtual Reality. In: CHI '26 : Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, New York, pp. 1-18. ISBN 9798400722783

Abstract

People differ in how much they move their head versus their eyes when shifting gaze, yet such tendencies remain largely unexplored in HCI. We introduce head movement tendencies as a fundamental dimension of individual difference in VR and provide a quantitative account of their population-level distribution. Using a 360° video free-viewing dataset ( = 87), we model head contributions to gaze shifts with a hinge-based parametric function, revealing a spectrum of strategies from eye-movers to head-movers. We then conduct a user study ( = 28) combining 360° video viewing with a short controlled task using gaze targets. While parameter values differ across tasks, individuals show partial alignment in their relative positions within the population, indicating that tendencies are meaningful but shaped by context. Our findings establish head movement tendencies as an important concept for VR and highlight implications for adaptive systems such as foveated rendering, viewport alignment, and multi-user experience design.