Eye tracking in Child Computer Interaction: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Eye trackers allow for the collection of eye gaze data. These data can include eye gaze points which are two dimensional Cartesian coordinates (x,y) that represent a point on a screen (for screen-based eye trackers) or points in a natural real-world environment (e.g., at home, school or a supermarket). Advances in eye tracking technology have resulted in less intrusive devices being developed that open up opportunities for the Child Computer Interaction community (CCI) to understand how children interact with digital technologies and offer new insights into their cognitive processing. This paper reports the results of a literature review of three digital libraries using the Quorom technique, to identify research on eye tracking that aligns with the core themes of CCI researchers. In total 66 papers were identified that related to the themes of design, education, programming and interaction design. The results highlighted that eye tracking studies with children have relatively small sample sizes (median n=11) and that the median age of the children participating in the studies is 10.3 (inter-quartile range = 3.96). The metrics used within the research studies are predominately fixation duration and fixations within areas of interest. The paper contributes to a critique of existing methodological challenges to ensure quality data is obtained from studies involving children. In addition, the review identified that there are clear opportunities to further understand children’s interaction with digital technology using other metrics such as pupillometry and blinks; these can assist to understand phenomenon including cognitive load and arousal which may be useful for user experience research.