Eye Movement Analysis Research Articles

Task-irrelevant optic flow guides attention in visual search.

Motion is an important factor in visual information processing. Studies have shown that global optic flow guides attention, but it remains unclear whether this attentional guidance occurs regardless of top-down attentional control settings for another endogenous cue. To address this issue, we developed a visual search paradigm in which a task-irrelevant optic flow starts and stops prior to a visual search task itself. Participants first observed an initial optic flow motion pattern for a brief period; next, they searched a static display for a target amongst multiple distractors. Results showed faster target detection when a target's locus coincided with the implied focus of expansion (FOE) from the preceding optic flow (vs. other loci). Eye-movement analyses revealed that initial saccades were drawn to the FOE during optic flow exposures and that relatively few saccades were needed to find targets contingent to the preceding FOE. The advantage of FOE for finding target occurred even when a salient feature singleton captured attention or when a task-relevant feature singleton was prioritized. Results of six experiments suggest that attentional control settings for a feature singleton do not over-ride a sustained influence of optic flow on attentional guidance.

An Analysis of Entropy-Based Eye Movement Events Detection.

Analysis of eye movement has attracted a lot of attention recently in terms of exploring areas of people’s interest, cognitive ability, and skills. The basis for eye movement usage in these applications is the detection of its main components—namely, fixations and saccades, which facilitate understanding of the spatiotemporal processing of a visual scene. In the presented research, a novel approach for the detection of eye movement events is proposed, based on the concept of approximate entropy. By using the multiresolution time-domain scheme, a structure entitled the Multilevel Entropy Map was developed for this purpose. The dataset was collected during an experiment utilizing the “jumping point” paradigm. Eye positions were registered with a 1000 Hz sampling rate. For event detection, the knn classifier was applied. The best classification efficiency in recognizing the saccadic period ranged from 83% to 94%, depending on the sample size used. These promising outcomes suggest that the proposed solution may be used as a potential method for describing eye movement dynamics.

Eye Movements in Neuropsychological Tasks.

This chapter reviews how recording and analysis of eye movements have been applied to understanding cognitive functioning in patients with neurological disease. Measures derived from the performance of instructed eye movement tests such as the anti-saccade and memory-guided saccade tasks have been shown to be associated with cognitive test performance and the early stages of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Other researchers have taken an ecological approach and recorded the uninstructed pattern of saccades made by patients during performance of established neuropsychological tasks. Studies that have analysed the eye movement strategies used in a number of widely used tests are reviewed, including the Corsi blocks, Tower of London, 'CANTAB' Spatial Working Memory and Brixton Spatial Anticipation test. The findings illustrate that eye movements are not purely in the service of vision, but support visuospatial working memory and forward action planning. Eye movement tests and measures also have potential for application in the assessment and diagnosis of neurological disease and cognitive impairment. Establishing large-scale normative data sets in healthy older adults and use of machine learning multivariate classifier algorithms may be key to further developing eye tracking applications in neuropsychological assessment.

RESOLUTION OF VESTIBULAR MIGRAINE COMPLICATED BY AUTOIMMUNE HYPOTHYROID WITH A PROGRAM OF MULTIMODAL NEUROREHABILITATION AND CLINICAL NUTRITION

Event Abstract Back to Event RESOLUTION OF VESTIBULAR MIGRAINE COMPLICATED BY AUTOIMMUNE HYPOTHYROID WITH A PROGRAM OF MULTIMODAL NEUROREHABILITATION AND CLINICAL NUTRITION David Schiller1* 1 Independent researcher, United States Background: A 51 year old female presented to a private clinic with a history of chronic dizziness that had been getting progressively worse over the last several months. She had been given a diagnosis of vestibular migraine by an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist. She had numerous episodes of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) previously in her history which were resolved with Epley's maneuver. She has a history of gastrointestinal symptoms that were diagnosed as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and hypothyroid that was diagnosed as Hashimoto's. The patient describes the dizziness symptoms as her head is "a balloon floating above my body." Her autoimmune hypothyroid was being managed with medications by her endocrinologist. Methods: Neurological examination revealed paradoxical findings on multi position blood pressure with a rise in blood pressure when the patient changed from seated to supine. Convergence insufficiency was observed on the right during eye movement analysis. Optokinetic eye movements were insufficient leftward and upward. Alternating hand movements revealed dysdiadochokinesia (DDK) on the left. Saccodometry of 100 saccades revealed hypometria with leftward and rightward saccades. Computerized Dynamic Posturography (CDP) revealed an anterior center of pressure (aCOP) on perturbed surface testing. CDP testing with head in right rotation revealed an abnormal loss in stability. CDP testing with head in extension on a perturbed surface revealed a near fall. Palpation revealed several areas of aberrant spinal segmental movement in the cervical and thoracic spine. A program of multimodal neurorehabilitation included vestibular rehabilitation (VR), spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) and Low Level Laser Therapy (LLLT). VR included gaze stability exercises, passive and active vestibular canal stimulation, laser guided visual feedback and eye movement exercises. Results: Saccodometry revealed resolution of the hypometria. CDP revealed an improvement in stability with head to the right and in extension. There was a resolution of aCOP on perturbed surfaces. Convergence test normalized. OPK testing normalized. Patient reported a resolution of dizziness symptoms that now only rarely occur with extreme fatigue. Conclusion: this author recommends further investigation into multimodal neurorehabilitation protocols that include VR, LLLT and SMT for the treatment of chronic dizziness and vestibular migraine Keywords: Dizziness, dizziness and vertigo, vestibular migraine, Vertigo, Hashimoto's, autoimmune disease, Hypothyroid, IBS – Irritable bowel syndrome, Neck Pain, Shoulder Pain, Spinal manipulative therapy, Low level laser therapy ( LLLT), Vestibular Rehabilitation, Clinical Nutrition, Center of Pressure (COP), saccodometry, convergence insufficiency, Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), Migraine, dysautonomia, orthostatic blood pressure Conference: International Symposium on Clinical Neuroscience, Orlando, United States, 24 May - 26 May, 2019. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Clinical Neuroscience Citation: Schiller D (2019). RESOLUTION OF VESTIBULAR MIGRAINE COMPLICATED BY AUTOIMMUNE HYPOTHYROID WITH A PROGRAM OF MULTIMODAL NEUROREHABILITATION AND CLINICAL NUTRITION. Front. Neurol. Conference Abstract: International Symposium on Clinical Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.fneur.2019.62.00015 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 02 Apr 2019; Published Online: 27 Sep 2019. * Correspondence: Dr. David Schiller, Independent researcher, Avon, United States, drschiller@comcast.net Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers David Schiller Google David Schiller Google Scholar David Schiller PubMed David Schiller Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Time Course of Visual Attention to Emotional Stimuli in Persons with Aphasia

Event Abstract Back to Event Time Course of Visual Attention to Emotional Stimuli in Persons with Aphasia Sameer A. Ashaie1, 2*, Katie McMenamin2 and Leora Cherney1, 2* 1 Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, United States 2 Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, United States Depression is a common sequela of aphasia. Cognitive models of depression suggest that visual attention to emotional information plays a key role in the etiology and maintenance of depression (Gotlib et al., 2010). The cognitive underpinnings of depression have been supported by eye-tracking research whereby depressed individuals spent longer time viewing negatively valenced stimuli compared to non-depressed individuals (Armstrong et al., 2012). However, the majority of research has been done by collapsing metrics of visual attention into long time segments (i.e., time segments greater than 1 second) thus obscuring the fine-grained nature of eye-movements (Mirman, 2016). Analyzing attention in smaller time segments may provide a better understanding of how visual attention to emotional stimuli changes over time. We conducted a fine-grained analysis of eye-movements to investigate whether persons with aphasia (due to left-hemisphere stroke) differ in visual attention to emotional stimuli compared to healthy controls. Twenty-four persons with chronic aphasia (post-onset > 6 months) and 13 healthy age and education-matched controls participated. Table 1 summarizes the demographic characteristics. The eye-tracking task was a free-viewing task. Participants were instructed to look at 20 pairs of happy-neutral faces and 20 pairs of sad-neutral faces. The complete presentation time (3500 ms) for each stimulus was analyzed and segmented into 70 consecutive 50ms time bins. Fixation probabilities were computed as a function of emotion trial-type (i.e., happy and sad face) and group (i.e., healthy controls and persons with aphasia). Growth curve analysis was used to investigate the attentional probabilities over time using fourth-order orthogonal time polynomials (linear, quadratic, cubic, and quartic). The four time terms, emotion-trial type and group were entered as fixed effects. Results showed that the face viewing probabilities roughly peaked at 500ms post-stimulus onset and then gradually decreased over time (with a smaller second peak). There was a significant group interaction with quadratic and quartic time terms. We also analyzed emotion bias (emotional face – neutral face) over time. There was a significant interaction between linear, cubic, quartic time terms with group and trial-type. The linear time term interaction suggests that as time progressed, persons with aphasia were less biased to sad faces compared to healthy controls. Both groups demonstrated a strong initial face orienting effect but over time persons with aphasia were less attentive. Persons with aphasia were also biased to neutral faces compared to sad faces early on and then maintained that attention throughout the time course. Overall, findings that time course of eye-movement behavior changes in response to different emotional stimuli suggest that eye-tracking is sensitives to different emotional stimuli in persons with aphasia. Our findings also demonstrate that eye-tracking is feasible in persons with aphasia and there may be a potential to use it as a biomarker for depression. Figure 1 Acknowledgements This research is supported by The Coleman Foundation.

Eye movement analysis to enhance the communication skills of children (patients) with severe motor and intellectual disabilities.

Eye movement analysis to enhance the communication skills of children (patients) with severe motor and intellectual disabilities.

Effects of Multisine Signal Bandwidth on Eye Movement Dynamics

In the analysis of human motor skills, tracking tasks with multisine target signals are often performed as they allow for quantitative measurement, identification, and modeling of human control dynamics. In this paper, the same "cybernetic" approach is taken to analyze eye movement dynamics in gaze tracking tasks, where participants had to track a moving target marker across the screen) with their eyes (i.e., a eye-only task) and 2) with their dominant hand (i.e., a eye-hand task). A human-in-the-loop experiment with 10 participants was performed to measure the eye movement dynamics. These two different conditions were performed with four different bandwidths of the multisine target signal driving the movement of the visual stimulus. The results show that the measured eye movement dynamics can be identified from the data of all experiment conditions and can be accurately modeled as an underdamped mass-spring-damper system with a time delay. Furthermore, with increased target signal bandwidth the bandwidth of participants’ eye movements also increases. Future development of gaze tracking tasks into a new tool for assessment of altered gaze behavior due to neurological diseases should take the balance between saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements into account and avoid very high (i.e., too difficult) bandwidths to warrant accurate modelling of gaze dynamics.

New insights into facial emotion recognition in Parkinson's disease with and without mild cognitive impairment from visual scanning patterns

BackgroundRecognizing emotional facial expressions is crucial for social interactions. Cognitive impairment and oculomotor abnormalities are common features of Parkinson's disease (PD) which may contribute to the performance in facial emotion recognition (FER) in PD. ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to analyze eye movement behavior during a facial emotion recognition (FER) task with respect to cognitive state in PD patients and healthy controls. MethodsEye movements of 24 non-demented, non-depressed PD patients (12 with intact cognitive functions and 12 with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) according to MDS task force criteria level 2), and 12 age-, sex and education-matched healthy controls were recorded during visual exploration of 28 emotional (happiness, surprise, disgust, anger, fear and sadness) and neutral faces. Participants were asked to identify the displayed emotion out of a sevenfold multiple choice question. ResultsPD-MCI patients showed reduced FER with specific impairment of anger recognition. Although the scanned area of PD patients with intact cognition was significantly restricted, they did not differ in FER from healthy subjects. While healthy subjects and cognitively intact PD patients scanned faces with preference for mouth and eyes, patients with PD-MCI tended to look at the center of the face and spent significantly less time fixating the mouth. ConclusionsIneffective visual exploration may contribute to impaired emotion recognition in PD. Visual scanning of emotional faces is altered in PD even in the absence of cognitive impairment. The progression to PD-MCI may result in further deterioration of scanning behavior and FER impairment.

T-junction priority scheme and road user’s yielding behavior

Four studies investigated yielding behavior in yield-controlled T-junctions that differed for two priority schemes. In one case road users in the intersecting arm had to give way to road users in the straight arm (priority to straight arm). In the other case road users in the straight arm had to give way to road users approaching from the intersecting arm (priority to intersecting arm). In two studies, yielding behavior was assessed with approaching speed and gaze behavior to the critical areas of the intersection. Two additional studies monitored road users’ speed and eye movements approaching the intersection. The results of the two behavioral studies showed a significant speed reduction and an increase of driver’s visual inspection to the intersection area in the priority-to-straight-arm condition in comparison to the priority-to-intersecting-arm condition. The eye movement analysis showed that total fixation time towards the intersection critical area and horizontal eye movements were significantly higher in the priority-to-straight-arm condition. The results emphasize the importance of considering perceptual affordances and expectations for priority in intersection design to increase drivers’ compliance to yielding rules.

Eye Movements in the "Morris Maze" Spatial Working Memory Task Reveal Deficits in Strategic Planning.

Analysis of eye movements can provide insights into processes underlying performance of cognitive tasks. We recorded eye movements in healthy participants and people with idiopathic Parkinson disease during a token foraging task based on the spatial working memory component of the widely used Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. Participants selected boxes (using a mouse click) to reveal hidden tokens. Tokens were never hidden under a box where one had been found before, such that memory had to be used to guide box selections. A key measure of performance in the task is between search errors (BSEs) in which a box where a token has been found is selected again. Eye movements were found to be most commonly directed toward the next box to be clicked on, but fixations also occurred at rates higher than expected by chance on boxes farther ahead or back along the search path. Looking ahead and looking back in this way was found to correlate negatively with BSEs and was significantly reduced in patients with Parkinson disease. Refixating boxes where tokens had already been found correlated with BSEs and the severity of Parkinson disease symptoms. It is concluded that eye movements can provide an index of cognitive planning in the task. Refixations on locations where a token has been found may also provide a sensitive indicator of visuospatial memory integrity. Eye movement measures derived from the spatial working memory task may prove useful in the assessment of executive functions as well as neurological and psychiatric diseases in the future.

Reduction of Map Information Regulates Visual Attention without Affecting Route Recognition Performance

Map-based navigation is a diverse task that stands in contradiction to the goal of completeness of web mapping services. As each navigation task is different, it also requires and can dispense with different map information to support effective and efficient wayfinding. Task-oriented reduction of the elements displayed in a map may therefore support navigation. In order to investigate effects of map reduction on route recognition and visual attention towards specific map elements, we created maps in which areas offside an inserted route were displayed as transparent. In a route memory experiment, where participants had to memorize routes and match them to routes displayed in following stimuli, these maps were compared to unmodified maps. Eye movement analyses revealed that in the reduced maps, areas offside the route were fixated less often. Route recognition performance was not affected by the map reduction. Our results indicate that task-oriented map reduction may direct visual attention towards relevant map elements at no cost for route recognition.

Reading Instructions Influence Cognitive Processes of Illustrated Text Reading Not Subject Perception: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Scientific illustrations play an important role in scientific texts, however, young readers show limited ability to use illustration information and integrate it with the text in multimedia learning. The primary goal of the present study was to investigate if strategy instructions for illustrated text reading focused on scientific illustration reading and text-illustration integration can help young readers overcome their deficiencies and change their reading processes, learning outcomes, and subjective perceptions of article difficulty and enjoyment, illustration enjoyment, and self-evaluation of learning. Besides, is subjective perception of the article related to reading behavior? Sixty-two fourth-grade students read an illustrated science text while their eye movements were recorded, and then completed a reading test and questionnaire. The instruction group outperformed the control group on the reading test, but subjective perceptions of the article did not differ between groups. Eye-movements analysis showed that the instruction group spent twice as much time reading the illustrations and made more saccades between relevant text and illustration sections than the control group. These findings indicate that strategy instructions for reading illustrated text promoted reading comprehension and changed learning processes, not subjective perceptions. In addition, the result of this study showed that there was no relationship between subjective perception (article difficulty or illustrations enjoyment) of the article and reading time (total reading time on the illustrated science text and on the science illustrations). This study had empirical and practical contributions. Empirically, this study developed the instruction methods in multimedia learning and further examined their effect on learning processes in young readers. Practically, this study can help elementary school teachers understand the processes used by young readers when reading illustrated texts and provide them with evidence-based instructions to teach science reading effectively.

Further to the right: Viewing distance modulates attentional asymmetries (‘pseudoneglect’) during visual exploration

Previous studies showed that the small leftward bias found in healthy humans’ spatial judgments of lines (“pseudoneglect”) shifts to the right with increasing distance between stimuli and observer. In this study, we investigated whether such a modulation of attentional asymmetry can also be observed in free visual exploration. Participants freely explored photographs of naturalistic scenes for 7 s in near (60 cm) and far (140 cm) space. After an initial leftward bias, followed by a compensatory rightward bias, gaze positions were significantly more leftward in near compared to far space (around 4 s from scene onset). Our results show that the modulation of attentional asymmetries by viewing distance previously reported for spatial judgments generalizes to free visual exploration, and we revealed the temporal dynamics of these asymmetries by fine-grained eye movement analysis. In contrast, an effect of viewing distance was reduced or absent when eye movements are under strong top-down control, as in systematic serial visual search (Sensitive Negelct Test). Finally, there was no effect of viewing distance in the landmark task (as also reported in a minority of other studies), suggesting that this effect may depend on specific, yet unidentified task characteristics.

In the Eye of the Deceiver: Analyzing Eye Movements as a Cue to Deception

Deceit occurs in daily life and, even from an early age, children can successfully deceive their parents. Therefore, numerous book and psychological studies have been published to help people decipher the facial cues to deceit. In this study, we tackle the problem of deceit detection by analyzing eye movements: blinks, saccades and gaze direction. Recent psychological studies have shown that the non-visual saccadic eye movement rate is higher when people lie. We propose a fast and accurate framework for eye tracking and eye movement recognition and analysis. The proposed system tracks the position of the iris, as well as the eye corners (the outer shape of the eye). Next, in an offline analysis stage, the trajectory of these eye features is analyzed in order to recognize and measure various cues which can be used as an indicator of deception: the blink rate, the gaze direction and the saccadic eye movement rate. On the task of iris center localization, the method achieves within pupil localization in 91.47% of the cases. For blink localization, we obtained an accuracy of 99.3% on the difficult EyeBlink8 dataset. In addition, we proposed a novel metric, the normalized blink rate deviation to stop deceitful behavior based on blink rate. Using this metric and a simple decision stump, the deceitful answers from the Silesian Face database were recognized with an accuracy of 96.15%.

Strong Conscious Cues Suppress Preferential Gaze Allocation to Unconscious Cues.

Visual attention allows relevant information to be selected for further processing. Both conscious and unconscious visual stimuli can bias attentional allocation, but how these two types of visual information interact to guide attention remains unclear. In this study, we explored attentional allocation during a motion discrimination task with varied motion strength and unconscious associations between stimuli and cues. Participants were instructed to report the motion direction of two colored patches of dots. Unbeknown to participants, dot colors were sometimes informative of the correct response. We found that subjects learnt the associations between colors and motion direction but failed to report this association using the questionnaire filled at the end of the experiment, confirming that learning remained unconscious. The eye movement analyses revealed that allocation of attention to unconscious sources of information occurred mostly when motion coherence was low, indicating that unconscious cues influence attentional allocation only in the absence of strong conscious cues. All in all, our results reveal that conscious and unconscious sources of information interact with each other to influence attentional allocation and suggest a selection process that weights cues in proportion to their reliability.

Influence of spatial attention on priming effects in word completion tasks: Analysis of eye movements of healthy subjects

Influence of spatial attention on priming effects in word completion tasks: Analysis of eye movements of healthy subjects

How people acquire knowledge from a web page: An eye tracking study

The article describes a pre-experimental research study that focuses on learning objects. Web objects that capture the attention of users and that characterize the content of a website were examined. The main goal was to identify the most relevant design of three web objects by using the eye-tracking tool Areas of Interest and feedback questioning as research methods. Eye tracking was used to gather data about students’ learning activity and questioning to gather students’ learning achievements. The eye movement analysis shows exactly in which order and how long participants spend on viewing selected items. In all three experimental stimuli, the majority of students started the learning process with a focus on the headline and headline and illustration (diagram), not on the box with information with written text. Heat maps and gaze plots document the learning process (Tobii Pro, 2017). As the findings of the learning process show, the students from the third quartile, which paid more attention to the learning process, achieved the best learning performance. The study contributes to our understanding of learning objects as small (reusable) “knowledge packages”.

Using Eye Movement Data Visualization to Enhance Training of Air Traffic Controllers: A Dynamic Network Approach

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) forecasted substantial increase in the US air traffic volume creating a high demand in Air Traffic Control Specialists (ATCSs). Training times and passing rates for ATCSs might be improved if expert ATCSs’ eye movement (EM) characteristics can be utilized to support effective training. However, effective EM visualization is difficult for a dynamic task (e.g. aircraft conflict detection and mitigation) that includes interrogating multi-element targets that are dynamically moving, appearing, disappearing, and overlapping within a display. To address the issues, a dynamic network-based approach is introduced that integrates adapted visualizations (i.e. time-frame networks and normalized dot/bar plots) with measures used in network science (i.e. indegree, closeness, and betweenness) to provide in-depth EM analysis. The proposed approach was applied in an aircraft conflict task using a high-fidelity simulator; employing the use of veteran ATCSs and pseudo pilots. Results show that, ATCSs’ visual attention to multi-element dynamic targets can be effectively interpreted and supported through multiple evidences obtained from the various visualization and associated measures. In addition, we discovered that fewer eye fixation numbers or shorter eye fixation durations on a target may not necessarily indicate the target is less important when analyzing the flow of visual attention within a network. The results show promise in cohesively analyzing and visualizing various eye movement characteristics to better support training.

Eye Tracking Results in Postconcussive Syndrome Versus Normative Participants.

Standard physical, neurologic, and neuropsychologic examinations may not detect abnormalities after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). An analysis of eye movements may be more sensitive to neurologic dysfunction. We performed eye tracking assessments in 71 active duty and veteran military personnel with persistent postconcussive symptoms (3 months to 5 years after mTBI) and 75 volunteers with no history of brain injury. Both eyes were sampled at 500 Hz and analyzed for various eye measurement parameters during visual tasks involving the saccadic and smooth systems. No difference between mTBI and normal participants in main sequence profiles was observed. On the circular task, intersaccadic interval duration was shorter in mTBI compared with normal subjects (horizontal: Cohen's D = -0.65; vertical: Cohen's D = -0.75). For reading, absolute saccadic amplitudes (Cohen's D = -0.76) and average forward saccadic amplitudes were lower (Cohen's D = -0.61). Absolute fixation velocity was higher (Cohen's D = 1.02), and overall fixation durations (Cohen's D = 0.58), regression durations (Cohen's D = 0.49), and forward saccadic durations (Cohen's D=0.54) were longer. mTBI participants had more fixations (Cohen's D = 0.54) and regressions per line (Cohen's D = 0.70) and read fewer lines (Cohen's D = -0.38) than normal subjects. On the horizontal ramp task, mTBI participants had lower weighted smooth pursuit gains (Cohen's D = -0.55). On the horizontal step task, mTBI participants had shorter mean fixation times (Cohen's D = -0.55). These results suggest vulnerability of the smooth pursuit and saccadic systems in mTBI. Eye tracking shows promise as an objective, sensitive assessment of damage after mTBI. (ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01611194, NCT01925963.).

Visual behavior and self-efficacy of game playing: an eye movement analysis

ABSTRACTThis study was to investigate the role of students’ game self-efficacy in their game performance as well as in their visual behavior distributions and transfer patterns during their gameplay. A total of 48 university students were recruited for participating in a gameplaying task while wearing with an ASL Mobile Eye eye-tracker. After the gameplay, each participant was asked to report their self-efficacy of the gameplay. Based on the self-reported game self-efficacy (GSE) score, the participants were divided into the higher and lower GSE groups. Independent t tests were used to compare their game performances and eye-tracking indices for each area of interest. A lag sequential analysis was used to profile the visual transfer pattern for each group. The results showed that the higher GSE group had better performances than the lower GSE group. During the gameplay, the higher GSE students tended to pay more attention to the critical information for a successful play. In addition, the lag sequential analyses revealed different visual transfer patterns for the two GSE groups. The higher GSE group tended to show a critical-factor-centralized visual-trasfer pattern which demonstrated more planning and monitoring gameplaying strategies; while the lower GSE students, probably lacking the self-confidence of gameplaying, tended to pay more attention to the remaining time for the game.This study may provide suggestions for future game-based leraning system designs.