Eye Tracking Research Articles

Enhancing Mobile Eye-Tracking in Extreme Urban Lighting Conditions

One of the methods for understanding residents' needs and socially improving urban spaces in terms of transportation, safety, landscape protection, and managing tourist traffic load is eye-tracking (ET). Researchers using mobile ET for outdoor studies face significant challenges, particularly due to sunlight affecting data quality. Existing solutions often overlook participant comfort. This article introduces a novel accessory designed for extreme lighting conditions, such as bright days, sunsets, and snowy or water-filled environments. The goal is to eliminate disruptions caused by uncontrolled sunlight on participants' eyes and enables studies in urban environments. A custom sun shield, designed for ETs based on spectacle frames, prioritizes both physical and psychological comfort. The lightweight shield is easy to install, minimally restricts the field of view, and does not interfere with eye-tracking components. It is cost-effective and suitable for DIY 3D printing. Control studies and field research confirmed its effectiveness, with feedback from over 100 users improving the final design. The shield enhances eye-tracking research credibility in sunny conditions, supports efficient calibration, and improves participant recruitment and well-being. Jakość danych znacząco wzrosła co obrazuje porównanie danych dotyczących sposobu detekcji źrenicy. Thanks to this solution, it will be possible to conduct research aimed at better understanding the behavior of city users, while ensuring their comfort and safety. It will also be possible to conduct research within the framework of so-called living labs. Importantly, studies show that the approach to designing subsequent mobile ETs based on IR should undergo significant modification.

Analysis of foothold selection during locomotion using terrain reconstruction.

Relatively little is known about the way vision is used to guide locomotion in the natural world. What visual features are used to choose paths in natural complex terrain? To answer this question, we measured eye and body movements while participants walked in natural outdoor environments. We incorporated measurements of the three-dimensional (3D) terrain structure into our analyses and reconstructed the terrain along the walker's path, applying photogrammetry techniques to the eye tracker's scene camera videos. Combining these reconstructions with the walker's body movements, we demonstrate that walkers take terrain structure into account when selecting paths through an environment. We find that they change direction to avoid taking steeper steps that involve large height changes, instead of choosing more circuitous, relatively flat paths. Our data suggest walkers plan the location of individual footholds and plan ahead to select flatter paths. These results provide evidence that locomotor behavior in natural environments is controlled by decision mechanisms that account for multiple factors, including sensory and motor information, costs, and path planning.

Analysis of foothold selection during locomotion using terrain reconstruction

Relatively little is known about the way vision is used to guide locomotion in the natural world. What visual features are used to choose paths in natural complex terrain? To answer this question, we measured eye and body movements while participants walked in natural outdoor environments. We incorporated measurements of the three-dimensional (3D) terrain structure into our analyses and reconstructed the terrain along the walker’s path, applying photogrammetry techniques to the eye tracker’s scene camera videos. Combining these reconstructions with the walker’s body movements, we demonstrate that walkers take terrain structure into account when selecting paths through an environment. We find that they change direction to avoid taking steeper steps that involve large height changes, instead of choosing more circuitous, relatively flat paths. Our data suggest walkers plan the location of individual footholds and plan ahead to select flatter paths. These results provide evidence that locomotor behavior in natural environments is controlled by decision mechanisms that account for multiple factors, including sensory and motor information, costs, and path planning.

Eye tracking research on readers’ interactions with multimodal texts: a mini-review

This mini-review advocates for the role of eye-tracking research in understanding readers’ engagement with multimodal texts. Synthesizing findings from a variety of studies, the review reveals how eye-tracking gives insights into sophisticated interactions between the textual, visual, and auditory elements within reading environments that assist both cognitive processing and comprehension. Several gaps were revealed: limited demographic scope, integration of advanced technologies, and substantial impact to the area of eye tracking and multimodal literacy. Future directions must therefore include studies across diverse populations, innovative technologies, and cross-discipline research studies. These directions are critical for advancing literacy development in an increasingly multimodal digital world.

The role of processing goals in second language predictive processing

Abstract This study investigates how second language (L2) learners engage in prediction based on their processing goals. While prediction is a prominent feature of human sentence comprehension in first–language speakers, it remains less understood when and how L2 learners engage in predictive processing. By conducting a visual–world eye–tracking experiment involving Chinese–speaking L2 learners of Korean, we tested the hypothesis that L2 learners determine whether to engage in prediction by evaluating the costs and benefits of anticipatory processing. The experiment specifically focused on the impact of a top–down comprehension goal for L2 learners’ predictive use of an honorific form in Korean by providing them with different types of task instruction. Our results indicated that all groups engaged in predictive processing in early and entire predictive regions. However, in the late predictive region, L2 learners presented with a prediction–oriented task, but not those with a simple comprehension task, actively generated expectations about the honorific status of an upcoming referent. These findings lend support to the utility account of L2 prediction, suggesting that L2 learners’ engagement in prediction depends on their current goals and strategies for processing efficiency.

On the role of visual feedback and physiotherapist-patient interaction in robot-assisted gait training: an eye-tracking and HD-EEG study

BackgroundTreadmill based Robotic-Assisted Gait Training (t-RAGT) provides for automated locomotor training to help the patient achieve a physiological gait pattern, reducing the physical effort required by therapist. By introducing the robot as a third agent to the traditional one-to-one physiotherapist-patient (Pht-Pt) relationship, the therapist might not be fully aware of the patient’s motor performance. This gap has been bridged by the integration in rehabilitation robots of a visual FeedBack (FB) that informs about patient’s performance. Despite the recognized importance of FB in t-RAGT, the optimal role of the therapist in the complex patient-robot interaction is still unclear. This study aimed to describe whether the type of FB combined with different modalities of Pht’s interaction toward Pt would affect the patients’ visual attention and emotional engagement during t-RAGT.MethodsTen individuals with incomplete Spinal Cord Injury (C or D ASIA Impairment Scale level) were assessed using eye-tracking (ET) and high-density EEG during seven t-RAGT sessions with Lokomat where (i) three types of visual FB (chart, emoticon and game) and (ii) three levels of Pht-Pt interaction (low, medium and high) were randomly combined. ET metrics (fixations and saccades) were extracted for each of the three defined areas of interest (AoI) (monitor, Pht and surrounding) and compared among the different experimental conditions (FB, Pht-Pt interaction level). The EEG spectral activations in theta and alpha bands were reconstructed for each FB type applying Welch periodogram to data localised in the whole grey matter volume using sLORETA.ResultsWe found an effect of FB type factor on all the ET metrics computed in the three AoIs while the factor Pht-Pt interaction level also combined with FB type showed an effect only on the ET metrics calculated in Pht and surrounding AoIs. Neural activation in brain regions crucial for social cognition resulted for high Pht-Pt interaction level, while activation of the insula was found during low interaction, independently on the FB used.ConclusionsThe type of FB and the way in which Pht supports the patients both have a strong impact on patients’ engagement and should be considered in the design of a t-RAGT-based rehabilitation session.

Situational Awareness Errors in Forklift Logistics Operations: A Multiphase Eye-Tracking and Think-Aloud Approach

Background: This study explores forklift operators’ situational awareness (SA) and human errors in logistic operations using a multiphase approach as an innovative methodology. Methods: Ethnography, eye tracking, error taxonomy, and retrospective think-aloud (RTA) were used to study the diverse cognitive, behavioral, and operational aspects affecting SA. After analyzing 566 events across 18 tasks, this research highlighted eye tracking’s potential by offering real-time insights into operator behavior and RTA’s potential as a method for cross-checking the causal factors underlying errors. Results: Critical tasks, like positioning forklifts and lowering pallets, significantly impact incident occurrence, while high-cognitive demand tasks, such as hoisting and identifying pedestrians/obstacles, reduce SA and increase errors. Driving tasks are particularly vulnerable to errors and are the most affected by operator risk generators (ORGs), representing 42% of incident risk events. This study identifies driving, hoisting, and lowering loads as the tasks most influenced by system factors. Limitations include the task difficulty levels, managing physical risk, and training. Future research is suggested in autonomous industrial vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems (ADASs). Conclusions: This study provides valuable insights into how we may improve safety in logistics operations by proposing a multiphase methodology to uncover the patterns of attention, perception, and cognitive errors and their impact on decision-making.

Eye Movement Classification using Feature Engineering and Ensemble Machine Learning

This paper explores the classification of gaze direction using electrooculography (EOG) signals, integrating signal processing, deep learning, and ensemble learning techniques to enhance accuracy and reliability. A complex technique is proposed in which several feature types are derived from EOG data. Spectral properties generated from power spectral density analysis augment basic statistical characteristics such as mean and standard deviation, revealing the frequency content of the signal. Skewness, kurtosis, and cross-channel correlations are also used to represent intricate nonlinear dynamics and inter-channel interactions. These characteristics are then reformatted into a two-dimensional array imitating picture data, enabling the use of the pre-trained ResNet50 model to extract deep and high-level characteristics. Using these deep features, an ensemble of bagging-trained decision trees classifies gaze directions, lowering model variance and increasing prediction accuracy. The results show that the ensemble deep learning model obtained outstanding performance metrics, with accuracy and sensitivity ratings exceeding 97% and F1-score of 98%. These results not only confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach in managing challenging EOG signal classification tasks but also imply important consequences for the improvement of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) systems, especially in assistive technologies where accurate gaze tracking is fundamental.

Simultaneous Eye Tracking and Single-Neuron Recording to Identify Target-Selective Neurons

Simultaneous Eye Tracking and Single-Neuron Recording to Identify Target-Selective Neurons

Driver Cognitive Distraction Detection based on eye movement behavior and integration of multi-view space-channel feature

The significance of Driver Distraction Detection (DDD) in enhancing road safety is immense and undeniable. While numerous DDD methods concentrate on conventional distractions, such as driving behavior, gaze direction, or hand movements, they often overlook cognitive distractions owing to their intricate nature. This study aims to bridge this gap by leveraging driver eye movement data to detect cognitive distractions. To achieve this, we introduce the Driver Cognitive Distraction Detection (DCDD) model. This model incorporates the driver’s gaze points, captured by an eye tracker, and the DashCam Image (DCI) as inputs. To capture the temporal dynamics of the driver’s eye movements, we devise a preprocessing technique that generates an eye movement heat Map (Map), which highlights the driver’s areas of focus within the DCI. Then, a Fusion Adversarial Network (FAN) is designed by utilizing the Sigmoid activation function to blend DCI features with those of the Map. Subsequently, a shared parameter network is employed for adversarial learning, focusing on the inversely activated features. To further achieve the extraction of DCI and Map features, we propose the Multi-View Space Channel Network (MSCN). This network can integrate low-dimensional spatial features and high-dimensional channel features from different views of DCI and Map to help Transformer capture DCI and Map features more comprehensively in the temporal dimension. By effectively integrating DCI and Map data and recursively extracting time information, our DCDD model achieves remarkable accuracy while controlling model Params and FLOPs, attaining a high score of 96.42%.

Face-Looking as a Real-Time Process in Mind-Mindedness: Timely Coordination Between Mothers' Gaze on Infants' Faces and Mind-Related Comments.

Maternal mind-mindedness refers to a caregiver's tendency to respond to their infants as individuals with their own thoughts, feelings, desires, and beliefs. Although previous studies have focused on maternal speech in quantifying mind-mindedness, maternal mind-mindedness should manifest not only as mind-related comments but also through non-verbal behaviors during infant-mother interactions. In this study, we investigated the relationship between maternal gaze at the infant's face and typical verbal measurement of mind-mindedness in free-flowing interactions. Forty 11- to 13-month-old infants and their mothers participated in the study; the mothers were asked to wear a head-mounted eye tracker to measure their gaze during infant-mother free-play interactions. We measured the proportion of time mothers looked at the infant's face when it was present in the mother's field of view and examined the relationship between the face-looking proportion and verbal measurement of mothers' mind-mindedness. Mothers who displayed appropriate mind-related comments looked at the faces of their infants more frequently. Moreover, their looking was coordinated in a timely manner with appropriate mind-related comments compared with other comments. Our findings suggest that mothers looking at infants' faces supports comments regarding infants' mental states and shed new light on real-time behaviors underlying mothers' mentalization processes.

Real-Time Gaze Tracking via Head-Eye Cues on Head Mounted Devices

Real-Time Gaze Tracking via Head-Eye Cues on Head Mounted Devices

Practical Gaze Tracking on Any Surface With Your Phone

Practical Gaze Tracking on Any Surface With Your Phone

Exploring sense of spaciousness in interior settings: Screen-based assessments with eye tracking, and virtual reality evaluations

Exploring sense of spaciousness in interior settings: Screen-based assessments with eye tracking, and virtual reality evaluations

Integrating Students’ Real-Time Gaze in Teacher–Student Interactions: Case Studies on the Benefits and Challenges of Eye Tracking in Primary Education

Integrating neuroscience techniques, such as eye tracking, into educational practices has opened new avenues for understanding the cognitive processes underlying learning. This study investigates the feasibility and practicality of using eye tracking as a supportive tool for educators in primary school settings. By taking into account eye-tracking features in lesson plans and instruction, this study explores the benefits and challenges of this technology from teachers’ perspective. The findings reveal that eye tracking can enhance interactivity, maintain student attention, and provide immediate feedback, thereby aiding in identifying student difficulties that may otherwise go unnoticed. However, the study also highlights concerns related to technical complexities, data privacy, and the need for teacher training to utilize and interpret eye-tracking data effectively. These insights contribute to a nuanced understanding of how eye-tracking technology can be implemented in educational settings, offering potential pathways for personalized teaching and improved learning outcomes.

Айтрекинг в нейропсихологическом исследовании особенностей зрительного гнозиса детей с нарушением слуха

<p>The article is devoted to the problem of assessing the state of visual gnosis in children with hearing impairment in order to identify possible mechanisms for compensating for uneven development of mental functions and assessing the possibilities of remedial education. We combined the research potential of the classical neuropsychological approach with the eye-tracking methodology in order to study in detail through eye movements the uneven development of auditory, visual and verbal functions in information processing in children with hearing impairment. The task was to conduct not only a classical neuropsychological assessment of visual gnosis in children with hearing impairment, but also to obtain new data on eye tracking during neuropsychological tests. The study involved cochlearly implanted preschoolers with hearing impairment (N=15) and typically developing preschoolers (N=16) aged 5 to 7 years (M=6.1; SD=0.5). At the first stage, classical neuropsychological tests for visual gnosis were conducted, at the second stage, eye tracking was used to record eye movements during neuropsychological tests by preschoolers. Our study confirms the weakness of visual information processing processes during neuropsychological tests in children with hearing impairment. Analysis of eye movement strategies recorded by the eye tracker during neuropsychological tests allowed us to identify a number of features of visual information processing in children with hearing impairment: chaotic search, changes in the recognition sequence, decreased noticeability (“recognizability”) of images or decreased interest (duration of fixations and viewing), weakness of the holistic strategy and synthesis, fragmentation of perception. The duration of the scanning path, spatial density of fixations, scanning regularity, and scanning direction during image recognition differ. Features of the visual search strategy are observed in the number of switches, fixation time, and patterns of gaze transitions between areas of interest. In children with impairments, when performing tests for visual gnosis, an increase in the time of fixations is recorded, which indicates the cognitive complexity of perception. The combination of weakness in the processing of auditory and visual information leads to diffuseness, incorrectness of the correlation of the image of an object and its verbal designation due to the poverty of the vocabulary of children with hearing impairments.</p>

An Eye Tracker Study on the Understanding of Implicitness in French Elementary School Children

Background: The aim of this study is to use an eye tracker to compare the understanding of three forms of implicitness (i.e., presupposition, conversational implicatures, and irony) in 139 pupils from the first to the fifth year of elementary school. Methods: The child was invited to read short texts composed of a context about some characters and a target sentence conveying one of the three kinds of implicitness. After that, there was a comprehension yes/no question to check whether the child had understood the implicit content of the target sentence. At the same time eye, movements were recorded by a remote system (Pro Fusion by Tobii). The number of correct answers, the duration, and the number of fixations on the texts were measured. Results: We showed that children’s reading time is positively correlated with the accurate comprehension of implicitness, and that children similarly understand the three types of implicitness. Furthermore, the number and the duration of fixations depend both on the age of the children and on their good or poor understanding of the implicit contents. This fact is particularly noticeable for children in the first-grade class, for whom fixations are significantly longer and more frequent when they correctly understand sentences containing implicitness. Conclusion: These results argue in favor of the possibility of teaching the comprehension of some types of implicitness (presupposition, implicature, and irony) from an early age.

Visual attention and recall of flavored cigarillo package elements among young adults: A randomized control trial.

Flavoring in cigarillos contributes to greater product initiation and abuse liability particularly among young adults. Few studies have examined how packaging elements, including flavor, may draw visual attention from potential consumers as well as impact product recall. This study aimed to test the difference in visual attention to flavor names and other packaging elements on cigarillo products as well as recall of these packaging elements. Young adults aged 16-28 years were recruited to participate in a randomized control trial (Clinictrials.org ID: NCT04358705) in June through December 2022 (N = 89). Participants were randomized to two conditions viewing 12 flavored or unflavored cigarillo package images. Eye tracking software captured participants viewing (dwell) time on package features: flavor, brand, health warning, price, and other package imagery. Participants were asked about their recall of the images viewed. The proportion of dwell time on each package elements were used to examine differences between experimental conditions. Across conditions, participants spent the greatest proportion of dwell time looking at the health warning. Participants in the flavored condition spent a significantly greater proportion of dwell time looking at flavor name (mean: 10.66%; SD: 3.56) compared to those in the unflavored condition (mean:7.03%; SD 2.81). Following the experiment, 45.8% of those in the flavored condition recalled having seen flavors or flavor names, which was greater than recall of all other elements and was significantly greater than flavor recall in the unflavored condition (12.2%). Flavored cigarillos attract greater visual attention and were the most memorable element of cigarillo packaging among young adults sampled. Changes to cigarillo packaging, including limiting flavor descriptors, imagery, and/or color on packaging and advertisements may be an effective way to reduce young adults' attention to the products and thus their appeal.

Attentional differences in L2 learners’ word learning strategies between mobile-assisted and in-print reading: An eye tracking study

The present study combines three influential and interwoven areas of research (MALL, SLA, and psycholinguistics) into a cohesive research framework to explore whether and how medium and word exposure influence L2 learners’ incidental acquisition and online processing of new words using eye tracking methodology. Seventy-seven L2 learners engaged in reading a short novel containing new words of higher and lower exposure frequencies on a tablet or in print. We assessed L2 learners’ word learning accuracy using word form recognition, meaning recognition, and meaning recall tasks after reading. Eye tracking measures (including first-fixation duration, first-pass time, second-pass time, and total-reading time) were used to analyse visual attention allocated at the early and late stages of L2 learners’ lexical processing during reading. The results from ANCOVA analyses demonstrated the continued positive and significant effects of word exposure on L2 learners’ learning gains and attentive processing. Further, our findings indicated the negative effects of mobile-assisted reading on both accuracy and attention compared to in-print reading, with the latter readers achieving greater word learning gains in all three accuracy dimensions and employing an attentive reading strategy with more attentional resources allocated at the early stage and fewer ones at the late stage of lexical processing, as opposed to a skimming strategy observed in tablet users. From a pedagogical perspective, the cognitive costs associated with attentional deficits underscore issues on underlying cognitive mechanisms and highlight interventions requiring further exploration and consideration.

Attention Mechanism and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory-Based Real-Time Gaze Tracking

Attention Mechanism and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory-Based Real-Time Gaze Tracking