Eye Movement Measures Research Articles

A cross-cultural study showing deficits in gaze-language coordination during rapid automatized naming among individuals with ASD

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their first-degree relatives demonstrate automaticity deficits reflected in reduced eye-voice coordination during rapid automatized naming (RAN), suggesting that RAN deficits may be a genetically meaningful marker of ASD language-related impairments. This study investigated whether RAN deficits in ASD extend to a language typologically distinct from English. Participants included 23 Cantonese-speaking individuals with ASD and 39 controls from Hong Kong (HK), and age- and IQ-comparable groups of previously-studied English-speaking individuals with ASD (n = 45) and controls (n = 44) from the US. Participants completed RAN on an eye tracker. Analyses examined naming time, error rate, measures of eye movement reflecting language automaticity, including eye-voice span (EVS; location of eyes versus the named item) and refixations. The HK-ASD group exhibited longer naming times and more refixations than HK-Controls, in a pattern similar to that observed in the US-ASD group. Cultural effects revealed that both HK groups showed longer EVS and more fixations than US groups. Naming time and refixation differences may be ASD-specific impairments spanning cultures/languages, whereas EVS and fixation frequency may be more variably impacted. A potential underlying mechanism of visual “stickiness” may be contributing to this breakdown in language automaticity in ASD.

Effects of Air Route Alternation and Display Design on an Operator’s Situation Awareness, Task Performance and Mental Workload in Simulated Flight Tasks

Air route alternation caused by unexpected events in abnormal or emergency situations often produces adverse consequences on an operator’s cognition and behavior in flight tasks. Under such a circumstance, it is especially necessary to examine the utility of the interaction displays usually designed based on the routine environment. This study was aimed to investigate the effects of air route alternation and display design on operators’ situation awareness (SA), task performance and mental workload during simulated flight tasks. Twenty-four participants attended an experiment where they were instructed to perform simulated flight tasks with three types of display designs in both air-route-as-planned and air-route-altered conditions. Subjective measures, behavioral measures and eye movement measures were adopted to assess the participants’ SA, task performance and mental workload. The results show that unexpected air route alternation increases mental workload as well as deteriorates the SA and task performance due to the gap between attention resource demand and supply. Reducing the demand of the operator’s attention resource should be the focus when coping with unexpected events in abnormal situations. In addition, reasonable information layout, such as a center-layout design of the critical decision-making information, is more important than information salience for improving the SA and task performance in abnormal situations. Nevertheless, indicators with a high-salience design, such as a more open window design and immersive design, are still worth recommending.

The psycholinguistic and affective processing of framed health messages among younger and older adults.

How health-related messages are framed can impact their effectiveness in promoting behaviors, and messages framed in terms of gains have been shown to be more effective among older adults. Recent findings have suggested that the affective response to framed messages can contribute to these effects. However, the impact of demands associated with psycholinguistic processing for different frames is not well understood. In this study, exercise-related messages were gain or loss framed and with a focus on either desirable or undesirable outcomes. Participants read these messages while their eye movements were monitored and then provided affective ratings. Older adults reacted less negatively than younger adults to loss-framed messages and messages focusing on undesirable outcomes. Eye-movement measures indicated both younger and older adults had difficulty processing the most complex messages (loss-framed messages focused on avoiding desirable outcomes). When gain-framed messages were easily processed, they engendered more positive affect, which in turn, was related to better recall. These results suggest that affective and cognitive mechanisms are interdependent in comprehension of framed messages for younger and older adults. An implication for translation to effective health communication is that simpler message framing engenders a positive reaction, which in turn supports memory for that information, regardless of age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Search for a distressed swimmer in a dynamic, real-world environment.

Visual search is increasingly being explored in dynamic, real-world environments. This includes swimming pools, where lifeguards have shown superior drowning detection in simulated environments. Here, we explored if lifeguard superiority is observed in real-life scenes of a busy swimming pool. Experiment 1 required participants to identify real-life distressed swimmers in clips of busy pool activity via a touchscreen interface. Experiment 2 sought to replicate the first study, with the inclusion of eye-movement measures. Experiment 3 varied the methodology, using an occlusion method where clips were frozen and blurred shortly after target onset. The results demonstrated an experience effect, with lifeguards detecting distressed swimmers more often and faster than nonlifeguards. No clear differences were found in the eye-movements between groups; thus, we cannot conclude that the lifeguards' faster responses are due to better scanning strategies. The different methodological approaches revealed the occlusion method to have the larger effect size, supporting the growing evidence that occlusion may be a better test for dynamic target detection than traditional response-time tests. This research demonstrates that the clear lifeguard experience effect generalizes to real-life pool environments with a large number of swimmers and real incidents. It could be used to inform lifeguard training tools and assessments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The effects of age and verbal ability on word predictability in reading.

Increased predictability effects in older compared to younger adults have been mostly observed in late eye-movement measures during reading. However, it is unclear whether and how these effects may be related to verbal ability, which typically improves with age. Past studies have shown that verbal abilities modulate the predictability effect. Here, we aimed to replicate predictability effects in younger and older adults in a sentence reading paradigm and to investigate how verbal ability modulates the predictability effect. We monitored 26 younger and 27 older adults' eye movements as they read sentences with target words varying in predictability and examined the impact of age and verbal ability, as reflected in vocabulary and print exposure measures. Replicating previous studies, we found that older adults relied more heavily on contextual information in their anticipation of upcoming input in one late measure. In one early measure (first-fixation duration), participants with higher scores in verbal ability showed greater predictability effects, whereas the predictability effect was virtually absent in those with low scores. In one late measure (regression-path duration), age interacted with predictability. However, verbal ability, when included as a covariate in this model, could not account for the age-related increases in predictability effects. Collectively, our findings indicate that verbal ability influences predictability effects in early processing stages, suggesting facilitation of initial word processing and that some aspect of aging other than verbal ability influences predictability effects in late measures. The latter finding most likely reflects a shift toward integrative controlled processes with age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

How do we react to cluttered displays? Evidence from the first seconds of visual search in websites

Display clutter is known to degrade search performance and lead to differences in eye movement measures in different contexts. The goal of this study was to determine whether these differences in eye movements could be detected in the first few seconds of a search task using a realistic display, both with or without time pressure. Participants were asked to search for image or word targets in 40 website screenshots. Time pressure was introduced for half the trials. Clutter algorithms were used to classify the websites as low- or high-clutter. Performance, subjective, and eye tracking metrics were collected. Results showed that people’s attention allocation within the first three seconds of search is different when viewing high-clutter websites. In particular, people’s spread of attention was larger in high-clutter websites. The results can be used to detect whether a person is struggling with clutter early on after they view a display. Practitioner summary: Eye tracking metrics showed that people react differently to a cluttered website in a variety of conditions. These differences were evident within the first three seconds of search. The eye tracking metrics identified can be used to detect people struggling with clutter as soon as they look at a website.

The Effects of Language Barriers and Time Constraints on Online Learning Performance: An Eye-Tracking Study.

The goal of this study is to model the effect of language use and time pressure on English as a first language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL) students by measuring their eye movements in an on-screen, self-directed learning environment. Online learning is becoming integrated into learners' daily lives due to the flexibility in scheduling and location that it offers. However, in many cases, the online learners often have no interaction with one another or their instructors, making it difficult to determine how the learners are reading the materials and whether they are learning effectively. Furthermore, online learning may pose challenges to those who face language barriers or are under time pressure. The effects of two factors, language use (EFL vs. ESL) and time constraints (high vs. low time pressure), were investigated during the presentation of online materials. The effects were analyzed based on eye movement measures (eye fixation rate-the total number of eye fixations divided by the task duration and gaze entropy) and behavioral measures (correct rate and task completion time). The results show that the ESL students had higher eye fixation rates and longer task completion times than the EFL students. Moreover, high time pressure resulted in high fixation rates, short task completion time, low correct rates, and high gaze entropy. The results suggest the possibility of using unobtrusive eye movement measures to develop ways to better assist those who struggle with learning in the online environment.

Action predictability is reflected in beta power attenuation and predictive eye movements in adolescents with and without autism

Most theoretical accounts of autism posit difficulties in predicting others' actions, and this difficulty has been proposed to be at the root of autistic individuals' social communication differences. Empirical results are mixed, however, with autistic individuals showing reduced action prediction in some studies but not in others. It has recently been proposed that this effect might be observed primarily when observed actions are less predictable, but this idea has yet to be tested. To assess the influence of predictability on neural and behavioural action prediction, the current study employed an action observation paradigm with multi-step actions that become gradually more predictable. Autistic and non-autistic adolescents showed similar patterns of motor system activation during observation, as seen in attenuated mu and beta power compared to baseline, with beta power further modulated by predictability in both groups. Bayesian statistics confirmed that action predictability influenced beta power similarly in both groups. The groups also made similar behavioural predictions, as seen in three eye-movement measures. We found no evidence that autistic adolescents responded differently than non-autistic adolescents to the predictability of an observed action. These findings show that autistic adolescents do spontaneously predict others’ actions, both neurally and behaviourally, which calls into question the role of action prediction as a key mechanism underlying autism.

Bedside video-oculographic evaluation of eye movements in acute supratentorial stroke patients: A potential biomarker for hemispatial neglect

Background and purposeThe presence of hemispatial neglect adversely affects functional outcomes in stroke patients; consequently, it warrants early targeted rehabilitative intervention. Nevertheless, hemispatial neglect in the acute phase of stroke has often been underdiagnosed. In this study, we aimed to detect hemispatial neglect at the bedside in acute stroke patients by measuring eye movements using video-oculography (VOG). MethodsForty-seven patients with acute unilateral supratentorial stroke were enrolled. We quantitatively measured horizontal saccade (latency, velocity, and amplitude) and smooth pursuit (gain) at the bedside using VOG and compared these variables with scores on the Behavioral Inattention Test (BIT), a screening battery to assess hemispatial neglect. ResultsContralesional saccade latency, velocity, and amplitude, and ipsilesional smooth pursuit gain were suppressed compared with those in the opposite directions (p = 0.08, 0.02, 0.04, and 0.02, respectively). These directional ocular hypokinesia values correlated with the total BIT score (correlation coefficients −0.53, 0.48, 0.51, and 0.39, respectively). The association was significant even after adjusting for age and stroke severity. ConclusionsEye movement measurements performed using VOG significantly correlated with the tendency for hemispatial neglect in acute supratentorial stroke patients. Bedside VOG measurement may be a simple biomarker for detecting hemispatial neglect even in patients in the supine position during the acute phase of stroke.

Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Word order alternation has been described as one of the most productive information structure markers and discourse organizers across languages. Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that word order is a crucial cue for argument interpretation. Previous studies about Spanish sentence comprehension have shown greater difficulty to parse sentences that present a word order that does not respect the order of participants of the verb's lexico-semantic structure, irrespective to whether the sentences follow the canonical word order of the language or not. This difficulty has been accounted as the cognitive cost related to the miscomputation of prominence status of the argument that precedes the verb. Nonetheless, the authors only analyzed the use of alternative word orders in isolated sentences, leaving aside the pragmatic motivation of word order alternation. By means of an eye-tracking task, the current study provides further evidence about the role of information structure for the comprehension of sentences with alternative word order and verb type, and sheds light on the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. We analyzed both “early” and “late” eye-movement measures as well as accuracy and response times to comprehension questions. Results showed an overall influence of information structure reflected in a modulation of late eye-movement measures as well as offline measures like total reading time and questions response time. However, effects related to the miscomputation of prominence status did not fade away when sentences were preceded by a context that led to non-canonical word order of constituents, showing that prominence computation is a core mechanism for argument interpretation, even in sentences preceded by context.

Display interface design for rollers based on cognitive load of operator

AbstractOptimizing a display interface design for rollers is the focus of this study, in which the effects of cognitive load of the operator are taken into consideration, which greatly contribute to acquiring interface information accurately and enhancing cognitive efficiency. To reduce the cognitive demand of the operator, a commonly used generic display interface is modified in this study. Three methods are used to measure the cognitive load, including subjective (NASA Task Load Index) and physiological (eye movement) measurements and through task performance. These three measurements are used with two groups of subjects: those who view the original and those who are given the modified version during four given tasks. The findings show that the modified interface has a significant impact on eye movement and completion time of the four tasks. After a comprehensive analysis of the results from the three types of measurement, it is found that the modified interface is less cognitively demanding than the original interface and allows a higher cognitive performance, which accordingly demonstrates that the modifications made are effective in reducing cognitive load. This study therefore provides the scientific basis for advancing interface designs and evaluating the display interface designs for engineering equipment.

Analysis of vertical eye movements in Parkinson’s disease and its potential for diagnosis

It is well known that eye movements are highly affected by Parkinson’s disease. The majority of studies related to effects of Parkinson’s disease on eye movements have been performed for rapid eye movements during sleep. However, in the current study, eye movements during resting-state (eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions) were studied to evaluate Parkinson’s disease. To measure eye movements, vertical electrooculography (VEOG) was used. Using extracted features in time-, frequency-, and time-frequency domains of VEOG time-series, a classification analysis between healthy subjects and Parkinson’s disease patients in OFF- and ON-medication states was performed. The most-informative features for an error-correcting output codes support vector machine classifier were selected according to the multiple-comparison corrected p-values. VEOG data obtained 69.10 % and 87.27 % discrimination accuracy for OFF- and ON-medication states, respectively. Interestingly, higher discrimination was obtained for the lower frequency contents of VEOG time-series (0.1–1.25 Hz). The most discriminative features were related to the variation of amplitude and frequency content for OFF-medication, while in ON-medication the features according to the variation of VEOG amplitudes were removed from the most discriminative features list. Based on the obtained results, it was concluded that vertical eye movements of Parkinson’s disease patients had lower amplitude variation compared with healthy subjects in OFF-medication, while levodopa prescription increased such variation in vertical eye movements during the eyes-closed condition and decreased the variation during the eyes-open condition. Levodopa prescription possibly affects the amplitude variation of VEOG time-series, while it had no effect on the movement rates (frequency contents) of vertical eye movements.

Strategic Communication and Neuromarketing in the Fisheries Sector: Generating Ideas From the Territory

Background: Globalization and technological progress has changed the relationships among fisheries, society and markets. The industrial primacy has led, among others, to the marginalization of fishermen and the deletion of local culture. It followed a loss of the conventional link between territory and traditions, with a change in consumer behavior.Aim: The purpose of this study is to investigate the way through which the communication of territoriality of fish products influences the consumers' quality perception, their willingness to pay and the exploration of packaging, in the Italian context.Method: In order to obtain quantitative and qualitative data on visual paths (the series of fixations and saccades) and areas of interest (AOI) of the analyzed packaging, gaze data were recorded. AOI permits to define regions of a visual stimulus and to link eye-movement measures to parts of the used stimulus. This study used AOI in order to measure Spent Time (the amount of time that consumers have spent looking at a particular AOI) and Entry Time (the time passed from the moment of the first fixation in a particular AOI) on brands and on products.Results: The results of the drivers identified crucial points for the future communication of fish products and the promotion of the territory. In particular, the analysis lays the foundations for a reorganization of the approach to the creation of product packaging, through greater attention to detail and the intrinsic values that this can express.Conclusion: The use of neuromarketing techniques has proved to be valid in identifying what is the main information that is processed for the evaluation of the product also considering the role played by emotions.

Strip-based digital image registration for distortion minimization and robust eye motion measurement from scanned ophthalmic imaging systems.

Retinal image-based eye motion measurement from scanned ophthalmic imaging systems, such as scanning laser ophthalmoscopy, has allowed for precise real-time eye tracking at sub-micron resolution. However, the constraints of real-time tracking result in a high error tolerance that is detrimental for some eye motion measurement and imaging applications. We show here that eye motion can be extracted from image sequences when these constraints are lifted, and all data is available at the time of registration. Our approach identifies and discards distorted frames, detects coarse motion to generate a synthetic reference frame and then uses it for fine scale motion tracking with improved sensitivity over a larger area. We demonstrate its application here to tracking scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (TSLO) and adaptive optics scanning light ophthalmoscopy (AOSLO), and show that it can successfully capture most of the eye motion across each image sequence, leaving only between 0.1-3.4% of non-blink frames untracked, while simultaneously minimizing image distortions induced from eye motion. These improvements will facilitate precise measurement of fixational eye movements (FEMs) in TSLO and longitudinal tracking of individual cells in AOSLO.

Visual attention towards food during unplanned purchases - A pilot study using mobile eye tracking technology.

This pilot study aims to investigate the relationships between consumers' weight status, energy density of food and visual attention towards food during unplanned purchase behavior in a real-world environment. After more than a decade of intensive experimental eye tracking research on food perception, this pilot study attempts to link experimental and field research in this area. Shopping trips of participants with different weight status were recorded with mobile eye tracking devices and their unplanned purchase behavior was identified and analyzed. Different eye movement measurements for initial orientation and maintained attention were analyzed. Differences in visual attention caused by energy density of food were found. There was a tendency across all participants to look at low energy density food longer and more often.

Spotlight on the Developmental Eye Movement (DEM) Test.

The developmental eye movement (DEM) test is a practical and simple method for assessing and quantifying ocular motor skills in children. In this review, a summary of the literature relevant to the DEM test has been made, its psychometric properties and its pros and cons have also been considered. The DEM test provides clinicians with a simple method of measuring eye movement using a psychometric test. Over the years, many studies have enabled the identification of the strengthens and weaknesses of this test apart from outlining the psychometric properties. The validity of the test has been checked and expanded over time and studies have shown that the DEM test measures an aspect of eye movement related to reading, rather than purely parameters associated with eye-movement. Some reservations have emerged regarding the repeatability of the test because a degree of learning effect emerges over multiple sessions. Being aware of this point allows correct clinical application and interpretation of the test. Normative data in children were available for nine languages and countries. So far, DEM test could be applied clinically in each case when a rapid test of eye movement was required, such as in testing for vision-related visual problems.

Reading Process of Arab Children: An Eye-Tracking Study on Saudi Elementary Students

Many previous eye-tracking studies were conducted to examine how adult readers process different written languages. Relatively, only few eye-tracking studies have been conducted to observe the reading process of Arab children. This study investigated the influence of orthographic regularity on Saudi elementary grades’ English and Arabic words recognition. The eye movements of 15 grade-four students and 15 grade-six students were recorded while they read words that differ in frequency and regularity. Analysis of the visual information from the word-recognition process shows differences in the students’ eye movements for the two languages. There were statistically significant differences in the total fixation duration and fixation count between the two languages and between both groups. All the students showed longer processing time for English sentences than Arabic ones. However, Arabic-speaking students were influenced by English orthography with more processing difficulty for English irregular words. The visual information shows that more cross-linguistic differences are found in grade-four students’ results. Grade-four students transferred their first language (L1) reading strategies to read English words; however, Arabic reading methods cannot be effectively applied to reading irregular orthographies like English. This explains the increased eye-movement measurements of grade-four students compared to grade-six students, who fixated more on unfamiliar English words. Although orthographic regularity had a major effect on the word-recognition process in this study, the development of the students’ Arabic and English orthographic knowledge affected the progress of their visual word recognition across the two levels.

A Fusion Algorithm for Saccade Eye Movement Enhancement With EOG and Lumped-Element Models.

Electrooculography (EOG) can be used to measure eye movements while the eyelids are open or closed and to assist in the diagnosis of certain eye diseases. However, challenges in biosignal acquisition and processing lead to limited accuracy, limited resolution (both temporal and spatial), as well as difficulties in reducing noise and detecting artifacts. Methods such as finite impulse response, wavelet transforms, and averaging filters have been used to denoise and enhance EOG measurements. However, these filters are not specifically designed to detect saccades, and so key features (e.g., saccade amplitude) can be over-filtered and distorted as a consequence of the filtering process. Here we present a model-based fusion technique to enhance saccade features within noisy and raw EOG signals. Specifically, we focus on Westheimer (WH) and linear reciprocal (LR) eye models with a Kalman filter. EOG signals were measured using OpenBCI's Cyton Board (at 250 Hz), and these measurements were compared with a state-of-the-art EyeLink 1000 (EL; 250 Hz) eye tracker. On average, the LR model-based KF produced a 47% improvement of measurement accuracy over the bandpass filters. Thus, we conclude that our LR model-based KF outperforms standard bandpass filtering techniques in reducing noise, eliminating artifacts, and restoring missing features of saccade signatures present within EOG signals.

Effects of age and sex on eye movement characteristics.

Abnormal eye movements are often associated with psychiatric disorders. Eye movements are sensorimotor functions of the brain, and aging and sex would affect their characteristics. A precise understanding of normal eye movements is required to distinguish disease‐related abnormalities from natural differences associated with aging or sex. To date, there is no multicohort study examining age‐related dependency and sex effects of eye movements in healthy, normal individuals using large samples to ensure the robustness and reproducibility of the results. In this study, we aimed to provide findings showing the impact of age and sex on eye movement measures. The present study used eye movement measures of more than seven hundred healthy individuals from three large independent cohorts. We herein evaluated eye movement measures quantified by using a set of standard eye movement tests that have been utilized for the examination of patients with schizophrenia. We assessed the statistical significance of the effects of age and sex and its reproducibility across cohorts. We found that 4‐18 out of 35 eye movement measures were significantly correlated with age, depending on the cohort, and that 10 of those, which are related to the fixation and motor control of smooth pursuit and saccades, showed high reproducibility. On the other hand, the effects of sex, if any, were less reproducible. The present results suggest that we should take age into account when we evaluate abnormalities in eye movements.

Eye Tracking Measures for Studying Language Comprehension Deficits in Aphasia: A Systematic Search and Scoping Review.

Aim The aim of this scoping review is to identify the eye tracking paradigms and eye movement measures used to investigate auditory and reading comprehension deficits in persons with aphasia (PWA). Method MEDLINE via PubMed, Cochrane, CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, OTseeker, Scopus, Google Scholar, Grey Literature Database, and ProQuest Search (Dissertations & Theses) were searched for relevant studies. The Covidence software was used to manage the initial and full-text screening process for the search. Results and Discussion From a total of 1,803 studies, 68 studies were included for full-text screening. In addition, 418 records from gray literature were also screened. After full-text screening, 16 studies were included for this review-12 studies for auditory comprehension in PWA and four studies for reading comprehension in PWA. The review highlights the use of common eye tracking paradigms used to study language comprehension in PWA. We also discusse eye movement measures and how they help in assessing auditory and reading comprehension. Methodological challenges of using eye tracking are discussed. Conclusion The studies summarized in this scoping review provide evidence that the eye tracking methods are beneficial for studying auditory and reading comprehension in PWA.