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Use cases

Developmental psychology

Eye tracking enhances the developmental study of infants, as well as children with short attention spans and limited instruction comprehension. The technology provides insights into the behavioral and cognitive processes long before speaking begins.

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  • The biggest finding of my work is that eye tracking can be used to define subtypes of autism and diagnose different subsets of kids with very high accuracy...Eye tracking is really telling us quite a bit, not only about diagnosis but also potentially about prognosis and outcomes.

    Dr. Karen Pierce

    Professor, Department of Neurosciences, University of California

  • We have spent a lot of time setting up different eye trackers to work with babies in our lab. Tobii eye trackers provide several advantages compared to other systems. They offer large freedom of head movement and non-intrusiveness, which is mandatory for baby testing. Calibration and recording is also much more straight-forward than anything else we have seen.

    Claes von Hofsten

    PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, UPPSALA UNIVERSITY

Developmental disorders

Developmental disorders

Eye tracking can aid in early screening and identification of developmental conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Differences in attentional processes and eye gaze patterns during social interaction can indicate developmental challenges, which can be assessed with eye tracking.

Tobii Pro Fusion used to study developmental psychology

Uses cases

Discover how Tobii eye trackers are used in the study of autism. 

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Sad little boy

How Osaka University uses eye tracking to identify autism

In a research project aimed at developing an objective index to identify autism in patients, subjects were recorded with Tobii Pro eye trackers while viewing video clips. By analyzing gaze patterns, researchers developed a quantitative method to help diagnose autism.

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Autism webinar

Insights into autism research with eye tracking

In this panel discussion, research experts from Stanford School of Medicine, Uppsala University, and Karolinska Institute shared their experiences with the unique insights eye tracking provides in the field of autism and answered audience questions.

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Social cognition and interaction

Social cognition and interaction

Eye tracking provides a means to study the emergence and progression of social cognition and interaction skills. Through eye tracking experiments, researchers can learn about infant attention to social stimuli, face processing, and social learning abilities. It helps researchers uncover critical developmental milestones and understand typical and atypical social development.

babies socially interacting together

Use cases

Discover how Tobii eye trackers are used in social cognition and interaction research studies. 

Language acquisition

Language acquisition

Researchers employ eye tracking to investigate the gaze patterns of infants and children when exposed to different linguistic stimuli, including spoken words or visual scenes. The technology provides valuable insights into the cognitive processes associated with language acquisition, including visual attention, word recognition, and syntax comprehension.

Girl reading on Tobii Pro Spectrum

Use cases

Discover how Tobii eye trackers are used to study language acquisition. 

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Child looking through binoculars

How curiosity boosts language learning in childhood

To further explore how language acquisition relates to emotional state, Dr. Vivien Outters, with her colleagues in Göttingen and Oxford University, conducted a word-learning recognition experiment with 3-year-old children.

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autism webinar

Understanding how children learn language

New York University’s Learn Lab uses eye tracking to study the learning mechanisms underlying language acquisition in children who are typically developing as well as children on the autism spectrum.

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Relevant publications — Tobii Pro Fusion and Tobii Pro Spectrum

Children learn words easier when they are interested in the category to which the word belongs

Ackermann and colleagues (2019) examined how a child's interest in a particular category of objects — such as animals or vehicles — impacts learning robustness of new word-object associations. They used pupillometry measurements to determine the level of interest in categories and objects and proportion-of-gaze time to target and measure word recognition.

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Social interaction targets enhance 13-month-old infants' associative learning

Thiele and colleagues (2020) studied selective learning in 13-month-old infants. Using screen-based eye tracking, the researchers identified faster saccadic latencies and more predictive gaze shifts in trials that included social interaction compared with those that didn’t. These findings support the view that infants find it intrinsically valuable to observe social interactions.

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A machine learning algorithm for distinguishing Saudi children with and without autism via eye tracking data

Alarifi and colleagues (2023) studied gaze patterns associated with autism spectrum disorder in the Arabic population. They used Tobii Pro Fusion in joint attention and face perception tasks. The autism group displayed differences in joint attention and left visual field bias compared to the control group. The results of this study show the potential of eye tracing-based biomarkers for autism diagnosis in an under-researched geographical context.

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