Eye tracking insights in psychology and neuroscience Q4 2024

Collaboration across different disciplines (interdisciplinary collaboration) is necessary for frame-breaking innovations. However, successfully implementing such often requires individuals to sample ideas outside their disciplinary knowledge. In the past, studies tend to show that individuals inevitably show bias in using their disciplinary knowledge due to disciplinary socialization. The current research proposes that disciplinary centrism is not inevitable and can be attenuated when participants do not perceive disciplinary values across disciplines to...Show more

• Tobii Pro X60 / X120 / T60 / T120

The folate cycle has been implicated in the pathophysiology of autism due to its role in the glutathione oxidative stress pathway, amino acid and DNA methylation reactions, and neurotransmitter synthesis pathway. Previous research on folinic acid supplementation in autistic children has suggested potential benefits. The primary aim of this pilot study was to determine the safety, feasibility and efficacy of oral folinic acid in improving communication and behaviour in autistic children. Ten autistic children were recruited into an open‐label pre‐post tre...Show more

• Tobii Pro X60 / X120 / T60 / T120

When people discuss something that they can both see, their attention becomes increasingly coupled. Previous studies have found that this coupling is temporally asymmetric (e.g., one person leads and one follows) when dyads are assigned conversational roles (e.g., speaker and listener). And while such studies have focused on the coupling of gaze, there is also evidence that people use their hands to coordinate attention. The present study uses a visual task to expand on this past work in two respects. First, rather than assigning conversational roles, pa...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 2
• Tobii Pro Lab

Talent identification and selection are crucial for the success of elite sport organizations. Scouts and managers generally select the most promising young athletes based on their current performances, physiological characteristics, and gut feelings. However, psychological characteristics (including perceptual-cognitive and self-regulation abilities) might still be overlooked by selectors. This study aimed at verifying the relationship between psychological characteristics and performance in elite ice-hockey. Eighty-eight youth elite ice-hockey players (...Show more

• Tobii Pro X3-120
• Tobii Pro Lab

Reciprocal inhibition is often diminished in elderly individuals and those with upper motor neuron disorders. This reduction in reciprocal inhibition can hinder smooth joint movement. For subjects who have increased muscle tone and a limited range of motion in the joints, we focused on visual kinesthetic illusions as an intervention to increase reciprocal inhibition. We aimed to investigate the effects of visual kinesthetic illusions on reciprocal inhibition and motor function in the ankle joint. Participants participated in two experiments measuring rec...Show more

• Tobii Pro Nano
• Tobii Pro Lab

Infants’ language is often measured indirectly via parent reports, but mothers may underestimate or overestimate their infants’ word comprehension. The current study examined estimations of mothers from diverse educational backgrounds regarding their infants’ word comprehension and how these estimations are associated with their verbal input and infants’ receptive vocabulary at 14 months. We compared 34 infants’ looking-while-listening (LWL) performances with the mothers’ Turkish Communicative Development Inventory (TCDI) reports to calculate the mothers...Show more

• Tobii Pro X60 / X120 / T60 / T120
• Tobii Pro Studio

Leading lines, a fundamental composition technique in photography, are crucial to guiding the viewer’s visual attention. Leading line composition is an effective visual strategy for influencing viewers’ cognitive processes. However, in-depth research on the impact of leading line composition on cognitive psychology is lacking. This study investigated the cognitive effects of leading line composition on perception and behavior. The eye movement behaviors of 34 participants while they viewed photographic works with leading lines were monitored through eye-...Show more

• Tobii Pro Nano

Children’s neural responses to emotions may play a role in the intergenerational transmission of anxiety. In a prospective longitudinal study of a community sample of N = 464 mother–child dyads, we examined relations among maternal anxiety symptoms when children were infants and age 5 years, child neural responses to emotional faces (angry, fearful, happy) at age 3 years, and child internalizing symptoms at age 5 years. Path analyses tested whether amplitudes of event-related potential (ERP) components selected a priori (N290, Nc, P400) (a) mediated asso...Show more

• Tobii Pro X60 / X120 / T60 / T120

The development of multimedia technology has given new life to the painting collection, forming a sharp contrast between the static collection and the dynamic exhibits. Studying the cognitive experience differences between static and dynamic exhibitions can better guide museum exhibit design and improve the quality of experience. In this paper, a combination of eye-tracking experiments and questionnaires will be used. A total of 40 volunteers were recruited to measure the presentation form and experience time in the museum exhibition, and to analyse the ...Show more

• Tobii Pro X3-120
• Tobii Pro Studio

As designers experience greater mental demands from the complexity of design tools and methods, we must understand their cognitive load when performing design tasks. Researchers have identified task- and designer-related factors that affect cognitive load, such as time or expected outcome. However, most of these design studies used self-report measures of cognitive load, which have been observed to be inaccurate and, to some extent, incomplete. In contrast, physiological measures (e.g., eye tracking) provide an objective assessment of mental workload. Ho...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 3
• Tobii Pro Lab

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by differences in social communication and repetitive behaviors, often associated with atypical visual attention patterns. In this paper, the Gaze-Based Autism Classifier (GBAC) is proposed, which is a Deep Neural Network model that leverages both data distillation and data attribution techniques to enhance ASD classification accuracy and explainability. Using data sampled by eye tracking sensors, the model identifies unique gaze behaviors linked to ASD and applies an explaina...Show more

• Tobii Pro X60 / X120 / T60 / T120

In auxiliary transportation within mines, accurately assessing the cognitive and response states of drivers is vital for ensuring safety and operational efficiency. This study investigates the effects of various vehicle interaction stimuli on the electroencephalography (EEG) signals of mine transport vehicle drivers, analyzing the cognitive and response states of drivers under different conditions to evaluate their impact on safety performance. Through experimental design, we simulate multiple scenarios encountered in real operations, including interacti...Show more

• Tobii Pro Fusion
• Bitbrain

This study used multi-faceted behavioural and quantitative experimental measures to explore observations of paintings of celebrated 19th-century Indian painter Raja Ravi Varma, widely accepted as the father of Indian modern art. The study tried to trace the different aspects of a subject's emotional and perceptual involvement with his work of art using the emotion classification system in Indian aesthetics based on the Rasa theory. Rigorous analysis was performed to investigate seven hypotheses on art perception and emotion with 40 Ravi Varma paintings f...Show more

• Tobii Pro TX-300

Previous research has shown that eye movements can serve as an indirect indicator of relational memory. The goal of the current research was to assess how eye movements coincide with different forms of spatial and associative memory. Young adults encoded object-scene combinations and were subsequently presented with repeated, novel, and manipulated scenes. The manipulated object-scene combinations included object additions and deletions (Experiment 1), a change in the location of the object within scenes (Experiment 2), or a change in object-scene combin...Show more

• Tobii Pro X3-120
• Tobii Pro Studio

This paper aims to analyze the effects of a fresh start mindset on attitudes toward the banks. Furthermore, we try to predict how optimism judgment bias and arousal can affect the effects of the fresh start mindset through three research questions.

• Tobii Pro X3-120
• Noldus

This study aims to compare the relative sensitivity between scene-independent and scene-dependent eye metrics in assessing trainees' performance in simulated psychomotor tasks.

• Tobii Pro X3-120

Interception, essential for activities like driving and sports, can be characterized by varying degrees of predictive behaviour. We developed a visually guided task to explore how target predictability and visibility influenced interception actions. The task featured a falling dot influenced by horizontal velocity, gravity and air friction, with predictability manipulated through external forces that altered the target's trajectory. We also introduced spatial occlusion to limit visual information. Our results show that low target variability favoured pre...Show more

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. A...Show more

• Tobii Pro Fusion
• Tobii Pro Lab

This study is the first to explore the usability of a commercial off the shelf (COTS) VR headset for people with macular degeneration (MD) in the context of visual search. Fourteen participants were recruited; 9 fully sighted and 5 with sight loss due to MD. Firstly, a visual grid search task was presented where participants were asked to identify and discriminate virtual objects and shapes. Secondly, affective audio-visual videos were presented in VR to assess participants processing of affective information. The experimental procedure involved both a p...Show more

• Tobii VR

Asymmetry in choice patterns across rewarding and punishing contexts has long been observed in behavioural economics. Within existing theories of reinforcement learning, the mechanistic account of these behavioural differences is still debated. We propose that motivational salience—the degree of bottom‐up attention attracted by a stimulus with relation to motivational goals—offers a potential mechanism to modulate stimulus value updating and decision policy. In a probabilistic reversal learning task, we identified post‐feedback signals from EEG and pupil...Show more

• Tobii Pro X3-120
• Brain Products
• Psychopy

Research incorporating either eye-tracking technology or immersive technology (virtual reality and 360 video) into studying teachers’ professional noticing is recent. Yet, such technologies allow a better understanding of the embodied nature of professional noticing. Thus, the goal of the current study is to examine how teachers’ eye-gaze in immersive representations of practice correspond to their attending to children’s mathematics. Using a mixed methods approach, we incorporated eye-tracking technology embedded within a virtual reality environment to ...Show more

• Tobii VR

Sign languages are considered fully-fledged and complete natural languages that are utilized by individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing as a means of communication within the visual-gestural modality. The utilization of virtual avatars as virtual assistants has witnessed a notable surge over the course of the previous fifteen years. Research on sign language recognition has already shown significant potential in achieving reliable and efficient automatic sign language recognition. Nevertheless, the development of physiologically believable (naturally...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 2

Primates can rapidly detect potential predators and modify their behavior based on the level of risk. The gaze direction of predators is one feature that primates can use to assess risk levels: recognition of a predator’s direct stare indicates to prey that it has been detected and the level of risk is relatively high. Predation has likely shaped visual attention in primates to quickly assess the level of risk but we know little about the constellation of low-level (e.g., contrast, color) and higher-order (e.g., category membership, perceived threat) vis...Show more

• Tobii Pro TX-300

The purpose of this study was to investigate the divergent viewpoints regarding fearful stimuli in young children by analyzing variations in eye movement tracking and detection rates when confronted with the sudden appearance of either snakes or lizards. A total of 137 five to six-year-old Chinese children (43.8% male) participated in the study, which utilized the inattentional blindness paradigm. The results indicated that young children did not display any attentional bias toward snakes when compared with lizards, as evidenced by their detection rates ...Show more

• Tobii Pro Spectrum

Prior research has demonstrated that scene cues within real-world environments significantly expedite visual search tasks, particularly when co-occurrence objects—those that tend to appear concurrently and in close proximity—are present. The underlying mechanisms driving these enhancements remain a subject of ongoing debate. In this study, we recruited forty-five participants to perform a visual search task using real-world scene images, with conditions involving either the presence or absence of co-occurrence objects, while recording their right eye mov...Show more

• Tobii Pro Fusion
• Tobii Pro Lab

Visual working memory (vWM) plays a crucial role in visual information processing and higher cognitive functions; however, it has a very limited capacity. Recently, several studies have successfully modulated vWM capacity in humans using entrainment with transcranial alternate current stimulation (tACS) by targeting parietal theta in a frequency-specific manner. In the current study, we aim to expand upon these findings by utilizing sensory instead of electrical stimulation. Across six behavioral experiments (combined N = 209), we applied rhythmic visual...Show more

• Tobii Pro X60 / X120 / T60 / T120
• Psychopy

Simultaneous interpreting with text or slides is a complex form of bilingual language processing due to its dual input. The present study seeks to explore the processing and rendering of asymmetrical structures in SI with slides. To achieve this, we first investigate asymmetrical structures in Chinese-English SI with slides in both directions. Then, we examine whether the processing of asymmetrical structures generates a spillover effect on the continuation segment, and how the spillover effect varies with the interpreting direction. Twenty interpreting ...Show more

• Tobii Pro Spectrum
• Tobii Pro Lab

The theory of expertise suggests that there should be observable differences in the eye movement patterns between experts and non-experts. Previous studies have investigated how expertise influences eye movement patterns during cognitive tasks like reading. However, the impact of expertise on eye movements in comics, a multimodal form of text, remains unexplored. This article reports on a study that uses eye tracking to examine patterns in the ways that experts and non-experts read comics. Expert participants (14) with experience in reading comics than n...Show more

• Tobii Pro Spectrum

With the development of brain-computer interface industry, large amounts of related applications have entered people’s vision. BCI applications based on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) are widely used because they do not require pre-training and have high information transmission rates. However, in the actual use of SSVEP stimulus paradigm, the subjects will produce visual fatigue with the use, and fatigue will affect the transmission efficiency. In this experiment, an experimental environment consisting of two paradigm stimulus frequencies...Show more

The use of eye tracking technology, together with other physiological measurements such as psychogalvanic skin response (GSR) and electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings, provides researchers with information about users’ physiological behavioural responses during their learning process in different types of tasks. These devices produce a large volume of data. However, in order to analyse these records, researchers have to process and analyse them using complex statistical and/or machine learning techniques (supervised or unsupervised) that are usually ...Show more

• Tobii Pro Lab
• Shimmer GSR

We explore how visual attention differentially impacts the trading behavior of men and women. In the laboratory, eye-tracking technology measures information gaze during a sequential trading game in which participants are asked to buy or sell an asset. Before making a decision, traders receive information on the trading decisions of other participants (others' decisions) and the redemption value of the asset (private information). Research documents that women, compared to men, pay more attention to social cues. In this study, women are more attention-dr...Show more

• Tobii Pro Lab

Although the Internet grants access to a large amount of information, it is crucial to verify its reliability before relying on it. False information is a dangerous medium that poses a considerable threat, as it impacts individuals’ perceptions and information processing, eventually shaping people’s behaviors. Misinformation can be weaponized, especially in cross-border conflicts, where it can be used as a means to erode social cohesion by manipulating public opinion and exacerbate tensions between nations. Cognitive Warfare targets human cognition shapi...Show more

• Tobii Sticky

So far, studies have revealed some differences in how long self-critical individuals fixate on specific facial expressions and difficulties in recognising these expressions. However, the research has also indicated a need to distinguish between the different forms of self-criticism (inadequate or hated self), the key underlying factor in psychopathology. Therefore, the aim of the current research was to explore fixation patterns for all seven primary emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, contempt, anger, and surprise) and the neutral face expressi...Show more

• Tobii Pro X2-60 / X2-30

Distinguishing target from non-target fixations during visual search is a fundamental building block to understand users’ intended actions and to build effective assistance systems. While prior research indicated the feasibility of classifying target vs. non-target fixations based on eye tracking and electroencephalography (EEG) data, these studies were conducted with explicitly instructed search trajectories, abstract visual stimuli, and disregarded any scene context. This is in stark contrast with the fact that human visual search is largely driven by ...Show more

• Tobii Pro Nano
• LSL

There is a large variety of photographic composition, and these compositions can illicit different visual and psychological responses in the audience. However, there is limited knowledge of the key factors in these compositions in photography that actually affect the viewing process, and also no empirical support for the relationship between emotional responses and visual cognition. This research applied eye-tracking to calculate the degree of fixation distribution in the process of viewing photographic works through the quantitative characteristics of f...Show more

• Tobii Pro Nano

Emergency responders such as firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical service (EMS) providers are exposed to significant risks of mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suicidal ideation. Existing psychological interventions are focused on improving generic coping skills rather than dealing with the link between the memory of the adverse event and its reexperience. In this regard, this paper introduces a novel framework to address mental health problems among first responders by examini...Show more

• Tobii Pro Fusion

Background and Purpose: Visual attention is imperatively linked to walking and has often been ignored in studies of dual-task walking in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). The purpose of this study was to describe the gaze behavior of 3 individuals with MS, with varying levels of mobility disability, during usual and distracted walking in a real-world environment. Methods: Three community-dwelling individuals with MS ambulating with or without an assistive device were assessed walking in a real-world environment with and without an auditory distraction...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 3

For human-agent teams, it is as important for agents to have models of their human teammates as it is for humans to have models of their agent teammates. However, approaches to knowledge elicitation have wrestled with the problem of capturing human knowledge when much of it is tacit and difficult to verbalize. By observing the choices that people make under different conditions we can infer the choice structure they appear to be following. In this way, observations could allow the agent to predict its human team-mates’ choices and actions. We report an e...Show more

• Tobii Pro Fusion

Despite significant advances in deception detection in forensic psychology using polygraphy, there is a lack of empirical evidence for the potential of deception detection in ordinary situations of simple conversation where contact and invasive measurement methods are not appropriate. To address this issue, we used two strategies: 1) a non-invasive observation of facial thermal changes and gaze behaviour under deceptive and truthful conditions and 2) combination of prepared and unprepared questions during an interview. We used a within-person experimenta...Show more

• Tobii Pro Spectrum
• Tobii Pro Lab

Natural eye movements have primarily been studied for over-learned activities such as tea-making, sandwich-making, and hand-washing, which have a fixed sequence of associated actions. These studies demonstrate a sequential activation of low-level cognitive schemas facilitating task completion. However, whether these action schemas are activated in the same pattern when a task is novel and a sequence of actions must be planned in the moment is unclear. Here, we recorded gaze and body movements in a naturalistic task to study action-oriented gaze behavior....Show more

• Tobii VR

Signatures of confidence emerge during decision-making, implying confidence may be of functional importance to decision processes themselves. We formulate an extension of sequential sampling models of decision-making in which confidence is used online to actively moderate the quality and quantity of evidence accumulated for decisions. The benefit of this model is that it can respond to dynamic changes in sensory evidence quality. We highlight this feature by designing a dynamic sensory environment where evidence quality can be smoothly adapted within the...Show more

• Tobii Pro X3-120
• Brain Products
• Psychtoolbox
• Titta

Learning never stops. As we navigate life, we continuously acquire and update knowledge to optimize memory-guided action, with a gradual shift from the former to the latter as we master our environment. How are these learning dynamics expressed in the brain and in behavioral patterns? Here, we devised a spatiotemporal image learning task (“Memory Arena”) in which participants learn a set of 50 items to criterion across repeated exposure blocks. Critically, brief task-free periods between successive image presentations allowed us to assess multivariate el...Show more

• Tobii Pro Fusion
• Brain Products
• Psychtoolbox
• EYE-EEG

The Tobii eye-tracker device reference T-120 was designed to record eye movements in observers whose face is parallel to the monitor. However, by inverting the face position, the sampling rate of captured data may decrease, as well as the recorded eye fixations. The present study wanted to compare the differences in sampling rates and durations of ocular fixations when inverting the face 1800, when performing a visual task for 20 s. 96 participants, divided into two groups, observed the same visual stimulus in front of a Tobii T-120 eye-tracker device, h...Show more

• Tobii Pro X60 / X120 / T60 / T120
• Tobii Pro Studio

Eye tracking can evaluate brand logos, but conventionally it has focused only on overt attention to logos. However, it is necessary to also focus on covert attention. We conducted gaze analysis with fixations in the central visual fields corresponding to the fovea and foveola. A Go/No-go task was utilized to examine whether the target logo was detected behaviorally either within or outside the fixation area. The difference between correct viewings of the logo within the fixation area and those outside it was compared for each logo. The results revealed s...Show more

• Tobii Pro Spectrum
• Psychopy
• Titta

Understanding mental workload is challenging due to its multidimensional nature and varying sensitivities of its primary measures: task performance, perceived workload, and physiological responses. This study investigates the effects of task load on performance, perceived workload, and pupil measures across different information modalities. A within-subjects experiment involving three tasks (digit span, matrix span, and dual n-back) was conducted with three task load levels. Workload measures included accuracy/sensitivity, reaction time, NASA-TLX, peak p...Show more

• Tobii Pro X3-120
• Tobii Pro Lab

In cultural heritage crowdsourcing, imbalanced volunteer task choices can impact project completion rate and sustainability. Nudges offer a way to alleviate this imbalance. This paper proposes three nudges: task order, visual saliency, and feedback based on dual‐process theory. We conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial experiment incorporating eye‐tracking research methods to investigate how these nudges affect volunteer task choices. The results demonstrate a significant positive impact of visual saliency. While task order and feedback did not demonstrate sign...Show more

• Tobii Pro X3-120

This study focuses on seating arrangement and interpersonal distance as important aspects of nonverbal communication and aims to elucidate the optimal distance and angle between pharmacist and patient through an analysis based on the subjective evaluation of the patient and the objective evaluation of eye movements. Seven female simulated patients and one male and one female pharmacist cooperated as patients and pharmacists, respectively. The medication teaching scenes were set up with three pharmacist placements (face-to-face at 50 cm and 70 cm, 90-degr...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 2
• Tobii Pro Lab

A child’s exposure to environmental contingencies in combination with neurocognitive and temperamental susceptibility factors, may lead to a differential impact on a child’s emotional functioning, especially concerning Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS). The current eye-tracking study sought to investigate the effects of both children’s and parents’ SPS in predicting the visual scanning patterns of children toward emotional faces. For this study, children performed a facial processing computerized task in the lab. The sample consisted of 153 children (...Show more

• Tobii Pro Nano
• Tobii Pro Lab

Objective: This study aims to clarify the gazing characteristics of older drivers while driving cars using a gaze analysis device. Methods: The participants included 16 older and 12 middle-aged drivers who drove cars daily. After conducting cognitive and attentional function tests, eye gaze while watching driving videos was measured using an eye tracker. Ten driving videos were prepared. In addition, a total of 34 hazard areas were analyzed. Results: The results of the gaze measurement parameters were statistically compared between the two groups. In the...Show more

• Tobii Pro Spectrum
• Tobii Pro Lab

Background: Altered gaze in social settings is a hallmark of social anxiety; however, little research directly examines gaze in anxiety-provoking contexts among youth with anxiety disorders, limiting mechanistic insight into pediatric anxiety. The present study leveraged mobile eye-tracking technology to examine gaze behavior during a naturalistic stressor in a clinical developmental sample. Methods: Sixty-one youth (ages 8–17 years; 28 with anxiety disorders, 33 non-anxious controls) completed a naturalistic social stress task (public speaking in front ...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 2
• Tobii Pro Lab

Children learn about art by actively engaging with their surroundings. This makes museums potentially rich environments for learning and development. Yet, the descriptions of paintings on show are usually written for adults rather than younger visitors. This study uses mobile eye tracking to examine how painting descriptions tailored for children influence their eye movements when viewing paintings at the Rijksmuseum - the national museum of The Netherlands. Our findings underscore the importance of adapting information specifically for children, rather ...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 2
• Tobii Pro Lab

Autistic adults are often perceived as having an atypical speech. The acoustic characteristics of these impressions prove surprisingly difficult to delineate, but one feature that does robustly emerge across different studies is higher pitch (F0 values) in autistic versus neurotypical individuals. However, there is no clear explanation why autistic individuals should have higher-pitched voices. We propose that the solution lies in the gender imbalance still prevalent in autism, which entails an overrepresentation of male participants in research on speec...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 2

Learning the meaning of a word is a difficult task due to the variety of possible referents present in the environment. Visual cues such as gestures frequently accompany speech and have the potential to reduce referential uncertainty and promote learning, but the dynamics of pointing cues and speech integration are not yet known. If word learning is influenced by when, as well as whether, a learner is directed correctly to a target, then this would suggest temporal integration of visual and speech information can affect the strength of association of wor...Show more

• Tobii Pro X3-120
• Psychopy