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Screen based
Developmental psychology — Use cases
Eye tracking enhances the developmental study of infants, as well as children with short attention spans and limited instruction comprehension.
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Developmental psychology
Studying children with the help of eye tracking
Gaze is one of the first abilities infants develop, providing researchers with insight into the development process long before speaking begins.
Capturing the moments that shape development
Eye tracking opens a window into the subtle, moment-by-moment shifts in attention and behavior that shape how children learn, grow, and interact with their world.
- 70%
of early childhood assessments
rely on indirect observation
or caregiver reports. - 65%
of developmental studies face
challenges capturing attention and
engagement in young participants. - 60%
of researchers report difficulty studying
non-verbal populations, such as infants
or children with developmental disorders.
Measurement
What you can measure with eye tracking
Eye tracking solutions with a dedicated application, like our software
Tobii Pro Lab, can further process the data to draw valuable conclusions on a wide variety of developmental processes, including:
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Visual perception
Discover how the brain’s ability to make sense of the world develops through infancy and childhood.
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Motor development
Visually guided reaching behavior reveals the development of intentions, planning, and motivation to explore the world.
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Language acquisition
Investigate the gaze patterns of infants and children when exposed to different linguistic stimuli, including spoken words or visual scenes.
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Social cognition and interaction
Study the development of social skills by measuring infants’ attention to social stimuli and face processing.
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Oculomotor function development
Understand oculomotor development by measuring object-tracking ability, gaze stability, and saccadic reaction time.
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Atypical development
Differences in attentional processes and eye gaze patterns during social interaction can indicate developmental challenges, such as autism spectrum disorder or ADHD.
Configurations
Research setups for infant and child studies
Screen-based for the lab
For lab environments, our screen-based eye trackers, Tobii Pro Spectrum and Tobii Pro Fusion, produce visual stimuli on a screen and work together with Tobii Pro Lab to deliver insights on study participant reactions.
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Screen-based for the field
You can connect the plug-and-play Tobii Pro Fusion eye tracker to any screen at a school, hospital, or library to collect data in the field in a nonintrusive way. Works together with Tobii Pro Lab to deliver insights on behavior.
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Standalone for the lab
With Tobii Pro Spectrum in standalone mode, data capture can take place while children observe or interact with people and physical objects. Works together with Tobii Pro Lab to deliver insights on behavior.
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Wearable for the real world
Designed for on-the-go data capture, our Tobii Pro Glasses 3 wearable eye tracker (suitable for 5+ years) allows children to interact and move around freely, enabling you to design studies that closely reflect real-world scenarios — for the lab and the field.
Image courtesy of Bitbrain
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Domains
Areas of research
There are many ways to leverage eye tracking data in developmental research.
Perception
Shows how a child assesses
facial expressions.
Comprehension
Reveals their ability to apply
understanding and recall.
Development
Discovers relevant processes
in the first stages of life.
Completion
Anticipatory eye movements reveal knowledge about structural or perceptual completion.
Engagement
Pupil dilation measures a child's arousal
and violation of expectations.
Oculomotion
Helps to understand oculomotor development,
such as object-tracking ability.
Use cases
Unraveling the wonders of developmental psychology
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blog
Three scientific studies shed new light on early learning processes
Researchers use attention computing to reveal the impact on how kids learn of: attention bias to faces, individual preferences, and social interaction.
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Customer stories
Eye tracking explains development of infants’ abilities
Eye tracking is used in developmental psychology to explain infants' growth and transformation in cognitive, social and emotional abilities.
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Customer stories
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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Webinars
Understanding child psychology with eye tracking
In this webinar experienced researchers will share their insights using eye tracking in developmental, clinical, and educational-psychology research in infants and children.
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Webinars
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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Scientific publications
Did you know that over 15,000 scientific
publications feature Tobii eye tracking technology?
Discover the latest trends in eye tracking for developmental
psychology research by exploring our scientific publication library.
Resources & community
Everything you need to get started
Free training, open-source tools, and direct support, designed to get you from unboxing to publishable results as fast as possible.
Tobii Academy
Free online learning platform with structured courses covering every stage of eye tracking research, from fundamental concepts to advanced analysis techniques.
→ Eye tracking fundamentals and methodology
→ Experiment design best practices
→ Tobii Pro Lab software training
→ Data analysis and interpretation
→ Certification tracks
Open-source research tools
50+ community-curated tools, experiment scripts, and integration libraries across the full eye tracking workflow. PsychoPy, MATLAB, Python, LSL, and more.
Tobii Connect support portal
Knowledge base, firmware updates, troubleshooting guides, and direct support from Tobii's technical team. Your first stop for any hardware or software question.
→ Product setup and troubleshooting guides
→ Firmware and software downloads
→ Data quality methodology documentation
→ Direct ticket support for registered products
→ Sample projects and demo recordings