Eye Tracking in Infancy and Preschooler Research: Procedure, Method and Data Analysis

Abstract

Abstract: Eye tracking has become a popular tool especially among children′s studies. In this article, we reviewed how to use eye tracking techniques to explore infants and children′s cognitive development. First, researchers should know how to choose remote or head-mounted eye trackers based on their research purposes, sampling rate, dark pupil corneal reflection, and bright pupil corneal reflection. Second, five points calibration is the most common calibration procedure in infant studies. Researchers also choose to use two points or three points to reduce the calibration time. The quality of calibration can influence the quality of the data. The eye movement data depends on precision, robustness, spatial accuracy, and temporal delay. Researchers should pay much attention to temporal resolution, spatial resolution, calibration, and head movements to improve the quality of the data. Third, researchers should learn how to filter the raw data and use interpolation to map the missing data. In infants study, pupil dilation, saccade latency, and smooth pursuit are special parameters to explore young children′s cognition. Finally, we suggest that researchers should pay much more attention to mining visual data and interactive data analysis techniques to develop the temporal and spatial information of eye tracking data.

Key words: eye movement, infant and preschooler, calibration, data mining.

摘要： 眼动技术在婴幼儿研究中成为一种流行的研究工具。如何合理地选择和使用眼动仪进行数据收集及分析，是婴幼儿眼动研究者需要考虑的重要问题。本文从眼动仪使用的流程出发，主要对婴幼儿眼动研究过程中所涉及的四个方面的问题进行了梳理和分析：（1）正确选择仪器；（2）合理校准；（3）提高数据质量；（4）有效分析和挖掘数据。同时，针对这些方面提出了相应的操作性建议。

关键词: 眼动, 婴幼儿, 校准, 数据挖掘。

CLC Number:

B844

Wang Fuxing, Tong Yu, Qian Yingying, Xie Heping. Eye Tracking in Infancy and Preschooler Research: Procedure, Method and Data Analysis[J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2016, 14(4): 558-567.

王福兴, 童钰, 钱莹莹, 谢和平. 眼动追踪技术与婴幼儿研究：程序、方法与数据分析[J]. 心理与行为研究, 2016, 14(4): 558-567.

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