Applied eye tracking research

Jarodzka, H. (2010, 12 November). Applied eye tracking research. Presentation and Labtour for Vereniging Gewone Leden in oprichting (VGL i.o.), Heerlen, The Netherlands: Open University of the Netherlands.This presentation was part of a lab tour

Eye-tracking - Research in Learning and Instruction

Jarodzka, H. (2010, 15 November). Eye-tracking - Research in Learning and Instruction. Workshop given at the Open University of the Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands.This is a presentation given during a workshop on eye tracking in learning and instruction

Eye tracking in Educational Science: Theoretical frameworks and research agendas

Eye tracking is increasingly being used in Educational Science and so has the interest of the eye tracking community grown in this topic. In this paper we briefly introduce the discipline of Educational Science and why it might be interesting to couple it with eye tracking research. We then introduce three major research areas in Educational Science that have already successfully used eye tracking: First, eye tracking has been used to improve the instructional design of computer-based learning and testing environments, often using hyper- or multimedia. Second, eye tracking has shed light on expertise and its development in visual domains, such as chess or medicine. Third, eye tracking has recently been also used to promote visual expertise by means of eye movement modeling examples. We outline the main educational theories for these research areas and indicate where further eye tracking research is needed to expand them

Behind the scenes: Impact of virtual backgrounds in educational videos on visual processing and learning outcomes

The increasing use of instructional videos in educational settings has emphasized the need for a deeper understanding of their design requirements. This study investigates the impact of virtual backgrounds in educational videos on students' visual information processing and learning outcomes.  Participants aged 14-17 (N=47) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a video with a neutral, authentic, or off-topic background. Their prior knowledge and working memory capacity (WMC) were measured before watching the video, and eye tracking data was collected during the viewing. Learning outcomes and student experiences were assessed after viewing. The eye tracking data revealed that a neutral background was the least distracting, allowing students to pay better attention to relevant parts of the video. Students found the off-topic background most distracting, but the negative effect on learning outcomes was not statistically significant. In contrast to expectations, no positive effect was observed for the authentic background. Furthermore, WMC had a significant impact on visual information processing and learning outcomes. These findings suggest that educators should consider using neutral backgrounds in educational videos, particularly for learners with lower WMC. Consequently, this research underscores the significance of careful design considerations in the creation of instructional videos

A vector-based, multidimensional scanpath similarity measure

Jarodzka, H., Holmqvist, K., & Nyström, M. (2010). A vector-based, multidimensional scanpath similarity measure. In C. Morimoto & H. Instance (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2010 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications ETRA ’10 (pp. 211-218). New York, NY: ACM.A great need exists in many fields of eye-tracking research for a robust and general method for scanpath comparisons. Current mea sures either quantize scanpaths in space (string editing measures like the Levenshtein distance) or in time (measures based on attention maps). This paper proposes a new pairwise scanpath similarity measure. Unlike previous measures that either use AOI sequences or forgo temporal order, the new measure defines scanpaths as a series of geometric vectors and compares temporally aligned scanpaths across several dimensions: shape, fixation position, length, direction, and fixation duration. This approach offers more multifaceted insights to how similar two scanpaths are. Eight fictitious scanpath pairs are tested to elucidate the strengths of the new measure, both in itself and compared to two of the currently most popular measures - the Levenshtein distance and attention map corre- lation

Learning to see: Role and teaching of perceptual skills

Jarodzka, H. (2011, November). Learning to see: Role and teaching of perceptual skills. Invited keynote at the ICO national fall school, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.Learning to see: Role and teaching of perceptual skills Perceptual tasks, such as diagnosing medical images, classifying biological motion patterns, or interpreting air traffic control radar, require not only knowledge of facts pertinent to the domain but also perceptual skills which make it possible to visually search a complex visual stimulus for relevant information and then interpret these observations. Although the role of perceptual skills has been widely noticed to be important for perceptual tasks, little attention has been paid to the question of how to convey these perceptual skills. This talk will focus on how such skills develop with expertise and how they may be conveyed through a novel instructional method, namely Eye Movement Modelling Examples (EMME). To shed light on the visual and cognitive processes accompanying the performance of perceptual tasks, individuals from different expertise levels were compared by means of eye tracking and verbal protocols while executing corresponding tasks. Such an investigation reveals (1) the optimal approach to a given perceptual task as performed by experts, (2) difficulties novices face when performing the same task, and (3) conclusions on how to design instruction facilitating the performance of this task. Based on such task analyses, the instructional method EMME was developed to convey perceptual skills. This method, which is based on cognitive modelling and worked examples research, consists of a verbal explanation provided by a didactical expert model describing how to perform the task at hand and a video of the stimulus with the model’s eye movements superimposed onto the video. These instructional videos were provided as a next step for novices to learn from. The first empirical verifications of this method have shown that EMME can guide students’ visual attention toward relevant information, which facilitates the acquisition of perceptual skills. Moreover, students can transfer the learned skills when they are provided with novel examples, in that they show improved visual search and enhanced interpretation performance. When implementing EMME, however, the design should be carefully considered. Thus, this talk will address the issues described above as well as possible future directions for further understanding the role of perceptual skills

Space-variant spatio-temporal filtering of video for gaze visualization and perceptual learning

Dorr, M., Jarodzka, H., & Barth, E. (2010). Space-variant spatio-temporal filtering of video for gaze visualization and perceptual learning. In C. Morimoto & H. Instance (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2010 Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications ETRA ’10 (pp. 307-314). New York, NY: ACM.We introduce an algorithm for space-variant filtering of video based on a spatio-temporal Laplacian pyramid and use this algorithm to render videos in order to visualize prerecorded eye movements. Spatio-temporal contrast and colour saturation are reduced as a function of distance to the nearest gaze point of regard, i.e. non- fixated, distracting regions are filtered out, whereas fixated image regions remain unchanged. Results of an experiment in which the eye movements of an expert on instructional videos are visualized with this algorithm, so that the gaze of novices is guided to relevant image locations. Results show that this visualization technique facilitates the novices’ perceptual learning

Toward an integrated analysis of verbal and visual data: The quest for expertise indicators

Boshuizen, H. P. A., Jarodzka, H., & Jaarsma, T. (2012, 22-23 October). Toward an integrated analysis of verbal and visual data: The quest for expertise indicators. Paper presented at the 'New tools and practices for seeing and learning in medicine '12' seminar, Turku, Finland.Medical expertise studies so far have mainly used verbal presentations of cases. These verbal presentations make that visual search and detection of symptoms are bypassed. Hence differences in that respect are not part of present medical expertise theories. Recently we have conducted a study in the domain of pathology, a visual domain par excellence, in which we compared medical students, residents and experienced pathologists (N=38) on seven cases. We collected diagnostic accuracy, think-aloud, eye-movement and navigation data (i.e., zooming and panning of digital slides), revealing (the interaction between) cognitive, perceptual and manipulatory processes. Earlier research suggests ways to analyse the separate data sets, but every data set also brings analysis problems on the table that have not been dealt with before as they are related to the features of this specific field. Examples are: How to identify encapsulated concepts in a visual domain? How to analyse eye tracking data on dynamic and manipulable images, more precisely areas of interest that change location and size on a manipulable image, or smooth pursuit eye movements following motion across the screen? And which indicators are most suitable to chart these processes? We expect, however, that the most interesting information will come from the integrated, time locked analysis of the three data sets. So far the medical domain does not provide examples to build on, but studies done in the linguistic domain may be helpful to develop strategies (e.g., Holsanova, 2008; Richardson & Dale, 2005). In this presentation example protocols will be presented, and the challenges and possible ways to a solution in the analyses will be discussed.NordLearn - Nordic Centre for Research on Learning and Medi

A Motivational Determinant of Facial Emotion Recognition : Regulatory Focus Affects Recognition of Emotions in Faces

Funding: The research was supported by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, project 452-07-006). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD