Eye Tracking Reveals the World Through Babies’ Eyes

Have you ever wondered what the world looks like through the eyes of a child? For most of us, that time was too long ago to remember. An eye tracking article appeared in the New York Times about a group of scientists who are using eye tracking to learn how children look at and interact with the world as they move around. Children five months old and older were tested as they crawled around a room, walking up and down over an obstacle course through adjustable wooden slopes and paths. In an effort to understand what prompts a child to respond to another, and how infants in particular coordinate their gaze with their hands and feet while navigating around the room, scientists at New York University equipped the group of children with head mounted eye trackers.

Infants, they believe, may be more capable of understanding and acting on what they see than originally thought, making for “surprisingly efficient” interactions. “Vision is not passive,” says Karen Adolph, a developmental psychologist and researcher at the university. “We actively coordinate our eye movements with the motions of our hands and bodies.” Humans make about two to four eye movements a second, totaling around 150,000 motions daily.

Using mobile, wearable eye trackers made by Positive Science, a company out of New York, researchers tested a group of infants as they worked their way over and through sets of different obstacles. The eye trackers were originally sized for adults, so the researchers made the necessary adjustments using padded headbands, spandex caps, and Velcro tabs to keep the camera equipment in place. Each piece weighs around 1.6 ounces, and spotters used straps attached to vests the children wore to prevent them for falling forward and injuring themselves or the cameras.

They apparently had some trouble getting all the infants to wear the eye trackers, but all in all were able to test about 70 children using the devices. During the study, six 14-month-olds roamed around a playroom at NYU, maneuvering past colorful balls, dolls, and toy cars. The eye tracking devices showed that the children were able to navigate past the various obstacles without centering their gaze on them. Adults normally fixate on an obstacle 30 percent of the time, and while the babies tended to fixate about 60 percent of the time, the researchers were impressed that they could even navigate without looking.

Looking This Way and That, and Learning to Adapt to the World

Related articles:

1. Eye Tracking: Viewing the World Through Someone Else’s Eyes
2. Eye Tracking Examines Visual Perception in Infants
3. Eye Tracking for babies
4. What Eye Tracking Reveals About Your Lying Eyes
5. Using Eye Tracking to Study Linguistic Annotation
6. Pupil Tracking Could Lead to Early Intervention for Infants With Autism
7. Eye Tracking Studies Effect of Motion on Autistic Infants
8. Understanding An Infant’s Actions Through Eye Tracking
9. Eye Tracking … Baby-Style