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Updated: Feb 1, 2026
Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Published on: November 14, 2018
Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior
Lauren K Slone1, Drew H Abney2, Jeremy I Borjon2
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University; laurenkslone@gmail.com.
Insights
Head-mounted eye tracking captures young children's dynamic visual attention during natural play. This protocol guides researchers in using this technology for developmental studies.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Human-Computer Interaction
Background:
- Children's visual environments are dynamic and constantly changing.
- Head-mounted eye tracking (HMT) offers a unique method to study visual attention in young children.
- HMT enhances ecological validity compared to screen-based eye tracking.
Purpose of the Study:
- To provide guiding principles and practical recommendations for using HMT with children.
- To illustrate data generation from HMT in a naturalistic toddler play setting.
- To enable research on visual attention and other developmental skills.
Main Methods:
- Utilizing head-mounted eye trackers in laboratory and naturalistic settings.
- Integrating HMT with other technologies like motion tracking and heart-rate monitoring.
- Collecting egocentric visual data during free-flowing toy play with a parent.
Main Results:
- Demonstrated the feasibility of collecting high-density multimodal data on children's behavior.
- Illustrated the types of data generated by HMT during toddler play.
- Showcased HMT's potential for studying visual attention in ecologically valid contexts.
Conclusions:
- HMT is a valuable tool for studying visual attention and development in young children.
- This protocol facilitates research in naturalistic settings, enhancing ecological validity.
- HMT integration with other technologies enables comprehensive analysis of child behavior and development.
Abstract:
Young children's visual environments are dynamic, changing moment-by-moment as children physically and visually explore spaces and objects and interact with people around them. Head-mounted eye tracking offers a unique opportunity to capture children's dynamic egocentric views and how they allocate visual attention within those views. This protocol provides guiding principles and practical recommendations for researchers using head-mounted eye trackers in both laboratory and more naturalistic settings. Head-mounted eye tracking complements other experimental methods by enhancing opportunities for data collection in more ecologically valid contexts through increased portability and freedom of head and body movements compared to screen-based eye tracking. This protocol can also be integrated with other technologies, such as motion tracking and heart-rate monitoring, to provide a high-density multimodal dataset for examining natural behavior, learning, and development than previously possible. This paper illustrates the types of data generated from head-mounted eye tracking in a study designed to investigate visual attention in one natural context for toddlers: free-flowing toy play with a parent. Successful use of this protocol will allow researchers to collect data that can be used to answer questions not only about visual attention, but also about a broad range of other perceptual, cognitive, and social skills and their development.