Beyond eye gaze: What else can eyetracking reveal about cognition and cognitive development?

Abstract

This review provides an introduction to two eyetracking measures that can be used to study cognitive development and plasticity: pupil dilation and spontaneous blink rate. We begin by outlining the rich history of gaze analysis, which can reveal the current focus of attention as well as cognitive strategies. We then turn to the two lesser-utilized ocular measures. Pupil dilation is modulated by the brain's locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system, which controls physiological arousal and attention, and has been used as a measure of subjective task difficulty, mental effort, and neural gain. Spontaneous eyeblink rate correlates with levels of dopamine in the central nervous system, and can reveal processes underlying learning and goal-directed behavior. Taken together, gaze, pupil dilation, and blink rate are three non-invasive and complementary measures of cognition with high temporal resolution and well-understood neural foundations. Here we review the neural foundations of pupil dilation and blink rate, provide examples of their usage, describe analytic methods and methodological considerations, and discuss their potential for research on learning, cognitive development, and plasticity.

Cognitive Processing dissociation by mental effort manipulation in long demanding tasks

“…Pupillometric studies provide evidence that the greater the effort undertaken to accomplish a task, the greater is pupil dilation (Eckstein et al 2016;Hess and Polt 1964;Kahneman and Peavler 1969).…”

A new comprehensive Eye-Tracking Test Battery concurrently evaluating the Pupil Labs Glasses and the EyeLink 1000

“…A different but very interesting eye behavior is blinks which can be related to dopamine levels (Riggs et al, 1981; but see Sescousse et al, 2018 for recent more nuanced evidence), saccadic suppression (Burr, 2005), or time perception (Terhune et al, 2016). Further, in combination with with physiological recordings, for instance EEG (Dimigen et al, 2011; Plöchl et al, 2012; Ehinger et al, 2015), fMRI (Bonhage et al, 2015a; Petit et al, 1997; Bonhage et al, 2015b), or skin conductance (Wieser et al, 2009), eye-tracking allows to investigate more complex and realistic behavioral paradigms and ultimately generate new insights into brain function and dysfunction (Eckstein et al, 2017). Another field of application is pupil dilation, a physiological measure with many cognitive applications (Mathôt, 2018): It allows to track attention (Wahn et al, 2016), investigate decision making (Urai et al, 2018).…”

SalGaze: Personalizing Gaze Estimation using Visual Saliency

“…Gaze estimation is the problem of estimating a person's line of sight. It is important as eye gaze reflects a person's underlying cognitive process [11] which can be used in a wide array of applications including digital content marketing [50], diagnosing psychiatric conditions such as autism [23], and automated driving [2]. Due to differences in the structure and appearance of the eye, calibration is typically required to learn the parameters that are intrinsic to the user in order for gaze estimation algorithms to achieve high precision.…”