Head-mounted mobile eye-tracking in the domestic dog: A new method

Pelgrim, Madeline H.; Espinosa, Julia; Buchsbaum, Daphna

doi:10.3758/s13428-022-01907-3

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…This captures both the items present in the environment and which of those items the participant looked at. They can be worn in a variety of ways (i.e., caps, glasses, goggles), allowing for their use in exploring natural behaviors with head shapes ranging from peacocks to lemurs (Shepherd & Platt, 2006;Yorzinski et al, 2013), and more recently dogs (Pelgrim et al, 2022). Head-mounted eye-tracking has also been used to facilitate cross-species comparisons of visual behavior, such as by comparing how cats and humans coordinate eye and head movements (Einhäuser et al, 2009).…”

Section: Head-mounted Eye-trackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dogs were chosen for suitability with the eye-tracking training program and the guardian's willingness to complete the training. Prior to participation in this experiment, dogs were trained at home by their guardians to wear the eye-tracking goggles using commercially available dog goggles following the methods described by Pelgrim et al, (2022), see Supplementary Information for more details. The purpose of this training was to acclimate dogs to the goggles so that they were comfortable wearing them.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Videos from both cameras were digitized at 29.96 frames per second. This apparatus, acclimation, and calibration procedures are adapted from comparable models in other species and has been validated in dogs using alternative methods (Figure 1; Pelgrim et al, 2022). Dogs also wore a harness throughout their session to hold the video recording pack and its battery.…”

Section: Procedures and Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Categorizing Dog’s Real World Visual Environment

Pelgrim,

Raman,

Serre

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Dogs have a unique evolutionary relationship with humans and are relied upon in a variety of working roles, yet little is known about the kinds of visual information available to them, as well as how they direct their visual attention within their environment. The present study, inspired by comparable work in infants, aimed to categorize the items available to be gazed at by dogs during a common event in their daily life, a walk. We then explored the statistics over the availability of those categories and over the dogs’ visual attention. Using a head-mounted eye-tracking apparatus that was custom designed for dogs, 11 dogs walked on a pre-determined route outdoors under naturalistic conditions generating a total of 11,698 gazes for analysis. Image stills from these fixations were then analyzed using computer vision techniques to explore the items present, and how much space within the visual field those items occupied, and which of the items the dog was gazing at. On average, there were few individual differences between dogs both in the items in dogs’ field of view and their gaze to items. Dogs looked proportionally most at people, buses, plants, the pavement, and construction equipment. The results of this project provide a foundational step towards understanding how dogs look at and interact with their physical world, opening up avenues for future research into how they complete tasks, and learn and make decisions, both independently and with a human social partner.

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Section: Head-mounted Eye-trackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Procedures and Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Categorizing Dog’s Real World Visual Environment

Pelgrim,

Raman,

Serre

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…The use of head-mounted eye-tracking has been used in animal studies [ 20 , 22 , 33 , 46 ] and has become a popular method among typically-developing adults, children, and infants to study attention and communication behaviors [ 12 , 13 , 42 , 49 ]. Head-mounted eye-tracking allows researchers to tap into internal processes that occur in three-dimensional experiences through the participant’s actions and body movements, rather than needing explicit participant responses (e.g., pointing a finger or saying a word) or requiring researchers to provide instructions for a presented computer-based task.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conducting head-mounted eye-tracking research with young children with autism and children with increased likelihood of later autism diagnosis

Perkovich,

Laakman,

Mire

et al. 2024

J Neurodevelop Disord

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Background Over the past years, researchers have been using head-mounted eye-tracking systems to study young children’s gaze behaviors in everyday activities through which children learn about the world. This method has great potential to further our understanding of how millisecond-level gaze behaviors create multisensory experiences and fluctuate around social environments. While this line of work can yield insight into early perceptual experiences and potential learning mechanisms, the majority of the work is exclusively conducted with typically-developing children. Sensory sensitivities, social-communication difficulties, and challenging behaviors (e.g., disruption, elopement) are common among children with developmental disorders, and they may represent potential methodological challenges for collecting high-quality data. Results In this paper, we describe our research practices of using head-mounted eye trackers with 41 autistic children and 17 children with increased likelihood of later autism diagnosis without auditory or visual impairments, including those who are minimally or nonspeaking and/or have intellectual disabilities. The success rate in gathering data among children with autism was 92.68%. 3 of 41 children failed to complete the play-session, resulting in an 86.36% success rate among 1–4-year-olds and a 100.00% success rate among 5–8-year-olds. 1 of 17 children with increased likelihood of later autism diagnosis failed to complete the play-session, resulting in a success rate of 94.11%. There were numerous “challenging” behaviors relevant to the method. The most common challenging behaviors included taking the eye-tracking device off, elopement, and becoming distressed. Overall, among children with autism, 88.8% of 1–4-year-olds and 29.4% of 5–8-year-olds exhibited at least one challenging behavior. Conclusions Research capitalizing on this methodology has the potential to reveal early, socially-mediated gaze behaviors that are relevant for autism screening, diagnosis, and intervention purposes. We hope that our efforts in documenting our study methodology will help researchers and clinicians effectively study early naturally-occuring gaze behaviors of children during non-experimental contexts across the spectrum and other developmental disabilities using head-mounted eye-tracking. Ultimately, such applications may increase the generalizability of results, better reflect the diversity of individual characteristics, and offer new ways in which this method can contribute to the field.

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“…There are studies of the application of eye trackers in the automotive industry, where this technology can be used to track a driver's concentration and field of view [17]. Also, recent studies have used eye tracking not only to analyze human behavior but also that of animals, for example, during their training [18]. Despite a long history of development and widespread use of the technology, there are still challenges in implementing it in some areas.…”

Section: Introduction Relevance Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye-tracking as a tool for researching user behavior

Reshetniak,

Faure

2024

cit

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This article discusses eye-tracking technology, one of the critical technologies in analyzing user behavior when interacting with computer systems, and has a wide range of practical applications. The current capabilities and limitations of existing methods and equipment for eye tracking were reviewed and analyzed, and problems and promising areas for further research were identified. The central hardware systems were studied, such as desktop trackers, mobile glasses for eye-tracking, systems for immersive environments, and systems based on embedded cameras. This research also includes analyzing and classifying eye localization methods: eye shape-based, feature-based, and appearance-based. Also were investigated modern gaze-tracking methods, which are crucial to analyzing eye movement and determining the user's point of view. Feature-based methods provide accuracy but have limitations in strong lighting conditions. Model-based methods require high image resolution and calibration to measure gaze direction using facial characteristics. Cross-ratio-based methods do not require calibration but require additional lighting. Appearance-based methods are effective with low-quality images but have limitations concerning head position. The study indicates significant potential for improving gaze-tracking technologies to enhance user interfaces and increase accessibility. It emphasizes the need to develop adaptive methods that function in different environmental conditions and hardware limitations.

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Head-mounted mobile eye-tracking in the domestic dog: A new method

Cited by 6 publications

References 44 publications

Categorizing Dog’s Real World Visual Environment

Categorizing Dog’s Real World Visual Environment

Conducting head-mounted eye-tracking research with young children with autism and children with increased likelihood of later autism diagnosis

Eye-tracking as a tool for researching user behavior

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