Eye Tracking Research to Answer Questions about Augmentative and Alternative Communication Assessment and Intervention

TLDR

Eye‑tracking technologies that automatically record gaze position enable researchers to quantify fixation location, duration, and frequency, opening new avenues to study how individuals with communication disabilities respond to AAC systems. This paper aims to demonstrate how eye tracking can address clinically relevant questions by evaluating skills in hard‑to‑assess individuals and revealing underlying visual cognitive processes. The authors discuss terminology and the specific challenges of conducting eye‑tracking research with AAC users, such as inferring attention from fixation and calibration difficulties arising from participant characteristics and behavioral idiosyncrasies.

Abstract

Recently, eye tracking technologies (i.e., technologies that automatically track the point of an individual's gaze while that person views or interacts with a visual image) have become available for research purposes. Based on the sampling of the orientation of the individual's eyes, researchers can quantify which locations within the visual image were fixated (viewed), for how long, and how many times. These automated eye tracking research technologies open up a wealth of avenues for investigating how individuals with developmental or acquired communication disabilities may respond to aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems. In this paper, we introduce basic terminology and explore some of the special challenges of conducting eye tracking research with populations with disabilities who might use AAC, including challenges of inferring attention from the presence of fixation and challenges related to calibration that may result from participant characteristics, behavioral idiosyncracies, and/or the number of calibration points. We also examine how the technology can be applied to ask well-structured experimental questions that have direct clinical relevance, with a focus on the unique contributions that eye tracking research can provide by (a) allowing evaluation of skills in individuals who are difficult to assess via traditional methods, and (b) facilitating access to information on underlying visual cognitive processes that is not accessible via traditional behavioral measures.