Validation of an open source, remote web-based eye-tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood
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Authors
Measuring eye movements remotely via the participant's webcam promises to be an attractive methodological addition to in-person eye-tracking in the lab. However, there is a lack of systematic research comparing remote web-based eye-tracking with in-lab eye-tracking in young children. We report a multi-lab study that compared these two measures in an anticipatory looking task with toddlers using WebGazer.js and jsPsych. Results of our remotely tested sample of 18-27-month-old toddlers (N = 125) revealed that web-based eye-tracking successfully captured goal-based action predictions, although the proportion of the goal-directed anticipatory looking was lower compared to the in-lab sample (N = 70). As expected, attrition rate was substantially higher in the web-based (42%) than the in-lab sample (10%). Excluding trials based on visual inspection of the match of time-locked gaze coordinates and the participant's webcam video overlayed on the stimuli was an important preprocessing step to reduce noise in the data. We discuss the use of this remote web-based method in comparison with other current methodological innovations. Our study demonstrates that remote web-based eye-tracking can be a useful tool for testing toddlers, facilitating recruitment of larger and more diverse samples; a caveat to consider is the larger drop-out rate.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Infancy |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 1 |
Pages (from-to) | 31-55 |
Number of pages | 25 |
ISSN | 1525-0008 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 01.01.2024 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:
Jessica F. Hay was supported by NIH 1R01HD083312 and NIH 1R15HD099706; Eon-Suk Ko was supported by NRF-2021R1I1A2051993; Hannes Rakoczy was supported by DFG RA 2155/7-1; Tobias Schuwerk was supported by DFG SCHU 3060/2-1; Elizabeth A. Simpson was supported by NSF CAREER 1653737. Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Funding Information:
Jessica F. Hay was supported by NIH 1R01HD083312 and NIH 1R15HD099706; Eon‐Suk Ko was supported by NRF‐2021R1I1A2051993; Hannes Rakoczy was supported by DFG RA 2155/7‐1; Tobias Schuwerk was supported by DFG SCHU 3060/2‐1; Elizabeth A. Simpson was supported by NSF CAREER 1653737.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Infancy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Congress of Infant Studies.
- Psychology - Anticipatory looking, Eye-tracking, Method Validation, Toddlers, Web-based eye-tracking