TY - JOUR

T1 - Validation of an open source, remote web-based eye-tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood

AU - Steffan, Adrian

AU - Zimmer, Lucie

AU - Arias-Trejo, Natalia

AU - Bohn, Manuel

AU - Dal Ben, Rodrigo

AU - Flores-Coronado, Marco A.

AU - Franchin, Laura

AU - Garbisch, Isa

AU - Grosse Wiesmann, Charlotte

AU - Hamlin, Kiley

AU - Havron, Naomi

AU - Hay, Jessica F.

AU - Hermansen, Tone K.

AU - Jakobsen, Krisztina V.

AU - Kalinke, Steven

AU - Ko, Eon Suk

AU - Kulke, Louisa

AU - Mayor, Julien

AU - Meristo, Marek

AU - Moreau, David

AU - Mun, Seongmin

AU - Prein, Julia

AU - Rakoczy, Hannes

AU - Rothmaler, Katrin

AU - Santos Oliveira, Daniela

AU - Simpson, Elizabeth A.

AU - Sirois, Sylvain

AU - Smith, Eleanor S.

AU - Strid, Karin

AU - Tebbe, Anna Lena

AU - Thiele, Maleen

AU - Yuen, Francis

AU - Schuwerk, Tobias

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. Infancy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Congress of Infant Studies.

PY - 2024/1/1

Y1 - 2024/1/1

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Psychology

KW - Anticipatory looking

KW - Eye-tracking

KW - Method Validation

KW - Toddlers

KW - Web-based eye-tracking

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85174228178&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/infa.12564

DO - 10.1111/infa.12564

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 37850726

VL - 29

SP - 31

EP - 55

JO - Infancy

JF - Infancy

SN - 1525-0008

IS - 1

ER -