Development of Eye-Tracking Based Techniques for Diagnosing Children's Cognitive Functions

Abstract

The development of eye-movement-based diagnostic techniques is especially relevant for assessing cognitive function in children who are unable to provide a verbal or motor response due to their age or developmental disabilities. For these children, the use of objective methods for assessing cognitive function based on eye-tracking can be a useful diagnostic tool to complement traditional behavioural questionnaires and scales. In addition, such diagnostic techniques can be used to quickly screen for problems in the development of cognitive functions. In this article, we review researches on the development of such techniques. Studies show that eye-tracking-based techniques can assess attention, receptive speech, especially in young children, and provide screening assessments of intelligence in children with developmental delays. The data obtained using eye-tracking techniques generally significantly correlate with those obtained using traditional behavioural techniques, indicating that further development of such techniques is promising. The application of machine learning methods may help to create simpler and more effective screening techniques for assessing cognitive processes based on the analysis of eye movement data.