NIH PROGRAM STUDY EVALUATES EYE TRACKING AS A TOOL FOR ASSESSING ATTENTION PATTERNS IN CHILDREN

DURHAM, N.C., Sept. 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Eye-tracking technology can be used to reliably assess attention patterns linked to socially withdrawn behaviors in preschool children, according to a new study funded by the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program at the National Institutes of Health.

Humans tend to give more attention to emotional information, such as happy or angry facial expressions, than neutral information. However, past research indicates that socially withdrawn children are less likely to conform to this pattern. This study aims to extend the existing research, which is limited primarily to White children in urban areas, to include children of diverse populations.

Eye-tracking is a technology that allows researchers to determine precisely where and how long a person looks at a stimulus. The research team compared eye-tracking data from indigenous children in the Navajo Birth Cohort Study (NBCS) with primarily non-Hispanic White children in the Illinois Kids Development Study (IKIDS). Both groups paid more attention to emotional faces. Socially withdrawn indigenous children were more likely than non-Hispanic White children to avoid emotional faces.

"Because eye-tracking technology doesn't rely on limited clinical observations or parents' reports, it can be used as a more objective measure across various settings and communities," said Sara Nozadi, PhD, an ECHO Program investigator at the University of New Mexico. Eye-tracking technology can also be used in remote communities without requiring participants to travel to clinic.

Dr. Nozadi and Andréa Aguiar, PhD, an ECHO Program investigator at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, led this collaborative research published in Emotion.

About ECHO: ECHO is a nationwide research program supported by the NIH. Launched in 2016, ECHO aims to enhance the health of children for generations to come. ECHO investigators study the effects of a broad range of early environmental influences on child health and development. For more information, visit echochildren.org.

About the NIH: NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information, visit www.nih.gov.

SOURCE NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program