Eye-Tracking Workshop: Theories and methods in eye-tracking research

Eye tracking is a widely used technique to uncover the mechanisms underlying human information processing. In this workshop, we will discuss theories, methods and analyses necessary for understanding, designing and carrying out empirical studies using eye tracking. We will focus on studies using eye tracking across a spectrum of paradigms mostly tapping into language and vision. Sessions will include lectures, hands-on demonstrations, and exercises regarding the analysis of experimental data. On the first day, we will introduce eye tracking methodology and paradigms from reading and visual cognition (e.g., search task), and teach the participants to extract from the data, the basic measures that are widely reported in the literature. On the second day, we will go on to examine recent work looking at eye movements in complex, realistic stimuli and the interaction between vision and language. In the lab session, participants will learn to align fixations to speech, model fixation data distributed over a time-course, and perform scan-pattern similarity analyses.  There will also be time for the participants of the workshop to practice example data or the results of their own experiments. By the end of the workshop participants will build an understanding of eye movement methodology in order to carry out state-of-the-art investigations in vision, language, and human cognition at large. 

• Tom Foulsham (University of Essex)
• Moreno Coco (University of Edinburgh)

When: December 15th-16th 2015 

Where: "Casino" building “K4” (Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 24D - 1st floor), campus “Stadtmitte” - University of Stuttgart

There will be a registration fee (15 Euro) to be paid on site. Bachelor and Master students are admitted for free.

Monday 14th

14:00 - 15:30 Plenary Session by Tom Foulsham: "Levels of social attention in a complex environment"

Room 17.21 (KII, Keplerstr. 17, 2nd floor). 

(Note: this talk will take place during our SFB meeting)

Tuesday 15th

09:30-11:00 Lecture 1: Moreno Coco: Eye movements and eye tracking.
Historical background on eye-movements, the evolution of tracking techniques, and the eras of theoretical development (see, for example, Keith Rayner distinction of the 4 eras of eye-tracking research). Basics on eye-movement measures, i.e., fixation and saccade, their definitions, and the pitfalls encountered when such measures need to be extracted from raw samples.

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-13:00 Lecture 2: Tom Foulsham: Experimental paradigms in reading and vision.
Overview of research in reading (one of the oldest field where eye-tracking technology was applied), and panorama of the different measures adopted to test theories of parsing and sentence processing (e.g., first pass, second pass, etc.). Shift towards research on scene understanding and visual cognition. Focus on visual search tasks (again quite basic in eye-tracking research), and measures related to target (e.g., search latency, gaze duration, etc.).

13:00-14:30 Lunch break

14:30-16:00 Practical Lecture 1.1:  Moreno Coco:
Basics of R to bring all attendees on the same page. Methods for extraction, analysis and visualization of eye-tracking data in reading. Objective: obtain the dependent measures from x,y time-stamped coordinate data, relate them to region of interests, sequence them into scan-paths, and aggregate them into synthetic attentional landscapes (i.e., heat-maps of fixation distribution).

16:00-16:30 Coffee break:
during the lab session there is a coffee break. In this break, one of our Phd students will lead a short hands-on session on how to use an eye-tracker with suggestions on calibration, settings, etc.

16:30-18:00 Practical Lecture 1.2:  Tom Foulsham:
Basics of Matlab to bring all attendees on the same page. Methods for extraction, analysis and visualization of eye-tracking data in visual search tasks. Objective: obtain the dependent measures from x,y time-stamped coordinate data, relate them to region of interests, sequence them into scan-paths, and aggregate them into synthetic attentional landscapes (i.e., heat-maps of fixation distribution).

Dinner and Drinks

Wednesday 16th

09:30-11:00 Lecture 3: Tom Foulsham: Vision and eye tracking in complex stimuli.
Eye-tracking in dynamics environments. We explore the differences between the use of static scenes and videos, the limitations that either approach entail, and the methodologies and analytical paradigms that could be adopted to deal with such data. We then move on 3D, mobile eye-tracking technologies and research focusing on real-world, ecologically valid, daily tasks.

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-13:00 Lecture 4: Moreno Coco: Tracking the interaction between vision and language.
We introduce the psycholinguistics branch investigating sentence processing situated in a visual context. We describe seminal paradigms focused on language understanding and syntactic ambiguity resolution. We move towards language production, and quest the limit of the paradigm, and research questions that can be addressed.

13:00-14:30 Lunch break

14:30-16:00 Practical Lecture 2.1: Moreno Coco
Methods to investigate concurrent signals, i.e., speech and eye-movement sequences. We teach how eye-movement can be aligned to linguistic ROI, how eye-voice span measures extracted, and present advanced methods of modeling time-course fixation data, e.g., growth curve analysis.

16:00-16:30 Coffee break:
during the lab session there is a coffee break. In this break, one of our Phd students will lead a short hands-on session on how to use an eye-tracker with suggestions on calibration, settings, etc.

16:30-18:00 Practical Lecture 2.2: Tom Foulsham
We touch upon metrics of scan-pattern similarity using MATLAB. Part of this lab will be dedicated to examine experimental data brought by the participants.

Dinner and Drinks

Internationales Studierendenhotel, Neckarstr. 172

• tram stop "Stöckach", 2.3 km from venue
• single room from €38 (for students €28), incl. breakfast
• rooms reserved until Dec 15

Hotel am Feuersee, Johannesstr. 2

• train station "Feuersee", 1.7 km from venue
• tram stop "Schloss-/Johannesstr."
• single room from €79, incl. breakfast
• rooms reserved until Dec 15

Hotel Sautter, Johannesstr. 28

• tram stop "Schloss-/Johannesstr.", 1.4km from venue
• single room from €85, incl. breakfast
• rooms reserved until Dec 14

Motel One, Lautenschlagerstr. 14

• train station "Hauptbahnhof", 400m from venue

The ExPsy Group

Supported by the FSK (Forschungsverbund Sprachwissenschaft und Kognition)

Contact: eyetracking2015 AT ims.uni-stuttgart.de