NSF Award
1828267
This NSF Major Research Instrumentation award supports the acquisition of an EyeLink 1000 Plus integrated eye tracking system (S-R Research) in the Behavioral Science Department at Utah Valley University (UVU), a primarily undergraduate institution, with a high proportion of first-generation, minority, and non-traditional students. The speed, accuracy, and precision of this equipment is enabling the Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab to conduct cutting-edge eye tracking research in a number of vital areas. For example, the eye tracking system, which detects subtle differences in eye movements by recording up to 2,000 distinct data points per second, is being used to distinguish subtypes of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. Other research is using an innovative methodology to assess how individuals with dyslexia deploy their attention while reading. Results of this study will lay a foundation for designing reading interventions for beginning readers with dyslexia, a disorder that affects 10-15% of children in the U.S. The acquisition of the EyeLink 1000 Plus system is significantly expanding both basic and applied research and research training opportunities for UVU faculty and students alike, and opening doors to interdisciplinary collaborations with faculty at UVU and other institutions. <br/><br/>The planned research investigates visual attention in several areas: ADHD, dyslexia, comparative cognition, and two-dimensional visual perception. It will contribute to a substantially growing body of research examining the development of oculomotor control in atypical populations by attempting to distinguish eye movements across ADHD subtypes. Using the EyeLink 1000 Plus system to record high-resolution data on simple oculomotor tasks has the potential to identify core cognitive impairments in a more clear-cut manner than existing approaches. The research includes six oculomotor versions of traditional neuropsychological tests to examine common areas of executive deficits seen in ADHD: activation, attentional orienting, set shifting, spatial working memory, stimulus suppression, and response suppression. This basic attentional work will provide a foundation for applied clinical investigations by other researchers. In order to better assess how individuals with dyslexia deploy their attention while reading, children and adults with dyslexia are being exposed to a series of single sentences that will include dynamic changes of upcoming words not currently fixated (i.e., within the parafoveal). The results of this work will inform revisions of models of normal reading to accommodate dyslexia and provide recommendations for creating standardized stimuli for future dyslexia reading research. The instrument will also enable research related to the perception of perspective within two-dimensional representations. The long-held assumption is that orthogonal lines drive the movements of the viewer's eyes. The research is testing this claim by recording eye movements of novice and expert art viewers as they view photographs and paintings with strong or weak depth cues. Researchers will test the hypothesis that experience rather than the lines themselves direct the eyes. The opportunity to participate in cutting-edge, transformative research facilitated by the acquisition of the EyeLink Plus 1000 system will be extended to women and minority students, who participate in high numbers in the behavioral sciences at UVU.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
