Eye Tracking Research On Learning Difficulties For Children With Hearing Impairments

The article analyzes the specifics of the organization of the perceptual activity of preschoolers with and without hearing impairment with different forms of instruction in the learning process. A comparative study of a sample of children aged 4-6 years was carried out: typically developing and with sensorineural hearing loss after cochlear implantation. During the experiment, the combinations of verbal and non-verbal instructions were varied. During the training task, eye movements were recorded by a Pupil Labs mobile tracker in the form of glasses. When changing the forms of instructions in 4 series of the experiment, it was found that a measure of reducing visual attention in the learning process in children with hearing impairment is changes in the periods of fixations when they are focused on the regions targeted for the learning task (such as a form for completing the task, a sample, an adult's face) . In children with hearing impairment, during the learning process, a transformation of perceptual processes was recorded depending on the form of the instruction: whether fixation on non-target stimuli decreases, fixation occurs faster or slower, whether the cognitive complexity of information decreases, whether fixation will be longer in target areas, whether there is constant attention and shared attention with an adult. It is shown how a different form of instruction allows you to restructure the perception of a child with hearing impairment, focusing attention on the elements relevant to the task. Differences in the change in the perceptual activity of typically developing preschoolers and preschoolers with hearing impairment were analyzed with different forms of instruction. It was found that the movement of the eyes of children with hearing impairment, unlike their peers, can be characterized by a significant reduction in orienting perceptual actions. The most effective for children with hearing impairment is the simultaneous use of multimodal means of explaining instructions or separately non-verbal forms of instructions (showing an action or a sample). For typically developing children, non-verbal forms of instruction without verbal accompaniment are not as effective.

1. Vygotskii L.S. Istoriya razvitiya vysshikh psikhicheskikh funktsii [History of the development of higher mental functions]. Sobr. soch. Vol. 6, no. 3. Moscow: Pedagogika, 1983. 328 p. (In Russ.).
2. Gal'perin P.YA. Lektsii po psikhologii: ucheb. posobie dlya studentov vuzov [Lectures on psychology: textbook. manual for university students]. Moscow: Universitet, Vysshaya shkola, 2002. 400 p. (In Russ.).
3. Gippenreiter YU.B. Dvizheniya chelovecheskogo glaza [Human eye movements]. Moscow: Izd-vo MGU, 1978. 256 p (In Russ.).
4. Zaporozhec A.V. Vospriyatie i deistvie [Perception and action]. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1967, pp. 100-250 (In Russ.).
5. Krichivets A.N., Shvarts A.YU., Chumachenko D.V. Pertseptivnye deistviya uchashchikhsya i ehksperimentov pri ispol'zovanii vizual'noi matematicheskoi modeli [Perceptual actions of students and experts when using a visual mathematical model]. Zhurnal vysshei shkoly ehkonomiki [Psychology. Journal of the Higher School of Economics], 2014. Vol. 3, pp. 55-78. (In Russ.).
6. Kuravskii L.S. (ed.), Otsenka stepeni sformirovannosti navykov i kompetentsii na osnove veroyatnostnykh raspredelenii glazodvigatel'noi aktivnosti [Assessment of the degree of formation of skills and competencies on the basis of probabilistic distributions of oculomotor activity]. Voprosy psikhologii [Questions of psychology], 2013. Vol. 5, pp. 1-17. (In Russ.).
7. Chumachenko D.V., Shvarts A.YU. Problema transformatsii pertseptivnykh protsessov v khode obucheniya: analiz issledovanii, vypolnennykh metodom zapisi dvizhenii glaz, s pozitsii deyatel'nostnogo podkhoda [The problem of transformation of perceptual processes during training: analysis of research carried out by the method of recording eye movements from the standpoint of the activity approach]. Psikhologicheskie issledovaniya [Psychological research], 2016. Vol. 9, no. 49, pp. 12. (In Russ.).
8. Yarbus A.L. Rol' dvizhenii glaz v protsesse zreniya [The role of eye movements in the process of vision]. Moscow: Nauka, 1965. 166 p. (In Russ.).
9. Action prediction during real-time parent-infant interactions. In Monroy C. (ed.), Development Sience, Vol. 24, pp. e13042. DOI:10.1111/desc.13042
10. Chen C.-h., Houston D.M., Yu C. Parent-Child Joint Behaviors in Novel Object Play Create High-Quality Data for Word Learning. Child Development, 2021. Vol. 92, no. 5, pp. 1889-1905. DOI:1111/cdev.13620
11. Tomasuolo E. [et al.]. Deaf Children Attending Different School Environments: Sign Language Abilities and Theory of Mind. The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2013. Vol. 18, 1, pp. 12-29. DOI:10.1093/deafed/ens035
12. Demareva V.A., Polevaya S.A. Searching for psychophysiological markers of foreign language proficiency: Evidence from eye tracking. International Journal of Psychophysiology, Vol. 85, no. 3, pp. 392.
13. Chen C.-h. [et al]. Effects of children’s hearing loss on the synchrony between parents’ object naming and children’s attention]. Infant Behavior and Development, Vol. 57. e101322. ISSN 0163-6383. DOI:10.1016/j.infbeh.2019.04.004.
14. Castellanos I. [et al.]. Embodied cognition in prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants: Preliminary findings – Evidence-based practices in deaf education. In H. Knoors, M. Marschark (eds). Teaching Deaf Students: New Perspectives. Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 1-30.
15. Epelboim J., Suppes P.A model of eye movements and visual working memory during problem solving in geometry. Vision Research, Vol. 41, pp. 1561-1574.
16. Scheiter K. [et al.]. Extending multimedia research: How do prerequisite knowledge and reading comprehension affect learning from text and pictures. Computers in Human Behavior, 2014. Vol. 31, pp. 73-84. DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2013.09.022
17. Haider H., Frensch P.A. Eye movement during skill acquisition: More evidence for the information-reduction hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 1999. Vol. 25, pp. 172-190.
18. Andrà C. [et al.]. How students read mathematical representations: an eye tracking study. Proceedings of 33rd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics. Greece: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki & University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, 2009. Vol. 2, pp. 123-131.
19. Inglis M., Alcock L. Expert and novice approaches to reading mathematical proofs. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 358-390.
20. Monroy C., Houston D., Yu C. Joint Action in Deaf and Hearing Toddlers: A Mobile Eye-Tracking Study. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Vol. 43, pp. 2794-2800. URL: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/77z4h6rx) (Accessed 27.05.2021).
21. Mundy P. A manual for the Abridged Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS). Miami: University of Miami Psychology Department, 2003. 65 р.
22. Mundy P. A Review of Joint Attention and Social-Cognitive Brain Systems in Typical Development and Autism Spectrum Disorder. European Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 47, pp. 1-18.
23. Musselman C., Churchill A. The Effects of Maternal Conversational Control On the Language and Social Development of Deaf Children. Journal of Childhool Communication Disorders, Vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 99-117. DOI:10.1177/152574019201400201
24. Peters M. Parsing mathematical constructs: Results from a preliminary eye tracking study. Proceedings of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics, 2010. Vol. 30, 2, pp. 47-52.
25. Schmidt-Weigand F., Kohnert A., Glowalla U. Explaining the modality and contiguity effects: new insights from investigating students’ viewing behavior. Applied Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 24, pp. 226-237.
26. Shvarts A., Abrahamson D. Dual-eye-tracking Vygotsky: A microgenetic account of a teaching/learning collaboration in an embodied-interaction technological tutorial for mathematics. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 2019. Vol. 22, pp. 100316 DOI:1016/j.lcsi.2019.05.003.
27. Shvarts A., Krichevets A. The perception of the number line by adults and preschoolers: eye-movements during the teaching process. In T. Ditye, H. Leder, A. Florack, (eds.), Abstracts of the 18th European Conference on Eye Movements. Vienna. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 2015. Vol. 8, 4, pp. 37.
28. Lei Yuan [et al.]. Smith Sustained visual attention is more than seeing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2019. Vol. 179, pp. 324-336. DOI:10.1016/j.jecp.2018.11.020
29. Vonder Embse C.B. An eye fixation study of time factors comparing experts and novices when reading and interpreting mathematical graphs: PhD dissertation. The Ohio State University, 1987. 154 p. URL: http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED283672 (Accessed 27.05.2021).
30. Chen C.-h. [et al.]. What leads to coordinated attention in parent–toddler interactions? Children's hearing status matters. Development Sience, Vol. 23, no. 3, e12919. h DOI:10.1111/desc.12919
31. Yu C., Smith L.B. Multiple sensory-motor pathways lead to coordinated visual attention. Cognitive science, 2017. Vol. 41, pp. 5–31. DOI:0.1111/cogs.12366