The present longitudinal quasi-experimental study examined the extent to which music education is related to the development of attentional control. Control of visual attention was examined with the use of an antisaccade task in an eye tracking study. Fifty primary school children (6–7 years old), 25 from music school matched on fluid intelligence with their peers from non-music primary school, performed the antisaccade task three times, at the beginning of school education, after 12 and 24 months. Their eye movements were recorded each time. Over time, attentional control increased in both groups. Music school children performed significantly better than general school children in antisaccadic trials. In line with the prediction, all students’ correct responses in the antisaccade task were faster over the time of education, supporting growth in their ability of attentional control. Yet this growth was significantly greater in music school children. Only music school children significantly decrease the latency of saccades toward the target in the correct antisaccade trials. No such trend was significant for children without music education. Finally, fluid intelligence increased over time in both groups. The present study demonstrated a relationship between systematic music education for the development of children’s attentional control.

Climate change data is complex and difficult to interpret, which may hinder public participation in mitigation efforts. This study examines whether gaze cueing can enhance the accessibility of this information by directing visual attention in the climate information-based collaboration task. Twenty participants collaborated in groups of four on a climate-related task while wearing mobile eye trackers. In the experimental condition, participants received gaze cues in an instructional video before performing the task, the purpose of which was to choose the best strategy to mitigate climate change. Statistical analysis using the Levenshtein distance on scanpaths showed that gaze cues fostered attention synchronization. The findings suggest that gaze cues in groups effectively guide attention through complex climate information, which is the first step to its comprehension.

This paper presents a novel approach to visual attention training for novice tram drivers by combining a tram driving simulator with eye-tracking-enabled Augmented Reality (AR) glasses. Based on previous eye-tracking studies and interviews with tram driving instructors, we identified issues related to the attention distribution of novice drivers. That is, we found that driver field-of-view areas critical to tram-driving safety, are often neglected by novices. For instance, such areas enable drivers to check the right-side mirror before turning right. The training system proposed here aims to direct novice visual attention to critical areas by highlighting overlooked regions, displaying directional arrows, or providing auditory cues from the left or right side. Integration of real-time eye tracking into AR glasses supports continuous monitoring of trainee gaze patterns, offering instructors valuable information on trainee visual behavior. Such real-time data allows for dynamic adaptation of training cues, ensuring that visual attention guidance is both relevant and personalized. The proposed system has the potential to enhance situational awareness among tram drivers.

Cognitive Load Theory describes the concept of limited working memory capacity for information processing and cognitive tasks requiring mental effort. Cognitive load is affected by the difficulty levels involved in the learning process and mental tasks. The present meta-analysis examines the effect of difficulty levels in educational tasks based on cognitive load using fixation duration, number of fixations, and pupil dilation. The present study is based on 21 articles containing 34 comparisons between high and low cognitive load conditions in education settings. We evaluated Cohen's d for effect size, the I 2 statistic and Q-test to estimate heterogeneity, and Egger's regression test for publication bias. The heterogeneity of the experimental settings was relatively high, nevertheless, we observed meaningful differences in pupil metrics. Pupil dilation significantly increased in hard compared to easy task conditions ( d = 0.72, CI = 0.3672; 1.072, p -value < 0.0001), serving as an indicator of cognitive load level in various educational settings. Fixation duration and number of fixations did not differentiate between the easy and hard levels.

We are excited to provide the third issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction focusing on contributions from the ACM Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA) community. ETRA is the premier eye-tracking conference bringing together researchers from across disciplines to present advances in eye-tracking systems and methods, oculomotor research, eye movement data analysis, gaze-based interaction, and eye-tracking applications. A total of 25 full papers were accepted for ETRA 2024 (June 4 - 7, 2024, in Glasgow, U.K.), selected from 68 submissions after a rigorous reviewing process (37% acceptance rate). Depending on the topic fit and authors' preferences, accepted papers were split into two issues. 19 accepted papers are presented in this issue, and 6 will be included in an issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. We want to thank all members of the Editorial Board and all external reviewers for their effort and dedication, as well as all authors for their high-quality contributions.

The paper presents empirical evidence in how differently art history experts and non-experts scan images of architectural objects. The study is a work-in-progress on a ubiquitous system enhancing accessibility to architectural heritage for a broad audience with a special focus on the Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI). The system provides city navigation for BVI along with the location-based real-time information and Gaze-Led Audio Descriptions (GLAD) about architectural artefacts. Gaze visualizations of non-experts are used to guide professional audio describers in shaping more natural, gaze-led narratives.

Advanced driving assistance systems are a useful technology that helps improve driving safety. These systems provide the driver with multi-modal information about the driving performance, however, the interaction between the driver and these interfaces is complex and requires the systems to adapt to the requests of the driving task. The proposed solution address this challenge, presenting an overview of the literature on the subject, with the objective of proposing an adaptive multi-modal interface based on eye tracking monitoring.

The present study explores differences in attention distribution of tram drivers with different expertise while watching tram driving simulations. Forty-seven participants participated in this experiment in two groups (23 experts and 24 novices). The results show between-group differences in attention dynamics. In line with prediction, the novices concentrated more on the middle panel of the tram simulator related to speed control than the experts. The study is the first step in designing gaze-based training for novice tram drivers.

In 2022, ETRA moved its publication of full papers to a journal-based model, and we are delighted to present the second issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction to focus on contributions from the Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA) community. ETRA is the premier eye-tracking conference that brings together researchers from across disciplines to present advances and innovations in oculomotor research, eye tracking systems, eye movement data analysis, eye tracking applications, and gaze-based interaction. This issue presents 13 full papers accepted for presentation at ETRA 2023 (May 30 - June 2, 2023, in Tübingen, Germany) selected from 37 submissions (35% acceptance rate). We are grateful to all authors for the exciting contributions they have produced and to the Editorial Board and external reviewers for their effort during the entire rigorous reviewing process which resulted in high-quality and insightful reviews for all submitted articles.

The paper contributes to scanpath bundling methods. We propose an analytical approach for statistical comparisons of aggregated scanpath visualizations by means of second-order gaze analysis metrics. The present study explores differences in attention distribution and cognitive processing over architectural objects between architects, art historians, and non-experts. The results show between-group differences in attention dynamics of the aggregated scanpaths. The aggregated scanpaths of both expert groups were focal, while non-experts' scanpaths were ambient. Experts also paid more attention to and tended to remember better the architectural details and their location. The discussion explores the scalability of the proposed approach for Human-Computer Interaction and accessibility technologies designed to enhance the experience of cultural heritage.

This article examines the attentional mechanism of in-person collaboration by means of System Dynamics-based simulations using an eye tracking experiment. Three experimental conditions were tested: in-person collaboration, remote collaboration, and single user. We hypothesized that collaboration focuses users’ attention on key information facilitating decision-making. Collaborating participants dwelt longer on key elements of the simulation than single users. Moreover, in-person collaboration and single users yielded a strategy of decision-making similar to an optimal strategy. Finally, in-person collaboration was less cognitively demanding and of higher quality. The contribution of this article is a deeper understanding of how in-person collaboration on a large display can help users focus their visual attention on the most important areas. With this novel understanding, we believe collaborative systems designers will be better equipped to design more effective attention-guiding mechanisms in remote collaboration systems. The present work has the potential to advance the study of collaborative, interactive technologies.

This article evaluates the Low/High Index of Pupillary Activity (LHIPA), a measure of cognitive effort based on pupil response, in the context of reading. At the beginning of 2nd and 3rd grade, 107 children (8-9 y.o.) from music and general primary school were asked to read 40 sentences with keywords differing in length and frequency while their eye movements were recorded. Sentences with low frequency or long keywords received more attention than sentences with high frequent or short keywords. The word frequency and length effects were more pronounced in younger children. At the 2nd grade, music children dwelt less on sentences with short frequent keywords than on sentences with long frequent keywords. As expected LHIPA decreased over sentences with low frequency short keywords suggesting more cognitive effort at earlier stages of reading ability. This finding shows the utility of LHIPA as a measure of cognitive effort in education.

We compare the measurement error and validity of webcam-based eye tracking to that of a remote eye tracker as well as software integration of both. We ran a study with n = 83 participants, consisting of a point detection task and an emotional visual search task under three between-subjects experimental conditions (webcam-based, remote, and integrated). We analyzed location-based (e.g., fixations) and process-based eye tracking metrics (ambient-focal attention dynamics). Despite higher measurement error of webcam eye tracking, our results in all three experimental conditions were in line with theoretical expectations. For example, time to first fixation toward happy faces was significantly shorter than toward sad faces (the happiness-superiority effect). As expected, we also observed the switch from ambient to focal attention depending on complexity of the visual stimuli. We conclude that webcam-based eye tracking is a viable, low-cost alternative to remote eye tracking.

Eye movement analysis in modern 3D rendering systems is reviewed and three new techniques are derived inspired by work developed in early Virtual Reality so-called 2.5D implementations, namely (a) gaze depth (i.e., vergence) estimation, (b) vergence calibration, and (c) real-time 3D event detection that considers eye- and head-coupling. The new 3D calibration shows excellent error reduction in terms of Mean Squared Error (MSE).

The Low/High Index of Pupillary Activity (LHIPA), an eye-tracked measure of pupil diameter oscillation, is redesigned and implemented to function in real-time. The novel Real-time IPA (RIPA) is shown to discriminate cognitive load in re-streamed data from earlier experiments. Rationale for the RIPA is tied to the functioning of the human autonomic nervous system yielding a hybrid measure based on the ratio of Low/High frequencies of pupil oscillation. The paper's contribution is drawn from provision of documentation of the calculation of the RIPA. As with the LHIPA, it is possible for researchers to apply this metric to their own experiments where a measure of cognitive load is of interest.

We are delighted to present a first issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction to focus on contributions from the Eye Tracking Research and Applications (ETRA) community.

Virtual Reality (VR) headsets can open opportunities for users to accomplish complex tasks on large virtual displays using compact and portable devices. However, interacting with such large virtual displays using existing interaction techniques might cause fatigue, especially for precise manipulation tasks, due to the lack of physical surfaces. To deal with this issue, we explored the design of VXSlate, an interaction technique that uses a large virtual display as an expansion of a tablet. We combined a user’s head movements as tracked by the VR headset, and touch interaction on the tablet. Using VXSlate, a user head movements positions a virtual representation of the tablet together with the user’s hand, on the large virtual display. This allows the user to perform fine-tuned multi-touch content manipulations. In a user study with seventeen participants, we investigated the effects of VXSlate on users in problem-solving tasks involving content manipulations at different levels of difficulty, such as translation, rotation, scaling, and sketching. As a baseline for comparison, off-the-shelf touch-controller interactions were used. Overall, VXSlate allowed participants to complete the task with completion times and accuracy that are comparable to touch-controller interactions. After an interval of use, VXSlate significantly reduced users’ time to perform scaling tasks in content manipulations, as well as reducing perceived effort. We reflected on the advantages and disadvantages of VXSlate in content manipulation on large virtual displays and explored further applications within the VXSlate design space.

A novel eye-tracked measure of pupil diameter oscillation is derived as an indicator of cognitive load. The new metric, termed the Low/High Index of Pupillary Activity (LHIPA), is able to discriminate cognitive load (vis-a-vis task difficulty) in several experiments where the Index of Pupillary Activity fails to do so. Rationale for the LHIPA is tied to the functioning of the human autonomic nervous system yielding a hybrid measure based on the ratio of Low/High frequencies of pupil oscillation. The paper's contribution is twofold. First, full documentation is provided for the calculation of the LHIPA. As with the IPA, it is possible for researchers to apply this metric to their own experiments where a measure of cognitive load is of interest. Second, robustness of the LHIPA is shown in analysis of three experiments, a restrictive fixed-gaze number counting task, a less restrictive fixed-gaze n-back task, and an applied eye-typing task.

We discuss several techniques for mapping the gaze point to fiducial markers detected in a video stream, as commonly used in Augmented Reality eye-tracking applications. Specifically, we focus on using the recovered camera rotation and translation determined by the apparent distortion of the marker. We exploit this to map Areas Of Interest (AOIs) in the plane relative to the given marker. This gives the advantage of not needing any more than a single marker. We also review how the recovered homography is transformed to the graphics world coordinates so that AOI visualization can be performed in world space instead of camera space.

We develop an approach to using microsaccade dynamics for the measurement of task difficulty/cognitive load imposed by a visual search task of a layered surface. Previous studies provide converging evidence that task difficulty/cognitive load can influence microsaccade activity. We corroborate this notion. Specifically, we explore this relationship during visual search for features embedded in a terrain-like surface, with the eyes allowed to move freely during the task. We make two relevant contributions. First, we validate an approach to distinguishing between the ambient and focal phases of visual search. We show that this spectrum of visual behavior can be quantified by a single previously reported estimator, known as Krejtz's K coefficient. Second, we use ambient/focal segments based on K as a moderating factor for microsaccade analysis in response to task difficulty. We find that during the focal phase of visual search (a) microsaccade magnitude increases significantly, and (b) microsaccade rate decreases significantly, with increased task difficulty. We conclude that the combined use of K and microsaccade analysis may be helpful in building effective tools that provide an indication of the level of cognitive activity within a task while the task is being performed.

Research has shown that keyframed eye motions are perceived as more realistic when some noise is added to eyeball motions and to pupil size changes. We investigate whether this noise, in contrast to being motion captured, can be synthesized with standard techniques, e.g., procedural or data-driven approaches. In a two-alternative forced choice task, we compare eye animations created with four different techniques: motion captured, procedural, data-driven, and keyframed (lacking noise). Our perceptual experiment uses three character models with different levels of realism and two motions. Our results suggest that procedural and data-driven noise can be used to create animations at similar perceived naturalness to our motion captured approach. Participants’ eye movements when viewing the animations show that animations without jitter yielded fewer fixations, suggesting ease of dismissal as unnatural.

Automatic Area Of Interest (AOI) demarcation of facial regions is not yet commonplace in applied eye-tracking research, partially because automatic AOI labeling is prone to error. Most previous eye-tracking studies relied on manual frame-by-frame labeling of facial AOIs. We present a fully automatic approach for facial AOI labeling (i.e., eyes, nose, mouth) and gaze registration within those AOIs, based on modern computer vision techniques combined with heuristics drawn from art. We discuss details in computing gaze analytics, provide proof-of-concept, and a short validation against what we consider ground truth. Relative dwell time over expected AOIs exceeded 98% showing efficacy of the approach.

We evaluate subtle, emotionally-driven models of eye movement animation. Two models are tested, reading and face scanning, each based on recorded gaze transition probabilities. For reading, simulated emotional mood is governed by the probability density function that varies word advancement, i.e., re-fixations, forward, or backward skips. For face scanning, gaze behavior depends on task (gender or emotion discrimination) or the facial emotion portrayed. Probability density functions in both cases are derived from empirically observed transitions that significantly alter viewing behavior, captured either during mood-induced reading or during scanning faces expressing different emotions. A perceptual study shows that viewers can distinguish between reading and face scanning eye movements. However, viewers could not gauge the emotional valence of animated eye motion. For animation, our contribution shows that simulated emotionally-driven viewing behavior is too subtle to be discerned, or it needs to be exaggerated to be effective.

A significant number of Internet users is unaware of privacy threats and they might not pay much attention to privacy notifications. It is imperative to create effective but, at the same time, non-distracting notifications about privacy policy of different web services. The article presents an eye-tracking study (N = 16) testing the effectiveness of different common types of privacy notification in capturing and retaining users' attention. Results showed that an non-intrusive notification presented at the top of the web page may be as effective as intrusive notifications in capturing attention. Results are discussed in terms of well-known effects of visual attention distribution on web pages. Present findings also offer practical conclusions for web service developers and publishers.

No abstract available.

A novel eye-tracked measure of the frequency of pupil diameter oscillation is proposed for capturing what is thought to be an indicator of cognitive load. The proposed metric, termed the Index of Pupillary Activity, is shown to discriminate task difficulty vis-a-vis cognitive load (if the implied causality can be assumed) in an experiment where participants performed easy and difficult mental arithmetic tasks while fixating a central target (a requirement for replication of prior work). The paper's contribution is twofold: full documentation is provided for the calculation of the proposed measurement which can be considered as an alternative to the existing proprietary Index of Cognitive Activity (ICA). Thus, it is possible for researchers to replicate the experiment and build their own software which implements this measurement. Second, several aspects of the ICA are approached in a more data-sensitive way with the goal of improving the measurement's performance.

A variety of psychological disorders like antisocial personality disorder have been linked to impairments in facial emotion recognition. Exploring eye movements during categorization of emotional faces is a promising approach with the potential to reveal possible differences in cognitive processes underlying these deficits. Based on this premise we investigated whether antisocial violent offenders exhibit different scan patterns compared to a matched healthy control group while categorizing emotional faces. Group differences were analyzed in terms of attention to the eyes, extent of exploration behavior and structure of switching patterns between Areas of Interest. While we were not able to show clear group differences, the present study is one of the first that demonstrates the feasibility and utility of incorporating recently developed eye movement metrics such as gaze transition entropy into clinical psychology.

This paper demonstrates the utility of ambient-focal attention and pupil dilation dynamics to describe visual processing of emotional facial expressions. Pupil dilation and focal eye movements reflect deeper cognitive processing and thus shed more light on the dynamics of emotional expression recognition. Socially anxious individuals (N = 24) and non-anxious controls (N = 24) were asked to recognize emotional facial expressions that gradually morphed from a neutral expression to one of happiness, sadness, or anger in 10-sec animations. Anxious cohorts exhibited more ambient face scanning than their non-anxious counterparts. We observed a positive relationship between focal fixations and pupil dilation, indicating deeper processing of viewed faces, but only by non-anxious participants, and only during the last phase of emotion recognition. Group differences in the dynamics of ambient-focal attention support the hypothesis of vigilance to emotional expression processing by socially anxious individuals. We discuss the results by referring to current literature on cognitive psychopathology.

Abstract Eye movements are an essential part of non‐verbal behavior. Non‐player characters, as they occur in many games, communicate with the player through dialogue and non‐verbal behavior and can have a strong influence on player experience or even on gameplay. In this paper, we evaluate a procedural model designed to synthesize the subtleties of eye motion. More specifically, our model adds microsaccadic jitter and pupil unrest both modeled by 1/fαor pink noise to the saccadic main sequence. In a series of perceptual two‐alternative forced‐choice experiments, we explore the perceived naturalness of different parameters of pink noise by comparing synthesized motions to rendered motion of recorded eye movements at extreme close shot and close shot distances. Our results show that, on average, animations based on a procedural model with pink noise were perceived and evaluated as highly natural, whereas data‐driven motion without any jitter or with unfiltered jitter were consistently selected as the least natural in appearance.

Eye motions constitute an important part of our daily face-to-face interactions. Even subtle details in the eyes’ motions give us clues about a person’s thoughts and emotions. Believable and natural animation of the eyes is therefore crucial when creating appealing virtual characters. In this article, we investigate the perceived naturalness of detailed eye motions, more specifically of jitter of the eyeball rotation and pupil diameter on three virtual characters with differing levels of realism. Participants watched stimuli with six scaling factors from 0 to 1 in increments of 0.2, varying eye rotation and pupil size jitter individually, and they had to indicate if they would like to increase or decrease the level of jitter to make the animation look more natural. Based on participants’ responses, we determine the scaling factors for noise attenuation perceived as most natural for each character when using motion-captured eye motions. We compute the corresponding average jitter amplitudes for the eyeball rotation and pupil size to serve as guidelines for other characters. We find that the amplitudes perceived as most natural depend on the character, with our character with a medium level of realism requiring the largest scaling factors.

A convolution-filtering technique is introduced for the synthesis of eye gaze data. Its purpose is to produce, in a controlled manner, a synthetic stream of raw gaze position coordinates, suitable for: (1) testing event detection filters, and (2) rendering synthetic eye movement animations for testing eye tracking gaze estimation algorithms. Synthetic gaze data is parameterized by sampling rate, microsaccadic jitter, and simulated measurement error. Sampled synthetic gaze data is compared against real data captured by an eye tracker showing similar signal characteristics.

We introduce coefficient K , defined on a novel parametric scale, derived from processing a traditionally eye-tracked time course of eye movements. Positive and negative ordinates of K indicate focal or ambient viewing, respectively, while the abscissa serves to indicate time, so that K acts as a dynamic indicator of fluctuation between ambient/focal visual behavior. The coefficient indicates the difference between fixation duration and its subsequent saccade amplitude expressed in standard deviation units, facilitating parametric statistical testing. To validate K empirically, we test its utility by capturing ambient and focal attention during serial and parallel visual search tasks (Study 1). We then show how K quantitatively depicts the difference in scanning behaviors when attention is guided by audio description during perception of art (Study 2).

Eye movements are an essential part of non-verbal behavior. Non-player characters (NPCs), as they occur in many games, communicate with the player through dialogues and non-verbal behavior and can have a strong influence on the player experience or even on gameplay. In this paper we propose a procedural model to synthesize the subtleties of eye motions. More specifically, our model adds microsaccadic jitter and pupil unrest both modeled by 1/f or pink noise to the standard main sequence. In a perceptual two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) experiment we explore the perceived naturalness of different parameters of pink noise by comparing synthesized motions to rendered motion of recorded eye movements at extreme close shot and close shot distances. Our results show that, on average, data-driven motion is perceived as most natural, followed by parameterized pink noise, with motion lacking microsaccadic jitter being consistently selected as the least natural in appearance.

This article details a two-step method of quantifying eye movement transitions between areas of interest (AOIs). First, individuals' gaze switching patterns, represented by fixated AOI sequences, are modeled as Markov chains. Second, Shannon's entropy coefficient of the fit Markov model is computed to quantify the complexity of individual switching patterns. To determine the overall distribution of attention over AOIs, the entropy coefficient of individuals' stationary distribution of fixations is calculated. The novelty of the method is that it captures the variability of individual differences in eye movement characteristics, which are then summarized statistically. The method is demonstrated on gaze data collected from two studies, during free viewing of classical art paintings. Normalized Shannon's entropy, derived from individual transition matrices, is related to participants' individual differences as well as to either their aesthetic impression or recognition of artwork. Low transition and high stationary entropies suggest greater curiosity mixed with a higher subjective aesthetic affinity toward artwork, possibly indicative of visual scanning of the artwork in a more deliberate way. Meanwhile, both high transition and stationary entropies may be indicative of recognition of familiar artwork.

We report on an experiment testing gaze-contingent depth-of-field (DOF) for the reduction of visual discomfort when viewing stereoscopic displays. Subjective results are compelling, showing, we believe for the first time, that gaze-contingent depth-of-field significantly reduces visual discomfort. When individual stereoacuity is taken into account, objective measurements of gaze vergence corroborate previous reports, showing significant bias toward the zero depth plane, where error is smallest. As with earlier similar attempts, participants expressed a dislike toward gaze-contingent DOF. Although not statistically significant, this dislike is likely attributed to the eye tracker's spatial inaccuracy as well as the DOF simulation's noticeable temporal lag.

We show that the error in 3D gaze depth (vergence) estimated from binocularly-tracked gaze disparity is related to the viewing distance of the screen calibration plane at which 2D gaze is recorded. In a stereoscopic (virtual) environment, this relationship is evident in gaze to target depth error: vergence error behind the screen is greater than in front of the screen and is lowest at the screen depth. In a physical environment, with no accommodation-vergence conflict, the magnitude of vergence error in front of the 2D calibration plane appears reversed, increasing with distance from the viewer.

The paper introduces a two-step method of quantifying eye movement transitions between Areas of Interests (AOIs). First, individuals' gaze switching patterns, represented by fixated AOI sequences, are modeled as Markov chains. Second, Shannon's entropy coefficient of the fit Markov model is computed to quantify the complexity of individual switching patterns. To determine the overall distribution of attention over AOIs, the entropy coefficient of individuals' stationary distribution of fixations is calculated.

The paper explores the effects of adding audio description to an educational film on children's learning behaviour, manifested by a visual recognition task. We hypothesize that the multimodal educational setting, consisting of both verbal (film dialogue and audio description) and non-verbal (motion pictures) representations of knowledge, fosters knowledge acquisition as it provides information via multiple channels, which in turn strengthens memory retrieval. In the study we employ eye tracking methodology to examine the recognition of previously seen film material, testing whether audio description promotes recognition- rather than elimination-based decision-making in the visual recognition task. The analysis of first fixation duration and first run fixation count measures in the experimental and control groups partially confirmed our hypotheses. Children in the experimental group generally looked longer at the scenes they had seen, which supports the hypothesis that their decision was based on recognition, whereas children in the control group had longer fixations on scenes they were unfamiliar with, suggesting a decision based on elimination.

Audio description (AD) has become a cultural revolution for the visually impaired; however, the range of AD beneficiaries can be much broader. We claim that AD is useful for guiding children's attention. The paper presents an eye-tracking study testing the usefulness of AD in selective attention to described elements of a video scene. Forty-four children watched 2 clips from an educational animation series while their eye movements were recorded. Average fixation duration, fixation count, and saccade amplitude served as primary dependent variables. The results confirmed that AD guides children's attention towards described objects resulting e. g., in more fixations on specific regions of interest. We also evaluated eye movement patterns in terms of switching between focal and ambient processing. We postulate that audio description could complement regular teaching tools for guiding and focusing children's attention, especially when new concepts are introduced.