Using a Major Instrumentation award from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Rhiannon Luyster and three co-investigators at Emerson College will purchase a Remote Eye Tracking (RED) System from Sensomotoric Instruments. By using infrared light, the RED system allows users to record eye movements and fixations to images or videos; this technology has been used across a wide range of disciplines to learn about what aspects of visual images attract a viewer's attention.
The four collaborating investigators are faculty in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and plan to use this advanced technology to study the emergence, use, loss and reacquisition of communication skills across the lifespan. One study explores the role of visual attention to speaking faces in early childhood language learning and language deficits. A second study addresses how children visually scan the facial expressions of peers with and without autism and how these visual scan patterns relate to the perception of awkwardness in the social communication attempts of children with autism. A final set of projects studies how adults with aphasia attend to verbal and non-verbal communication channels when trying to understand messages and how potential communication partners of adults with aphasia rely on verbal and non-verbal channels to understand people with aphasia. Together, this program of research has the potential to reveal new insights into the role of communication across the lifespan, from young children to adults. The goal is to answer core questions about the value of communicative cues, and how variations in the use of communicative cues might be associated with deficits, or, conversely, support healthy development.
This equipment will have broad benefits for faculty scholarship, student learning and community engagement at Emerson College. First, in addition to the four faculty associated with the present proposal, several faculty members throughout the college have expressed an interest in incorporating eye-tracking technology into their own work, covering topics from cross-cultural consumer behavior to the role of media in journalism. Second, the equipment will be made available to undergraduate and masters students from any college department, many of which (Marketing, for instance) produce graduates who will encounter eye-tracking technology in the professional world. Finally, the acquisition of this equipment will strengthen current Emerson College outreach programs, including an existing partnership with the Boston-area Science Club for Girls (connecting college students in the sciences with elementary and middle-school aged girls from underrepresented groups), the Boston Museum of Science, and the Cambridge Science Festival, where our students present pieces on science and science education to a large and diverse audience. Finally, the School of Communication at Emerson recently began recording a series of podcasts to showcase the research programs and innovations of its faculty. These podcasts are aired in a variety of contexts, including on WERS - the Emerson-owned radio station - thus disseminating information about Emerson's eye-tracking research, recent findings and the value of science in our society.
