Computerized Eye-tracking Attention Training for Children With Special Needs

Children with special needs (e.g. autistic spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) are found to have sustained attention problems. Several behavioral interventions have been carried out in the past to improve this situation. However, these interventions are often involved a high administration cost. Recently, researchers have been focusing on training the eye gaze fixation using the eye-tracking training games, as some of the research studies reported a correlation between atypical eye gaze patterns with poor sustained attention. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a computerized eye-tracking attention training. Two batches of 48 primary school students will be recruited from email and the subject pool of the Department of Psychology of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Participants are dividedly randomly and equally into either intervention or control group. Participants in both groups will undergo pre- and post-assessments measuring the executive function and attention before and after the intervention, respectively. However, there will be eight eye-tracking training sessions for the intervention group, but only the assessments are received in the control group. It is hypothesized that after the training, the performance of the training games and assessments will improve, indicated by increasing accuracy rates, as well as the reaction time of the tasks. The results would provide important information on the value of computerized eye gaze training and would guide the direction of interventions that target on improving the sustained attention and impulse control of children with special needs.