HI Data Forum: Finland’s Eye-Tracking Researchers Seminar (FinETS 2025)

Hybrid Intelligence Research programme and FinETS is co-organizing HI Data Forum: Finland’s Eye-Tracking Researchers Seminar (FinETS 2025) on 10th - 11th of April 2025, at LeaF at the University of Oulu (Linnanmaa campus).

Please note that FinETS 2025 is being organized in hybrid mode meaning that you can participate online or on-site. Online participation includes listening to the keynote speeches and presenting in round table and paper sessions. You can register for both days or only one.

Register here by 30.03.2025

Programme:

Day 1 (10.4.2025):
13:30-14:30 Keynote 1: Rebekka Stahnke, Doctor of Education, IPN - Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, on the topic "Through the teacher's eyes: exploring professional vision of classroom management with eye-tracking and think-aloud data"
14:30 - 15.00 Round table
15:00-16:00 Paper session 1
Chair: Dr. Reito Visajaani Salonen, University of Helsinki
15:00-15:20 (Online) Satu Rajalakso, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki: Eye movement behaviour of 5-year-old children during spontaneous and guided focusing on numerosity
15:20-15:40 (Online) Tomi Kiviluoma, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki: Collaborative knowledge construction among university biology students – an ongoing eye-tracking study
15:40-16:00 (Online) Thibaut Duthois, Ghent University: What children get overlooked? The distribution of teachers’ attention in early childhood education: a mobile eye-tracking study
16:00-18:00 Visiting LeaF labs with wine and VR
Session with Matti Pouke, Assistant Professor in VR and Extented Realities, Hybrid Intelligence research programme & Evan Center, Postdoctoral researcher in EEG and behavioral techniques and virtual reality: A Visual Search Task in a Cluttered Virtual Reality Environment

Day 2 (11.4.2025):
09:00- 09:15 Welcome
09:15-10:15 Keynote 2: Henri Olkoniemi, University Lecturer, Faculty of Education and Psychology, on the topic "Developmental and individual differences in irony comprehension"
10:15-10:30 Break
10:30-11:30 Paper session 1
Chair: Dr. Johanna Pöysä-Tarhonen, Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä
10:30-10:50 (On-site) Miiamaaria Kujala, Department Psychology, University of Jyväskylä: Gaze tracking in comparative research: Dogs observing objects, landscapes and emotional facial expressions
10:50-11:10 (On-site) Ridwan Whitehead, LET Research Lab, University of Oulu: Exploring the role of gaze behaviour in socially shared regulation of collaborative learning in a group task
11:10-11:30 (On-site) Lila Hummelin, Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Oulu: Supporting self-regulated learning using artificial intelligence: An eye-tracking study
11:30-13 Lunch (self-paid) and networking
13:00-14:30 Paper session 2
14:30-15:00 Closing

Please note: This event is free of charge (no registration fees required). We will not cover any travel or accommodation costs for the participants.

Additional information:

LeaF:
Niina Palmu, University of Oulu
niina.palmu@oulu.fi

Seminar:
Henri Olkoniemi, University of Oulu
henri.olkoniemi@oulu.fi

Joni Lämsä, Univeristy of Oulu
joni.lamsa@oulu.fi

Saswati Chaudhuri, University of Jyväskylä
saswati.s.chaudhuri@jyu.fi

Eeva Haataja, University of Helsinki
eeva.haataja@helsinki.fi

Abstracts

Satu Rajalakso, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki: Eye movement behaviour of 5-year-old children during spontaneous and guided focusing on numerosity

This research investigates 5-year-old children's eye movement behaviour during spontaneous and guided focusing on numerosity. Spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) refers to the extent to which a child spontaneously recognizes numerosity in everyday surroundings and utilises number knowledge in action. Previous research has shown that that there is an extensive variation on how frequently children spontaneously initiate mathematical activities. However, no previous research has utilised eye-tracking to study those self-initiated actions. In the present research, the participating children play an investigation game during which they are presented picture cards and asked to describe them. The tasks are designed to measure spontaneous and guided focusing on numerosity. Children's eye movements are tracked while they view the pictures using remote Tobii Pro Spectrum eye-tracking apparatus. The aim of the study is to investigate how spontaneous and guided focusing on numerosity in comparison to other aspects differ in eye movement behaviour. What kind of enumeration strategies children use and how those strategies vary when enumeration is spontaneous or guided. Preliminary analyses of the first data with 22 participants demonstrates individual variation in fixations related to enumeration, which suggests distinct enumeration processes. Further analysis with more extensive data aims for a deeper understanding of those strategies.

Tomi Kiviluoma, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki: Collaborative knowledge construction among university biology students – an ongoing eye-tracking study

The purpose of this study is to investigate the process of collaborative knowledge construction and interaction of university students using eye-tracking methodology. The student dyads (N = 4; altogether 2 dyads) of university biology students were asked to provide answers for two sustainability-related problem-solving tasks requiring strong conceptual understanding and systems thinking skills. Data collection is ongoing to increase the sample size. The research instrument consisted of a visual illustration of species pairs in ecosystems and cards with core concepts related to evolutionary processes and ecosystem dynamics. The participants wore eye-tracking glasses during the problem-solving task. Based on preliminary results, students’ prior knowledge and familiarity about the ecosystems and example species influenced the problem-solving process. From the transcribed discussions, a preliminary model of collaborative knowledge construction was outlined. From the eye-tracking data, temporal incidents of joint visual attention, distributed visual attention between dyads and partners looking at each other were identified. Our results support the previous findings according to which collaboration seems to be a promising instructional strategy to facilitate understanding of complex scientific contents. This research is among the pioneering efforts to explore collaborative problem-solving through dual mobile eye-tracking. As far as we know, no prior studies have examined such a process within a university setting, particularly when the task involves highly complex phenomena that demand both deep conceptual understanding and systems thinking.

Thibaut Duthois, Ghent University: What children get overlooked? The distribution of teachers’ attention in early childhood education: a mobile eye-tracking study

This study utilized mobile eye tracking with fifty teachers and 250 children to examine one formal and one informal language activity in the classroom. Previous research has shown that both the quality and quantity of interactions in the preschool classroom are not evenly distributed among all students. Using mobile eye tracking, this study aims to explore the underlying dynamics of this inequality. The research focused on the received attention of children in relation to teachers’ perceptions and expectations of child characteristics. The findings reveal that during both these formal and informal activities, where crucial teacher-child interactions occur, teachers do not distribute their attention equally among the children, suggesting that not all children have the same level of access to teacher-child interactions. Negative binomial models indicate that quiet and linguistically vulnerable children are most often overlooked in the early childhood classroom. Implications for future research and professional development for teachers are discussed.

Miiamaaria Kujala, Department Psychology, University of Jyväskylä: Gaze tracking in comparative research: Dogs observing objects, landscapes and emotional facial expressions

Besides human visuo-cognitive abilities, gaze tracking has been used to obtain comparative information across species. Obtaining data on non-human species resembles infant gaze tracking in a sense that the experiment must be interesting enough and fit the attention span of the observer. Our former group at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Helsinki utilized gaze tracking with domestic dogs, allowing for a window to the canine visual attention. The dogs were trained to stay still and lean their heads to the U-shaped chin rest, while images were presented on the screen in front of them. This gained specific information on how dogs target their attention to faces, objects, or landscapes, and how they process different emotions from the human and dog faces. However, little is still known how emotions are perceived across species and how attention is divided within different parts of faces. Our new, unpublished data compares the gaze of humans and dogs on the same images of emotional dog and human facial expressions. Dogs mostly gaze the eye and nose areas, whereas the human focus also includes the mouth area. The gaze of both species is affected by the facial expressions and species presented, and they gaze emotional more than neutral stimuli. Both dogs and humans demonstrate attentional bias toward angry and happy eyes of their own species. Taken together, our research suggests that the attention-grabbing function of emotional information has across-specific ecological advantage, and it has similarities in dogs as in humans.

Ridwan Whitehead, LET Research Lab, University of Oulu: Exploring the role of gaze behaviour in socially shared regulation of collaborative learning in a group task

Background

The necessity of supporting socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL) for learners is widely acknowledged as a crucial element for successful collaborative learning (CL). However, inherent challenges are presented for the observation, study, and support of SSRL. Non-verbal behaviours have been identified as a potentially rich resource for understanding learner interactions within CL. Yet, the exploration of its impact on SSRL remains largely unexplored.

Objective

The present study aims to explore how gaze behaviour, as a non-verbal behaviour, relates to verbal interactions that characterise SSRL in CL.

Methods

Twenty-seven Finnish secondary school students were given a 30-min group task of creating a breakfast smoothie, in which trigger events were integrated to examine possible interactions that characterise SSRL. In this experimental setting, data from multiple modalities were collected. For analysis, process mining was used to explore patterns of interaction, and multidimensional recurrence quantification analysis (MdRQA) was used, alongside with statistical analysis.

Results and Conclusions

Our study revealed that gaze behaviour is intricately linked with SSRL interactions, suggesting a complex interplay in collaborative learning contexts. When temporally investigated, SSRL interactions varied in frequency while gaze behaviour remained constant. Moreover, the recurrence of gaze and SSRL interactions did not vary due to trigger events, confirming an established collaborative pattern.

Implications

This study advances the field by extending research on SSRL by introducing a ‘non-verbal perspective’. This perspective enriches our understanding of collaborative learning environments by revealing hidden interaction patterns and guiding the development of more responsive and adaptive digital learning tools.

Lila Hummelin, Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Oulu: Supporting self-regulated learning using artificial intelligence: An eye-tracking study

Engagement in self-regulated learning (SRL) processes boosts performance, but students may lack the capacity to engage in SRL as they work on complex learning tasks (Dignath & Büttner, 2008). Supporting SRL in these tasks has positive effects on learning (Donker et al., 2014). Following the developments of learning technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), the aim of this study is to investigate the role of AI-enhanced personalized scaffolds in higher education students (N = 20) SRL. Eye-tracking and digital trace data were collected from the digital learning environment when participants completed an essay assignment on a computer with the EyeLink Portable Duo eye tracker. In addition, the participants answered self-reports before and after the essay assignment related to their prior knowledge on the content of the essay assignment and their learning skills. The data analysis combines eye tracking data with the digital trace data. Preliminary findings indicate that participants often focused on specific interface elements, suggesting patterns in their SRL behaviors. Our study provides insights on how eye tracking data can enhance the measurement of SRL compared to digital trace data alone.