Eye Tracking the Youngest Subjects in History
The auditory attention test (AAT) from the Lahav Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, was created as a potentially early screening tool to assess auditory attention in premature infants before their NICU discharge.
The AAT takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. During the AAT, an infant is placed in a specialized test crib that has two micro-speakers installed by the infant’s head. Throughout the AAT, the infant hears their mother’s voice and a female’s voice separated by silent baseline conditions presented in a counterbalanced fashion. Infant behavior and eye movements are recorded during the AAT using a micro video camera and an eye tracking camera (LC Technologies™).
The eye tracking technology is a vital component to this study and allows us to quantitatively assess eye movements (horizontal/vertical trajectories) as well as pupil dilation (mm) in these young infants. We hypothesize that the results of this study could potentially serve as a pre-screening tool used to identify at-risk infants for future attention deficits. The lead researchers on this project are Amir Lahav, ScD, PhD and Emily Zimmerman, PhD from the Lahav Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
This project was funded by the Waterloo Foundation.
Image credit: “My baby love” by WiLPrZ is licensed with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/