Publication Title
Audio description as an aural guide of children’s visual attention. Evidence from an eye-tracking study
Publication Type
Book chapter
Editor(s)
Title of edited book
ETRA '12: Proceedings of the Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications
Year of publication
2012
Pages
99-106
City
Language(s)

English

Modalities
Abstract
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.
Submitted by Irina Ruiz Friginal on Tue, 21/04/2020 - 13:09