Preliminary Experiment for Developing Quantitative Evaluation of Eye Movements in Developing Infants
- VernacularTitle:発達段階にある幼児の眼球運動の定量的評価の開発に向けた予備的実験
- Author:
Mika SAKAMOTO
1
;
Nanae SAKAKIBARA
2
;
Kotaro HACHIYA
3
;
Osamu UBA
4
Author Information
- Keywords: external ocular movement; development; assessment; pediatric rehabilitation
- From:The Japanese Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine 2025;():25009-
- CountryJapan
- Language:Japanese
- Abstract: Objective: Children with developmental disabilities exhibit poor eye movement more frequently compared to typically developing children. Their difficulties, such as being easily distracted and skipping words while reading, are partly due to their poor eye movement. It is desirable to identify and intervene in these issues before they become apparent in preschool, but currently, there are no clear indicators for the developmental process of eye movement. Therefore, we attempted to develop a quantitative evaluation of eye movement in typically developing children.Methods: We used a gaze analysis device to measure the eye movements of six older children using a prototype eye movement stimulus presentation video.Results: Although lapses in attention were observed during measurement, all six participants successfully completed the eye movement tasks. For fixation, on average, 80.8% of gaze points were within 3° of the target. For horizontal saccades, all participants exhibited rapid eye movements to fixate on the target after its presentation. In the third trial, waveform analysis for all six participants showed quick gaze shifts, appropriate eye movement amplitude, and maintenance of gaze during target presentation, confirming saccade proficiency. For horizontal pursuit, the averaged waveforms of the six participants showed that the standard deviation at each measurement point was smallest in the third trial out of five.Conclusion: Maintaining the children's attention during measurements required effort, and shortening the measurement time was necessary. However, continuous measurement of saccades and pursuit showed a learning effect. This early-stage learning effect may be used as a characteristic of typically developing children in the future.
