SBIR Phase II: Hacking Eye Movements to Improve Attention

这个小企业创新研究SBIR二期项目的更广泛影响将是标准化小学生的注意力评估。目前，教师们把太多宝贵的时间花在了无聊的事情上。标准的学校注意力评估要求训练有素的老师或助手观察一个孩子大约15分钟，每隔几秒钟记录他们的注意力行为。观察者跟踪行为，包括离开座位的时间，可听到的噪音，发声等等。教师和助手们认识到这个过程中有几个不吸引人的方面，例如，它主观上取决于观察者，没有对观察者进行标准化，而且过于耗时，只能偶尔对儿童的注意力技能进行全面的概述。更糟糕的是，这些困难影响到最脆弱的儿童，他们可能因自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）或注意缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）而面临挑战。教师花在评估孩子进步上的时间限制了孩子的进步。如果教师能够专注于教学，而不是目前耗时、不标准化的教学过程，这些有才华、聪明、有创造力的年轻人就可以避免这种恶性循环。随着目前全国儿童ASD和ADHD发病率的上升，本项目提出的可靠、简单、可重复的注意力评估工具为更好地利用教师的时间满足学校需求，同时为学生产生更好的结果提供了重要的数据。这个SBIR二期项目的智力价值在于研究和开发对商业化客观注意力评估工具至关重要，该工具可以测量持续注意力、注意力分散、注意力定向、焦点和抑制控制。当孩子们玩由目光驱动的游戏时，评估工具使用眼球追踪技术来监测他们的注意力。眼动仪使用小型摄像机来测量一个人的眼睛相对于头部的位置。从这些数据中，眼动仪可以精确地告诉人们在屏幕上看的是哪里，光标会跟随人们的目光。这个工具使用这个光标来控制视频游戏，这些游戏是由加州大学圣地亚哥分校的研究人员专门设计的，旨在提高各种注意力技能。通过这些游戏，孩子们可以练习集中注意力，调整视野，学会忽略干扰。第二期项目的主要目标是在学龄儿童的目标人群中测试一个统计上相关的样本，以验证新的注意力评估工具与现有的繁琐、昂贵、耗时的工具相比。这项研究和开发将这些新的注意力评估工具与实际的学校成果联系起来。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research SBIR Phase II project will be in standardizing attention assessment in elementary school children. Teachers currently dedicate too much of their valuable time to tedium. The standard school attention assessment calls for a highly trained teacher or aide to observe a child for about fifteen minutes and record their attention behavior every few seconds. The observer tracks behaviors including out of seat time, audible noise, vocalization and so on. Teachers and aides recognize several unappealing aspects of this process, e.g., it subjectively depends on the observer, is not standardized across observers, and is too time-consuming to provide more than an occasional snapshot of the full range of children's attention skills. Worse, these difficulties affect the most vulnerable children who may be experiencing challenges due to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The time teachers must spend evaluating children's progress limits that very progress. The resulting downward spiral for these talented, intelligent, and creative young people can be avoided if teachers can focus on teaching, rather than the current time-intensive, unstandardized processes. With the current rise in rates of ASD and ADHD in children nationwide, the reliable, simple, repeatable attention assessment tool proposed in this project provides important data to meet schools' needs by better using teachers' time while generating better outcomes for students. The intellectual merit of this SBIR Phase II project lies in the research and development critical to commercialize an objective attention assessment tool that measures sustained attention, distractibility, attention orienting, focus, and inhibitory control. The assessment tool uses eye-tracking technology when children play gaze-driven games to allow monitoring of their attention. Eye trackers use small cameras to measure where an individual's eyes are relative to their head. From these data, eye trackers can tell precisely where the person is looking on the screen, indicated by a cursor that follows the person's gaze. The tool uses this cursor to control video games that were specifically designed by researchers at UC San Diego to improve various attention skills. With these games, children practice focusing and orienting their vision and learn to ignore distractions. The primary goal of this Phase II project is to test a statistically relevant sample in the target population of school aged children to validate new attention assessment tools compared with existing tedious, expensive, time-consuming tools. This research and development links these new attention assessment tools to real school outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.