SBIR Phase II: Hacking Eye Movements to Improve Attention

小型企业创新研究SBIR第二阶段项目的更广泛影响将是对小学生注意力评估的标准化。教师们目前把太多的宝贵时间都花在了枯燥乏味上。标准的学校注意力评估要求训练有素的教师或助手观察孩子大约15分钟，并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。教师和助手认识到这一过程的几个不吸引人的方面，例如，它主观上取决于观察者，不是所有观察者的标准，除了偶尔提供儿童注意力技能的全面快照之外，太耗时了。更糟糕的是，这些困难影响到最脆弱的儿童，他们可能正在经历自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)或注意力缺陷多动障碍(ADHD)的挑战。教师必须花在评估儿童进步上的时间限制了这种进步。如果教师能够专注于教学，而不是目前耗时的、不规范的过程，那么这些有才华、有智慧、有创造力的年轻人由此产生的螺旋式下降是可以避免的。随着目前全国儿童自闭症和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提供了重要数据，通过更好地利用教师的时间，同时为学生创造更好的结果，从而满足学校的需求。这个SBIR第二阶段项目的智力优势在于，研究和开发对将一种客观的注意力评估工具商业化至关重要，该工具衡量持续注意力、注意力分散、注意力定向、焦点和抑制控制。该评估工具在儿童玩凝视驱动游戏时使用眼球跟踪技术，以监控他们的注意力。眼睛跟踪器使用小型摄像头来测量一个人的眼睛相对于他们的头部的位置。根据这些数据，眼球追踪器可以通过跟随人的凝视的光标来准确地判断出人在屏幕上的哪个位置。该工具使用这个光标来控制由加州大学圣地亚哥分校的研究人员专门设计的视频游戏，以提高各种注意力技能。通过这些游戏，孩子们练习聚焦和定位他们的视野，并学会忽略分心的事情。这个第二阶段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乏味、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真实的学校结果联系起来。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.