Jennifer C. Romano Bergstrom

How Are Online Health Messages Processed? Using Eye Tracking to Predict Recall of Information in Younger and Older Adults

Little research has focused on what precedes the processing of health messages to predict recall of information and whether age matters in this regard. To address this gap, this study investigates the relationship between attention and recall among younger (<65 years) and older (≥65 years) adults. Using eye tracking, we exposed participants to a webpage consisting of text-only information, text with cognitive illustrations, or text with affective illustrations. When attention to text increased, older adults recalled more information, whereas younger adults did not. However, younger adults paid more attention to cognitive illustrations than older adults and recalled more information. These results reveal conditions under which health messages are effectively recalled by younger and older adults.

12 – Older Adults

This chapter is a review of user research involving eye tracking to gain insights into the extent that age has an impact on the way people navigate websites. It discusses how eye tracking can help researchers to understand the difficulties older adults have when using websites, applications, mobile devices, and other technologies.

Age-Related differences in search strategy and performance when using a data-rich web site

In a usability study on a portion of the Census Bureau Web site, we assess how people of different ages search for specific information by evaluating performance and strategy differences between age groups. We collected usability metrics of accuracy and efficiency, including mouse click data. Eye-tracking data were also collected including eye-movement patterns in pre-defined areas of interest. This paper focuses on the number of fixations (whether participants looked at the correct area of the screen) and number of unique visits (whether participants re-checked their answers). Results show that on the hard task only, older adults took longer to make the first click when initially starting the task, and there was a trend for younger adults to have higher accuracy. All age groups re-checked their answers suggesting that users of all ages experience difficulties when reading and comprehending complex data tables.

Age differences in the knowledge and usage of QR codes

The adoption of a new technology is often affected by its perceived utility and ease of use, both of which could vary by age due to cognitive differences. A recently invented technology, the quick response (QR) code, enables smartphone users to access content on their mobile devices by scanning two-dimensional barcodes. In this paper, we examine awareness, knowledge, and usage of QR codes across different age groups in the United States, using a representative survey. Controlling for demographic characteristics, we find that older adults were only 13% as likely as younger adults to have used a QR code. We discuss survey results and implications for future research.

An Overview of How Eye Tracking Is Used in Communication Research

Eye tracking gives communication scholars the opportunity to move beyond self-reported measures by examining more precisely how much visual attention is paid to information. However, we lack insight into how eye-tracking data is used in communication research. This literature review provides an overview of how eye tracking is used in communication research by examining published articles from the top-25 ranked communication journals between 2005 and 2015. Our results showed that most eye-tracking research was employed in the field of advertising. Furthermore, most studies used eye tracking to measure (visual) attention and used this as the study’s dependent variable. A wide variety of eye-tracking measures were reported, including fixation time, fixation count, and visual shifts, and a wide variety of eye-tracking devices were used. Our results highlight opportunities for using eye tracking as well as identify other ways of using eye tracking to maximize its potential in communication research.

Eye Tracking on a Paper Survey: Implications for Design

Asking respondents to record their activity in a diary can be a difficult task due to retrospective reporting and cognitive burden as well as the complexity of the data collection tool. Diary questionnaires typically require multiple pieces of information including demographics, activities, and duration over a data collection period. Like other questionnaire types, visual design principles can be used to help people perceive and understand what is being asked of them during diary measurement. Eye tracking, a technology that allows us to passively study people’s eye movements, has been used mostly for questionnaire testing within the survey research field. This study focuses on using eye tracking and other user experience measures to analyze how respondents perceive, understand and experience different designs of the paper Nielsen TV Diary. We used eye tracking to gain insights into visual elements that draw attention, the amount of text that respondents read (e.g., terms/instructions), and how respondents complete the survey. This paper centers on the collecting and analyzing of qualitative and quantitative measures of the user experience, including eye-tracking data (e.g., fixation count, time to fixate), participants’ verbalizations, self-reported satisfaction, and performance data (e.g., accuracy, steps to complete). We also provide recommendations about the design of the paper diary based on the user experience and eye-tracking results.

Does Web Design Matter? Examining Older Adults' Attention to Cognitive and Affective Illustrations on Cancer-Related Websites through Eye Tracking

This study examines how adults pay attention to cognitive and affective illustrations on a cancer-related webpage and explores age-related differences in the attention to these cognitive and affective webpages. Results of an eye-tracking experiment n = 20 showed that adults spent more time attending to the illustrations on the cognitive webpage than the illustrations on the affective webpage. Furthermore, older adults spent about 65% less time fixating the webpages than younger adults. Whereas older adults had less attention for illustrations on the cognitive webpage then younger adults, they spent equal time viewing the illustrations on the affective webpage as younger adults.

Physiological Response Measurements

This is an overview of physiological methods that are now possible with UX research. Using concrete examples and case studies, this chapter explains how eye tracking is used in conjunction with other technologies and measurements (e.g., EEG, skin conductance, pupil dilation) to measure correlations between eye and brain activity, including emotions and cognition.

Processing Speed and Vocabulary are Related to Older Adults' Internet Experiences

Some cognitive declines commonly occur with aging; yet they are seldom taken into account by Website designers and User Experience UX researchers. In this empirical study, we compared younger adults, middle-age adults, high-functioning older adults, and low-functioning older adults to examine whether there is a relationship between aspects of cognition and performance when using a Website. Performance was measured by accuracy percent of tasks completed successfully, efficiency mean time to complete tasks and self-rated satisfaction, three commonly used usability metrics. Results suggest that processing speed and vocabulary may be related to Internet performance. Specifically, older adults with faster processing speed and/or high vocabulary may perform better than their lower-functioning counterparts. More importantly, these older adults perform similar to younger adults.