Analysis of environmental and human factors of attention deficit in special-needs students using eye-tracking technology.
Authors: Manukyan Armand , Dinet Jérôme 
Published: June 2024

The visual and auditory attention of students with disabilities is fundamental to their progress at school. However, intellectual disability and neurodevelopmental disorders can lead to deficits in visual and auditory attention, and thus hinder the acquisition of new skills. As a result, the pupils concerned may find it difficult to inhibit certain information, to process others, or to make the link between information received and a response to be given. Assessing students' attention is therefore a key issue for specialist teachers. There are many factors that can affect attention, including motivation, fatigue and executive control deficits, as well as sensory factors arising from the external environment and teacher support. However, it can be complex to observe and assess environmental distractors in a specialized classroom setting. Indeed, traditional observation methods can be subjective and observer-biased. In response, eye-tracking is an infrared measurement of the participant's gaze. This allows us to capture eye trajectories, saccades and visual fixation times. However, the most commonly used eye-tracking techniques tend to assess gaze towards a fixed screen. As a result, they are unable to track gaze in a moving environment. Dynamic eye-tracking, using an on-board eyewear device, can track users' eye trajectories and visual hold. In this way, it can take into account the user's evolution in a given environment, in relation to a group of individuals. Method - The study presented consisted in assessing the ocular patterns (maintains and pursuits) of 17 students with disabilities, using an eye-tracking goggle device. With two 10-minute sessions of learning context, the eye-tracking data collected were viewed and analyzed with the teachers. An evaluation grid was drawn up based on the following criteria: Elements observed, eye-hold time by type of element, number of occurrences of eye contact, number of eye saccades, length of eye saccades, student and teacher behaviors during the session. After using a psychometric tool to assess participants' visual and auditory attention levels (cognitive inhibition, information processing time, working memory), observation and analysis of visual patterns enabled us to assess the factors that can facilitate or disrupt visual attention. Results - First and foremost, the results highlighted the decisive influence of the physical organization of spaces. Indeed, while small spaces grouping individuals together encourage interaction between them, for some students they appear to be detrimental to maintaining attention. On the other hand, they can generate regulatory strategies in other students, through positive peer imitation. Secondly, teachers' attitudes play a decisive role in students' visual attention. Indeed, the teacher's distance from and presence with the pupil is a factor in maintaining attention. Verbal prompts and visual aids also play a decisive role in the teacher's pedagogy. Finally, the support of a digital medium constitutes an attentional attractor that can isolate the student and make him inattentive to his social environment, thus interfering with the processing of information from the teacher. Discussion - The present study fulfils two objectives. Firstly, it enables us to assess the benefits of eye-tracking with on-board goggles in analyzing the behavior and abilities of special-needs pupils. Its use could then be extended to other educational systems. Secondly, the study reveals the influence of the physical layout of the environment and the teacher on the regulation of visual attention in special-needs pupils. It would be useful to use eye-tracking to better evaluate teaching methods, the layout of materials and pedagogical support. It would therefore be necessary to replicate this study on larger samples.