Inferring user knowledge level from eye movement patterns
The acquisition of information and the search interaction process is influenced strongly by a persons use of their knowledge of the domain and the task. In this paper we show that a users level of domain knowledge can be inferred from their interactive search behaviors without considering the content of queries or documents. A technique is presented to model a users information acquisition process during search using only measurements of eye movement patterns. In a user study (n=40) of search in the domain of genomics, a representation of the participants domain knowledge was constructed using self-ratings of knowledge of genomics-related terms (n=409). Cognitive effort features associated with reading eye movement patterns were calculated for each reading instance during the search tasks. The results show correlations between the cognitive effort due to reading and an individuals level of domain knowledge. We construct exploratory regression models that suggest it is possible to build models that can make predictions of the users level of knowledge based on real-time measurements of eye movement patterns during a task session.
personalization user study cognitive effort knowledge detection information search behavior