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Eye-Tracking as a Method for Enhancing Research on Information Search

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Abstract

The human eye plays an essential role in information acquisition from external world, and much of our contemporary information technology relies on visual processing. The eye-mind hypothesis suggests that human attention is connected to where our eyes are looking (Just and Carpenter 1980). Taken together with the continual movement of our eyes and the limited area of high-acuity human vision, eye-tracking methods are considered to offer theoretically reliable measures of visual attention and search task activities. We first briefly review cognitive factors of interest to information search and the “traditional” methods of their measurement. We then present examples of eye tracking tools and how they capture data before examining how eye-tracking data has been used to assess select cognitive factors in information search.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Oxford dictionary, https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/relevance.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the research support from the 2011 Google Faculty Research Award to Jacek Gwizdka, Institute for Museum and Library Studies (IMLS) Career Development Grant to Jacek Gwizdka #RE-04-11-0062-11A, and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Digital Media Program at University of Texas at Austin. Andrew Dillon wishes to thank the V.M. Daniel Professorship for research support.

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Correspondence to Jacek Gwizdka .

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Gwizdka, J., Dillon, A. (2020). Eye-Tracking as a Method for Enhancing Research on Information Search. In: Fu, W., van Oostendorp, H. (eds) Understanding and Improving Information Search. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38825-6_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38825-6_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-38824-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-38825-6

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