Abstract:

For the past decades, researchers have paid much attention to exploring how cognitive processes influence eye movements. Recently, they have begun to directly look into the reciprocal relationship and test how eye movements might influence cognitive processes by using eye movement modeling examples (EMME). As a new kind of teaching examples, EMME proved to be effective to guide visual attention. It could facilitate the selection, organization, and integration of information, as well as improve the scanpath similarity. However, research examining the effects of EMME on learning performance reported mixed results. The information-reduction hypothesis, cognitive theory of multimedia learning, and cognitive apprenticeship have been used as theoretical foundations for predicting or explaining the positive effects of EMME. Future studies are highly needed to explore the effects of EMME from the perspectives of boundary conditions, functional mechanism, eye-movement pre-training, expertise development, cooperative learning, and the neural basis.

Key words: eye movement modeling examples, attention guidance, cognitive processing, education