Evaluating age-related variations of gaze behavior for a novel digitized-digit symbol substitution test

Keywords: Eye tracking, pupil dilation, digitized-digit symbol substitution test

Abstract

Analysis of cognitive functioning from gaze behavior might serve as an early indicator of age related decline of cognitive functions. Standard psychological tests like the digit-symbol substitution test or the symbol-digit modalities test is used exclusively in this regard. In this paper, we have designed and developed a digitized version of the digit symbol substitution test. Three different versions have been designed in order to derive deeper insights of the user behavior. The test-retest validation of the versions reveals good correlation across sessions. Fur-ther, the difference in gaze behavior which might be used as an indicator of cognitive functions is tested for two different age groups (13 participants<30 years and 11 participants >40 years). It is seen that the designed digitized version along with the usage of physiological markers like eye tracking bestows additional information and is sensitive to age related factors which might be used for the assessment as well as for the training purpose in rehabilitation systems. Results show that the performance can be analyzed using gaze and pupillometric features in addition to the conventional test performance metrics. We derived an index to measure the performance related to visuo-spatial functioning on one of the de-signed versions of the test. Results of this index on the number of fixations for two age groups are found to be separated in a statistically significant (p<0.05) manner. The age related difference (p<0.05) is also evident in the pupillometric responses obtained.

Author Biographies

Debatri Chatterjee, TCS Research & Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services, Kolkata, India.

Scientist, Embedded Systems & Robotics, TCS Research & Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services, Kolkata, India.

Rahul Dasharath Gavas, TCS Research and Innovation, Kolkata, Tata Consultancy Services
Researcher, Embedded Systems & Robotics, TCS Research & Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services, Kolkata, India.
Kingshuk Chakravarty, TCS Research and Innovation, Kolkata, Tata Consultancy Services
Scientist, Embedded Systems & Robotics, TCS Research & Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services, Kolkata, India.
Aniruddha Sinha, TCS Research and Innovation, Kolkata, Tata Consultancy Services
Scientist, Embedded Systems & Robotics, TCS Research & Innovation, Tata Consultancy Services, Kolkata, India.
Uttama Lahiri, IIT Gandhinagar, India
Dr. Uttama Lahiri is currently working as professor at Centre for Cognitive Science, IIT Gandhinagar.
Published
2019-06-20
How to Cite
Chatterjee, D., Gavas, R. D., Chakravarty, K., Sinha, A., & Lahiri, U. (2019). Evaluating age-related variations of gaze behavior for a novel digitized-digit symbol substitution test. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.1.5
Section
Articles