What Can Physiology Tell Us about State of Interest?

TL;DR

This study explores how eye movements can indicate interest during educational content consumption, suggesting eye-tracking could improve learning effectiveness.

Contribution

The study identifies oculomotor correlates that predict interest in educational content, particularly through multimedia stimuli.

Findings

Multimedia content captures more visual attention in early information processing stages.

First fixation duration in multimedia stimuli correlates with subjective interest assessments.

Abstract

The state of interest as a positive emotion is associated with the ability to comprehend new information and/or to better consolidate already perceived information, to increase the attention level to the object, to increase informational processing, and also to influence such processes as learning and motivation. The aim of this study was to reveal oculomotor correlates that can predict the locus of interest in cases of people perceiving educational information from different areas of knowledge presented as text or multimedia content. Sixty (60) volunteers participated in the study (50% males, mean age 22.20 ± 0.51). The stimuli consisted of 16 texts covering a wide range of topics, each accompanied by a comprehension question and an interest assessment questionnaire. It was found that the multimedia content type triggered more visual attention and gave an advantage in the early stages of information processing. The first fixation duration metric for the multimedia stimuli allowed u to characterize the subjective interest assessment. Overall, the results suggest the potential role of eye-tracking in evaluating educational content and it emphasizes the importance of developing solutions based on this method to enhance the effectiveness of the educational process.

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