Integration of Human Eye-Tracking Responses and Object Recognition Test Performance

Object recognition tasks can be used as sensitive measures of rodent cognitive ability. We have developed a version of this task that can be used to study human cognitive ability, the Novel Image Novel Location [NINL] test. In the test, study participants are first shown a series of panels with photographs displayed in three of the four quadrants of each panel. Participants are subsequently shown a series of panels that include some that are identical to the panels in the first set (no change condition), some that contain an image in the panel shown before but placed in a novel location (novel location condition) and some containing a novel image (novel image condition). The study participants are asked whether they noticed a change and, if they did, the nature of the change that they noticed. As described in this chapter, we found that eye-tracking responses can correlate with successful and unsuccessful learning and memory performance on the NINL test. These finding hold promise for assessments of participants who lack sufficient language or motor skills, such as touching a computer or tablet screen, that might be affected by age, language or neurological condition.