The Eye Movement Data of Chinese Children Aged 1-6 Years of Free-Viewing Paragim

Eye movement of Hidden Markov Model is used to explore the characteristic of eye movement patterns in Chinese children aged 1-6 years when completing the free-viewing face paradigm and to investigate the relationship between eye movement patterns and children's cognition. We found that children exhibit holistic and analytic eye-movement patterns. As the age-group advanced, the change of the eye-movement patterns for different faces was similar. The likelihood that children in each age group would adopt the same eye-movement patterns was higher among groups than within groups. In addition, our research demonstrated a clear relationship between eye-movement patterns and cognitive abilities in children, and this relationship was more pronounced in the toddler group. Children exhibiting analytic patterns showed better performance compared with those exhibiting holistic patterns. Children with an analytic pattern may engage in both local and global processing, whereas participants with a holistic pattern may primarily engage in global processing. We discuss potential underlying mechanisms and suggest that the potential application of eye tracking as an efficient method for the early detection of cognitive abilities and neurodevelopmental disorders in infants and young children.