Social gaze behavior during parent-child interaction: a dual-eye tracking study

Gaze behavior to faces is an important component of social interaction. In our
daily life with others we rely on the importance of the human face for
conveying social signals. For example, gaze behavior to faces contributes to
the conversation, signaling and recognizing of emotions, and following
someone's direction of gaze. Gaze behavior is also important for social
learning, for example, if a child follows the gaze direction of the parent to
explore the environment. Because the parent-child relationship is the basis for
later psychological development, this pilot will be focused on gaze behavior to
faces during parent-child interactions. Until now, there have been no studies
that have been conducted to investigate gaze behavior during parent-child
interaction. With this method, we hope to contribute to this. Our unique setup
enables the objective measurement of gaze behavior during social interaction.
Furthermore, this setup enables us to find new insights with regard to abnormal
psychosocial development, for example, children at risk for autism, and social
anxiety disorders.

This pilot study is aimed at assessing the feasibility and utility of a new
dual-eye tracking setup. This method is designed to study gaze behavior during
social interaction. This method has already been tested and validated with
adults en now we want to use this method to study gaze behavior during
parent-child interaction. The utility of this method will be primarily
dependent on data quality.

Furthermore, we are interested in how social gaze behavior contributes to the
regulation of conversation, and how gaze behavior is related to social
competence and social behavior. But first, this method must be tested during
parent-child interactions. Therefore it is important to look at the data
quality first before we can utilize this method.

This pilot will therefore provide the first the basis to assess how feasible
this method will be for this age-group (8-11 years), and to what extent the
eye-tracking data is associated with the psychosocial development of children,
in particular, their social competence and behavioral control.

This pilot study will be incorporated into the longitudinal YOUth Adolescent
cohort. Parents and children and YOUth can sign up an extra eye-tracking
experiment in which their eye movements will be measured while they are having
two short conversations. The experiment takes about 15-20 minutes. The tasks
are comparable to parent-child interactions which are already being conducted
at YOUth. The difference is that for this pilot a new methodology will be used.

During the conflict-task, parent and child will be asked to discuss a
family-issue. To assist the parent and child in finding an appropriate topic,
we have a list of subjects that participants can use. For example, screentime,
games, grades, homework, chores, cleaning room, money, bedtimes, hygiene, etc?
After a subject is chosen, the parent and child have to shortly explain why
they have chosen the subject (in order to check whether the subject is
appropriate), before the conversation will be held.

During the cooperation=task the parent and child will get a specific
assignment: to organize a party together. To assist them with this task the
test-assistant can ask them several questions, for example: who will be
invited? Where will the party take place? What will they do? How much cake and
soda must be bought?

The goal of both tasks is to get a conversation going between parent and child
in order to investigate how this interaction develops.

The burden for participants: children + parent is undergoing an 'eye-tracking'
experiment of approximately 15-20 minutes. There is no direct advantage or
significant risk associated with this study, because eye tracking is a
non-invasive technique to measure gaze behavior.