Does personal interests affect visual attentionƒ - An eye tracking study

Eye tracking technologies have shown during the last decade a huge increase in performances, and hence in application fields. Especially in psychology and neuro-development, it is frequently used because of its non invasivity and its ability to give insights about mental processes. In this paper, we investigate the impact of personal interests on our visual attention. The question of attention is very important because of its link with memory and learning. Our results show that the gaze behavior when faced with neutral stimuli or others representing personal interests is the same for adults participants. However, when we consider children, slight differences appear in favor of increased attention.