Eye tracking studies of normative and atypical development

This paper reviews the use of eye tracking measures (saccades, smooth-pursuit eye movements, fixations during scene and face perception, and pupillary dilation) to study typical and clinical populations of children and adolescents and evaluates the use of these measures. The studies are evaluated with a focus on points that may be of general interest to developmentalists (the contribution of contextual and temporal factors in performance, methods of analyzing age-related differences, and the role of the psychometric properties of the tests in interpretation of differences across age and clinical groups). Some limitations of eye tracking are pointed out (e.g., the nature of the relation between oculomotor and other motor systems, constraints in making inferences about the brain from psychophysiological data). Finally, the potential of eye tracking measures for probing normative and abnormal development is explored.