The way children look at the upright photograph of a male dentist’s face

—Analysis using non-contact type of eye movement measuring apparatus FreeView^®—

Abstract

We investigated how child patients take in information from a dentist’s face and whether there is any age difference in the way of scanning the face. For this purpose, we used a non-contact type of eye movement measuring apparatus tradenamed FreeView^® and an upright photograph of a male dentist’s face as the test image. The subjects consisted of a total of 90 children between the ages of 2 years 11 months and 12 years 11 months. The subjects were divided into three age groups-group A (below 7 years), group B (7-9 years) and group C (10 years or above), and their eye movements were measured and analyzed. Our findings are as follows.
1. The saccadic movements to the background of the photo and the fixation points in the background decreased most in group C, followed by group B and group A, in that order.
2. The overlapping of saccadic movements to the features of the face (the eyes, nose and mouth) was remarkably in all age groups. However, the subjects did not scan the whole of the appearance of the face (the hair, forehead, cheeks, ears and chin).
3. The fixation points on the appearance of the face were unevenly distributed. Many fixation points were found close to the features of the face. This peculiarity was common to all the groups.
4. The fixation points on the features of the face increased most in group C, followed by group B and group A, in that order.