178. Analysis of the impact of eye-tracking-based teacher attention allocation patterns on identifying students’ social difficulties

Abstract Background Early identification of students’ social difficulties is crucial for effective intervention. Currently, teachers primarily rely on experiential observation, which is subject to strong subjectivity and prone to overlooking hidden clues. Eye-tracking technology offers a potential solution to this bottleneck by objectively quantifying teachers’ visual attention patterns toward social peripheries and nonverbal cues in real classroom settings. Therefore, this study involves teachers wearing lightweight eye-tracking devices during routine instruction to record their natural gaze distribution, duration, and trajectories while teaching. Combined with post-class interviews, it analyzes the relationship between specific attention patterns and the accuracy and depth of identification. This approach helps teachers enhance their professional observational skills and provides concrete recommendations for early identification strategies. Methods The study recruited 20 practicing teachers as test subjects, inviting them to wear lightweight wearable eye trackers throughout a full week of teaching. The devices comprehensively recorded teachers’ visual scanning patterns, key gaze points, and attention-shifting processes within complex, dynamic classroom settings. Simultaneously, a wide-angle camera positioned at the rear of the classroom synchronously captured panoramic classroom footage. Following eye-tracking data collection, face-to-face interviews were conducted with teachers. During these sessions, classroom recordings were played back, pausing at key moments when teachers fixated on specific students. Teachers were then asked about their attentional intentions at those points and their interpretations of student behaviors. Finally, statistical analysis was performed on the data, employing correlation analysis to reveal the intrinsic relationship between teachers’ classroom attentional patterns and their ability to identify students’ social difficulties at an early stage. Results The experimental results are shown in Table 1. As shown in Table 1, attention span, focus on the social periphery, and average attention duration to nonverbal cues all exhibit a highly positive correlation with recognition accuracy. Notably, the correlation coefficient between focus on the social periphery and recognition accuracy reached 0.91 (p<.01), indicating a strong positive relationship. Additionally, all three indicators—attention span, focus on the social periphery, and average attention duration to nonverbal cues—exhibit significant negative correlations with recognition response speed, with correlation coefficients ranging from -0.62 to -0.7. Discussion The study revealed through eye-tracking that teachers’ patterns of attention toward social periphery zones and nonverbal cues in the classroom were significantly and positively correlated with both their accuracy in identifying students’ social difficulties and their response speed. This indicates that systematic visual attention allocation serves as the key cognitive foundation for teachers to achieve early identification, providing quantifiable behavioral evidence for classroom observation. Future research may conduct longitudinal tracking to explore how teachers’ classroom attention patterns evolve with teaching experience, training, and instructional reflection, thereby elucidating the developmental trajectories of teachers’ observational skills across different stages. Funding No. 34-K0222004.