June 30, 2017, by Elizabeth Liddle

Providing Schools with RECOGNeyes

Changes were made to the RECOGNeyes attention training game based on feedback from a local ADHD support group. We then arranged to provide five local schools with the RECOGNeyes game along with laptops and eye-trackers. These schools are currently providing access for their pupils to RECOGNeyes.

Teachers have been very enthusiastic about using RECOGNeye.  They feel the use of technology in this way has great potential in supporting pupil engagement and learning. Some commented that this was just the kind of thing that was needed and helps to make school fun for children. Teachers felt that the RECOGNeyes game in particular could be a really useful resource in the class room. They felt the novelty of the eye-tracking element would be of great interest to the children.

Teachers were shown how to set up the equipment and start the game. All found this straight forward and within a short period had learnt to set up the equipment, calibrate the eye-tracker and run the training game. Calibration is the process of ensuring the eye-tracker correctly knows where you are looking. Some teachers found it a little frustrating when they performed poorly on the game but it was noted that this was typically due to the system being poorly calibrated. We are currently working on simplifying the calibration process.  Some found the game more difficult than others. We are currently refining the manner in which the difficulty of the game changes in response to the player’s performance and deciding on a reasonable starting difficulty. On the whole the teachers seemed to have had a lot of fun playing the game.

We are now looking forward to feedback from the pupils. Once the pupils have had an opportunity to play the game we will be interested in their feedback about the acceptability, enjoyability, and challenge of the game. For the game to successfully improve attention it is critical that players find it engaging and challenging but not excessively difficult and frustrating. The difficulty of the game should closely match the player’s ability as they improve.  This approach to training is called “scaffolding” as the idea is to the support the trainee as they grow in skill. The feedback the game provides should be informative and help them to understand better how to control their attention system.

When we collect the systems teachers will provide further feedback about the game based on their own experience of using the system. They will let us know how useful they think it might be for their work. We are also interested in how easy they found the technology to use and whether they feel a resource such as this could be readily integrated into their teaching duties.

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