Measuring cognitive workload across different eye tracking hardware platforms

As pertinent technologies continue to evolve, eye tracking hardware options grow more diverse. Consequently, it is important that researchers verify that new systems and parameters used in testing meet data collection quality standards. The current study evaluated hardware from four manufacturers: SR Research, Seeing Machines, SensoMotoric Instruments and Tobii Technology. The eye trackers included different system types and different sampling rates. The purpose of this research was to determine whether or not the pupil recording of each system was precise enough to effectively utilize the Index of Cognitive Activity, a validated cognitive workload metric. Results indicated that each system effectively captured Index of Cognitive Activity data. System factors such as system type sampling rate did not affect the metric. To maintain the integrity of data collected by succeeding generations of eye tracker, it is important that this type of quality-control research continues.