Eyetracking Correlated in the Matching Pairs Game

The video games industry has made available frameworks and methodologies that can support many applications in education, medical assessments, and rehabilitation programs. This study proposes a gamified approach based on Matching Pairs (MP) game to evaluate memory skills and performance in a cohort of 18 healthy subjects. An eye-tracking (ET) device was adopted to acquire the participants gaze patterns while playing three consecutive instances of the card memory game. Eye gaze data has been analyzed to extract eye movements and velocity. Moreover, a statistical analysis was carried out to investigate possible differences in eye dynamics between trials, and a correlation analysis was performed between game statistics (i.e., total score, time, number of flipped cards) and ET-related parameters. Results showed that the maximum eye velocity differed between the first and second trials and eye movements (i.e. saccade and fixation count) and velocity significantly correlated with game duration and the number of flipped cards, respectively. These preliminary outcomes highlight possible relationships between eye dynamics and mental mechanisms for memory recall strategy. Furthermore, this study explored the feasibility of the proposed strategy to be applied to elderly or fragile people to contrast cognitive decline.