NSCPHD1179 PhD course: Eye-tracking for Dummies – An Introduction to Eye tracking as a Social Science Tool

The development of neuroscience, and not least the neuroscience empirical methods, has over the last couple of decade been dramatically rapid. This trend has besides grounding the knowledge of this research also opened for cross-over disciplinary applications of neuroscience. At the University of Copenhagen, this is for instance illustrated with the recent Center of Excellence combining neuroscience insights with music research (“Center for Music In the Brain”). In economics, the use of neuroscience insights and techniques has recently begun to emerge at an exponential speed. The central aim for this sub-field of economics is to study economic decision making from, not only an outcome perspective, but also from a process perspective. The research agenda is, in other words, to understand the processes which lead to outcomes. A firm understanding of this is interesting per se, but importantly it also leads to improved theoretical models and behavioral predictions, which then leads to more accurate and effective policy interventions. When we, as social scientists, introduce neuroscience into economic research, our toolbox to obtain empirical neurological knowledge about the decision processes contains all methods known from neuroscience research. Yet, eye-tracking is particular well-suited for the purpose. Compared to other classical neuroscience tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, Positron emission tomography (PET) scans, Trans magnetic Stimulations (TMS), and hormone treatments, eye-tracking is a relative easy to understand measurement, yet still very insightful about decision processes. Eye-tracking is furthermore not very expensive to invest in, and social science researchers can quite fast learn to master data collection themselves, hence reducing the dependency of external research centers which potentially might have different research agendas. So, the benefit of using of eye-tracking techniques in social science research is therefore promising. The suggested PhD course is a three day crash course offering an introduction to eye-tracking for social science researchers who are interested in applying the technique in their own research projects. The course seeks to equip the participants with the entry skills needed to carry out basic eye-tracking studies themselves.

The main instructor on this course is Chris Street, Post Doc from University of British Columbia, Department of Psychology. Chris did his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at University College London, UK. A world leading research environment in the area. He also has several important publications, among others in Frontiers in Cognitive Science, Applied Cognitive Psychology, Social Cognition, and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Besides Chris, Thomas Ramsøy (Copenhagen Business School, Center for Decision Neuroscience) who have applied eye-tracking in several studies concerning consumer decision making, will give an encouraging talk about what he have used the technique for.