title: Before your very eyes: the value and limitations of eye tracking in medical education.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Medicine is a highly visual discipline. Physicians from many specialties constantly use visual information in diagnosis and treatment. However, they are often unable to explain how they use this information. Consequently, it is unclear how to train medical students in this visual processing. Eye tracking is a research technique that may offer answers to these open questions, as it enables researchers to investigate such visual processes directly by measuring eye movements. This may help researchers understand the processes that support or hinder a particular learning outcome.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  In this article, we clarify the value and limitations of eye tracking for medical education researchers. For example, eye tracking can clarify how experience with medical images mediates diagnostic performance and how students engage with learning materials. Furthermore, eye tracking can also be used directly for training purposes by displaying eye movements of experts in medical images.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Eye movements reflect cognitive processes, but cognitive processes cannot be directly inferred from eye-tracking data. In order to interpret eye-tracking data properly, theoretical models must always be the basis for designing experiments as well as for analysing and interpreting eye-tracking data. The interpretation of eye-tracking data is further supported by sound experimental design and methodological triangulation.
authors: Department of Educational Development and Research, School of Health Professions Education, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
authors: Ellen M
authors: EM
authors: Kok
authors: Welten Institute, Research Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology, Open University of the Netherlands, Heerlen, The Netherlands.|Humanities Laboratory, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
authors: Halszka
authors: H
authors: Jarodzka
mesh_terms: D004501:Education, Medical; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements / Q000295:instrumentation*; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning