Eye Tracking in Aging: Challenges, Best Practices, and Novel Frontiers

Adults aged 65 and older are the fastest growing population demographic. Standard, stationary eye tracking has been used to test for age differences in attention and cognition toward understanding decline trajectories and identifying ways to enhance functioning into late life. More recently, advanced methods of at-home eye tracking, mobile eye tracking, and simultaneous Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) eye tracking have suggested promise for insight into more dynamic and naturalistic processes of visual attentional and cognitive processing as well as their brain correlates in aging. Here, we outline challenges, best practices, and novel frontiers in the use of eye-tracking methodology among older adults. We cover considerations pertaining to optimized age-tailored study designs and procedures, eye-tracker setup as well as data quality and analysis. Throughout, we reflect on our experiences conducting novel experiments via at-home and mobile eye tracking as well as simultaneous MRI-eye tracking in aging populations. We also present empirical data comparing the quality of eye tracking in the behavioral lab vs. the MRI environment among both young and older adults, in support of simultaneous MRI-eye tracking informing brain-behavior links in aging, while acknowledging tradeoffs in data quality of this combined methodology. We propose for future research to leverage these novel, advanced eye-tracking applications for a more comprehensive and real-life capture of attentional and cognitive changes with age.