Probing digital game-based science learning experience through eye-tracking

This study aimed to investigate the role the students’ prior knowledge in their visual attention and behavioral patterns while playing a digital game. The participants were 39 fourth graders from an elementary school in the southern part of Taiwan. The Tobii 4C Eye Tracker (with a sampling rate of 90Hz) was utilized to track the students’ visual attention while they were playing the game. In addition, the lag sequential analyses were conducted to examine the visual transitional patterns of the participants with different levels of prior knowledge. The results of this study showed that students with the lower level of prior knowledge tended to put more mental effort on the trivial information of the game. In contrast, the participants with the higher level of prior knowledge were more likely to employ more effective gameplaying strategies (e.g., evaluation).