Author(s)

Daisuke Kimura¹, Taro Ohtoshi¹, Hiroki Bizen¹, Aiko Imai², Masako Notoya³, Kazumasa Yamada²

¹Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Kansai University of Health Sciences, Osaka, Japan.
²Faculty of Care and Rehabilitation, Seijoh University, Tōkai, Japan.
³Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences and Disorders, Kyoto Gakuen University, Kyoto, Japan.

The Trail Making Test A (TMT-A) is a task related to visual search. Therefore, performance in the TMT-A has a high possibility of being influenced by visual information, such as the arrangement of numbers. The purpose of this study was to measure eye movements during the TMT-A using an eye tracker, to analyze differences in enforcement and trace execution, and to examine appropriate inspection drawings as visual search tasks. Study 1 was performed in 14 young healthy subjects and Study 2 was performed in 6 young healthy subjects. The English and Japanese versions of the TMT-A were administered as usual and the subjects performed the traces in a sitting position. The eye movements of the subjects were measured during the task. We analyzed the combined motion angles of both eyes. We compared the average values (30 Hz/s) of movement in the horizontal (X-axis) and vertical (Y-axis) directions during the normal administration of the English and Japanese version of the TMT-A. We also compared the traces performed by the subjects. There were no differences in tracing or enforcement in the English version of the TMT-A. Especially in the vertical visualization operation, it was shown that the normal enforcement was fewer than the tracing, and almost no up-to-down search was performed. In contrast, the subjects performed visual searches in all directions during the Japanese version of the TMT-A.

Trail Making Test, Eye Tracker, Attention

Kimura, D. , Ohtoshi, T. , Bizen, H. , Imai, A. , Notoya, M. and Yamada, K. (2018) A Study on Visual Search during the Trail Making Test: Analysis Using an Eye Tracker. Neuroscience and Medicine, 9, 116-122. doi: 10.4236/nm.2018.93012.