Proposal

This proposal seeks funding for establishing a new laboratory facility that aims to investigate subconscious visual processing by measuring eye movement. This grant will provide the funds to purchase a high-end eye-movement tracking system. The new lab facility with the eye tracking system will provide unique research opportunities for both undergraduate and graduate student. Moreover, the expansion of the lab facility would be aligned with the FAU’s Quality Enhancement Program (QEP) by providing more space for undergraduate students.  

The new facility is developed to investigate subconscious visual processing by measuring eye movement. Eye movement can provide information where in the complex environment people are attending. For example, we almost automatically move our eyes and look straight at the stimulus that can be harmful. In other words, any attention-grabbing stimulus, either visual or auditory, automatically attracts eye movement to that stimulus. With the new eye tracking system, which can measure the movement of two eyes independently with high spatial and temporal precision, we are aiming to investigate 1) whether the attention-based eye movement is directed to an invisible object and, 2) how much information the eye-movement pattern can provide.       

The new eye movement lab facility will provide a unique opportunity to both undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in human visual processing. Undergraduate students who become members of the lab will experience all aspects of their research project. They will participate in the research as subjects and also experimenter. They will have the opportunity to present their work at the lab meeting and to discuss the topic with other undergraduate and graduate students. When the project is successfully performed, students will be able to have an opportunity to present the results at national and international conferences and also the undergraduate research fair at FAU. These experiences will greatly beneficial to students who are seeking graduate programs in various disciplines. 

This project is fully consistent with the new FAU 2012-2017 strategic plan and below is the outline. 

Goal 1: Enrich the Educational Experience

Scientific research is the process to find out the solution for a problem. By participating research activity, college students can learn correct reasoning and also how to approach to the problem with various paths and how to choose the correct solution among many alternatives. Therefore, providing various research opportunities can greatly enrich the educational experience.

This proposed facility will not just provide more research opportunities, but also provide an environment within which undergraduate students can experience various aspect of higher education. They will participate in the lab meeting as members, so that they will be able to present their work, discuss the topic with colleagues and develop their idea further. Learning skills, such as programing, data collecting with eye tracking system and data analysis, will definitely be beneficial to them when they are pursuing the path in academia or even in professional area.

Goal 2: Inspire Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity     ?  

One of the main goals of the research facility is to provide more research opportunities for undergraduate students. The proposed research facility will inspire creative research activity by providing a cutting edge technology that can independently measure two eyes' movement.  

Goal 3: Increase FAU's Community Engagement ?   

The new facility possibly attracts students from regional high schools for summer internship program. The proposed facility will support increasing interest and emphasis on STEM program by providing research experience to K-12 students through summer internship program.

Goal 4: Leverage momentum toward achieving FAU's strategic goals by being good stewards of its human, technological, physical and financial resources.

There are many research labs using eye-tracking technique to investigate cognitive process, such as attention, underlying human behavior. However, it has not been attempted to measure eye movement while the visual stimulus is invisible. Performing a pioneering research project based on a State-of-the-Art eye tracking system will make substantial contributions to knowledge in human cognition. The proposed facility will provide undergraduate and graduate students with the unique opportunity to learn and experience a cutting-edge technique to study human visual processing. 

Acquiring the proposed facility will attract more QEP students and graduate student who are interested in human visual processing. Further, the facility will possibly attract faculties from various departments, such as psychology, neuroscience, biology and medicine with shared research interests.

The outcomes from the new eye-tracking research facility will increase a chance to achieve further extramural funding from national funding agencies as well as foundation, since the planned research with the new facility is scientifically important and novel.

The project is very sustainable beyond the initial project period. The new eye-tracking research lab will be used for future projects at the undergraduate, graduate, and faculty level. Additionally, the likelihood of acquiring external grant funding will be improved dramatically. The newly built lab facility will be a key part of future projects, investigating human visual processing and visual awareness.  

The Vision Lab in the Department of Psychology will implement this project under the leadership of Professor Hong and his current doctoral students Dustin Cox.