Using Eye-tracking to understand student reasoning

In prior studies, we sought to expand the Dual Process Theory literature to analyze students' reasoning patterns in algebra-based physics courses. Our earlier work showed that student performance was similar across questions in traditional physics contexts and those that require the same physics concepts but incorporate contexts more relevant to life-science majors. Building on that study, we now focus on identifying the specific information students attend to when constructing their responses. Specifically, we used eye-tracking for analyzing student responses during one-on-one think-aloud interviews. Students are presented five physics questions. Two of the questions required the same physics principles to arrive at a correct solution, but differed in context. We used Area's of Interest to analyze visual attention patterns. We report on the analysis of these interviews to characterize what information students rely on when reasoning through physics problems presented in different contexts.