EyeT4Empathy: Dataset of foraging for visual information, gaze typing and empathy assessment

Abstract

We present a dataset of eye-movement recordings collected from 60 participants, along with their empathy levels, towards people with movement impairments. During each round of gaze recording, participants were divided into two groups, each one completing one task. One group performed a task of free exploration of structureless images, and a second group performed a task consisting of gaze typing, i.e. writing sentences using eye-gaze movements on a card board. The eye-tracking data recorded from both tasks is stored in two datasets, which, besides gaze position, also include pupil diameter measurements. The empathy levels of participants towards non-verbal movement-impaired people were assessed twice through a questionnaire, before and after each task. The questionnaire is composed of forty questions, extending a established questionnaire of cognitive and afective empathy. Finally, our dataset presents an opportunity for analysing and evaluating, among other, the statistical features of eye-gaze trajectories in free-viewing as well as how empathy is refected in eye features.