Schedule of Events | Symposia

Comparative Analysis of Input Devices for a Digitized Trail Making Task

Poster Session D - Monday, March 31, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Erin* Lynch¹, Isabella* Frenzilli¹, Bailey Utiz¹, Emma Tinney¹, Tarkeshwar Singh², Timothy Morris¹, Mathew Yarossi¹; ¹Northeastern University, ²Pennsylvania State University

The Trail-making test (TMT) is a neuropsychological test used by clinicians and researchers to detect changes in cognitive function, motor control, and visual scanning. The TMT is a connect-the-dots task where participants connect circles in numeric (ie. 1-2-3..., TMTA) or alphanumeric (ie. 1-A-2-B..., TMTB) order. The traditional TMT offers limited performance metrics in a single domain, like completion time. Therefore, we have developed a novel digitized trail-making test (dTMT) with integrated eye-tracking to capture quantitative spatial-temporal measures of domain (cognitive, visual, motor) specific performance. Our goal is to refactor this setup by replacing the digitizing tablet with an alternative input device to be used with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The purpose of this study is to evaluate the criterion validity of two alternative input devices compared to the tablet version. Data collection was completed from 12 young, healthy individuals (18-28 years, 10 female) following institutionally approved informed consent. Each participant completed the dTMT with eye-tracking using three different devices: a Wacom tablet with a stylus (previously validated), an Xbox controller, and a TrackBall. Spatial and temporal features of the hand path and gaze path were extracted. Pearson's correlations were used to determine associations between the experimental devices (Xbox, Trackball) and the  Wacom tablet. Overall, stronger correlations were found between Xbox and Wacom. This is supported by a larger interclass correlation across all features between Xbox and Wacom. Understanding how type of input device affects TMT visuomotor performance measures provides measurement validity for implementing the dTMT in an fMRI environment.

Topic Area: METHODS: Neuroimaging