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Learning from preschool children's pointing sub-movements
Conference proceeding

Learning from preschool children's pointing sub-movements

Juan Hourcade
Proceedings of the 2006 conference on interaction design and children, Vol.2006, pp.65-72
IDC '06
06/07/2006
DOI: 10.1145/1139073.1139093

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Abstract

Several studies have shown that children's performance with input devices in pointing tasks increases with age. However, none of these studies analyzes the sub-movements children make during pointing tasks. This paper analyzes mouse event data from a previous study to compare, at a sub-movement level, the way preschool children and young adults conduct pointing tasks. Results of the analysis show that the children made significantly more sub-movements than the adults. This was caused by children's inaccuracy in the length and direction of their sub-movements. The results also show that most sub-movements were started near the target, and that there was a balance between overshoots and undershoots in these sub-movements. Based on sub-movement data, this paper proposes an algorithm to identify when participants have difficulty pointing. The algorithm provides several advantages such as triggering a precision mode only when users experience difficulty, not requiring information on the location of visual targets, and not requiring information on the direction of mouse motion.
algorithm children human-computer interaction mouse pointing tasks sub-movements

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