Cognitive

Cognitive Eye-Tracking Solutions

Researchers use eye tracking to provide a transparent window into a wide range of cognitive operations, including those involved in attention, memory, and perception. EyeLink systems have the highest technical specifications in the world, and their unique flexibility has ensured their use in a wide range of research areas within cognitive psychology.

If you would like to find out how our eye-tracking hardware and software can help your cognitive research, get in touch, and we will get back to you!

Hardware Solutions

Both the EyeLink 1000 Plus and EyeLink Portable Duo have outstanding technical specifications, making them ideal tools for cognitive research. The EyeLink 1000 Plus has a range of mounting options, allowing it to support a wide variety of tasks and experimental settings. The EyeLink Portable Duo is easy to transport and very quick to set up, making it perfect for cognitive psychology research in non-laboratory settings, such as schools and homes.

Both the EyeLink 1000 Plus and EyeLink Portable Duo systems have the following features that make them great for cognitive research:

• Outstanding Spatial Accuracy and Temporal Precision: This allows detection of even the most subtle differences in metrics such as dwell time, saccade latency, and pupil area.
• High Sampling Rates: High sampling speeds and fast access to gaze data open up the world of gaze-contingent research paradigms, allowing researchers to determine precisely what information is perceived and when.
• Head-Free and Head-Fixed Modes: Both systems can be used with or without a chin-rest for reading research.
• Perfect for Pupillometry: EyeLink eye trackers measure pupil size every sample and can reliably detect changes of less than 1%, making them perfect for pupillometry research.

Software Solutions

Stimulus Presentation

SR Research Experiment Builder is a sophisticated and intuitive drag-and-drop graphical programming environment for creating computer-based psychology and neuroscience experiments. Experiment Builder delivers complex visual and auditory stimuli and registers responses with extremely high levels of timing precision. 

Experiment Builder has many features for creating EyeLink eye-tracking and non-eye-tracking experiments in cognition, including the following:

• Templates: Hundreds of templates exist for common tasks such as visual search, dot-probe, change-blindness, cueing tasks, and many many more.
• Precise Timing and Recording: Experiment Builder has precise timing delivery for text, images, audio, and videos and millisecond precise recording of responses from button box / voice-key devices.
• Multiple Gaze-Contingency Triggers: Saccade, Fixation, Velocity, and Invisible Boundary Triggers allow sophisticated gaze-contingent tasks to be produced with a few clicks of the mouse.
• Integration with Other Equipment: Simple integration and data synchronization with a wide range of other recording equipment.

Easily integrate EyeLink eye-tracking functionality with existing experimental scripts written in third-party software such as E-Prime, MATLAB and Psychtoolbox, Presentation, and more.

Data Analysis

EyeLink Data Viewer is a powerful data analysis software package used to process eye gaze data recorded with EyeLink eye trackers.

Data Viewer makes the data analysis process very straightforward in cognitive research:

• Data Visualizations: View data in a temporal graph, spatial overlay, or dynamic playback modes. Also, create static and dynamic heatmaps.
• Reports: Output reports containing hundreds of gaze variables at the Trial, Interest Area, Fixation, Saccade, and even Sample level.
• Data Gouping: Use Trial Grouping and Aggregate Data Mode to simultaneously view and compare data across conditions / trials / participants. Generate aggregate Event or Interest Area Reports for a rapid overview of key gaze metrics.

You can also import EyeLink Data Files directly into MATLAB, or convert them to ASCII for import into other software packages for analysis.