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Joint Eyetracking Lab

The Joint Eyetracking Lab (JEL) is part of HCRC and is run jointly by the School of Informatics and the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences. The lab is designed for studying a range of human cognitive processes, including reading, speech, dialog, and visual processing. The setup in the lab is unique in that it contains two state of the art head-mounted eyetrackers, controlled by customized software that makes it possible to study how participants interact when they solve collaborative tasks. Of course the lab can also be used for single-participant eyetracking studies.

This page only contains the most essential information regarding the Eyetracking Lab. For more details, please go to the EyeTracking Wiki. This facility allows users to post their own information and thus facilities collaboration among lab users.

Also, all lab users should subscribe to the eyetracking mailing list. Please go to this page for instructions on how to subscribe.

Location and Access

• The lab is located in room B.04, in the basement of the Informatics Forum at 10 Crichton Street.

• As the lab is a shared facility, a booking system is in place. The JEL appears as "Sound Studios - Studio 3 & Eyetracking" on this system. Anyone with a Dice account can make a booking, but the bookings will be forwarded to the Lab Supervisor for approval. Please don't block-book the lab, but only book slots that you really have participants for.

• Note that lab use by undergraduate and MSc students is only allowed during the hours designated for non-qualifying use of the Forum, see the Forum Wiki for details.

• Only qualified staff and students are allowed to book and use the lab. In particular, this means that you can only use the lab once you've received appropriate training. Please contact the Lab Supervisor for details.

Experimental Facilities

• The lab is equipped with two SR Research EyeLink II head-mounted eyetracking systems.

• Each system consist of two PCs: The display PC, running Windows XP, is used to display stimuli and collect responses from the subject. The host PC, running MS-DOS, records the data streams from the eyetracker and the scene camera.

• The systems are also equipped with EyeLink Scene Cameras for tracking the subject's gaze position in a real-word scene.

• The lab includes a license for the EyeLink Experiment Builder. This is a visual experiment creation tool that supports a wide range of experimental paradigms without any need for programming or scripting expertise. The Experiment Builder supports the eyetracker and the scene camera, but it can also be used for experiments that don't use specialized hardware. Note that this software will only work if the license key is installed on the display PC.

• We also have two licenses for the EyeLink Data Viewer for viewing, filtering, and outputting EyeLink data events. Note that this software will only work if the license key is installed on the display PC.

• A note on the license keys for the Experiment Builder (EB) and the Data Viewer (DV): The EB is installed on both display PCs, but it will only run on one of them at any given time, viz., the one that has that has the EB license key attached to it. The EB license key also allows you to run the Data Viewer. There is another license key, but it only covers the DV, not the EB. So in other words, one of the display PCs can run both the EB and the DV, while the other one can only run the DV. Of course you can swap the dongles to run the EB on the other PC. Note that both PCs can run EB experiments; only the development of EB experiments is controlled by the dongle.

• The Eyelink II Software Suite developed by the UMass Eyetracking Lab is also installed on the display PCs. This includes EyeTrack, a tool for the creation of reading and visual world experiments, and EyeDoctor, a tool for post-processing of eyetracking data.

• The two trackers are situated in a sound proof booth to make it possible to record high-quality audio data.

Experimenter Account

• If you want to run experiments in the lab, an account will have to be created for you on the display PCs. Please contact the Lab Supervisor to arrange this.

• Your user name will be your University User Name (UUN).

• Standardly, experimenters are allocated only limited Windows accounts on the display PCs, which means that they are not able to install new software or update existing software. This is necessary to ensure integrity of the system and to prevent the spread of viruses and other unwanted software. If you require installations or updates for your work, please contact the Lab Supervisor.

Backups and Printing

• We are currently working on a backup solution for the lab. Until then, users are expected to make their own backups. A convenient way of doing this is by using the Informatics Samba Service, which allows users to access their Dice home directory under Windows. Note that you need to register for this service.

• Also, users might be interested in the fact that all the experimental data generated by a given tracker is also duplicated on the relevant host PC on drive G: in the directory \edf.

Good Practice for Experiments

• All users of the lab are expected to comply with the Guidelines on Research Ethics of the Unversity of Edinburgh and the School of Informatics.

• Specific guidelines for running experiments with human subjects are laid down in Code Of Conduct of the British Psychological Society or the Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association.

• In particular, this includes that experimental subjects sign an informed consent form; please have a look at this sample consent form.

Lab Supervisor

• An experienced researcher acts as the lab supervisor. He should be contacted in case there are any questions or problems regarding the lab.

• The lab supervisor is currently Robin Hill.