Mieke Slim

Webcams as windows into language processing? – The feasibility of web-based eye-tracking

Over the past decade, there has been a growing shift toward web-based experimentation. Rather than having participants come to a lab, researchers can invite them to take part in an experiment from the comfort of their own homes. Most web-based experiments involve behavioural tasks that don’t require specialised equipment, such as grammaticality judgement tasks or self-paced reading tasks. However, in recent years, researchers have started to explore the possibility of moving eye-tracking experiments to the internet, using consumer-grade webcams.

In this talk, I will discuss the feasibility of webcam-based eye-tracking for psycholinguistic studies, focussing on the influential visual world eye-tracking paradigm. I will compare two webcam-based eye-tracking techniques: (i) an automated eye-tracking algorithm (called WebGazer) and (ii) manual annotation of webcam videos. I will explain how each technique works, how you can implement these techniques in your own experiments, and share recent findings on their data quality. The goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of the trade-offs between traditional in-lab eye-tracking and webcam-based eye-tracking conducted over the internet.

Mieke is affiliated with Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, see her website.