Feb 2010 - Update version 5.01 with installer/uninstaller for Windows,
bug fixes for both Mac and Windows


Introducing Eye Lines 5
Eye Lines is Back!

. . . and now it's FREE         




Research software for psychology

with special capabilities for visual perception, psychophysical measurement, and sensory-motor learning


What's New?

The new version has been completely re-written to take advantage of current hardware and operating systems (Macintosh, Windows) and adds additional capabilities*. The reduced costs for publicity and distribution made possible by today's web make it possible to offer Eye Lines as a free service to researchers and educators.

*Highlights include:   (for a complete list, see the beginning of the Eye Lines 5 user manual.)
1. Experiment generator allows an unlimited number of stimulus fields per trial
2. Multiple adjustment channels allow simultaneous manipulation of multiple objects or characteristics
3. More adjustable attributes: subjects can now adjust line length, width, angular orientation, horizontal & vertical position, and point of attachment of one line on another.
4. Support for most common image file formats (jpg, tif, bmp, etc.) as either stand-along stimuli or as components of EL images (eli).
5. More compatibility:
      Cross platform: Interface and functioning are now nearly identical on both Macintosh and Windows.
      International: Eye Lines now understands European decimals.



Figure 1. Mirror Drawing. Either the horizontal or vertical mouse direction can be reversed. If the cursor leaves the white path, an alarm sounds.




Figure 2. View of the stimulus editor with a stimulus designed to measure the strength of the Zollner illusion. The spreadsheet at upper left shows the coordinates of each component of the image. The channels window at upper right specifies a single adjustment channel, controlling orientation Angle and having a random offset of the initial value of up to 3 degrees. It is set to record data for the Angle of segment 2 and compare it to a target vale of 20 degrees. The controls checkboxes (far right) set the adjustment to be controlled by either mouse movement or arrow keys.

Eye Lines' purpose is to help both professional and novice researchers design stimuli, set-up and run experiments, and configure the data for seamless integration with statistical and graphing software. In addition to handling any of the standard stimulus-response paradigms, it has special capabilities for image manipulation and mouse trajectory recording. These make it especially useful for studies of visual perception and motor behavior. For example:

Psychophysical measurement: Use method of adjustment, method of limits, method of constant stimuli, or adaptive staircase to measure perceived size, position, angle of orientation, or shape distortion. Eye Lines will measure the magnitude of any conceivable variation on the classic geometric illusions (Muller-Lyer, Zollner, Ponzo, Delboeuf, etc).

Drawing / handwriting: Record performances for playback, timing, or other analysis.The entire drawing (or selected portions) can be replayed in real time. Playback can be speeded up or slowed down, or the the researcher can step through it line by line (either forwards or backwards) while simultaneously viewing a spreadsheet containing the x,y coordinates and creation time for each.

Mirror tracing: Flexible version of the classic mirror drawing task that allows the user to design any path, and specify a variety of hand-eye distortions (reverse and/or stretch the vertical and/or horizontal dimensions). When the cursor leaves the path, an alarm sounds and the drawing color changes to red. Use any of the playback or analysis tools described above. Program will plot multi-subject, multi-trial learning curves.

Data tools include a spreadsheet editor and simple graphic controls that allow you to reconfigure data by re-ordering the factors in a multi-dimensional data matrix, move factors from rows to column or vice-versa, and collapse dimensions by averaging values. These can be used to open and process any tab-separated data file.

For Teaching, Eye Lines includes experiments and demonstrations of visual illusions and mirror drawing, designed so that students can use them as starting points from which to design their own stimuli and experiments.

Technical Support: by e-mail to:  beagley@alma.edu
All questions or suggestions welcomed: Help for beginners, advice on how to set up particular stimuli or experiments, additional capabilities needed or features desired.


W. K. Beagley
Department of Psychology
Alma College, Alma MI 48801 USA
return to top                                                                                                  updated Nov 5 2009