Creating an Eye Tracking Task
Once webcam eye tracking is enabled at the study level (Settings tab → Physiology → Eye-Tracking), you enable it for an individual task in the task editor: click the Settings button in the top-left corner, next to "Task:", then in the Physiological Signals tab check Enable Eye-Tracking:. Eye tracking can be enabled for as many tasks in the experiment as you need; the main study-level calibration still only runs once, before the first eye-tracking-enabled task.
The background color of your frames is worth considering early: dark frames illuminate a participant's eyes less well than white or lightly colored ones, which can make subtle eye movements harder to track accurately.
From there, a task's eye tracking setup involves a few decisions: how often to recalibrate during the task, whether to detect fixations in addition to raw gaze, and which display mode to use so gaze coordinates are measured in a unit that suits your study. Shorter tasks generally need less recalibration than longer ones, where small errors can accumulate over time. You then build the events that actually record gaze data as variables, optionally restricted to specific stimulus objects, and can rely on Labvanced's automated event setup for the common case rather than building every event by hand.
Learn More
Webcam Eye Tracking Guide
The Webcam Eye Tracking Guide is the complete reference for building an eye tracking study in Labvanced, covering everything from how stimuli relate to gaze data through calibration settings, task setup, recording, areas of interest, and the participant experience. If this is your first eye tracking task, it is the best place to start before diving into any single piece below.
Setting Up Eye Tracking in a Task
Setting Up Eye Tracking in a Task covers the full set of task-level decisions: enabling eye tracking via the Settings button and Physiological Signals tab, configuring how often the system recalibrates and applies drift correction over the course of the task, and choosing between Fixation Detection modes where your Physiology Toolbox Version supports it. It also explains the display mode options, and when switching to a fixed physical unit like millimeters or visual degrees is worth the extra setup.
Recording and Exporting Gaze Data
Recording and Exporting Gaze Data walks through the automated event setup dialog that appears when you enable eye tracking, which can create the standard gaze and fixation recording events for you directly. It also covers building these events manually, restricting recording to specific stimulus objects, and what the resulting data export looks like once your study has run.
In-Lab Hardware Instead
If you are connecting your own in-lab eye tracking hardware rather than using Labvanced's webcam eye tracking, see Eye Tracking in Labvanced for that option.