Mouse Tracking Technology for Research

Mouse tracking, also referred to as cursor tracking, is used in research to collect data about the participant’s mouse cursor position on the screen. Mouse tracking is an important source of physiological data that provides insights to cognitive processes and decision making. Also, mouse tracking can also serve as an important means of controlling experimental design and stimuli presentation. Labvanced, as an experimental design and data collection tool, can be used to utilize these aspects of mouse tracking for your research.

Mouse Tracking in Labvanced

Mouse tracking can be implemented in your Labvanced study just with a few clicks, without having to code so that in your next research project you can collect this data with ease.

Try it out! Click Participate or Import this study to your Labvanced account and see how mouse tracking works: https://www.labvanced.com/page/library/62668

Setting Up a Mouse Tracking Study

Activating mouse tracking can be set up with just a few steps using Labvanced, all without having to code. The image below shows how this looks like in the editor, a user-created custom variable that stores the values (left) is set to record the MouseX value or MouseY value. It is also possible to set up so that the coordinates are stored in an array format.

Mouse Tracking Test: Flexible Design and Implementation

In research, mouse tracking can be as simple as collecting X- and Y-coordinates or it can be more dynamic where mouse movement dictates experimental design and behavior. For instance, when a participant scrolls over an image, you can prompt the app to display a text.

In the example below, the participant below is prompted to hover over the center text and upon hovering over a stimuli text in the subsequent frame, then is expected to return again and hover in the center before the trials progress any further:

Try it out! Click Participate or Import this study to your Labvanced account and see how the mouse tracking hover feature works: https://www.labvanced.com/page/library/8736

With Labvanced, you benefit from flexible design, so you can create and implement a mouse tracking test that suits your research question, without having to code. For example, you can specify the app to record all mouse tracking data, hovers, clicks, and even instruct certain actions to occur for certain mouse behaviors.

In the demo below, mouse tracking is activated, together with mouse clicks, for the purpose of understanding how participants edit text:

Try it out! Click Participate and try out this editing text dynamically demo to see how mouse tracking works in this context: https://www.labvanced.com/page/library/67925

Mouse Tracking: Recording Data and Movements

When enabling mouse tracking in research, there are several kinds of data that can be collected, including:

• Mouse coordinates: Mouse X and Y coordinates are recorded across time.
• Timestamps: Respective timestamps, as well as reaction times are recorded with peer-reviewed precision for all necessary mouse movements and behaviors.
• Hover counts: You can specify hover counts over certain stimuli or areas of areas of interest to be recorded.
• Click counts: Likewise, clicks can also be counted and quantified.
• Name of stimulus: For more data, you can also record the names of which stimuli or area of interest the mouse hovered over or clicked.

Mouse Tracking and Eye Tracking

For an additional layer of data, mouse tracking can be used together with eye tracking in order to fully capture the scope of the subject’s attention and behavior.

If you are interested in webcam eye tracking, consider Labvanced’s peer-reviewed webcam eye tracking for your next project.

Research Utilizing Labvanced’s Mouse Tracking

Below are a few examples of published research that made use of Labvanced’s mouse tracking for their studies.

Continuous measures of decision-difficulty captured remotely: Mouse-tracking sensitivity extends to tablets and smartphones

In this study, Zuk, Bertrand, & Chapman, (2025) set out to determine the sensitivity of mouse tracking across devices using Labvanced in order to determine device-specific differences in decision-difficulty. Classic reach-decision paradigms were administered across computers, tablets, and smartphones and mouse (or touch) tracking was quantified and compared across tasks. The findings showed fine-grained portable touch-devices can sensitively capture decision-difficulty.

The image above is a sample overview of study design across devices and mouse / cursor and touch trajectories from the computer, tablet and smartphone. Light gray lines indicate the participant’s average trajectories across all trials where mean trajectories across participants are shown in green for congruent trials and organize of incongruent trials. The average location of the maximum absolute deviation (MAD) is shown with a filled circle in the zoomed-in inset. For more information, please refer to the paper.

Examining long-term repetition priming effects in spoken word recognition using computer mouse tracking

In a study by Tuft, Incera, & McLennan (2023), Labvanced’s mouse tracking was used in the context of an auditory lexical decision task to determine long-term repetition priming effects. The researchers found that for all values of interest (accuracy, reaction time, and mouse trajectories), participants responded more efficiently to primed than to unprimed words.

The image below is taken from the publication and demonstrates the reported mouse trajectories:

Unconscious Frustration: Dynamically Assessing User Experience using Eye and Mouse Tracking

Friction points occur when a user experiences confusion or difficulties while interacting with a website or app. Friction points are known to be a major barrier towards user adoption and can ultimately impact customer satisfaction and their perception of the brand.

This study wanted to see whether combining and analyzing eye and mouse tracking data together would be a valid approach for detecting friction points in a video game-based menu navigation task using Labvanced.

Participants received two different types of instructions for navigating through the menu task:

• Direct Prompt: “Go to Extras - Options - Gameplay and turn Hints on.”
• Indirect Prompt: “You notice you are having trouble hearing the characters’ dialogue in game. Go and turn on the subtitles.”

Indirect prompts take more exploration time because they are less explicit. Thus, if any friction occurred during the task, the Indirect prompt should exacerbate that friction.

Simplified recreation of the menu navigation task and the experimental frames.

The study found that indeed Friction points can be detected when both eye and hand movements are being measured in sync.

• The friction points were identified using both a remote set up (Labvanced) and monitor-mounted hardware which shows that remote methods are a valid and economical approach to get results.
• This study is a good example of cognitive ethology where remote study set ups are used to see if research findings apply beyond the lab and in a more natural and complex environment.