Mouse-tracking

JasperdeWaard

Hello everyone,

Is it possible to track the movements of the mouse in online experiments?

What I'm looking to create is a sort of mask so that only the part of the display surrounding the cursor location will be visible.

Basically, I'd like to something like this: https://psyarxiv.com/rsdwg/ but I'm not sure if such a javascript plugin would work in OS? And also, there might be simpler solutions.

Any help would be greatly appreciated :)

Cheers,

Jasper

JasperdeWaard

So I think I got a solution that actually works quite nicely :)

• I use a sequence with a sketchpad and an inline javascript that repeats 1000 times
• The sketchpad is shown 1 ms (i.e. one screen refresh)
• The location of the mask in the sketchpad is determined by vars.x_mouse and vars.y_mouse
• The inline js contains the code below.
• Of course any ideas to improve on this are very welcome! I've only tested in Chrome on a Mac.

onmousemove = function(e){vars.x_mouse = e.clientX; vars.y_mouse = e.clientY}
if (vars.x_mouse == vars.x_mouse2) {
    console.log('no x movement');
} else {
    vars.x_mouse -= 512; //half of display width
}
if (vars.y_mouse == vars.y_mouse2) {
    console.log('no y movement');
} else {
    vars.y_mouse -= 384; //half of display height
}
vars.x_mouse2 = vars.x_mouse; //for use on the next cycle
vars.y_mouse2 = vars.y_mouse;

Cheers,

Jasper

eduard

Hi Jasper,

Thanks for sharing! That might be quite useful.

Eduard