Open-source software for mouse-tracking in Qualtrics to measure category competition

Abstract

Mouse-tracking is a sophisticated tool for measuring rapid, dynamic cognitive processes in real time, particularly in experiments investigating competition between perceptual or cognitive categories. We provide user-friendly, open-source software (https://osf.io/st2ef/) for designing and analyzing such experiments online using the Qualtrics survey platform. The software consists of a Qualtrics template with embedded JavaScript and CSS along with R code to clean, parse, and analyze the data. No special programming skills are required to use this software. As we discuss, this software could be readily modified for use with other online survey platforms that allow the addition of custom JavaScript. We empirically validate the provided software by benchmarking its performance on previously tested stimuli (android robot faces) in a category-competition experiment with realistic crowdsourced data collection.