The Language Development Laboratory

The Language Development Laboratory is situated on the 3rd floor of the New Building of the School of Philosophy (room 308 Δ). The Language Development Lab (LDL) was established in 2003 with initial financial support from AUTH of just 1.000 Euros, an amount that was enough to purchase 1 laptop at the time.

The Equipment of the LDL comes mostly from external funding: The first Tobii 1750 eye tracker was bought in 2006 (AUTH Laboratory Equipment programme), funded from EU sources through the Regional Government.

The Language Development Laboratory is the only (Psycho)linguistics Lab in Greece conducting eye-tracking research.

Today: 10 PCs (laptops and workstations), 2 digital cameras, 5 Ε-prime software licenses 2.0 (Psychology Software Tools) and 2 Eye-Trackers (Tobii X-120, X-60)

E-prime

E-prime is a software provided by Psychology Software Tools, Inc. for rapidly developing and conducting psycholinguistic experiments on PCs with audio/visual stimulus material. Detailed information about E-prime can be found at http://www.pstnet.com.

Eye-Tracker

Tobii 1750, eye-tracker comprises software and hardware provided by Tobii Technology AB. The Tobii Eye tracker system is used to record oculomotor behavior in infants, children, and adults: the research participants see audio-visual stimuli on a 17” screen, while there is a recording of looking preferences and gaze fixations by the hardware. Eye tracking is used to investigate human language development and skills. It is particularly useful in psycholinguistic research, because it allows to investigate the first (unconscious) reactions of the mind in various stimuli (linguistic or not). Tobii system is particularly friendly to both experimenters and research participants because it offers large freedom of head movement and great accuracy of eye tracking data.

Within the framework of the “Thales” (Action 85514) & “ARISTEIA I” (Action 87566) projects run by the Language Development Lab, the Tobii T1750 eye tracker was upgraded to a T120 and a new Tobii X2-60 portable eye tracker was also purchased. This new small eye tracking research system is exceptionally flexible, resulting from the freedom of head movement and its unique portability. This portable eye-tracking technology is particularly useful for our research which aims to collect data from various age groups, across a number of different towns in Greece, in surroundings that are familiar to the participants (such as their homes, clinics or schools). Further information about Tobii eye-tracker technology is provided at http://www.tobii.com.

Other hardware and software components

E-prime Extensions for Tobii
E-prime Extensions for Tobii (professional version) allows the direct communication with the Tobii Studio Software (TET and CV packages). The Tobii eye trackers are controlled directly from E-Prime, where the experiments are designed, while visualizations, AOIs’ analyses, timing and presentation are made through either E-Prime, or E-Studio.