The very first paper about d’Eye and Pen (2005) is in french:

Chesnet, D., & Alamargot, D. (2005). Analyses en temps réel des activités oculaires et graphomotrices du scripteur: intérêt du dispositif ‘Eye and Pen’. L’Année Psychologique, 105(3), 477-520.

The “official” (international) citation of Eye and Pen is:

Alamargot, D., Chesnet, D., Dansac, C. & Ros, C. (2006). Eye and Pen: a new device to study reading during writing. Behaviour Research Methods, Instruments and Computers, 38(2), 287-299.

The latest published paper:

Chesnet, D., Solier, C., Bordas, B. & Perret, C. (2022). A quick briefing on the new version of Eye and Pen (version 3.01): news and update. Reading and Writing. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-022-10267-5

System

Windows Seven, Windows 8/8.1., Windows 10/11.

You will have to use  a user account with administrative rights to be able to install and use Eye and Pen.

Free disk space

60MB for a complete installation (with samples), plus space needed for recordings and analyses.

Memory

min. 1024 MB with Windows Vista and later.

Video adapter

A minimum resolution of 1024×768 is recommanded (32 MB of video RAM).

USB slot

A free USB slot is required for the SafeNet Sentinel dongle (security lock key) required with Eye and Pen 1 and 2.

Tablets

Every tablet supplied with a Wintab32 compatible driver for Windows is supported by Eye and Pen.
In general, installation of the tablet’s driver also installs a file named WINTAB32.DLL into Windows directory.

Please note that not every manufacturer has battery-less pencils and/or inking pen.

The list below is not exhaustive, but shows  a number of compatible device manufacturers, including the main vendor on the market. Many “historic” tablet manufacturer stopped this activity (Aiptek, Genius, Hitachi, Numonics, Oce, Seiko, etc.) within the last 5 years.

Company’s name	Web site
GTCO Calcomp Corp.	http://www.gtcocalcomp.com
Huion	https://www.huion.com/
XP-Pen	https://www.xp-pen.com/
Turcom	https://turcomusa.com/
Topaz Systems Inc.	http://www.topazsystems.com/
WACOM Corp.	http://www.wacom.com

 

Eyetrackers (optional)

Eye and Pen supports the following eyetrackers:

• S.R. research models Eyelink I, Eyelink II and Eyelink 1000
• Applied Science Laboratories ASL 504 (serial link)
• SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) iViewX (version 1.05 and above).

 

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Note about remote eyetrackers

Unless major changes, we do not plan to support remote eyetrackers because they are hardly usable in a handwriting situation: the camera(s) should be below  the participant’s line of gaze. Then , it is not possible to place a tablet “under” the screen.

It may be usable with an LCD tablet, but when the movements of the subject’s forearm masks the camera, the eye is lost for a while. To limit theses drawback, you’d be to setup a strongly constraining situation.

Similar tests have been conducted at S.R. Research with the Eyelink1000 Remote eyetracker and ended with same results.

In general, remote optic eyetrackers are not advisable: most of them were buit to be located below a display screen, not about a tablet on a desk. This leads to problems of adaptation, coordinates liability, while imposing body posture constraints to the subjects.

More information can be found in our FAQ.

The authors of Eye and Pen 1 and 2 are David Chesnet and Denis Alamargot. Version 3 was developped by David Chesnet with scientific guidance of erci Lambert and Cyril Perret, members of the Ecriture (writing) team of the CeRCA lab.

• David Chesnet is a computer engineer at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société of the University of Poitiers (UAR 3565 CNRS),
• Denis Alamargot: was formerly senior lecturer at the CeRCA laboratory (UMR 7295 CNRS and University of Poitiers), then professor, researcher in developmental cognitive psychology at the laboratory Cognition Humaine & Artificielle (CHart) of the University of Paris Est Créteil (EA4004), and now back in CeRCA .
• Eric Lambert is professor in psychology at the CeRCA laboratory (UMR 7295 CNRS and University of Poitiers).
• Cyril Perret is senior lecturer in psychology at the CeRCA laboratory (UMR 7295 CNRS and University of Poitiers).

Picture credits: most of the pictures on this site are from Yves Almecija (CeRCA, UMR 7295 CNRS)

 

 

MSHS 5, rue Théodore Lefebvre TSA 21103 F – 86073 Poitiers cedex 9 Tél. +33 (0)5 49 45 46 00 Fax : + 33 (0)5 49 45 46 47	MSHS – CeRCA – Bâtiment A5 5, rue T. Lefebvre TSA 21103 86073POITIERS Cedex 9, France
Web: www.mshs.univ-poitiers.fr	Web:cerca.labo.univ-poitiers.fr

 

Eye and Pen is a software that evolve with its users.

This means that it was built in function of our research goals (and those of our partners) and it will be enhanced to fulfill the needs of the greatest possible number of users.

The Keep in touch page hosts a contact form which can be used to submit features requests. Depending on the requests, the amount of work required to implement them and of the coherence between these requests and the software’s objectives, we may release a software update as a “patch” (uploaded into the “Updates” section of  the “Downloads” menu) or register and “prioritize” requests to treat them later as a “bloc” to release an Eye and Pen  upgrade.

The list of supported eyetrackers is thin, but any unsupported eyetracker may become supported. If you’re interested in Eye and Pen, but your device is not supported, please get in touch with us (via email to the support) !

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The “Roadmap” lists enhancements we plan to add to Eye and Pen. Some are drawn from requests and suggestions from users.

Roadmap to version 4.0

• Add module to segment handwriting into strokes
• Fully integrate “In Air” data (when then pen is not in contact with the tablet) into data processing
• Update network components
• Enhance graphs to make them more indicative
• Record more measures within each “tablet” sample ( Z, Azimuth, Altitude and Twist)
• Add ability to rotate handwriting (90° / 180°)
• Add ability to split / merge files
• Add option to exclude the first pause of “Tracing dynamics” data extraction.
• Calculate the Number of Inversion in Velocity (NIV)
• Enhance tablet samples timestamps correction (required with some hardware)
• Add a module to work on production bursts
• Better analyse the quality of data provided by equipements
• Add unicode support (UTF8)
• Add to Windows high-DPI display scale
• And… release Eye and Pen as Open Source !

Roadmap to version 3.0

• Freely give away Eye and Pen
• Get an element into an item of the list
• Capture a portion of the display
• Ability to add one’s own text into a session log file
• Add an optional pictures preloading
• Add a “template” to help labelling sequences
• Enhance handwriting samples timing liability
• Simultaneous voice recording while writing
• Discontinue support for Eyeputer (Alphabio)
• Add diagram showing sequences of writing and pausing, eye movements and fixations
• Increase the range of available codes, AOI and sequences that can be used
• Simplify files management
• Record “in the air” pen movements
• Add data input/output throught the parallel port

Roadmap to version 2.0

System/Hardware

• TabletPC support through Microsoft TabletPC API (Windows XP TabletPC Edition, Windows Vista).
• Windows Vista/Seven compatibility
• Support of Wacom new Intuos4 tablet series (2048 pressure levels)

Acquisition

• ability to perform an acquistion without a tablet
• manage acquisition on mutiple computers through network
• applying “special effect” to the trace displayed on screen while recording: blur.
• applying “special effect” to screen readability : masking.
• ability to record tablet as an eyetracker (pen movement is recorded, even if  “up”)
• audio recording of subject’s retrospective comments.
• Script: syntax checking
• script: randomizable list of stimuli management
• script: variables usage
• support of more images formats

Analysis

• replay animation and animation speed management
• having Eye and Pen drived by an external software, to allow repetitive tasks (extractions etc…).
• Word clipping tool to generate sequences, AOIs and codings
• sequences importation/exportation
• uniformization of data extractions