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JESPR is a javascript library that is designed to help language researchers to conduct self-paced reading experiments (i.e., as described in Just, Carpenter, and Woolley 1982 1(/fildpauz/jespr/wiki/1][)) through a browser interface. JESPR is compatible with all modern browsers that can process javascript and can be set up to run on a local machine, or remotely, enabling the possibility of gathering data through crowd-sourcing services. The experimental procedure and interface is highly customizable and data output can be easily imported into analysis applications such as Excel or R. Development is ongoing, and future plans include adding capability for touch-enabled and small form-factor screens. The JESPR demo shows the various capabilities of the library.

There are already a wide variety of powerful applications for conducting self-paced reading experiments (e.g., 2(/fildpauz/jespr/wiki/2][), 3(/fildpauz/jespr/wiki/3][), 4(/fildpauz/jespr/wiki/4][)). Many of these will interface with high-resolution hardware keypads for highly sensitive reaction-time measurements. But not all self-paced reading experiments require such high resolution. Furthermore, these applications typically require local installation and active management by the experimenter for each experimental participant. Recently, though, linguists are finding it useful to conduct experiments and gather data through on-line web-forms and applications or through crowd-sourcing services.

Recent work 5(/fildpauz/jespr/wiki/5][) has even shown that self-paced reading experiments can be conducted via Amazon's Mechanical Turk crowd-sourcing service and can generate reliable observations of some well-known experimental effects. As yet, however, there are very few Javascript-based solutions for conducting self-paced reading experiments via a web browser (but see 6(/fildpauz/jespr/wiki/6][) for one solution) (5(/fildpauz/jespr/wiki/5][)'s work used Flash technology, which is seeing waning support by browser developers), but with the advent of HTML5, Javascript-based solutions are becoming commonplace. JESPR is my attempt to contribute to a Javascript solution for conducting self-paced reading experiments.

Hence, JESPR stands for "Javascript-Enabled Self-Paced Reading".