The Inspector Preferences provides two additional options in the listener view.
Figure 18.8 The Listener tab of the Inspector Preferences
These options control the interaction between the listener pane of the Inspector, if it has one, and the Inspector itself.
See Adding a Listener to the Inspector for details of how to add a listener pane in the Inspector.
Check
Bind $ to the current inspector object
to bind the variable $ to the current object in the Inspector in the listener.
Check Automatically inspect listener values to inspect listener values automatically.
Both these options are checked by default.
LispWorks IDE User Guide (Unix version) - 12 Feb 2015