Experiment Advisor Monitoring

Fri Sep 27 15:33:43 UTC 2013

Hi Vaaal,

I had some exchanges with PST support about the clock issues with WinXP, 
here's what they told me at the time:

> Windows XP sometimes causes the speed of the processor to be reported 
> as the clock frequency. When the speed of the processor changes during 
> an experiment, this can interfere with E-Prime's timing. Therefore, 
> our developers have advised that some users with Windows XP may need 
> to switch over to the power management clock. I have attached a 
> document explaining how to make this change. Once the change has been 
> made, E-Prime will use the power management clock on your system, 
> which should perform much better than the default clock. Note that 
> this involves changing your system's Boot.ini file, so we strongly 
> recommend backing up your system before performing these actions.
>
> Also, you should consider turning off clock synchronization, at least 
> while running E-Prime experiments. It should only occur occasionally, 
> but your network might have different custom settings. Please see the 
> following Microsoft article for more information: 
> http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/windows_date_turn_off_synch.mspx?mfr=true. 
> Of course, the simplest way to turn it off during an experiment is to 
> physically unplug the cable from the computer. You should not have any 
> other programs or processes running during the experiment anyway, so 
> unplugging it should not cause any problems.

The document mentioned in the first paragraph includes instructions on 
how to switch the power management clock by editing boot.ini - I'm sure 
PST support will pass that information along to you in due course.

Hope this helps,
(A different) David

On 27/09/2013 16:24, Vaaal wrote:
> Hi David,
> thank you for your advice, I got it.
> What actually concerns me is this one, since my machine in the lab run 
> exactly Windows XP: "The E-Prime Primary Clock is configured in a way 
> that could cause timing inconsistencies on Windows XP. Contact PST 
> Tech Support to configure the clock for more stabilized performance 
> when using Windows XP with this finding". I contacted the PST tech 
> support but still no reply. In the meantime, do you have any knowledge 
> about that? Should I install a new OS in my lab machine?
>
> On Friday, 27 September 2013 15:49:28 UTC+1, McFarlane, David wrote:
>
>     Valerio,
>
>     You can puzzle this out for yourself.  Try the following.  Open a
>     blank (Professional) experiment.  Run it.  Now look at the resulting
>     ExperimentAdvisorReport.xml.  See the Experiment Advisor Modules
>     table?  Does it include all the same items as before, even though the
>     experiment is completely blank?
>
>     Now disable some of the Experiment Advisor Modules.  E.g., back in
>     E-Studio, open the Experiment Object Properties, go to the Experiment
>     Advisor tab, and disable "Use of ClearAfter" and "Use of
>     Stretch".  Run this, open the resulting ExperimentAdvisorReport.xml,
>     and look at the Experiment Advisor Modules table.  Do you see that
>     "An object has its ClearAfter property set to Yes..." and "A visual
>     object has its Stretch property set to Yes..." have both disappeared?
>
>      From this evidence would you conclude that the Experiment Advisor
>     Modules table tells you only what modules were enabled, and not what
>     problems it found?  Would you find this useful, because without this
>     information you could not tell whether the lack of a warning only
>     meant that that test was not run?
>
>     As usual, do not take my word for any of this, test it out for
>     yourself.  I presented my answer this way because I need to stress
>     that I do not have any inside knowledge about E-Prime, I simply
>     figure it out exactly as I outlined above.
>
>     Best regards,
>     -----
>     David McFarlane
>     E-Prime training
>     online: http://psychology.msu.edu/Workshops_Courses/eprime.aspx
>     <http://psychology.msu.edu/Workshops_Courses/eprime.aspx>
>     Twitter:  @EPrimeMaster (https://twitter.com/EPrimeMaster
>     <https://twitter.com/EPrimeMaster>)
>
>     /----
>     Stock reminder:  1) I do not work for PST.  2) PST's trained staff
>     take any and all questions at
>     http://support.pstnet.com/e%2Dprime/support/login.asp
>     <http://support.pstnet.com/e%2Dprime/support/login.asp> , and they
>     strive to respond to all requests in 24-48 hours, so make full use of
>     it.  3) In addition, PST offers several instructional videos on their
>     YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/PSTNET
>     <http://www.youtube.com/user/PSTNET> ).  4) If you do
>     get an answer from PST staff, please extend the courtesy of posting
>     their reply back here for the sake of others.
>     \----
>
>
>     At 9/26/2013 05:01 PM Thursday, Vaaal wrote:
>     >Quick question about this interesting feature of e-prime. When I
>     >open the xml I can read several tables. Although it is clear for me
>     >the meaning of onset to onset stats, onset delay stats, load time
>     >stats and experiment advisor finding, the last table is a little bit
>     >more difficult for me to understand: Experiment Advisor Modules.
>     >I was checking this table when I notice that most of the "problem"
>     >pointed out by this table was actually not relevant for my
>     design. For example:
>     >  "A visual object has its Stretch property set to Yes, which can
>     > cause display timing anomalies. Instead of using Stretch, consider
>     > editing the source material to match the size and proportions you
>     > want to display during the experiment".
>     >But no visual object in my experiment has stretch set to Yes. Or,
>     again:
>     >"An object has its ClearAfter property set to Yes. ClearAfter is a
>     >deprecated property."
>     >
>     >This is not true for any of my object.
>     >So, how reliable is this table?
>     >Or maybe it just point out to POSSIBLE/LIKELY problems, without
>     >actually telling that you are incurring in one of those?
>     >
>     >Thank you very much for any clarification.
>     >Valerio
>
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-- 
David Vinson, Ph.D.
ESRC Research Fellow
Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences Research Department
University College London
26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP
Tel +44 (0)20 7679 5311  (UCL internal ext. 25311)

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