Running E-Prime experiments online

[David McFarlane]

And more thoughts...

In general, I do not think that E-Prime is set up 
to run over a network, certainly not with ms 
accuracy, and I do not expect PST to have any such plans for the future.

If you do want ms accuracy for tasks run over a 
network, then try Inquisit by Millisecond, 
http://www.millisecond.com .  Put briefly, with a 
program written in Inquisit, subjects can go to a 
web site, and it will install an add-on or 
plug-in to their local machine, which they must 
do only once (much like installing Flash to run 
Flash content from the web).  Now when they 
launch the Inquisit program from their web 
browser, the program will actually run locally on 
their own machine, with all the power of DirectX 
to provide ms accuracy.  Clever, eh?  And then 
you can have the data posted directly to a 
network repository of your own choice, which you 
may then examine remotely at any time.  I think 
this covers exactly what you asked for, and it is 
all covered by the terms of the Inquisit license.

I generally find Inquisit an inferior product to 
E-Prime, but in this instance it exceeds EP.  And 
the company that handles Inquisit is much friendlier than PST.

-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder


>Couple of thoughts:
>-          That would be far easier. The only 
>thing I could think of which you might try is to 
>have people log on to your system through remote 
>desktop (mstsc) and see if you can run E-Prime 
>that way. Last time I tried that (i.e. last time 
>I tried to work on an e-prime experiment from home), this failed, however.
>-          The problem with Ben’s idea here is 
>that you’d require each of your subjects to have 
>an E-Prime license key (cost of which is about 650 Euro, last time I checked).
>
>Alternatively, and MUCH easier, is to learn a 
>simple bit of Flash and let them run Flash 
>experiments from your server. It’s very easy to 
>program (in comparison with trying to figure out 
>how, if at all possible, to run E-Prime on a 
>server!), rather easy to learn (Flash comes with 
>a very easy tutorial that gets you doing cool 
>things within hours), and although the timing is 
>rather inaccurate, it’s better than nothing. 
>Cheaper, and to mind, better, is to run stuff on 
>Silverlight and design experiments using 
>Expression Blend. It’s free for university 
>students (google ‘Microsoft Dreamspark’), can do 
>Visual Basic (but later versions), and more properly object based than Flash.
>
>You should consider:
>-          Running experiments from a server 
>(rather than a local computer) brings inaccuracy due to latency problems;
>-          Running experiments from local 
>computers connected to a server brings 
>inaccuracy due to the fact that you don’t have a 
>clue as to what they’re running.
>Therefore, E-Prime won’t do much better than 
>anything other out there. If you’re very new to 
>E-Prime, I recommend learning something else 
>instead – transition from E-Prime to proper 
>programming is harsher than the other way around.
>
>Cheers,
>Mich
>
>
>
>Michiel Spapé
>Research Fellow
>Perception & Action group
>University of Nottingham
>School of Psychology
>www.cognitology.eu
>
>From: e-prime at googlegroups.com 
>[mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of ben robinson
>Sent: 24 September 2010 13:16
>To: e-prime at googlegroups.com
>Subject: Re: Running E-Prime experiments online
>
>why not have them run it locally and email you 
>their data file when they've finished?
>On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 4:01 AM, tudor 
><<mailto:tudor3 at gmail.com>tudor3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>Hello everyone,
>
>I have an E-Prime script for an experiment that measures subjects'
>reaction times to a simple number comparison task. The design of the
>experiment is such that the subjects need to run the experiment daily
>for 3 weeks, which is why I intend to have them run it from their
>homes, online, rather than asking them to come each day into the lab.
>
>I thought it would be the easiest for the subjects if their daily task
>is to login to a website and run the script through their Internet
>browser. This will enable me to monitor their performance every day,
>which is quite important. The data files (which are small, < 1 MB)
>would be stored on the server.
>However I am concerned that, in this case, the reaction times will not
>be accurate, because, unless the script is somehow ran "locally",
>there will probably be a significant (and variable) Internet lag
>between their response and the moment the response is registered.
>On the other hand, if I choose to run the experiment "offline" by
>having them run a copy of the script on their computers, I will have
>no knowledge of their performance before the end of the 3 weeks (I
>would not want to ask them to submit the data files every day).
>
>Since I am very new to E-Prime, I am not sure what would be the best
>way to go about running this experiment. Can anyone help? Many thanks
>in advance!

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "E-Prime" group.
To post to this group, send email to e-prime at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to e-prime+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/e-prime?hl=en.