problem with extended response collection (also "the virtue of collecting multiple responses")

Fri Feb 11 12:08:44 UTC 2011

Hi Tobias & List,
It seems the "infinite duration until response and stimulus disappears as a result" thing, which is so much easier to do in E-Prime than anything else, seems to become less popular as people are more often using neuroscience weaponry these days. A minimum duration property would be quite nice, but is pretty much lacking. Anyway:
- no, there should be no flicker, unless you set the clear-after property to true (which it isn't by default). As long as both slides look identical, that is. The timing-wise difference is not so much in the interval in between as the stimulus keeps collecting data between the two objects (asynchronously, if you like). I would say, try it, see if it works better. If not, there's at least less code involved and it saves some redundancy in the data collection here (which seems, as you say, to work out well enough). I might be missing something here, I'm not very good at debugging without seeing it happening in E-Prime.

As an aside, I find it - especially while doing EEG - quite often very useful to 
- have a response-collecting object with some time limit started long before any stimulus. It's very easy to code, afterwards, something like
c.SetAttrib "Y_RT", myResponseCollectingObject.RTTime - myStimulusObject.OnsetTime
- have it collect multiple responses, then afterwards (or in your case, both in the middle and afterwards) sorting these out (code for that is in this e-prime list somewhere). Crucially, and I never thought of this until two years ago when I started doing bimanual experiments, in almost any single-response experiment, there is a good chance a participant will react A THEN SWITCH to B as he/she changes his/her mind. If A was actually the correct answer, you'd usually (or at least, by e-prime default) incorrectly classify the whole bit as a correct response. "Incorrectly" might be debatable, but I find it safer to throw out all dual-response data (if the correct answer is a single response). I should point this out in the e-Primer :)

Best,
Mich

Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
www.cognitology.eu

-----Original Message-----
From: e-prime at googlegroups.com [mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tobias
Sent: 11 February 2011 11:25
To: E-Prime
Subject: Re: problem with extended response collection

Hi Michiel,

thanks for your reply. Indeed I am using EEG and the search/stimulus
slide should be equally long presented in each trial and for each
subject. The trick with the subtraction of "Slide1.Duration" is a good
idea, I will try that later. But isn't there a flickering or something
between Slide1 and ExtendedStim? Anyway, I am not sure if your
suggestion makes a difference timing-wise: Between ExtendedStim and
ResponseSlide is the same number of microseconds, milliseconds or
whatever than in my former version between Slide1 and ResponseSlide.

One more thing about the response collection: The result file shows
that Slide1.RESP has a value no matter when the subject responds and
no matter if the ResponseSlide is already shown. If the subject
responds during ResponseSlide, Slide1.RESP and ResponseSlide.RESP have
the same value, namely the key the subject pressed.

Best,
Tobias

On Feb 11, 11:11 am, Michiel Spape <Michiel.Sp... at nottingham.ac.uk>
wrote:
> Hi,
> If you're right (and I guess it is possible), then you might try setting offset sync of 1) to none, and onset sync of 3) to none. That way you might get some screen-tearing artefacts, but the time between them should be microseconds (rather than milliseconds) - making it terribly unlikely that subjects respond at that time.
>
> But, I don't think this is necessarily the problem. I have a feeling (but correct me if I'm wrong) that time limit of infinite, with duration of 248, might go wrong. How, for example, is E-Prime to know that a late response (after the 248) is for 1) rather than 3)? My suggestion:
> 1) As you say (with time limit = infinite), but also with jump label (label1) to 4. End
> 2) makes little sense (search.resp?) Is Search the slide in 1)? If so, then it should be without getattrib (i.e. not reading from list, but from object 1).
> 3) Slide, as you say, except _without response collection_ (since 1 is doing that).
> 4) As you say.
> So, without any code, for once, the stimulus is shown for 250 ms, if participant reacts during that time, they don't see 3. Unless you don't want the stimulus to be presented shorter (perhaps you do EEG?). In which case it might be a bit more difficult:

> 5) Short inline: ExtendedStim.Duration = 250 - Slide1.Duration 'slide1 being whatever you named 1
> 6) ExtendedStim is a slide that is just a copy (control+drag) of 1). Except it doesn't have keyboard input or collect responses.
>
> Anyway, the nice thing is that the response is always collected by the same object now, which is at least my preferred way of coding E-Prime.
> Does that help?
> Best,
> Mich
>
> Michiel Spapé
> Research Fellow
> Perception & Action group
> University of Nottingham
> School of Psychologywww.cognitology.eu
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: e-prime at googlegroups.com [mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tobias
> Sent: 10 February 2011 18:30
> To: E-Prime
> Subject: problem with extended response collection
>
> Hi,
>
> i wanna set up the following experiment: A stimulus appears for 250
> ms. Participants are to respond to that stimulus either during
> presentation of that stimulus or any time after, when a response
> screen is shown until the participant reacts. If the participant
> reacts during stimulus presentation, the response screen should not be
> displayed.
>
> I did this as follows:
> (1) I made a slide that has a duration of 248 ms (should round up to
> 150 as I use a screen of 100 Hz). I set the time limit to "(infinite)"
> and the end action to "(none)".
> (2) After the slide follows an Inline Script with this content:
> "if c.getattrib("search.resp") = "a" or c.getattrib("search.resp") =
> "l" then goto Label1"
> (3) Then follows a slide that serves as a response screen. It has an
> infinite duration (-1) and "terminate" as an end action.
> (4) The next element ist the Label1
>
> This works quite well for most of the trials. If the particpant
> presses a or l during stimulus ("search") presentation, the inline
> will make e-prime jump the the label and not call the response screen.
> If the particpant does not press the button during presentation, the
> response screen appears until a button is pressed.
>
> However, sometimes, like about 5% of the trials, participants would
> have to press twice. That is, even though they pressed a button during
> stimulus presentation, the response screen appears. My first guess is,
> that this is because in these rather seldom cases, the participant
> presses the button in the few milliseconds between stimulus offset and
> response screen onset. Is that possible? How can I circumvent this
> problem? Have you had a similar problem?
>
> Your help is most appreciated!
>
> Best,
> Tobias
>
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