Best input device regarding refresh rate

Wed May 2 12:23:41 UTC 2012

Hi,

Three things:

1. You would like to carefully go through this page:
http://www.pstnet.com/eprimedevice.cfm - plenty of devices there, but
outdated information.

2. I find that, typically, psychological effects FAR outweigh timing jitter
in response devices; typically, one can easily get robust results even with
the world's worst timing in a system (you can get, for instance, solid Simon
test results in a flash-based timing on random equipment). One may wonder
about the importance of an effect if this is not the case, indeed, although
I suppose for the more motor oriented experiments (for instance, where you
would like to study standard deviation of sequential tapping), this might be
important.

3. The "buttons are hard to press issue" I find is incredibly underrated
because psychologists seem to concentrate on system timing and psychology,
but seldom that which lies in between (you might call it human-computer
interaction). How long does it take, between the start of the button press
and the button actually being down? How much motor noise do we find? Are
psychological effects sometimes confounded somewhere in between response
initiation and completion? I remember doing a standard finger tapping test
("press space bar as fast and often as possible within 10 seconds"), and
people got around 60-80 taps on average (IRI=148 ms), whereas it has been
norm-scored ages ago at about 50-60 (IRI=182). The difference, of some 34 ms
(roughly the size of a Simon effect) or 23%, seems to be far larger than
common RT timing issues. Was my group made up of fantastic tappers, or could
the difference really be as simple as using an (arggh) mac keyboard with
feather-light keys (the ones that stick out about 3 mm)? Now, if you think a
normal PC keyboard has heavy keys, try pressing a PST SRBOX button! 

Anyway, hope you like my hints. In general, USB is preferred to PS/2. Legend
has it that USB2 may be better in this regard. Anyone can confirm this?

Best,

Michiel

From: e-prime at googlegroups.com [mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Tobias
Sent: 02 May 2012 13:44
To: e-prime at googlegroups.com
Subject: Best input device regarding refresh rate

An old but important issue in collecting RT is the refresh rate of the input
device. I have heard that the typical USB keyboard refresh rate is about 125
Hz. This means by using a standard keyboard you have some time jitter of up
to 8 ms. The refresh rate might even more importantly depend on the driver
so that you don't even know the exact jitter.

Of course there are more sophisticated input devices such as the E-Prime
button box. However, they are expensive and not very user friendly
(unergonomic, heavy, buttons are hard to press). Taken these shortcomings I
am wondering if you are aware of any more "standard" input devices that
typically have better refresh rates. I guess for my purposes a refresh rate
of 250 Hz would be sufficient.

What about Game controllers such as the Microsoft Sidewinder etc.? Do they
typically have better refresh rates?

Any hints are most appreciated.

Tobias

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