Millisecond Forums

Mistake in digit span task from task library?

https://forums.millisecond.com/Topic12935.aspx

By GNij - 4/7/2014

I believe that I found a mistake in a task from the task library. Specifically, it seems that the data from the visual digit span task for inquisit 4 are not logged correctly in the summary file.
The experiment should log two measures of the forward digit span and two measures of the backward span. However, the measures from forward span do not appear under the headers as explained in the comment of the code, and the measures from backward span do not appear at all in the log file.

I tested this twice, creating on purpose certain outcomes (these are displayed as a form of user feedback "your digit span is xx" during the experiment as well, so I am sure it worked) to find out where they are logged in the summary file, but the two backward span numbers do not even appear in the data file.
Have you heard of this problem before and is there a way to fix it?

I naively trusted that the tasks in the library would work and need to use it for an experiment tomorrow, so I really hope that this issue can be solved easily...
By GNij - 4/7/2014

I found out a bit more about the problem.The script runs two tasks, first forward digit span, then backward digit span. In the raw data file both of these are logged, but in the summary data file only the data from the second block/task (the backward digit span) are saved.

I am new to Inquisit so do not know how to add a command to save a second data row or to save data already earlier during the experiment.
(Actually the Inquisit task library was recommended to me as a fast solution for an experiment tomorrow while normally I use a different programming language, but so far it is not going too well..)
By Dave - 4/7/2014

As you correctly noted, the data for both tasks is captured correctly in the raw data file. From the comments:

"(both backward and forward digit variables get stored in the datafile under the same name e.g. TE_TT, TE_ML, ML and MS)"

It is not possible to add further lines to the summary data file -- it captures the state of the various variables *at the end of the task*, here after the backward digit span portion.

If you wanted to have separate variables for forward vs. backward captured, you can simply log the respective values:

<summarydata >
/ file = "DigitSpanVisual_summary.iqdat"
/ columns = [script.startdate, script.starttime, script.subjectid, values.TE_ML, values.TE_TT, values.ML, values.MS,
values.fTE_ML, values.fTE_TT, values.fML, values.fMS, values.bTE_ML, values.bTE_TT, values.bML, values.bMS]
</summarydata>
By GNij - 4/7/2014

Thank you! Not it works just fine. (Actually I tried something similar before but it did not work, so I apologize for the beginner's question).

Excellent customer support, Dave!