Hi,
I am writing a script for an experiment that involves using spacebar presses that sometimes lead to the delivery of a stimulus through a port box, and sometimes lead to no outcome. I have managed to program most of the experiment, but in the testing phase I need to see how many button presses in 5second intervals are made, especially after the presentation of a stimulus. In doing this I have had to create a looping system, which is working nicely. However, because of this loop, I am finding it near impossible to counterbalance which stimuli are presented in which order.
For example, currently part of the test phase looks like this (I won't upload the whole script as it would be too much of a headache for anyone to look through, and isn't relevant to the question I am asking):
29 - 33 =replace (instrEXT_5bin); 34=Pav_testCSA; 35 - 44 =replace (instrEXT_5bin); 45 - 49 =replace (instrEXT_5bin); 50=Pav_testCSB; 51 - 60 =replace (instrEXT_5bin)
Where insrEXT_5bin are just blocks that allow unlimited spacebar presses but timeout after 5seconds, and Pav_testCSA and Pav_testCSB are the two looped blocks that present a stimulus while allowing unlimited spacebar presses.
Ideally I would say something like 34 = noreplace (Pav_testCSA, Pav_test CSB) and do the same for block 50 (and for the next two sequences to come), but I know that noreplace resets after each block, so that I couldn't guarantee that between 34, 50 and the next two sequences, I would have seen Pav_testCSA and Pav_test CSB twice each.
I was wondering if there was something in the subject number that defines which block will be selected during a noreplace, so that I can pre-determine which subject numbers to use to sort of pseudo-counterbalance myself. I know I can do this a long way by creating different versions of the experiment with CSA and CSB counterbalanced, but due to some other shortcuts I've used along the way this would result in 16different experiments being created.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions anyone has!