Millisecond Forums

Hi all,

We are currently programming an experiment using inquisit 2.0 in which participants are required to choose one out of 4 doors. Depending on the chosen door, a number of points is won or lost. This number differs over doors AND trials (cfr. Iowa gambling task). On each trial, feedback should be given concerning the points won and lost on the current trial, AND the total amount of points. Does anyone have an idea on how to keep track of the points scored on each trial, on how to calculate the total score, and on how to present these scores to the participant?

Thanking you in advance,

Kasia, Helen & Bram

Thank you all for your valuable comments and tips!! My hungry donkey task works now!

However, we still have one problem. We first have an habituation block where the participants have to practice. During this block the amount of losses and gains are already calculated. When the first real block begins (the actual experiment) we would like to start from 0. Is it possible to set the score back to zero somehow? I have tried to work with onblockend, but that didn't work...

Greetz

Kasia

Glad to hear it's basically working now. For resetting the scores, using '/ onblockend' generally seems to be the right idea. So, I suppose there's just some minor error somewhere in the syntax. If you'd again like to upload your updated script, I'll take a look.

~Dave

Dear Dave,

Thank you!!! Well, the file is uploaded on the following link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VAM5O4TI

The habituation/try out block is depicted as Hungry Donkey0. When I tried out the following, it didn't work:

<block hungry_donkey0>

/ trials = [1-5 = noreplacenorepeat (trial_ID1, trial_ID2, trial_ID3, trial_ID4, trial_ID5, trial_ID6, trial_ID7, trial_ID8, trial_ID9, trial_ID10)]

/ onblockend = [values == 00]

</block>

Furthermore, we downloaded at one computer the tryout version of Inquisit 3.00. We tried to run this experiment but then we got the notification that their is a port problem (we need that for measurement of the physiological data).

Parallel port operation failed.

Line Number: 200

File: .\DirLptPort.cpp

Status Code: 9996

Error Message: 'No device handle'

Do you know what this imply? Because on the other computer everything works ...

Thank you again!! Regards,

Kasia

Okay. This is fairly easy. You have these <values> in your script in order to keep track of gains/losses:

<values>
/ currenttotal = 0
/ previoustotal = 0
/ gain = 0
/ loss = 0
</values>

Now, after subjects have finished the habituation block, you'll want to reset all these values to zero. The correct syntax will look like this:

<block hungry_donkey0>
[...]
/ onblockend = [values.currenttotal = 0; values.previoustotal = 0; values.gain = 0; values.loss = 0]
</block>

As you can see, you have to specifically tell Inquisit the "name" of each <values> entry to reset. One further note: Assigning a value is done by using a single "=" sign. On the other hand, the double "==" sign is a logical operator used for evaluating the "Truth" of comparisons. That's that.

The port problem is a different story. Here are some basic things to check on: First, make sure that the computer really has a physical parallel port (i.e. crawl behind it and see if it's there). Also check the Windows device manager and see if you can find a correctly installed parallel port. Then start Inquisit and run the Parallel Port Monitor from the Tools menu. Switch through the port numbers and look for an entry that displays a non-zero value under port address (e.g. "378" or "3BC" on some systems). Once you have this, change the <port> elements in your script to use the correct port number (right now, they're referencing LPT1).

Best,
~Dave