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What email address shall I send it to?

Sorry, I got lost somewhere along the way. As a last resort, can you send me the original E-Prime task that you're trying to recreate via email? If you do, please include all necessary supporting materials (pictures, etc.) and, again if possible, please send me the file in E-Prime 1.x format (*.es). Of course I won't make any of the enclosed materials available to any third party. I'll just reverse-engineer the original and re-implement it in Inquisit-lingo -- maybe that'll clear some of your questions up.

~Dave

Hi,

Ok I'll just do two blocks then, one practice and then one for compassion and critical.

With regards to the correct column query in the output - How about if I double my trials and for each one add a '1' or '2' to the trial name. 1 = .. and 2 = : and define the correct response....

E.g.  Instead of just one trial f1aCOMPneutral*, it is now:

<trial f1aCOMPneutral*1>

            / pretrialpause = 500

            / stimulustimes = [1= focuspoint; 500 = rectangle_pic; 1000=f1compassionleft_pic,f1neutralright_pic; 1500 = rectangleright_pic, rectangleleft_pic; 2000= replace(target1left); 2500 = rectangleright_pic, rectangleleft_pic]

            / inputdevice = keyboard

            / responsetime = 2000

            / validresponse = ("a", "l")

            /correctresponse = ("a")

            / posttrialpause = 180

</trial>

<trial f1aCOMPneutral*2>

            / pretrialpause = 500

            / stimulustimes = [1= focuspoint; 500 = rectangle_pic; 1000=f1compassionleft_pic,f1neutralright_pic; 1500 = rectangleright_pic, rectangleleft_pic; 2000= replace(target2left); 2500 = rectangleright_pic, rectangleleft_pic]

            / inputdevice = keyboard

            / responsetime = 2000

            / validresponse = ("a", "l")

            /correctresponse = ("l")

            / posttrialpause = 180

</trial>

 This means I will have 224 trials in the trials document. I still want 112 trials to run in the experiment, and for each trial name just one out of the options trial f1aCOMPneutral*1 OR trial f1aCOMPneutral*2 for example.

Is this possible? (before I change all my trials!) Can I write in the </expt> bit to run 112 out of the 224 and choose either 1 or 2.

E.g. logically I'd guess it would be this (but obviously it won't be in inquisit language!)

/trials = [1-112 = noreplace (f1aCOMPneutral*1, f1aCOMPneutral*2) (f1bcompNEUTRAL1, f1bcompNEUTRAL2) then list all 224 trials....

Thanks again,

Sorry I don't understand any of it!

Yes. Look, a <block> is a self-contained unit. If you want to have both critical/neutral and compassionate/neutral trials run in random order, they need to be contained in the same block.

Instead compute a new variable in Excel based on the trialcode column (which should tell you if a given trials was compassionate/neutral or critical/neutral along with a bunch of other things) and sort based on this new variable.

~Dave

Thanks Dave

<block compassion>

/ preinstructions = (taskreminder)

/ trials = [1-56 = noreplace(LIST ALL COMPASSION/NEUTRAL TRIALS)]

</block>

and

<block critical>

/ preinstructions = (taskreminder)

/ trials = [1-56 = noreplace(LIST ALL CRITICAL/NEUTRAL TRIALS)]

</block>

would have to become

<block test>

/ preinstructions = (taskreminder)

/ trials = [1-112= noreplace(LIST ALL COMPASSION/NEUTRAL TRIALS, LIST ALL CRITICAL/NEUTRAL TRIALS)]

</block>

just like you've done it in the practice block.

So my two blocks would become <block test.> and have all 112 trials in them. The idea of having two blocks was that in the output I'd have some trials with 'Compassion' in the block column and some with 'Critical', then I could easily sort them on Excel so I can look at the two conditions separately. If I do it how you've explained won't they all just be under the same block name? i.e. test in the example you've given.

Sorry for my confusion, I haven't got a programming brain!

Not at all. This something that needs to be done at the <block> level. If you want a block to run both "critical" and "compassion" trials, you'll have to sample from these trials via the <block>'s '/ trials' attribute. So

<block compassion>

/ preinstructions = (taskreminder)

/ trials = [1-56 = noreplace(LIST ALL COMPASSION/NEUTRAL TRIALS)]

</block>

and

<block critical>

/ preinstructions = (taskreminder)

/ trials = [1-56 = noreplace(LIST ALL CRITICAL/NEUTRAL TRIALS)]

</block>

would have to become

<block test>

/ preinstructions = (taskreminder)

/ trials = [1-112= noreplace(LIST ALL COMPASSION/NEUTRAL TRIALS, LIST ALL CRITICAL/NEUTRAL TRIALS)]

</block>

just like you've done it in the practice block.

~Dave

P.S.: Your confusion suggests that you need to take a step back and review your knowledge about implementing experiments in Inquisit before proceeding. Maybe read http://www.millisecond.com/forums/Topic3712.aspx#3712 to get a better understanding of how Inquisit's language is structured.

Hiya,

I'm getting really confused now - am tempted just to switch back to eprime! (Although I bet that would be just as hard)

Why will my trials have different number of stimuli? I thought that each one would be the same?!

I think I'm going to have manually score the correct/incorrect responses then. Because if I do it as you suggest - with each option being a separate trial - it will lead me to having too many trials (we don't want the experiment to last for more than 5 minutes really).

 To keep it fair I would have to make sure all 8 possibilities from the 14 actors were presented. If i also added in the : and .. options I'd end up with an experiment twice as long. 224 trials. I just want the computer to choose whether it's a : or  a .. and know which response is the correct one!

Does that make sense?! I really don't want to have to manually input though so not sure what I will end up doing....

I'm thinking about having 3 blocks - one for compassion/neutral and one for critical/neutral. Just so when I get the output I can easily sort the data and keep it separate. And also a practice. Will it work if I make these changes?:

<block practice>

/ trials = [1-10 = noreplace(LIST ALL OPTIONS)]

/ bgstim = (taskreminder)

</block>

<block critical>

/ preinstructions = (taskreminder)

/ trials = [1-56= noreplace(LIST ALL CRITICAL/NEUTRAL TRIALS)]

</block>

and then

<expt>

/ preinstructions = (intro, task, taskreminder)

/ postinstructions = (end)

/ blocks = [1=practice; 2=critical; 3=compassion]

</expt>

Bit in bold - how do I get it to randomly take trials from the compassion and critical blocks (rather than just running them consecutively)

Thanks again!

Lucy.

<block compassion>

/ preinstructions = (taskreminder)

/ trials = [1-56 = noreplace(LIST ALL COMPASSION/NEUTRAL TRIALS)]

</block>

Looking at the data files you posted, this <trial target2right> is never run. So how would e.g. <trial f5gCRITICALneutral*>, which is actually run, know about this and know what to do with this? Note that

<trial mytrial>
/ stimulusframes = [1=target2left]
[...]
</trial>

does *not* reference <trial target2left>, but a *stimulus* element named 'target2left', e.g. <picture target2left>!

If you wanted to get the correct / incorrect scoring working in Inquisit 2, you'd again have to set up different <trial> elements for each possibility, e.g.

<trial f5gCRITICALneutral_target2left>
/ validresponse = ("a","l")
/ correctresponse = ("a")
[...]
</trial>

<trial f5gCRITICALneutral_target2right>
/ validresponse = ("a","l")
/ correctresponse = ("l")
[...]
</trial>

About upgrading to Inquisit 3: V3 is really cool because it allows you to do much more sophisticated stuff than V2, and as such it's worth considering. However, I don't think upgrading makes much sense as long as you haven't really gotten your head around the basics in V2. Anyway, you might just download the demo version and try it!

Trials differ in the number of stimuli they display. Obviously you have a <trial> element in your script that displays 9 stims. Obviously, you also have <trial> elements that display less than 9 stims, so the 'stimulusnumber9', etc. columns will display 0s for these trials, since there's nothing there to record.

Cheers,

~Dave

How would you do that in Inquisit 2? The ability to define "dynamic" correct responses became only available in Inquisit 3.0. That means post-hoc scoring then, I guess.

I thought that I had done this here:

<trial target2right>

/stimulustimes = [1=target2right]

/inputdevice = keyboard

/correctresponse = ("l")

</trial>

It makes sense to me logically that I have said for each of the 4 targets which is the correct response but obviously I am not making sense in Inquisit-language! Do you think I should get Inquisit 3.0 then?

With regards to the columns it all makes sense up until Stimulus8. Then I am confused as to why some rows have a 0 and some have a 1. Whereas for the earlier Stimuli the whole column had 1's....

Sorry I'm being a pain!

Thanks so much for all your help

Lucy.