[open] One up one down forward digit span task

christianhigton

Dear everyone,

I am trying to put together a up-and-down forward digit span task, where a participant is presented with a series of numbers and then, when prompted, will recall and enter the numbers. I am hoping that the series will start with a digit span length of 5 and then increase by 1 digit span each time a score of over 50% is achieved for a trial, potentially up to a digit span of 15 with a maximum of 10 trials. Each time a participant gets below 50% the digit span should be decreased by one. I have tried to use the GUI staircase function to achieve this. But I have failed on all accounts.

Any advice or comments would be appreciated.

Many thanks in advance

Chris

Josh

Hi Chris,

You said you failed on all accounts, but in order to know what advice would best help you forward, I still need to have clear: do you have any experience with OpenSesame? (e.g. have you built other, perhaps simpler experiments before?)
I personally haven't used the GUI staircase function before (anybody else would be welcome to give advice here!), but I could imagine ways in which you could realize your experiment with a loop item and some inline_script code.

Cheers,

Joshua

christianhigton

Thanks for your reply Joshua.

I would say I am fairly familiar with Opensesame. I have written several experiments in past including dot probes, Stroops etc . I have also made use of the some in-line script to incorporate Python code but I wouldn't say I am very confident in writing my own complicated Python code, but if you could give me some Python code to get me started that would be very much appreciated. My suspicion is that the built-in Staircase plug-in is not designed for the task that I had in mind. It seems to be more geared up for psychophysics experiments.

Many thanks for your time

Chris