[solved] Open Sesame Response Time Accuracy General Question

svaughen

Hi all,

I’m currently researching what software might be best to use for a specific experiment and was wondering if Open Sesame has any general information on the accuracy of the response time for keyboard responses on Windows 7 computers.

I looked on the “timing” page of the Open Sesame website and saw information about how to check the accuracy of the stimuli presentation time by using the Open Sesame Timestamp and information about specific monitors. However, I was unsure if this also corresponded to the accuracy of data collected about response times.

Is the accuracy of the response time collected by Open Sesame also monitor/experiment specific? Or might you all have information about the degree of response time accuracy that Open Sesame can claim?

Thanks!

sebastiaan

Hi,

How accurate keyboard response times are depends largely on the keyboard. It varies, but I think that a jitter in the order 10 ms is common. (See e.g. this paper.) If you use a dedicated response box, timing is usually almost perfect, with a jitter of less than 1 ms. None of this, by the way, is specific to OpenSesame. The hardware is the limitation here.

Is the accuracy of the response time collected by Open Sesame also monitor/experiment specific?

If you want to measure a response time relative to the onset of a visual stimulus display, then of course you need to know when the display appeared. (Which OpenSesame is very good at, as you can read on the timing page.) So in that sense, yes, response-time measurements depend on visual stimulus presentation.

Does that clear things up?

Cheers,
Sebastiaan

svaughen

Yes, thank you very much for all the information!