Collection of reaction times - question

brt123

Dear community,

After setting up my experiment via OpenSesame (great software!) I want to record my participants' reaction time to a specific target sketchpad.
The structure of my trialsequence is shown in the screenshot.

Now I have three questions regarding this:

1. Will this set-up produce reliable collections of the reaction time to my target sketchpad (and only my target sketchpad)?
2. During the process, OpenSesame recorded a variable that was called "response_time_Target" which I understood was the response_time to my target sketchpad. Now this variable is gone and I am left with the "response_time" variable. Am I still recording the reaction time to the target slide or something else? (like maybe the general response time to a whole trial or sth...)
3. I set the duration of the target sketchpad to 0, as advised in the tutorial for the gazecuing experiment. Also I run a "correction trial" after every false trial (see this thread: http://forum.cogsci.nl/index.php?p=/discussion/3635/one-correction-trial-after-false-reaction#latest). Can I set the duration of this sketchpad to 0 also and append a keyboard_response item behind it without screwing up my logfile or mixing up the recorded reaction times?

I would be happy if someone had a quick answer to these issues as I want to start collecting data by tomorrow...

Cheers and happy holiday!

sebastiaan

Hi,

Will this set-up produce reliable collections of the reaction time to my target sketchpad (and only my target sketchpad)?

Yes!

During the process, OpenSesame recorded a variable that was called "response_time_Target" which I understood was the response_time to my target sketchpad. Now this variable is gone and I am left with the "response_time" variable. Am I still recording the reaction time to the target slide or something else? (like maybe the general response time to a whole trial or sth...)

The response_time variable is the last response time collected by any item. The response_time_keyboard_response is the last response time collected by the item called keyboard_response, etc. Does that make sense?

Can I set the duration of this sketchpad to 0 also and append a keyboard_response item behind it without screwing up my logfile or mixing up the recorded reaction times?

Yes, because the _[item name] disambiguates the different items.

Cheers!
Sebastiaan

brt123

Thanks for your answer, Sebastiaan!

The response_time variable is the last response time collected by any item. The response_time_keyboard_response is the last response time collected by the item called keyboard_response, etc. Does that make sense?

So in my case that means that the variable "response_time_keyboard_response" basically collects the same reaction time as the "response_time_Target"? Or, in other words, is the "response_time_keyboard_response" wrong, yet reliable so that I can still report it and use it for my analyses (I suppose that the variance of the values doesn't change from Target - response to keyboard - response...). By the way I programmed the experiment for some science course in University and it's rather about a proof - of - principle than real hypothesis testing, so that wouldn't be a problem.
Background of my question is that I have two versions of the Experiment running (one for left - handed and one for right - handed participants, so to say) and now found out that I can't find the "response_time_Target" variable in one of the versions. The "response_time_keyboard_response" variable is present in both datasets so I could analyze that, if it validly measures the reaction time to the target slide...

Cheers!

eduard

Hi,

To chime in a little, the easiest way to find out, is to compare the values of the two variables for the experiment for which both are present. If they are the same, you're good, I guess.

Eduard