How to show the responses from practice trials to participants?

Yuyanxue

Hi OpenSesame developers,
Thanks for creating such a useful tool for us! Almost all the problems arising from my experiment building process were solved by watching the tutorials and reading various posts on this forum!

Now I am trying to show the participant's responses after the practice trials (it's a rating task ranging from 1-7. There is no right or wrong answer, but I would like to check participants' responses after practice trials before they enter the main experiment to see if they need more instructions or practice). I came across this post
forum.cogsci.nl/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/12683/ and also the manual osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.1/manual/response/keyboard/, but what I wanted was all the responses from practice trials instead of the previous trial. Is this possible? I tried adding a sketchpad after the practice block and write [response], as the variable name of the responses is 'response', but it didn't work...

In addition, is it also possible to add a feedback if the difference in responses of the previous two trials is, say, smaller than 2 (as I would expect more difference given the previous instructions they received)?

Thanks a lot,
Mengzhu

eduard

Hi Mengzhu,

I tried adding a sketchpad after the practice block and write [response], as the variable name of the responses is 'response', but it didn't work...

If you try the same with a feedback item instead of a sketchpad does it work then? (The rationale why it could work is explained here: http://osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.1/manual/prepare-run/#sketchpad-and-feedback-items

In general, what you describe is very possible in python scripts (that is inline_scripts).

For example. the code below adds the score of some response variable to a string that you can then present at the end of the practice in a feedback item. If you want to add some control layers (difference between any two must be smaller/bigger than 2, you can also add this here, you just have to work out the logic)

# this inline_script has to be put after the response was given and the script has to be in the run phase

# you also have to create a variable that captures all the responses before the practice loop
# e.g.: var.practice_responses = ' '
# I assume it exists for this script

if var.practice == 'yes': # consider responses only when we are in the practice phase
     var.practice_responses += var.response # add the response
     var.practice_responses += '\t' # add some whitespace to have a better view

# Later you can put a textfield into a feedback item and put [practice_responses] as text and you will see all the responses

I hope this make somewhat sense to you.

Eduard

Yuyanxue

Hi Eduard,
Thanks very much for your reply.
Yes, it does work if I use a feedback item. But when I tried the inline_script you've written (the script was in the run phrase and was after the practice_loop), but an error occurred saying:

'The variable 'practice' does not exist. Tip: Use the variable inspector (Ctrl+I) to see all variables.'

The weird thing was 'practice' was one of the variables when I checked using both 'variables inspector' or the results file... (someone had the same error message, but I haven't figured out a solution yet http://forum.cogsci.nl/index.php?p=/discussion/212/open-break-from-a-loop-item)

What problem was this you reckon?

Thanks a lot,
Mengzhu

eduard

Hi Mengzhu,

Can you upload your experiment? What you describe sounds a little weird. If the variable cannot be found, it shouldn't be written to the logfile.

Eduard

Yuyanxue

Hi Eduard,
Please find the mini version of my experiment in the attached.
Thanks a lot,
Mengzhu

eduard

Hi,

So, the variable var.response was not defined. Neither was var.practice_responses. As I mentioned in the comments of the code, you have to initialize them in order for the code to work. Also, the inline_script has to be put in the loop, not after the loop. There were a few other little hickups in the code, but the attached experiment should work now.

Good luck.

Eduard

Yuyanxue

It worked. Thank you