mousetrap & counterbalancing positions of response buttons

felixzhang

Hi, all,

I have a question regarding how to counterbalance positions of response buttons in an experiment designed with Mousetrap-os.

In this experiment, participants answer questions by clicking on one of the two response buttons in the upper corners of the screen, which are "agree" and "disagree". How can I randomize the positions of the two buttons for each item?

In Kieslich et al. (2019), it was suggested that this can be achieved through the advanced randomization operation shuffle horizontal. Since I am new to programming and OpenSesame, can anyone give me some more detailed instructions?

Thank you!

Best,

Felix

Pascal

Hi Felix,

a number of example experiments including one that demonstrates how to use the shuffle horizontal operation in combination with the mousetrap plugin can be found here:

https://github.com/PascalKieslich/mousetrap-os/tree/master/examples

In your case, you can set the values for the CategoryRight and CategoryLeft variables in the loop to constant values (e.g., CategoryLeft always agree and CategoryRight always disagree). The advanced loop operations are implemented by editing the script of the loop item (they are described in the OpenSesame documentation in more detail: https://osdoc.cogsci.nl/3.3/manual/structure/loop/#advanced-loop-operations).

In the example experiment, the loop item has already been modified by adding the following line before the final run trial line:

shuffle_horiz CategoryLeft CategoryRight

Best,

Pascal

felixzhang

Hi, Pascal,

Thank you for the solution. It's great. Now I can get the randomized response buttons for different trials. I would also like to thank you for your work in creating the Mousetrap plugin and Mousetrap R package. They are certainly of great help to me as an experimental linguist.

Have a great weekend!

Best,

Felix