[open] loops with words and pictures

Jorien

Hi,
I'm a beginner to OS and I can't get my head around the following. For a visual memory experiment, I'm presenting a target scene followed by distractor images from the same category (say, 'playground'). I've created a variable 'category' and named the pictures accordingly (e.g. playground_1.jpg etc). Now I also want to know whether subjects recall seeing particular objects (presented as written words), immediately following presentation of the images. There are about 20 different categories, and 9 words per category.
I don't know how to make sure that OS presents precisely those 9 words belonging to the specific category. For the images it was straightforward how to use the category as a variable, but for the words I find it quite difficult to work it out...
Thanks very much for any help you can give me!
Cheers,
Jorien

lvanderlinden

Hi Jorien,

You could achieve this in many different ways, but perhaps the following is the simplest:

• Define the category variable, e.g. 'cat', in the block loop item (as you probably already did)
• Add an extra loop to your trial sequence to present the words (with a sketchpad item), and to collect a response (e.g. with a keyboard_response item) following every word
• Define the words per category in the newly-appended loop item, e.g. as 'animal_list', 'beach_list', etc.
• Use the newly-appended sketchpad item to present words corresponding to the current category. You can do this very efficiently by using the square-bracket method (twice) to determine the value of the word: [[cat]_list]

For more information about using variables, please see:

• http://osdoc.cogsci.nl/usage/variables-and-conditional-statements/

Does this make sense? Please let us know if you have any further questions!

Cheers,

Lotje

Jorien

Thanks so much Lotje, this worked very well!
Cheers,
Jorien