Programming a psycholinguistic experiment on OpenSesame
Hello, I have to program a psycholinguistic experiment for my master's thesis, and I'm having a very hard time programming it in OpenSesame. Can anyone help me?
A short description of my experiment: In my experiment, participants see an object on the screen, hear two voices (a male and a female voice) and are asked to select the most appropriate voice (voice 1 or voice 2) for each object by pressing a button on the computer (1 or 2).
The line drawing of an object appears on the screen for a few milliseconds and then disappears. After about 500 ms, the object reappears together with a recording of a male or female voice saying a short sentence. The object disappears again, then reappears and repeats the sentence with a voice of the opposite sex. It then remains on the screen until the participant presses a the key 1 on the keyboard to indicate that he or she prefers the first voice or the key 2 if he or she prefers the second voice heard. After a pause of about 1,500 ms, the next line drawing appears.
The procedure could be summarized as follows:
In total, participants see 24 images of objects and hear a male and female voice for each image. The content of the sentences they hear varies from image to image. The order in which they hear the male and female voices is randomized, as is the order in which they see the images.
I've tried this with just one image, but the experiment doesn't work. I think I may have made some basic mistakes. I would be very grateful if someone could give me some sort of step-by-step explanation. Thank you!
Comments
Hi @EmelyBF,
From what I see, there might be some issues in your loop table that could be causing problems, depending on how you've set the variables in the other items. However, it's hard to say for sure without knowing what error you’re encountering when running the experiment.
Could you share your experiment file? That way, I can take a closer look and suggest the best way to fix it—it might be more helpful than step-by-step instructions.
The order in which they hear the male and female voices is randomized
Does that mean each image appears only once, with either a male or female voice first? Or does each image appear twice—once with the male voice first and once with the female voice first?
Let me know, and I'll be happy to help!
Claire
Check out SigmundAI.eu for our OpenSesame AI assistant! 🤖
Hi @cvanbuck,
Thank you for your quick reply! I've attached what I have at the moment, but it's very incomplete. I wanted to try it with just one image and see if it worked, and then add the other 23 images and their audios, but it doesn't work.
Regarding your second question, each image appears three times. The first time it appears alone (without any voice), the second time it appears with one voice (it could be the male or female voice) and the third time it appears with the other voice, and it remains on the screen until the participant presses 1 (to choose the first voice) or 2 (to choose the second voice). Once the choice has been made, a white screen appears for 1500 ms and then it starts with the second image. The order of the 24 images should be randomized for each participant. This means that they won't see the images in the same order.
Thank you for your help,
Emely
Hi @EmelyBF,
Here is a modified version of your experiment, which should now work as expected.
Just add your files to the file pool and update the names in the loop table accordingly.
You might also find this tutorial helpful: Beginner tutorial: gaze cuing // OpenSesame documentation. It covers some useful basics that could help with similar setups (or if you want to tweak things like background color, or whatever).
Hope it helps!
Claire
Check out SigmundAI.eu for our OpenSesame AI assistant! 🤖
Hi @cvanbuck,
Thank you so much for your help! It is a great step forward that the experiment is working and I can actually see and hear something. However, the image only appears twice: once with no voice and a second time with a random voice (male or female), which is very nice! But one step is missing: it should appear a third time with the other voice and then stay on the screen until the participant chooses voice 1 or 2.
It also doesn't react to pressing 1 or 2. It just stays there and I have to stop the experiment. Does this work on your computer? Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
I really appreciate your help :)
Emely
I've tried a few changes and the only way I could get the experiment to go through the three steps while running (image without voice, image with voice 1 and image with voice 2) was to set the image duration and audio duration to "keypress". This way, the experiment moves forward, but the audios are not played until a key is pressed, and at the end, the image stays there and doesn't react to me pressing 1 or 2 to select a voice. Instead, when I press 1 or 2 or any other key, the sound is played again :(
Hi @EmelyBF,
I'm not sure why it’s not working on your computer—it runs fine on mine without any of the issues you mentioned.
Are you using the latest version of OpenSesame? (If not, you can download it here: Download // OpenSesame documentation). Also, are you on Windows, Mac, or Linux?
Claire
Check out SigmundAI.eu for our OpenSesame AI assistant! 🤖
Hi @cvanbuck,
I'm on a Mac. I downloaded the last version of OpenSesame and run the experiment file again, but I still have the same problems. I've attached a link to a video of my screen. In the video, you can't hear the audio, but I do hear the audio the second time the image appears.
https://www.canva.com/design/DAGgHUHk9U8/TlR7iZPfVjoAfToHKVK9rw/view?utm_content=DAGgHUHk9U8&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h110e2f2746
Thanks!
Emely
@EmelyBF, that's weird. Have you tried running it with a different backend (legacy or xpyriment)? Do you get any error from the console?
Check out SigmundAI.eu for our OpenSesame AI assistant! 🤖
Hi @cvanbuck,
it tried it out with Experiment and PyGame and it did work! OMG! I can't believe it works! I could even run my first version! I'm going to add the rest of the files to your version and update the names in the loop table.
Thank you so much!!!
Emely