OpenSesame stops working in a loop with sound file presentation

platzf

Hi,

My first attempt to post here may have failed or is delayed—apologies if this is a duplicate.

I’m conducting an experiment in OpenSesame and adapted the beginner tutorial for a simpler version. Participants detect melodic errors and respond with “e” (error) or “c” (correct). To implement my 2 (length) × 2 (perfectness) repeated-measures design, I used the {var.name} trick to structure my audio file names as {var1}.{var2}.wav/mp3.

However, after the first audio file plays, OpenSesame freezes without an error message, requiring me to quit via ESC. What might be causing this issue?

Thanks in advance!

platzf

cvanbuck

Hi @platzf,

I'm not sure without more details, could you share your experiment file?

Claire

platzf

Hi @cvanbuck ,

thank you very much for your response. Originally, I used .wav-files but I have now included *.mp3 files. I checked the behavior with both file types and received the same system behavior (freezing after first audio presentation). Thank you for your support!

Friedrich

Trial_Exp.osexp

cvanbuck

Hi @platzf,

It seems like you were simply mispecifying the allowed keys in the keyboard item that appears right after the sampler item. Try it this way instead:

Does this solution work for you too?

Claire

platzf

Hi @cvanbuck ,

unfortunately it's not working. The system freezes after the first audio file. Nothing happened. I've tried several combinations with "e;c" e,c,... but nothing helped.

Best wishes

Friedrich

cvanbuck

Weird, it did solve the issue for me... Maybe try with another key e.g., space? Have you tried running the experiment on another computer or with a different backend?

platzf

Hi!

Actually, my OpenSesame is running on a mac, but I think that simple setup should run on every machine. I also tried several backends: Interestingly it's only working on the OSWeb-Backend. However, the long road to "my" experiment is, that I would like to measure the reaction time, next to correct or incorrect responses.

Unfortunately, the console gives no addition information. One positive aspect now to me is, that the overall structure is not wrong. However, it would be perfect for now, if it would work also on the psycho-backend as well...

cvanbuck

Hi again @platzf

I'm not entirely sure why this is happening, as simply removing the quotation marks worked on my machine with the PsychoPy backend.

Could you check which version of OpenSesame you're using and ensure it's the latest?

For troubleshooting:

• Try setting 'space' as the allowed key response (without quotes) to see if it's a parsing issue.
• Set the keyboard item’s duration to a fixed time (e.g., 5000ms) to prevent an infinite loop waiting for an unrecognized response.
• Remove the keyboard item temporarily to check if the rest of the experiment runs correctly.

Let me know what happens!

Claire

platzf

Hi again @cvanbuck ,

excuse my late reaction. I tried several setups as suggested:

• I used "space" (without quotes) as allowed key response
• set the duration to a fixed time (5000ms)
• and run the experiment with the PsychoPy (psycho) backend

resulting in a freezing system. Removing the keyboard item temporarily resulted in the same system behavior. Contrarily, the setup with and without the keyboard item worked well in all other backends.

Best wishes

Friedrich

platzf

Hi @cvanbuck and everyone else,

do you have any further suggestions in order to get the simple experiment running in the native OpenSesame (psycho) backend? Or do you have any other ideas what might be causing the experiment to run on all backends except for the psycho backend?

Have a nice day,

Friedrich

cvanbuck

Hi @platzf,

I'm not sure what's causing the issue, as it worked fine with the Psycho backend on my Windows machine, after removing the quotes. Maybe someone else will have a better solution to offer, but here are some things you could try in the meantime:

• Run it on a different Mac machine to see if the issue is related to your specific machine or MacOS in general.
• Uninstall Opensesame on your device and install the latest version with the standalone package (in case of compatibility issues with the PsychoPy libraries or something similar).
• Use the .wav audio file format only.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

Let me know how it goes,

Claire