[open] Different numbers of stimuli per trial
Good afternoon,
I have just come across this great software and wish to use in my work.
I want to program a memory experiment.
In each trial subjects see words. The number of words in each list is randomised so for some trials it might be 1 word and in others up to 15 words.
Is there a way to do this in OpenSesame? I could not find an obvious option within the program for different numbers of stimuli in each experiment.
Subjects write down on paper the words that they can remember from the list but I want to display during this recall period the number of words that they saw as they have to write the words they can remember next to a numbered grid so I can measure how accurate they were at remembering where in the list they saw the word. I don't want them to know how many words will be in the list until after they have experienced the list and so it has to appear on the computer screen and not on the paper where they write their answers.
So I have two queries:
1. Can (and if so how does) OpenSesame deal with different numbers of stimuli being presented within a trial (I have 72 trials and several hundred words so would prefer not to do this manually).
2. Is there a way for it to know how many stimuli (words) it has presented in a given trial and display this at the end of each trial.
Thank you very much,
RGE.
Comments
Hi,
You could create a loop with 15 variables, named
word01toword15. For each of the cycles, only fill the amount of words you would like to show.In the sequence associated with your loop, add a text_display with the following contents:
Below is the OpenSesame script for a working example with up to three words:
Dear Edwin,
Thank you very much for your prompt and helpful reply. I am very new to OpenSesame.
It is good to know that it seems like I might be able to do what I would like to do.
I have tried your code and I couldn't get it to work but I am sure this is down to me not entering the code in the correct places. I managed to get the welcome to display but then when I clicked and pressed several buttons it would not advance the experiment. I don't know if there is a way to share what I have done? Or for you to share your experiment?
As I said I am very new to this program. I only downloaded it yesterday and tinkered for a short while and then wanted to check that it could do what I needed it to before expending a lot of time trying.
Thank you.
RGE.
No worries! (Although it might be good to read up on things one the Documentation Page.)
Open OpenSesame, and choose the default template. Next, click on
New experimentat the top of the Overview. Then click on theScript editorbutton. This opens an editor in which you can edit the OpenSesame syntax for the entire experiment.Select and delete everything that's currently in there. Then paste in the script I posted here. To save, press the
Applybutton in the top right corner.Good luck!
Dear Edwin,
Thank you for replying again.
I have done this but when I click apply and then click on run it comes up with a black blank screen which then immediately shuts itself.
I noted as well that when I pressed apply the code for the specific areas like the sequence, loop, text display etc. towards the end all disappeared from the editor.
RGE.
I've copied the script into OpenSesame, and saved the resulting experiment to my Dropbox: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/95377477/random_words_example.opensesame (to download: right-click on link, and select Save Link As...)
Dear Edwin,
Thank you once again for your help. I have progressed further with my experiment since we last spoke. I have copied in my script so that you can run it for yourself but it didn't seem to want to post it so I will try again in a separate message.
It is still a work in progress but what I want to end up with - which I know it is not set up the right way to do - is to eventually have a single pool of words and have words from this pool randomly assigned to the different locations in the list. At the moment my work around is specifying which words should be shown in the first position in the list etc. with my word1, word2 etc. variables. I want this to be fully randomised so that for different participants they see words in different orders. I tried to set up a single list [word] but when I entered this in the sketchpad to show a different word each time it just repeated the same word 7 times in the trial which led me to decide to separate out the different positions of the words - even though this is not how I want it to end up.
Secondly the next step is to be able to control the number of words it displays for each trial. At the moment it is constantly 7 but usually I have a range from 1 word in a trial to 15 in a trial. I want to have trials in which 1 word appears, 2 words etc. up to 15 words and I want these to also be appearing randomly such that for a participant they might see a trial containing 2 words, then next trial is 7 etc. but this needs to be random for each participant.
I hope this makes sense and you are able to assist with my randomisation of the words across trials (rather than prescribing them to specific locations in the list) and also with how to make the computer only show a certain number of words each time.
Thank you,
RGE.
That is the end of my script.
RGE.