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My research group has gone pure python for coding experiments; we've been burned too many times by glitches and implicit behaviour in boxed experiment-building software to bother trusting it. Moving from a point-and-click experiment design interface to pure code does have a large learning curve, and you want to be careful to model your own code on well ...
20
"Science" refers to a methodology for obtaining knowledge, and often to the knowledge itself as well. Science is often confused with another term "technology", that refers to the application of such knowledge for practical uses. Some people might incorrectly refer to "computers" and "cars" as examples of "science", when in fact they are examples of "...
17
This effect is referred to as Piaget's Theory of Conservation.
Piaget constructed an experiement where children would be shown a tall, narrow glass of colored water (to make it clearly visible in a clear glass) and two shorter, wider glasses of the same exact size.
A single amount of water would be distributed in both small glasses. If a child is asked "...
17
Here are a few options. I have not tried them yet personally.
As mentioned below, the rtdists package in R is able to fit both LBA and diffusion models.
Other Options
LBA
Scott Brown has a copy of Donkin et al (2009) on his web page with some code in R, Excel, and WinBUGS for fitting the LBA model:
http://www.newcl.org/publications/...
16
I'd suggest checking out the Linear Ballistic Accumulator (Donkin et al., 2011) model for a scenario like this. While LBA can be used to model any number of alternatives in a speeded choice task, to model signal detection you'd want to model just two accumulators, one for the "signal" response and one for the "no signal" response. With this scenario, ...
15
There is currently a lot of debate surrounding what questions Bayesian modeling is appropriate for answering within cognitive science, as well what makes a "poor model." Unfortunately these become extremely thorny issues very quickly, partly because what is called "bayesian modeling" actually refers to a rather heterogeneous set of approaches and ...
13
I would recommend Matlab and the Psychophysics Toolbox. It lets you display all sorts of stimuli in full-screen mode, and it lets you capture key strokes and mouse clicks.
13
MANOVA is definitely a bad idea given that one dv is continuous and the other is binomial. After exploring a number of different approaches to combining RT and accuracy data, I've come to conclude that the best current approach is to use linear ballistic accumulator model (e.g., see Donkin et al 2011).
The LBA is a simple (structurally and computationally) ...
11
A paper comparing the performance of Inverse Efficiency Scores and diffusion models for the quantification of RT and accuracy can be found here.
Rach et al. (2011) "On quantifying multisensory interaction effects in reaction time and detection rate " Psychological Research
Volume 75, Number 2, 77-94, DOI , PDF
11
Veridicality is a term used in cognitive science; it is the degree to which your internal representation of the world accurately reflects the external world.
Some background
Since the work on Humberto Maturana in color perception, it was considered very important to not always focus on the fact that there is some external stimuli to be cognized by the ...
11
I've studied this a little bit within the context of timing responses to personality test items. General models of reading speed look at both the time to read the words as well as to comprehend. From memory, eye tracking studies have shown how the eyes will often back track to confusing parts of a sentence (apologies for lack of reference).
Some general ...
11
The basic approach that you are describing sounds like inverse efficiency scores (e.g., see Townsend and Ashby, 1978,1983), which are measured as
$$\frac{r}{1-e} = \frac{r}{c}$$
where $r$ is reaction time, $e$ is proportion error, and $c$ is proportion correct. John Christie provides a critique of inverse efficiency scores here or see the discussion in ...
10
There are a variety of models solving accuracy and RT that have been pretty well tested and LBA is probably fine (I haven't used it). If you don't want to go that far there is a rather simple way to analyze data controlling for SAT that has much better mathematical properties than IE scores (which, as Mike said were named by me, but offhandedly proposed by ...
10
In addition to Mike's answer, see the Ratcliff diffusion model E.g.:
Ratcliff, R., & Rouder, J. N. (1998). Modeling response times for two–choice decisions. Psychological Science, 9, 347–356.
Ratcliff, R., & Tuerlinckx, F. (2002). Estimating parameters of the diffusion model: Approaches to dealing with contaminant reaction times and parameter ...
10
@CHCH has provided a good broad overview, but I thought I would also append some specific experiments that are considered to be a weakness of Bayesian models. The whole theme of this answer is an extension of Tversky and Kahneman's program of rationality-violation. All of these experiments can be fitted by some Bayesian-ish just-so model of the sort Bowers &...
10
This is an experiment testing the Stroop effect, named after John Ridley Stroop who studied it in 1935, and often called a Stroop experiment. It is a classic and well understood experiment and has now become a neuropsychological test for use in clinical settings, usually called the Stroop test.
9
Programs/packages for EEG analysis
There are decent MatLab toolboxes with good tutorials for for the analysis of EEG data. The EEGLAB toolbox (tutorial) can be operated by both GUI and command-line (and script). The fieldtrip toolbox (tutorial) is mainly operated by command line / script.
Of course there are also (commercial) software packages for EEG ...
9
For the diffusion model, there is also Eric-Jan Wagenmakers' "EZ-diffusion model", which you can find here.
This paper compares three different pieces of software for estimation of diffusion model parameters:
von Ravenzwaaij D., & Oberauer, K. (2009). How to use the diffusion
model: Parameter recovery of three methods: EZ, fast-dm, and DMAT.
...
9
A study that used the field setting you describe is done by Bateson et al. (2006).
As for the mechanism, they write:
we believe that images of eyes motivate cooperative behaviour because they induce a perception in participants of being watched. Although participants were not actually observed in either of our experimental conditions, the human ...
8
OpenSesame is a recent entry that is cross-platform and seems to promote GUI-based design while allowing customization via Python scripting.
It can be found at their website (link above). A recent article has references and summarizes 16 other tools as well (including some reported in the other stackexchange responses). I found great video tutorials and ...
8
Procedures like this are often called "funnel debriefing" procedures, and they basically consist of an extended version of what you already had in mind.
You begin with some very general questions about the nature of the experiment (e.g., "Do you have any initial thoughts or reactions about this experiment?"), then move on to some questions that are slightly ...
8
Disclaimer: As you have noted yourself, there aren't very many scientific researches on the topic. The only main points that I can derive are generally of blogs or sketchy speculations. As such, you are supposed to take this answer with a grain of salt.
Interesting Thing of the Day notes that polyphasic sleep may make the person awake and alert but have ...
8
Yes! The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) is widely used.
From the IAPS instruction manual:
The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) is being developed
to provide a set of normative emotional stimuli for experimental
investigations of emotion and attention. The goal is to develop a
large set of standardized, emotionally-...
8
You might look for examples in the Witt, Donnellan & Orlando (2011). They tested subject motivation in a psychology subject pool to see how it varied among groups. There may be follow up studies. Looking through similar studies will give you an idea of the kinds of things people use to assess. This is not a standardized line of research (yet).
Witt, E. ...
8
I think it's a basic concept of experimental design that you have control groups. So for example, if you want to study the effect of X (e.g., a drug) on Y (e.g., performance), you could manipulate X (e.g., give half the drug and the other half no drug) and randomly assign the participants to either group.
Random assignment is a strategy for making the groups ...
7
I use the FieldTrip toolbox in Matlab to analyze my own modified auditory MMN experiment :) But I use MEG, so I don't have that many software options. The toolbox is very powerful but it has a steep learning curve and I would recommend it only if you already have both Matlab and EEG data analysis experience.
I don't analyze my data in the classical MMN way ...
7
I would first like to discuss the concept of lateralization and clear up a common misconception about hemispheric dominance.
"A brain is considered to be asymmetrical (or lateralized) if one side (hemisphere or other brain region) is structurally different from the other and/or performs a different set of functions." (Bisazza et al., 1998).
A good ...
7
If you really wanted to know you could use models of reading behaviour - e.g. EZ-Reader or Swift. The Rayner reviews are the classic go-to to outlne this kind of thing:
Rayner, K. (2009). Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006) (Vol. 62, pp. 1457-506).
It will ...
7
I'm not aware of a comprehensive resource that details all of this information for all of these tests. A simple solution would be to find a specific reference for each of the tests you're interested in.
A good place to start looking for these references might be The Cognitive Atlas, which has a Tasks section. For example, the page about Digit/Symbol coding ...
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