OS: MacOS Sierra (version 10.12.5) PsychoPy version: 1.184.2 Standard Standalone? (y/n): Yes, standard standalone What are you trying to achieve?:
I have built an experiment to be used in fMRI in PsychoPy builder. The experiment is supposed to display a random set of 40 words, 3 times for a total set of 120 words. Participants will need to make a button press response to each word. In between each word presentation is a fixation period, and in between each set is a brief break period.
At some point during the running of the experiment, the experiment will stop presenting stimuli and accepting button press responses and will just present a grey background. Each time it is in the middle of a loop, the freeze is linked to a different stimulus set, and there is no associated error message or warning making it difficult to narrow down and diagnose the problem. The program will not abort, it just ceases to respond.
What did you try to make it work?:
Examined output files
Examined script for errors
Ensured input files were correct and being read by PsychoPy
Google searched for possible similar issues other people experienced
Tried running experiment on different OS
Ran experiment with similar structure to see if the same issue occurred
What specifically went wrong when you tried that?:
Output files show no consistent pattern of when experiment aborts. Stimulus sets and points in the loop when the experiment aborts have all been unique
Script looks ok (no error messages)
Input files were being read correctly (no error messages or warnings)
Did not find anyone with a similar issue to try to troubleshoot off of
Ran on Windows 10 and issue still occurred
Experiments with similar structures run without errors or issues from start to finish
Hi, it sounds like you have been throughly investigating the problem, but it is unlikely that anyone here can suggest anything else without actually seeing your experiment files.
Is it possible to post here the minimum experiment (i.e. smallest number of trials and files) that reliably shows the problem?
I am running an experiment with a loop of 25 trials and without fail the whole python program will stop working at one of the trials from 20-23. I have never been able to run my experiment to the end.
I have not found any problems in the code, all my images have been reduced in size so they do not overload the program.
I have run a shorter but similar experiment and it does not seem to have any trouble finishing.
And every time the experiment freezes and I have to shut it down it fails to save any data at all.
I have been told it might be due to how much processing power my computer has so I am going to try it on a desktop rather than a laptop and I will let you know if that makes any difference.
Is your experiment behavioral only or is it designed for eyetracker, fMRI, etc?
Mine is for fMRI and I learned the hard way that it was my synch pulse that was throwing everything off so make sure your whole experiment is put together and then add in the synch pulse last!
I hope maybe this helps, but I am still curious to hear what your issue is if it is something different so I can keep that in mind moving forward as well.
My experiment is only behavioral, I am trying to investigate if social context has an influence on economic decision making in risky decision making. But thank you I will keep the synch pulse in mind if I advance to using fMRI in the next stage of investigation.
I am trying out a few different attempts to fix my issue and I will let you know if I find something. It always appears to happen around the same time so First I am going to see what happens if I set up the experiment to end earlier then work on from there.
Convert to the coder and try it first.
if you really need to run from the builder, and if you have lots of statements printing to the console, try removing them (make a copy though beofre you do this!)