Feedback - failing to respond in 2 consecutive trials

Builder
1

If this template helps then use it. If not then just delete and start from scratch.

OS :macOS Catalina
PsychoPy version: 3.2.3
Standard Standalone? (y/n) Yes

**What are you trying to achieve?:
I am trying to give feedback if a participant have failed to respond in 2 consecutive trials. e.g (Are you awake?)

What did you try to make it work?:
For now, I have used Conditional Branching, such that if a participant presses ‘space’, they go on to the next routine, whereas if the don’t press anything, they go to the Are you awake-routine.

This was achieved with store correct in the key component, etc, as described here.

What specifically went wrong when you tried that?:
The participants gets feedback after every trial when failing to respond. I want the participant to only receive feedback when they fail to respond in 2 consecutive trials.

2

You’ll have to write a code component that tracks recent responses with a variable and uses those to provide the feedback. That’s dicussed in the book but come back if you have a specific error that needs solving

4

I have a partial solution for now, based on the examples in Building Experiments in PsychoPy:

In a code component, I have added in Begin Experiment:

corr = []
nWakeUp = 0
nFeedbackResponse = 0

In Begin Routine, I have added:

corr.append(keyRespTrial.corr)
nCorr = sum(corr[- 2 :])
nResps = len(corr[- 2 :])

if nCorr == 0 and nResps == 2:
    nWakeUp = 1
    nFeedbackResponse = 0
else:
    nWakeUp = 0
    nFeedbackResponse = 1

However, what happens now is that:

After 2 trials with no answer, the Wake-Up routine starts, and the participant is informed that they have not answered in 2 trials, and to press a button to continue. So far so good.

After this, even if the participant does not respond in the first trial, the Wake-up Routine starts again, and the participant is informed to press continue.

After the “first” Wake-Up Routine, I want things to be reset, so that it again needs to be 2 consecutive trials with no responses before going to the wake-up routine.

I suspect I need to add some code into End Routine which clears nCorr and/or nResps?

5

By spelling it out, I think you’ve worke it out on your own!! :slight_smile:

Yes, you might want something to reset after the wake-up has been called. That depends on what you want. If someone gets it wrong twice and still doesn’t wake up do you keep telling them?

A reseting alternative could look like this:

if not keyRespTrial.corr:
    consecutiveErrs += 1  # increment
else:
    consecutiveErrs = 0  # reset

if consecutiveErrs >= 2:
    nWakeUp = 1
    consectiveErrs = 0  # reset

and obviously you’d need consecutiveErrs=0 at begin Experiment

That’s the best I can suggest, but really you just need to think carefully about the logic and what those values are on each iteration.

Jon

7

Thank you for your response.

What I want is that, if someone gets it wrong twice, they are told to press a button to acknowledge it in a Wake-Up routine.
When they have pressed the button, they need to get it wrong twice again in ordet to get the Wake-Up routine. So they are only told to wake up if they haven’t answered two times in a row.

I tried your code but the same thing still happens; after getting it wrong twice and acknowledging it, they go to the wake-up routine even after the first wrong as well.

However, I’m not entirely sure where to put the code, in which routine should the code component be added?

8

This was my solution:
In Begin Experiment:

nWakeUp = 0
nFeedbackResponse = 0
consecutiveErrs = 0

In Begin Routine:

# add +1 to Errors if incorrect answer
if not keyRespTrial.corr:
    consecutiveErrs += 1  # increment
else:
    consecutiveErrs = 0  # reset

# go to nWakeUp if 2 consecutive incorrect answers
 if consecutiveErrs >= 2:
    nWakeUp = 1
    nFeedbackResponse = 1
    consecutiveErrs = 0  # reset
else:
    nWakeUp = 0
    nFeedbackResponse = 1