Memory Recognition Task Randomization Issue

Coding
1

Hi! I am new to psychopy and coding and I’ve been working on this for a few days and can’t seem to figure it out… I have a list of 14 statements and there is a new and old version of each statement. I managed to program the experiment so that participants are randomly presented with 7 new statements and 7 old statements (they can only see one version of each statement). The statements are organized in a csv file with each type in a different column.

However, I want to add 7 foil statements to the experiment so that a total of 21 statements (7 of each type) are randomly presented. I’ve managed to add the foil statement but it is only presenting 14 trials and there is a random number of each statement.

This is what my code looks like:
Begin experiment:
import random

#randomize the Excel file by row
all_rows=[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13] #if you have 20 rows in your Excel sheet, this field should be 0-19
random.shuffle(all_rows)

OLDorNEW=[“old”, “new”,“foil”]*7 #if you want 7 trials randomly selected between old and new, change 4 to 7 here
random.shuffle(OLDorNEW)

Begin routine:
trial_type = OLDorNEW[trials.thisN]

if trial_type == “new” or trial_type == “foil”:
continueRoutine = False
else:
thisExp.addData(‘trial_type’,trial_type)

And here’s the loop:

Screenshot 2024-06-28 at 3.20.46 PM
Screenshot 2024-06-28 at 3.20.46 PM1192×198 24.9 KB

2

Shouldn’t this be 0 to 20 for 21 trials?

Is there a reason why you are using selected rows? Does the spreadsheet have a different number?

4

The spreadsheet has 3 columns (statement_new, statement_old, statement_foil) & each column has 14 rows. Initially, it had 2 columns (old, new) and I added a new one when I added the foils. I don’t know if it’s the proper way to add them though?

I tried 0 to 20 and removed selected rows from the loop properties and I am still getting only 14 trials. I also removed the selected rows and it didn’t change anything, I had it previously to randomize before adding the loop.

Thank you for the help btw!

5

For 21 trials you should have 21 rows.

Either

Three columns with 21 statements in each

or

Put the 7 foil statements in different rows from your 14 new/old statements. You could put x in the statement_new column and then have something like:

if statement_new == 'x':
     thisStatement = statement_foil
     trial_type = "foil"
elif OLDorNEW.pop() == "old":  # or possibly == ["old"]
     thisStatement = statement_old
     trial_type = "old"
else:
     thisStatement = statement_new
     trial_type = "new"