Microphone Voice Recording

I’m designing a picture-naming experiment for which I need to record the participants’ voice, and I have a problem.
On the one hand, when I run the experiment If I tap my keyboard as soon as I name the picture, my voice will be interrupted and Psychopy microphone will record just half of my voice. On the other hand, If I wait for Psychopy microphone to record my voice completely and then tap the keyboard, my key response rate output will be longer than when I tap the keyboard as soon as I name the picture. Is there any setting in Psychopy Builder or Coder to solve this problem?

OS (e.g. Win10):
PsychoPy version (e.g. 1.84.x):
Standard Standalone? (y/n) If not then what?:
What are you trying to achieve?:

What did you try to make it work?:

What specifically went wrong when you tried that?:
Include pasted full error message if possible. “That didn’t work” is not enough information.

Hello,

why do want to tap the keyboard in a picture-naming experiment?

Best Jens

Hello

Because I want to measure naming latency through the keyboard tap.
Do you any other ideas to help me?

Kind regards,
Mohaddese

Dear Mohaddese,

well this forum is about PsychoPy-programing , not experimental design, but using a keyboard tap as a measure of a vocal response does not give the appropriate measure for a picture naming task.

You might want to take a look at publicly available demo on pavoliva, e.g. https://gitlab.pavlovia.org/avinhcado/word-naming, https://gitlab.pavlovia.org/mcphedrm/picture-word-naming-task, https://gitlab.pavlovia.org/zjy/word-naming or https://gitlab.pavlovia.org/zjy/word-naming-task. I did not try out any of the posted examples, so no guarantee.

Or search the forum for word naming. There are a couple of posts regarding voice-recordings.

Best wishes Jens

Dear Janes

Thanks for providing your helpful information.

Truly yours,
Mohaddese

Dear Jane

Thanks for your perfect links, but I’m a beginner in psychopy and I can’t write codes in it. Can you help me and provide a link that helped you to write the code of the https://gitlab.pavlovia.org/mcphedrm/picture-word-naming-task experiment. When I copy your code I see NameError of vocal rt and I don’t know how I can solve it.

Kind regards,
Mohaddese.

Dear Jens

Hello, I’m setting my experiment to get vocal RTs in the end. However, I face two problems:

  1. Throughout the experiment, there are cases when even no responses are given to the stimulus but voice RT is recorded. I wish to know if there are ways to reduce the sensitivity of the program not to record the noises from the environment!

  2. Since I am working with autistic special cases, I have to set a long time out for each trial, say 5 seconds. But it may be distracting for faster participants. Is there a way to set the timeout on the participants’ voice response?

Kind regards
Mohaddese

Hello Mohaddeseh

regarding 1) this is a typical problem in mic recordings, being sensitive enough but at the same time ignoring non-speech signals. When you can’t control the outside noise, you have to manually correct the voice-onset time afterwards by listening to each sound-file yourself. You might reduce the influence of outside noise by using a microphone that is attached the participants’ clothing (if they sit still enough, for instance a Sennheiser ME 2-II) or by using a microphone that is worn like a headset (a Sennheiser ME 3-II). Other brands have similar offers and I have no affiliations with Sennheiser.

regarding 2) it seems as if the microphone-component does not stop the trial. I do not know whether this will be possible with some code. Are you in the room where the experiment takes place? In this case you could attach a mouse or keyboard with some extension cable and use a mouse or keyboard-component that ends the trial. You press the mouse-button or keyboard after your participant has responded to end the trial.

See here for more details on the microphone-abilities of PsychoPy. You might consider another software which might be more suited for your needs. I am familiar with Inquisit which offers a 30 day trial-period and can record the voice-responses. I am also familiar with Presentation from Neurobehavioral System that offers to the ability to set the mic-level for each participant before the experiment starts. Unfortunately, both are not open-source and you have to buy them.

Best wishes Jens

Dear Mr. Jens

I really thank you and appreciate you due to your perfect and detailed information.

Kind regards
Mohaddese

Dear Mohaddeseh,
May I have your email address?