Selection of set number of random trials

Builder
1

OS (e.g. Win10): Win10
PsychoPy version (e.g. 1.84.x): 3.2.4
Standard Standalone? (y/n) y
What are you trying to achieve?:

Hi everyone,

I’m quite new to psychopy (and programming - that’s why I’m going with the builder mode) and would appreciate your help. In general, my experiment is a sentence/picture matching task (i.e. each trial consists of a sound file + image file) preceeded by a priming condition (a sound file).

So my experiment should go like this:

prime
block of 6 trials
prime
block of 6 trials
etc

I have 48 trials, 6 of which I’d like to be randomly chosen once (i.e. not repeated) for each block, until all trials are done.

In case there isn’t a problem so far, let me add one: the prime has 2 levels (i.e. 2 sound files) which need to be counter balanced.

Imaginary solution 1:
create two experiments that have pre-loaded the counterbalanced primes
figure out a way to randomly select 6 trials for each block
prime1
block1
prime2
block2
loop to prime1

(and the counterbalanced version with prime2 first)

Imaginary solution 2:
create one experiment that starts randomly with either one prime and then an If conditional within the loop to present the other prime the next time
primex
block
loop(with the other prime)

I’m sure that each of the solutions might have a different way of selecting a set number of random trials from my variables file, so I’m sorry for the long post!

What did you try to make it work?:

I’ve more or less done the solution 1, but the problem is that I don’t know how to get a random selection out of the 48 items from the variables file. For the block 1 I have a selection of 0:6

image
image1920×1080 356 KB

and for the block 2 I have a selection of 6:12

image
image1920×1080 354 KB

But it randomly selects out of this range and I obviously need it to select randomly 6 out of the 48.

When it has shown all 48 trials, I’ll need to end the loop and get a message that the experiment is over.

Also, if you have a suggestion of how I could optimise this (i.e. imaginary solution 2) I’d greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,
Katerina

2

This could indeed be done 2 ways. I think the easiest is not really to treat it as blocks but as a continuous set of trials where you insert a pause occasionally that makes it look to the participant like ‘blocks’ which you could do with the following files:
conditions.xlsx (8.3 KB) fakeBlocks.psyexp (15.8 KB)

image

In that I handled the counterbalanced prime by creating a list of 48 primes (equal numbers), shuffling that list and then fetching the next one on each trial

The other option where you use a loop for trials and then another for blocks is a bit trickier but possible. For that you’d have to create a list of indices into the conditions file and pass that list in each time. It’s possible but there’s more to keep track of that way.

3

Hi Jon,

Thank you for the time you took to reply. Maybe I didn’t explain things right:

My primes are only two and they occur just before a block of 6 trials. So I need a conditional when presenting the routine where if Prime1 is used played then the other one is ignored/disabled. And next time (using a flag?) since Prime1 was played then Prime2 is played while the other one is ignored/disabled. Apparently if I put two soundfiles in the same routine then both of them need to be played.

Let me give you an example to be more clear:

We run the program and in the beginning we get a keyresponse that it’s either 1 or 2. Depending on the key response the program runs like this:

If we put 1

Prime1

Trial1

Trial2

Trial3

Trial4

Trial5

Trial6

Prime2

Trial1

Trial2

Trial3

Trial4

Trial5

Trial6

Prime 1

Trial1

Trial2

…

Trial6

Prime2

Trial1

…

Trial6

If we’ve pressed 2 in the beginning then the experiment should go like this:

Prime2

Trial1

Trial2

…

Trial6

Prime1

Trial1

Trial2

…

Trial6

Prime2

Trial1

…

Thanks again!