e-primer book

[Lorig K]

Hello, I was wondering how many folks own the e-primer book by spape et al (2014) and if anyone has had trouble with some of the tutorial exercises at the end of each chapter? Either the text book is not written well or e-prime is way over my head! Any responses would be most welcome!

[Michiel S-Spape]

Hi Lorig K,

Personally, I would say the book is on the whole a pretty pleasant read! It is, however, written somewhat on the premise that one goes through all the exercises, not skipping bits and then one can slowly grasp better what is going on – from guided tutorial, to more self-oriented learning, so to speak. I do not expect it is entirely without flaws, and would be happy to post errata if you find any issues. Please let me know where you’re stuck and I can see what I can do.

Best,

Michiel Spape (nyet al)

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[Anne-Wil]

Hi!

Is there a specific exercise that you're stuck on? Perhaps it's more useful if we try to push you back on track :)

[David McFarlane]

Lorig K,

For fun, I just worked through the first tutorial in the book (end of
Chapter I), and it worked OK for me. Of course, I already know E-Prime
pretty well, so perhaps I had an easier time filling in any "gaps" -- in
some places the tutorial instructions are brief and assume you know how
to fill in some details (e.g., it says, "Double-click on the
TrainingProc and add a List there", without giving more minute
mechanical instructions). I think you could find some of those more
minute details in the Guides that already come with E-Prime, so make the
most of all the materials available to you. I might go ahead and try
later tutorials in the book myself.

Like Anne-Wil wrote, do you have trouble with a specific tutorial? What
sort of trouble?

Also, what version of E-Prime do you use? The book was written for
E-Prime 2 (as was my online course), some things have changed with
E-Prime 3.

---------------
David McFarlane
E-Prime training online: psychology.msu.edu/Workshops_Courses/eprime.aspx
Twitter: @EPrimeMaster (twitter.com/EPrimeMaster)

[David McFarlane]

Well, I worked through all of the guided Tutorials in the book (I did
not do any of the followup Exercises or Advanced Exercises). Indeed, as
you go along the book assumes that you have worked through earlier parts
of the book, so the Tutorial instructions get more general and less
detailed. In most cases you can figure it out, and maybe look at the
Guides that came with E-Prime to fill in some of the more primitive details.

A few of the tutorials have problems due to changes in E-Prime 2.0 that
happened after publishing the book. A couple of web pages that go with
the book speak to that -- see
www.e-primer.com/2015/01/important-changes-in-e-prime-version_16.html
and
www.henkvansteenbergen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Troubleshooting-E-Prime-2.0.10.x.pdf
. And a few other tutorials have other issues, some with more obvious
fixes than others.


So here are some specific comments about a few tutorials ...

Tutorial VI, Working Memory Test: With EP2.0.10 and later, the program
will run without any error messages, but Feedback will not show the
intended results because the Feedback object will get set up before a
response is entered in GetAnswer. To fix this, on the Feedback object,
set Generate PreRun to BeforeObjectRun (on the Common tab).

Tutorial VIII, Cyberball: With EP2.0.10 and later, the program will
produce a Runtime Error, "Movie requires a call to .Load before being
played". Similar to the problem in Tutorial VI, this happens because,
by default, the program tries to Load the movie file at the top of the
Procedure, before the Filename gets set in the InLine that precedes
PlayerMovieDisplay1. And it has a similar fix -- on the
PlayerMovieDisplay1 object, set Generate PreRun to BeforeObjectRun.

Tutorial IX, Quasi-random trial selection: You will have to figure out
some of the details for settings for Feedback, Introduction, and
Stimulus, use your judgment. The inline code on on p. 157 does contain
a critical spelling error that results in a compile-time error,
"RandomiseArray" should be "RandomizeArray" (the book authors use
British spelling, but E-Prime uses American spelling).

Tutorial X, Simple questionnaire: The finished tutorial does not reset
the options before each question, although it works in all other ways.
This is a minor shortcoming, I suppose you could treat resetting the
options as just another optional exercise.
Note that E-Prime 3 has much better built-in support for questionnaires,
which will make this tutorial unnecessary, although it still makes a
decent inline code exercise.

Tutorial XI, Mouse tracking: Note that SlideImage.Y, etc., are relative
to the Frame coordinates of the SlideState, and because EP2.0.10 and
later default to Frame sizes of 75%, the dot and square will not be
centered vertically. You may fix this either setting the Height of the
SlideState to 100%, or by modifying the inline calculations to take into
account the Frame dimensions.


Finally, note that the book does not cover E-Prime 3.0. EP3 introduces
enough changes that it may require a new book (and a new version of my
online course).

---------------
David McFarlane
E-Prime® 2.0 training online:
psychology.msu.edu/Workshops_Courses/eprime.aspx
Twitter: @EPrimeMaster (twitter.com/EPrimeMaster)