Self-paced Reading Task

[Mayhra Z]

Hello everyone, 

I hope you are doing great and having fun! 

I am a new comer, since it is my first e-prime experiment! 

My aim is to contruct a self-paced reading task with stationary window. 

I read the user's guide so as to get to know the software better. Sadly, the lexical decision task provided as an example is far from what I need.

As I told you, my aim is to contruct a self-paced reading task with stationary window. The thing is I have the 2.0.8.90 version and every script or package I find is designed for newer versions. Unfortunately I don't know how to write a code script. I just know that I have to use an Inline Object to manipulate the way the experimental items will be shown to my participants.

Any piece of advice is more than welcome! 

Thanks in advance.

Sincerely, 

Mary 

[Michiel Spape]

Hi Mary,

So where are you stuck? I don’t think you need to use inline at all to do a self-paced reading task unless you do something advanced. However, I would suggest not just going through the guide, but

1. Go through the getting started guide (in E-Prime 2)
2. Read my book, The E-Primer (available both for EP2 and 3, but even the newer one consistently explains how to do the same in EP2).
3. Find some online material: STEP experiments (available in EP1 and 2 previously; not sure whether also in 3); there’s also David McFarlane’s course, and this E-Prime Tutorial #1: Introduction to E-Prime — Andy's Brain Book 1.0 documentation (andysbrainbook.readthedocs.io) .

Likely as not, after you do a few sample tutorial experiments, you should be able to do what you want to do.

Best,

Michiel

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[Mairi Papageorgiou]

Hello Michiel, 

First of all, I would like to thank you for answering my message.

Actually, I wasn't stuck. I just had no idea how to begin building the task, after I read the user's guide. I didn't feel like I had read something relevant to experiments regarding sentential processing or even how to get sements out of sentential items - that's why I thought I had to use inline objects. 

Furthermore, I could not find something relevant or sth I can test in the version I have.

In any casy, I would like to thank you again for your help. I'll check everything and hopefully everything will find their way.

I hope you enjoy your summer! 

Best regards, 

Mary

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[c fataax xuseen xuseen]

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[Michiel Spape]

Hi Mary,

Yes, this is kind of a thing with self-paced reading tasks. Basically, there are versions that take a block of text, present it, and once the subject is done reading they hit space or some such. This is of course easy enough; it’s the same as any e-prime experiment with a trial and a target stimulus. Then you have versions that segment the block of text. You could translate text to be split by code and have each word, or each sentence, be presented in sequence. It’s perfectly possible, but likely enough you will find the job of coding this in exactly the way you want it to be harder than just having 6 attributes ‘sentence1’, ‘sentence2’, etc, and hard-coding the 6 sentences to be presented within the same trial procedure with unlimited duration until pressed space. One way to help you a bit:

Make a list, trial list, 1 procedure, trialproc. To levels (trial1, trial2).

Add 6 attributes: sentence1, sentence2…6.

In the trialproc, add 6 textdisplays. Make each unlimited duration, end with {SPACE}. Let textdisplay1 show [Sentence1], textdisplay2 [sentence2], etc.

 

In the attribute, add the following info on the first line.

Sentence1: The cat (Felis catus), commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal.

Sentence2: It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae.

Sentence3: Recent advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the domestication of the cat occurred in the Near East around 7500 BC.

Sentence4: It is commonly kept as a house pet and farm cat, but also ranges freely as a feral cat avoiding human contact.

Sentence5: Valued by humans for companionship and its ability to kill vermin, the cat's retractable claws are adapted to killing small prey like mice and rats.

Sentence6: It has a strong, flexible body, quick reflexes, and sharp teeth, and its night vision and sense of smell are well developed.

 

Now figure out what to do for the second level (e.g. dog).

There are far more elegant ways of doing this, but this is the easiest I think!

Hope it helps,

Michiel

 

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[Mairi Papageorgiou]

Dear Michiel,

Many thanks for this enlightening message!

In fact, your first suggestion is what I had firstly though, but, given that I would want to have a pool of (approximately) 100 sentential items, it would be quite time-consuming constructing such an experiment and for this exact reason I thought that there have to be another way to do it.

The problem with the (inline - if this is the core you are referring to) code is that I don't know coding. It would be a perfect but hard challenge. Consequently, this would be my last choice.

In any case, I'll rush and try your suggestion-I thought i should have the sentence as Attribute, the sentential item as its value and my problem was how to split the intrasentential segments. So now I see how each sentence being an attribute can help!
Overall, I hope I got this all thing right!

Thank you once again for your invaluable help!

I'll come back to you as soon as I make it!

Best regards,
Mary

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[Michiel Spape]

Hi,

Yes, the first suggestion is possible, for example you can have an attribute with the entire paragraph, then use a split string on the period or something like that, and use what comes out to fill the attributes, for example:

Dim mystring as string()

Dim i as integer

mystring = split(mystring, “.”)

for i = 1 to ubound(mystring)

                c.setattrib “Sentence” & i

next i

 

…but I must admit I forgot the exact way ebasic likes to declare arrays (in mystring) because I don’t have eprime installed on my home pc. Also whether splitting a string is with the split function or something similar – this looks more like matlab code. You can find out both easily if you go through the documentation. The next lines then create attributes dynamically.

 

There’s a better way of doing this without code, though. Dump your entire paragraph one line below the next into an attribute at the trial level, then add an extra SubTrial list with just a single sentence (one textdisplay with text [Sentence]). Now, instead of ‘horizontally’ arranging the sentences, you could just add the following to the Sentence attribute:

[Sentences:0]

[Sentences:1]

[Sentences:2]

[..]

[Sentences:5]

…In the subtrial list. It’s a bit harder to explain this without pictures and enough time, but the key thing is that the attribute-colon-number syntax allows you to select a specific level within another attribute. These are 0-indexed, so [Sentences:0] refers to whatever is on the first level of the attribute Sentence (note the difference between sentences and sentence).

 

Perhaps it helps, perhaps it’s a bit much to wrap your mind around quickly. Often enough, I find it helps students to actually see the exact sentences written out in different attributes in a great big trial list, so they immediately notice if some conditions in the experiment have far too much text compared to others, for example. You can easily miss critical information if you just code stuff to work some magic and then trust it will work somehow.

Best,

Michiel

 

 

 

 

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[McFarlane, David]

Michiel,

Thanks for plugging my online E-Prime 2 course, but we retired the course when I retired from the university at the end of this June. Of course, users still have all the resources that you mentioned, and I highly recommend your "The E-Primer".

I might still tune in to the E-Prime Google Group and help when I can, but my activities will be somewhat limited now that I no longer have keys to run E-Studio :(.

-- David McFarlane

________________________________________
From: e-p...@googlegroups.com <e-p...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Michiel Spape <msp...@um.edu.mo>
Sent: Thursday, August 8, 2024 2:19 AM
To: e-p...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Self-paced Reading Task

1. Go through the getting started guide (in E-Prime 2)
2. Read my book, The E-Primer (available both for EP2 and 3, but even the newer one consistently explains how to do the same in EP2).
3. Find some online material: STEP experiments (available in EP1 and 2 previously; not sure whether also in 3); there’s also David McFarlane’s course, and this E-Prime Tutorial #1: Introduction to E-Prime — Andy's Brain Book 1.0 documentation (andysbrainbook.readthedocs.io)<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://andysbrainbook.readthedocs.io/en/latest/E-Prime/E-Prime_ShortCourse/EP_01_Introduction.html__;!!HXCxUKc!ziBVzcSyoPMkXdWCo9cxIFQr0L4c8eRLggJ3dji9FYm8IeJ3ZfuQGrHFnuKkqSaBrdg5Df6_I94TaGo__w$> .