Running E-Prime experiments online
tudor
I have an E-Prime script for an experiment that measures subjects'
reaction times to a simple number comparison task. The design of the
experiment is such that the subjects need to run the experiment daily
for 3 weeks, which is why I intend to have them run it from their
homes, online, rather than asking them to come each day into the lab.
I thought it would be the easiest for the subjects if their daily task
is to login to a website and run the script through their Internet
browser. This will enable me to monitor their performance every day,
which is quite important. The data files (which are small, < 1 MB)
would be stored on the server.
However I am concerned that, in this case, the reaction times will not
be accurate, because, unless the script is somehow ran "locally",
there will probably be a significant (and variable) Internet lag
between their response and the moment the response is registered.
On the other hand, if I choose to run the experiment "offline" by
having them run a copy of the script on their computers, I will have
no knowledge of their performance before the end of the 3 weeks (I
would not want to ask them to submit the data files every day).
Since I am very new to E-Prime, I am not sure what would be the best
way to go about running this experiment. Can anyone help? Many thanks
in advance!
ben robinson
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Michiel Spape
Couple of thoughts:
- That would be far easier. The only thing I could think of which you might try is to have people log on to your system through remote desktop (mstsc) and see if you can run E-Prime that way. Last time I tried that (i.e. last time I tried to work on an e-prime experiment from home), this failed, however.
- The problem with Ben’s idea here is that you’d require each of your subjects to have an E-Prime license key (cost of which is about 650 Euro, last time I checked).
Alternatively, and MUCH easier, is to learn a simple bit of Flash and let them run Flash experiments from your server. It’s very easy to program (in comparison with trying to figure out how, if at all possible, to run E-Prime on a server!), rather easy to learn (Flash comes with a very easy tutorial that gets you doing cool things within hours), and although the timing is rather inaccurate, it’s better than nothing. Cheaper, and to mind, better, is to run stuff on Silverlight and design experiments using Expression Blend. It’s free for university students (google ‘Microsoft Dreamspark’), can do Visual Basic (but later versions), and more properly object based than Flash.
You should consider:
- Running experiments from a server (rather than a local computer) brings inaccuracy due to latency problems;
- Running experiments from local computers connected to a server brings inaccuracy due to the fact that you don’t have a clue as to what they’re running.
Therefore, E-Prime won’t do much better than anything other out there. If you’re very new to E-Prime, I recommend learning something else instead – transition from E-Prime to proper programming is harsher than the other way around.
Cheers,
Mich
Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
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David McFarlane
In general, I do not think that E-Prime is set up
to run over a network, certainly not with ms
accuracy, and I do not expect PST to have any such plans for the future.
If you do want ms accuracy for tasks run over a
network, then try Inquisit by Millisecond,
http://www.millisecond.com . Put briefly, with a
program written in Inquisit, subjects can go to a
web site, and it will install an add-on or
plug-in to their local machine, which they must
do only once (much like installing Flash to run
Flash content from the web). Now when they
launch the Inquisit program from their web
browser, the program will actually run locally on
their own machine, with all the power of DirectX
to provide ms accuracy. Clever, eh? And then
you can have the data posted directly to a
network repository of your own choice, which you
may then examine remotely at any time. I think
this covers exactly what you asked for, and it is
all covered by the terms of the Inquisit license.
I generally find Inquisit an inferior product to
E-Prime, but in this instance it exceeds EP. And
the company that handles Inquisit is much friendlier than PST.
-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder
Matt
locally and then e-mail back the EDAT files. The run-time only
license of E-Prime should be enough to let you distribute it to
whoever you need to participate, have them install it, and then run
the EBS files locally.
The run-time is around $100-200.
On Sep 24, 8:39 am, Michiel Spape <Michiel.Sp...@nottingham.ac.uk>
wrote:
Michiel Spape
Wish I lived in a country where the university would be willing to spend $100-200 per subject for an online experiment! Actually, I think it is pretty insane one has to pay 96,15 EU (looked it up) just to get such a runtime engine...
Another idea, experimentally more valid (since the problem of different systems still persists whether you use the solution below, or David's, or mine (Flash/Silverlight), and perhaps more pragmatic, is to install your experiment on a decent laptop and drive around the country to get data from all your participants. Don't know what the price of petrol is these days, though!
Cheers,
Mich
Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
www.cognitology.eu
-----Original Message-----
From: e-p...@googlegroups.com [mailto:e-p...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: 26 September 2010 16:48
To: E-Prime
Subject: Re: Running E-Prime experiments online
--
Matt
license might allow you to distribute to all of the participants to
run the experiment. So $100-200 total for all of the participants, not
$100-200 each. PST would have to give the official word on whether or
not the license covers this situation.
But yes, installing on a laptop and taking it to each participant is
the ideal option and no run-time is needed for that.
On Sep 27, 4:21 am, Michiel Spape <Michiel.Sp...@nottingham.ac.uk>
wrote:
> Wish I lived in a country where the university would be willing to spend $100-200 per subject for an online experiment! Actually, I think it is pretty insane one has to pay 96,15 EU (looked it up) just to get such a runtime engine...
>
> Another idea, experimentally more valid (since the problem of different systems still persists whether you use the solution below, or David's, or mine (Flash/Silverlight), and perhaps more pragmatic, is to install your experiment on a decent laptop and drive around the country to get data from all your participants. Don't know what the price of petrol is these days, though!
>
> Cheers,
> Mich
>
> Michiel Spapé
> Research Fellow
> Perception & Action group
> University of Nottingham
> Sent: 26 September 2010 16:48
> To: E-Prime
> Subject: Re: Running E-Prime experiments online
>
> The subjects shouldn't need a full E-Prime license to run experiments
> locally and then e-mail back the EDAT files. The run-time only
> license of E-Prime should be enough to let you distribute it to
> whoever you need to participate, have them install it, and then run
> the EBS files locally.
>
> The run-time is around $100-200.
>
> On Sep 24, 8:39 am, Michiel Spape <Michiel.Sp...@nottingham.ac.uk>
> wrote:
> > - The problem with Ben's idea here is that you'd require each of your subjects to have an E-Prime license key (cost of which is about 650 Euro, last time I checked).
>
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Peter Quain
Timing would be shot no matter what, so if timing was important,
and/or DV was RT there would be problems... different machines,
different times to execute the same blocks of code, or load the same
stimuli. Different refresh rates ... You'd have to make sure that
there was lots of slack built in (no 4ms load times, for instance) to
account for different processors, RAM, HDD access time etc. etc.
etc.; that refresh was changed to the same value on each host
machine; that timing utility was run on each machine, and the values
also sent back to home; that the paradigm included code to check ..
the list might go on, perhaps
tudor
each participant would not be possible (although I agree it is the
ideal option), nor asking them to send data files at the end of each
day. My experiment does not require a lot of accuracy in the
measurement of RTs, so I think an online solution could work well.
It would be good to find a solution that doesn't require writing new
code but rather using the existing E-Prime code, either directly (if
running on the same platform) or machine-translated into a different
language (e.g. Flash). I heard that there might be a special version
of Flash for running experiments online, does anyone know anything
about this?