e prime crashes if subject presses response button twice
Jas
I am trying to design an experiment on E-prime, which pretty much
worked except that if it happens that the subject accidentally presses
the response button more than once, or presses both response buttons
one right after the other, the E prime crashes and won't continue the
experiment. Being an absolute beginner, I don' t even know what
information you may need to be able to help me. Any help from more
experienced users is appreciated.
Best regards, Jas
Michiel Spape
For one, you should be able to code your experiments to be foolproof (or idiot proof, as coders like to say). In E-Prime, that is pretty easy: in the standard e-prime paradigm, say, a priming one with stimulus-->response--->feedback, just make sure that the participant CAN only give one response, by for instance:
* have the Stimulus object only accept one input, and, to avoid clicking on after feedback, insert a short copy of the stimulus, except without any input object.
* design your experiment in such a way that the participant sees feedback notifying him/her this is certainly NOT what they should do (say, use a jump label on the copy of the stimulus), make sure you code into your .edat file that your subject has been naughty and that you don't want to use this particular trial.
I get, however, the impression the above won't help you, useful as the information is, because: E-Prime certainly does not crash if the subject presses the response buttons after another or at the same time. I have done many experiments with sequential, *very fast* response buttons, double response presses, and so on, and have never experienced this. What I have, and very often so, experienced, is that participants are pressing the windows key. They do that sometimes, possibly because it's such an attractive key. They very finest way I've come up to avoiding this issue is by getting a screwdriver, placing it at an angle of 45 degrees below the windows key, and taking out the key. It's perhaps a bit harsh to treat a 5 euro investment like this, but it's cheaper than wasting your own time for 30 minutes.
If that won't hack it, then: start from scratch. Can you replicate crashing e-prime by pressing two keys at once? (I'd be amazed). Also, there's a ton of good information freely available on the net that'll get you from 'absolute beginner' status to 'average psychologist status'.
Cheers,
Mich
Dr. Michiel M. Sovijärvi-Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
www.cognitology.eu
Hi everybody,
Best regards, Jas
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mrtj
Are you using a Eprime response box, or are you using the keyboard of
your computer?
If you are using a keyboard: When participants accidently press the
shift button repeatedly (or some other key combinations), this will
activate 'StickyKeys' (or other functions) in Windows and will cause
Eprime to crash. You can deactivate these automatic key functions
through the Control Panel > Accessibility Options > Keyboard.
I'm not sure of this is your problem, but if so this may well help.
groeten,
Maartje
mrtj
(being a beginner myself)
Michiel Spape
Just to say: this one completely went over my head - you're absolutely right, that'd certainly crash e-prime! I doubt it's the problem here, though, the only one who repeatedly activates "Stickykeys" is my cat, who likes to sleep on top of my keyboard (especially when I'm trying to use it).
Best,
Mich
Dr. Michiel M. Sovijärvi-Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
www.cognitology.eu
Hi Jas,
groeten,
Maartje
--
Jasmina Bakic
Hi,
Mich and Maartje, thank you for the advices and the wits. I am still working on it …
To answer your question, Mich, I can actually make it crash intentionally, I just have to press one of the two possible response keys on the keyboard several times, and it crashes right away. So, unfortunately, I don’t think it is the problem with pressing shift or windows button.
My two “ participants” report that this is, of course, totally unintentional, and probably very difficult to control, especially after a while, when you really get into the task.
The response message that I get is : 11042: Filename on ImageDisplay has not been set
On ImageDisplay I had set the two possible responses in the Response Options session under “allowable”...
Jas
Hester Duffy
Jasmina Bakic
yes, I think you are totally right about this one, thank you! E prime has to give the feedback based on the correctness of the response, with three options "true", "false" and "too late". The problem is, I don;t want to just get rid of the double/triple button press answers because I am still interested in knowing whether the answer was correct or not. The only in line that I wrote so far was to make sure that the answers will be recorded whether they are given during the stimulus presentation or in the blank afterwards, and I don't know how to expand this to include cases where button has been pressed several times, so to still record the answer and give the feedback.
Jas
ben robinson
ImageDisplay has not been set), that it has absolutely nothing to do
with how you are coding responses. whichever ImageDisplay object is
meant to onset at the moment your program is crashing has a missing or
mis-labeled image file specified, and that ImageDisplay object crashes
e-prime because it can't find an image file that it needs in order to
perform its job.
ben
Jasmina Bakic
yeah, it is most sensible explanation. , I just run it once again, to make sure it really is not a mislabelling problem, so I let all the images I use and all the feedback options play out several times. After I made sure all of them are uploading correctly, I just pressed, as before, same response button twice, and sure enough- it crashed. Is it possible that for some reason e-prime sees it as an ImageDisplay error?
Best, Jasmina
David McFarlane
Ben and Hester are both steering you down the
right track. Based on your error message, the
error does not come from the response to your
stimulus object, it comes from whatever object
later tries to load an image file using that file
name. So you have to start at that object and
work backwards -- clearly, the file name that it
tries to load is not what you think it is,
despite all your testing. I would try adding a
bit of inline code with a MsgBox or Debug.Print
that echoes the file name right before the point
where the program crashes (E-Studio will show you
that in the full Script window), then crash the
program with the multiple key presses and see
what file name E-Prime tried to use when it
crashed. Might turn out that the file name used
depends in some way on the subject responses, which would explain everything.
And of course, as I keep reminding folks, you
could also take this up with PST's trained staff
at
http://support.pstnet.com/e%2Dprime/support/login.asp
-- they strive to respond to all requests in
24-48 hours, and this is pretty much their
substitute for proper documentation, so make full
use of it. And if you do get an answer from PST
Web Support, please extend the courtesy of
posting their reply back here for the sake of others.
-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder
At 11/8/2011 11:11 AM Tuesday, you wrote:
>Hi Ben,
>
>yeah, it is most sensible explanation. , I just
>run it once again, to make sure it really is not
>a mislabelling problem, so I let all the images
>I use and all the feedback options play out
>several times. After I made sure all of them are
>uploading correctly, I just pressed, as before,
>same response button twice, and sure enough- it
>crashed. Is it possible that for some reason
>e-prime sees it as an ImageDisplay error?
>
>Best, Jasmina
>
>On 8 November 2011 16:58, ben robinson
> <<mailto:hester...@gmail.com>hester...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> It may be to do with the way your program deals with responses; I've dealt
> >> with an issue in the past where, if the response wasn't what e-prime was
> >> expecting, it fell into an interminable loop and then crashed. Is E-prime
> >> doing anything with your responses other than simply recording them? For
> >> example, is it using them to set event codes, to determine feedback, to
> >> choose the next stimulus, anything of that
> sort? If so, it's worth having a
> >> look at the bit of code that does that, and ensuring that there's a
> >> catch-all "ELSE" function, so that if the feedback is something other than
> >> what e-prime was expecting, it still knows what to do with it.
> >>
> >> H
> >>
> >> On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 12:36 PM, Jasmina
> Bakic <<mailto:jasmin...@gmail.com>jasmin...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> Mich and Maartje, thank you for the advices and the wits. I am still
> >>> working on it …
> >>>
> >>> To answer your question, Mich, I can actually make it crash
> >>> intentionally, I just have to press one of
> the two possible response keys on
> >>> the keyboard several times, and it crashes
> right away. So, unfortunately, I
> >>> don’t think it is the problem with pressing shift or windows button.
> >>>
> >>> My two “ participants” report that this is, of course, totally
> >>> unintentional, and probably very difficult to control, especially after a
> >>> while, when you really get into the task.
> >>>
> >>> The response message that I get is : 11042: Filename on ImageDisplay has
> >>> not been set
> >>>
> >>> On ImageDisplay I had set the two possible responses in the Response
> >>> Options session under “allowable”...
> >>>
> >>> Jas
> >>>
> >>> On 7 November 2011 12:14, Michiel Spape
> <<mailto:Michie...@nottingham.ac.uk>Michie...@nottingham.ac.uk>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi,
> >>>> Just to say: this one completely went over my head - you're absolutely
> >>>> right, that'd certainly crash e-prime! I doubt it's the problem here,
> >>>> though, the only one who repeatedly
> activates "Stickykeys" is my cat, who
> >>>> likes to sleep on top of my keyboard
> (especially when I'm trying to use it).
> >>>> Best,
> >>>> Mich
> >>>>
> >>>> Dr. Michiel M. Sovijärvi-Spapé
> >>>> Research Fellow
> >>>> Perception & Action group
> >>>> University of Nottingham
> >>>> School of Psychology
> >>>> <http://www.cognitology.eu>www.cognitology.eu
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> From:
> <mailto:e-p...@googlegroups.com>e-p...@googlegroups.com
> [mailto:e-p...@googlegroups.com] On
> >>>> Behalf Of mrtj
> >>>> Sent: 06 November 2011 21:12
> >>>> To: E-Prime
> >>>> Subject: Re: e prime crashes if subject presses response button twice
> >>>>
> >>>> Hi Jas,
> >>>>
> >>>> Are you using a Eprime response box, or are you using the keyboard of
> >>>> your computer?
> >>>> If you are using a keyboard: When participants accidently press the
> >>>> shift button repeatedly (or some other key combinations), this will
> >>>> activate 'StickyKeys' (or other functions) in Windows and will cause
> >>>> Eprime to crash. You can deactivate these automatic key functions
> >>>> through the Control Panel > Accessibility Options > Keyboard.
> >>>> I'm not sure of this is your problem, but if so this may well help.
> >>>>
> >>>> groeten,
> >>>> Maartje
> >>>>
> >>>> On Nov 4, 5:26 pm, Jas
Peter Quain
not sure how this might cause your problem, but perhaps the second press jumps straight out of the feedback object when it is not supposed to? Are fb object's properties set to do what you want, or is there a response allowable, and some jump action? maybe back to before the initial image display? If ep is somehow jumping to an image display object that has already run, perhaps there is no indication on that trial for another image to be displayed.
- change response button?
- try another computer?
Jasmina Bakic
I solved the problem by adding a few additional lines in In line. In short, the problem was that participants could respond during stimulus presentation or in the blank after, but if they accidentally did both (by two or more button presses one right after the other) , e -prime wouldn't know what feedback to send. So I just defined this a little bit better and it worked.
Thanks everyone for help!
Jas