Unstable connection and desychronisation
Lou Schubert
Hi everyone,
I'm working on a coordination game experiment (40 periods, groupSize = 8) and ran into an issue during testing:
During the session, one player briefly lost their wifi connection mid-experiment. They reconnected within about 20 seconds, but when they came back they were on the wrong page (one waiting stage before the rest of the group)
I think what happened is that he reconnected so quickly, he was not marked as a dropout, which I understand is by design to allow for brief disconnections. Or maybe he was marked, which allowed the others to move on, and then unmarked as he reconnected.
But this meant he stayed stuck on a different waiting page than the others, and with "wait for all" active, the entire group was blocked indefinitely. I had the control panel open throughout, and I have dropoutHandling set to 2, but neither helped since the player wasn't technically a dropout.
I'm wondering if others have experienced this with participants on unstable connections, and if there's a way to handle this types of situations.
Thanks in advance,
Best,
Lou
in...@lioness-lab.org
Hi Lou,
When dropout handling is set to “proceed with reduced group”, a dropout (disconnect of >30 seconds) reduces the variable currentGroupSize by 1, and the groupNr of the dropout is set to -1. This means the participant is no longer part of the group – this should also be recorded in the logEvents table. Should the dropped-out participant return, they will not be able to proceed (as they no longer are part of a group), but the others in the group should be able to proceed, as the “wait for all” mechanism waits for one participant less than before.
Reconnection is possible if they go to the same page as where they dropped out. If they would enter the experiment at another stage (esp. outside the loop they are in), things break down. Might that have happened?
Best, Lucas
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