The Psych/Lab (TM) software contains programs to run versions of classic experiments from Human Cognitive/Experimental Psychology. The programs allow some (but not too much) control over parameters of their operation, provide raw trial data in text files, include analysis programs to compute condition means, and they are free! There is also a program that allows one to run their own reaction time experiment.  The software has been in use since before 1990 for the Experimental Psychology course at Washington University, and in many other places around the world. You can use any of the programs for teaching or research, and you can distribute them to others for the same purposes but do not sell the software or otherwise use the programs or documentation for any commercial purpose without contacting the author first. The programs run fine on a wide range of different (PC) computers but you know that we cannot guarantee that they will work properly on your computer, or for your purposes (but they work on all of ours). To learn more about the programs in general, click here. To learn more about the specific experiments, see the section "Individual experiment programs" below.  Click on the name of an experiment and you can read about the software for that experiment.

Download Area

Here are quick links to everything that you can download.  Can't decide?  Get Psych/Lab for Windows.  It includes all of the programs and is easier to run than the individual programs.  And yes, it's free.

Psych/Lab for Windows XP

• Click here to download the most recent version (8/21/04). (3.0MB zip file.  You will need an unzipping program such as WinZip).
• Save the file to your desktop.
• "Open" it after the download is complete and extract the files to the desktop.  (They are in a single folder.)
• Double click on the Psych/Lab folder to open it.  Double click on setup.exe and follow the instructions.
• If you do not have the Microsoft .NET Framework installed you will be prompted to download it (free) from the Microsoft Update site.
• After the installation is completed you can delete the folder and the zip file on your desktop.
• Installation will place a shortcut to the program on your desktop.
• Note: If you logon to XP as an administrator, then you can ignore this step, but if you logon as a regular user then you must set permissions properly in XP for the programs to run! To do that first you must somehow logon as administrator! Then in Windows Explorer browse to the folder in which you installed PsychLab. (The default is Program Files/PsychLabWin.) Right click on the folder, select the security tab, choose the user whose permissions you want to change, and set the permissions to "full access". This is necessary because the programs create and delete files in the PsychLab folder when they are run.
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• Note: Minor annoyance when using ANOVA program.. If you are using the ANOVA program you will need to take this additional step in order to view the output. The output is contained in the file ANOVA.OUT which is in the PsychLab folder (the default is Program Files/PsychLabWin). After you run the ANOVA you must browse to that folder (using windows explorer) and then open the anova.out file using Notepad. When I have time I'll try to fix this...

Psych/Lab for Windows 98 (and 95)

• Click here to download the most recent version (8/5/02). (3.0MB zip file.  You will need an unzipping program such as WinZip).
• Save the file to your desktop.
• "Open" it after the download is complete and extract the files to the desktop.  (They are in a single folder.)
• Double click on the Psych/Lab folder to open it.  Double click on setup.exe and follow the instructions.
• After the installation is completed you can delete the folder and the zip file on your desktop.

Individual experiment programs

Click on an experiment name below to read more about it. Click on "Experiment" to download the experiment program or "Analysis" to get the analysis program. All of these programs are included in Psych/Lab for Windows (above).

• Donders Reaction Time.  Experiment. Analysis.
• FLEX1 FLexible EXperiment Software.  Experiment. Analysis.
• Inhibition of Return of attention.  Experiment. Analysis.
• Lexical Decision.  Experiment. Stimulus file 1. Stimulus file 2. Analysis.
• Memory Scanning.  Experiment. Analysis.
• Mental Rotation.  Experiment. Analysis.
• Muller-Lyer Illusion.  Experiment. Analysis.
• Precuing Visual Attention.  Experiment. Analysis.
• Signal Detection.  Experiment. Analysis.
• Stroop Interference.  Experiment. Analysis.

Click here to tell us what you think!

Visit the author's page: Richard A. Abrams

last modified 6 August 2002.