The software available here has been developed as a classroom aid for
teaching Experimental Psychology. The included programs conduct experiments
using classic paradigms from human experimental/cognitive psychology. Each
experiment provides raw (individual trial) data, and also has an analysis
program that will compute means of various dependent measures.
A program is also provided (FLEX1) to allow users to create and run their
own reaction time experiments.
For most of the experiments, the user must enter a (random) number at the
start of the program to initialize any randomization of conditions necessary
for the experiment. The same sequence of trials and conditions can be repeated
in another run of the program by entering the same random number.
Each experiment program also allows the user to adjust various parameters
that control the design (number of blocks of trials, number of trials per
block, etc.) and the timing of various events during the experiment. Most
experiments will be satisfactory for most purposes by using the default
parameter values. If parameters are changed, caution is advised because
invalid parameter values are typically not trapped by the software, and
may cause undesired operation. One example of such an occurrence would
be if the number of trials per block was not an exact multiple of the number
of distinct trial types per block: The result would be an unequal number
of observations in the different conditions.
Raw data files from previous runs of each experiment are automatically
deleted each time the experiment program is run. Thus, it is important
to output results from each run of an experiment before repeating the experiment.
Similarly, the output file from each analysis program (which includes means
and standard deviations of the dependent measures in the various conditions)
is deleted each time the analysis program is run.