Subject: Perceptual experiments: collection of all answers From: Tarun Pruthi <tpruthi@xxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 10:25:50 -0500Hi all, I had asked the following question some time back: I plan to do some perceptual experiments during the course of my research here. Since, I am completely new to this, I wanted to know if there are any softwares that help in doing perceptual experiments (organising stimuli, collecting results, designing questionairre, making the interface etc)? Thanks to the members, I got a lot of responses. For the benefit of everyone else on the list, here's collection of responses I got: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Replies: -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Tarun I think a good software is e-prime. I have never used it, but most of the people I work with use this program to set up experiments. The licence is a little bit expensive,anyway take a look and check if it could be good for you www.pstnet.com/products/e-prime/ Linda ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Tarun, There is not many free software for this, and proprietary software is very expensive. I suggest you have a look at MUSHRAM, which is distributed under the GPL license at http://www.elec.qmul.ac.uk/digitalmusic/downloads/#mushram. Best regards, -- Emmanuel Vincent --------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a program called MEDS written by Roger Kendall. This is specifically a windows based program but is a nice interface for developing perceptual experiments. I believe this is the link: http://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/systematic/Faculty/Kendall/meds.htm This would be a good start. If you have a specific setup in mind let me know there may be more available. Good luck, Jonathan P. Orose ------------------------------------------------------------------------ hi, in reference to your question about software for perceptual experiments. we use MAX/msp to design and generate our stimuli. the timing is consistent if your computer or interface has a buffer vector size of 32 bits or less. the only drawback to max is that it's pretty heavy on the programming aspect. you can even create a type of gui that your subjects can use if you wish. it's quite versatile. http://www.cycling74.com/products/maxmsp some people use matlab but we find that there (we use it on a mac osX) is some inconsistencies in the latency. matlab is great for analysis though. wouldn't use anything else. i hope this is helpful for you. Summer Rankin ---------------------------------------------- Dear Tarun Pruthi, You can download some useful software from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, www.sil.org/computing/catalog/index.asp, and also from www.praat.org. I wrote some software in Java for my Ph.D. dissertation in Linguistics at Georgetown University (http://www.georgetown.edu/departments/linguistics/Defense/Kripkee.pdf -- before revisions. Final revised version upon request.) to present sounds, capture responses, and analyze the data. If you are interested, I'd be happy to send you both runtimes and source code. Regards, Bernard Kripkee ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Tarun, You don't specify what kinds of perceptual experiments you have in mind (e.g. visual, auditory, or others). There are a number of programs available for stimulus presentation and data collection, such as E-Prime (http://www.pstnet.com/products/e-prime/) , Media Lab (http://www.empirisoft.com/), Authorware (http://www.macromedia.com/software/authorware/) , Super Lab (http://www.superlab.com/). None of them is free of charge. They all allow the use of various types of stimuli, questionnaires, randomization of presentation or stimuli etc. Best, Magda ------------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Prime is a very useable program for generating experiments and organizing results. See link below: http://www.pstnet.com/products/e-prime/ Jeremy Gaston ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey Tarun, I found myself with the same question at the beginning of my PhD two years ago. I don't have experience with any special software for perceptual experiments. Well, since you mentioned you are completely new to this I assume you are at the starting point of your research, so, I would strongly recommend you to learn a programming language (if you don't know one already) and program your experiments yourself. I know it might look scaring at the beginning but certainly pays off. The main advantage I see, is that there are no black boxes in your experiment chain, you can have complete control over it and adjust everything as you wish. If you focus on learning object-oriented programming you will realize that you can easily reuse code for further experiments without spending so much time. regards, Pablo Faundez Hoffmann --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi! you could try the "Presentation" program. nbs.neuro-bs.com it's a bit clumsy, but you can try it for free and it's really flexible, when you master it. and has got very good tutorial as well. BR, -daniel ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tarun! Allthough I couldn't agree more with Pablo about learning an (object oriented) programming language, such as c++, there is an alternative that might by useful, namely E-prime http://www.pstnet.com/products/e-prime/ It can be used to collect all kinds of psychofysical data with the help of a computer and the programming is done in an environment similar to Visual Basic, which might be less intimidating than starting from scratch with c++. Regards, Anders Genell ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I agree about E-prime (although it can be cumbersome) and also offer the thought of using JavaScript in html files if you have anyone around who could provide some support. While that still involves learning a programming language, it's a little less intimidating that a full blown object oriented programming language. Cheers, Camille ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hello Tarun, if you use a Mac-plattform, there is a free software named PsyScope. It is similar to E-prime (which we use sometimes, too). In our opinion, Psyscope has proven itsself to be very powerful for collecting behavioral data in psychological experiments (like judgements, performance data etc.). We use it since 1998, appr. 30-40 experiments, appr. 2000 participants ... http://psyscope.psy.cmu.edu/ http://psy.ck.sissa.it/ Good luck! Sabine --------------------------------------------------------------------- I agree with the suggestion to learn a real programming language. I suggest you take a look at "Python + pygame (www.pygame.org)" which will give you a lot a flexibility (+ it is multiplatform). "Praat" (www.praat.org) also allows to run perceptual experiments. -- Christophe Pallier ---------------------------------------------------------------------- As long as we are all throwing our 2 cents in, I'd suggest Matlab as a great place to start. It has the advantage of being a single environment in which you can design stimuli, collect and analyze data and perform model simulations. It also provides a very flexible graphical output mechanism. In addition, the number of labs using it is very large, providing a wide range of fellow-users to draw upon. In terms of programming, I have written experiments in Max/MSP, Psyscope, Pascal and Matlab and find Matlab to be a wonderful compromise between high-level opaque programs and low-level, steep-learning-curve languages. Erick Gallun ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Tucker Davis' SykoFizX software has a lot of "canned" paradigms which can be modified (although not as easily as the advertisements indicate!). ECoS (by avaaz innovations)is easy to use, but is not very flexible. uu Barbara E. Acker-Mills, Ph.D. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings Tarun, For Windows platforms, Presentation (www.neurobs.com) might be a good choice, particularly if you are interfacing to physiological recording equipment. It supports calibrated outputs and enables you to control multi-channel sound cards (e.g., 24 bit/96k) with several different modes for sound mixing. It can play pre-recorded sounds, synthesize relatively simple sounds, and has a Matlab interface for more complicated tasks. There are also some freeware tools for calibrating the timing of your stimuli (a problem in multi-tasking systems) with a variety of calibration results from different sound cards.posted on the website. A full-functioning version of Presentation can be downloaded for free and used for 45 days. Student licenses are $99/yr. Example experiments are available both on the website and at www.neuroexpt.com . That site also contains links to about 15 other software platforms that might be considered for stimulus delivery. David L. Woods --------------------------------------------------------------------- Cogent is a free toolbox for Matlab that is supposed to make it easy to run a wide variety of experiments: http://www.vislab.ucl.ac.uk/Cogent/ DMDX has also recommended to me: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~kforster/dmdx/dmdx.htm I have no personal experience of either of these. Stuart Rosen, PhD -------------------------------------------------------------------- SuperCollider is an object oriented audio processing language: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=54622 I've been using it to create experiments, settings as well as stimuli (it has the usual GUI facilities etc). It's very powerful in particular if you need sound synthesis (you can also use it for live computer music if you need a weekend off?). It's open source, free and cross-platform. No guarantees that it's any easier to learn that Python, MATLAB etc, just giving you more options... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Here is my personal experience about programming languages, in an academic context: I am very new to the field of audio applications, but in general I tend to recommend OCaml (Objective Caml) for many applications. I've been using it for 6-7 years for developing bioinformatics programs and I am still extremely pleased with it. It is a multi-purpose, high-level, high-productivity language, with a steep learning curve, but extremely comfortable to work with since the compiler catches most of your mistakes. You don't have to run your programs a zillion times before you can make it work. I don't like C because it makes me waste my time. I don't like C++ because it's not safer than C, just more complicated. I don't like Python because I can't afford to run my programs under all possible conditions to have an idea if they are correct or not, and occasionally it is too slow. Ada, Java for what I know are pretty verbose, that's not a good thing for my productivity. Haskell is supposed to be good but the monad thing, ... no thank you. And Matlab, well, not everything in life is a matrix, right? That's just my opinion though, and of course I am far from being a specialist of these languages, except for OCaml :-) Official site: http://caml.inria.fr Tutorial: http://www.ocaml-tutorial.org Book "OCaml for scientists": http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/ (you can ask the author Jon Harrop, he has a different experience than me and I am sure he will be glad to advertize OCaml further) Beginner's mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners/ Martin -- Martin Jambon, PhD ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Hi Tarun, You could try ALVIN, by James Hillenbrand and Robert Gayvert. This is an open source software for experiment design and control. It is a pretty easy one to figure out! http://homepages.wmich.edu/~hillenbr/ Hope this helps, Rad- Radhika Aravamudhan --------------------------------------------------------------------------