Course meeting time: Thursday, 10:15 - 11:45, Missionsstrasse 64a, Computerraum 00.010
Syllabus (you’re looking at it) webpage: http://rpubs.com/ajluck/Syllabus2018
Instructor: Ashley Luckman, ashleyjames.luckman@unibas.ch
Office Hours: By appointment (or you can stop by my office at Missionsstrasse 62A and hope I am in)
Your homework for each class period is to read the reading/article for that week. In particular we will discuss the design of the Experiments in the article and implement some of the key features. All of the work you turn in will be done in class as WPAs (Weekly Programming Assignments).
New WPAs and readings will be uploaded weekly, so check back regularly.
In the second half of the course, each student will be involved in presenting a paper as part of a small group.
| Week - Date | Topic | Reading | Assignment (in class) | Content |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 - 1 March | Introduction | None | WPA #1 | Course Details, Assignment, Basic Introduction, Running an Experiment |
| 2 - 8 March | Basic Choice Experiment | Kusev et al. (2007) - Particularly focus on Experiment 3 | WPA #2 | Structure of a task in Inquisit, Presenting Stimuli, Recording Keyboard Responses, Structure of Data file |
| 3 - 15 March | Categorization Experiment | Spiering & Ashby (2008) | WPA #3 | Multiple Trial types, Conditional Feedbcak, Branching (assigning conditions). |
| 4 - 22 March | Masked Priming | Feldman et al. (2009) | WPA #4- UPDATED | Stimulus Timing, Response Times, Condition Assignment (repeat), pairing stimuli, Instruction Pages |
| 5 - 29 March | No Class | - | - | - |
| 6 - 5 April | Staircasing Procedure | Weber & Chapman (2005) or link2 - Experiment 2/Indifference Points | WPA #5 | Stimuli Conditional on Responses, Custom Values |
| 7 - 12 April | Group 1 Presentation | Lindgaard et al. (2011)- Experiment 2 | WPA #6 | Response sliders and other response methods. |
| 8 - 19 April | Group 2 Presentation | Greenwald & Farnham (2000) - Experiment 1 (you’ll need the uni network to access the pdf) | WPA #7 | Block feedback, Logical Expressions, Participant defined Stimuli lists. |
| 9 - 26 April | Group 3 Presentation | Rudert et al. (2017) -Study 1 | WPA #8 | Revision, Condition Assignment, Data storage |
| 10 - 3 May | Final Project work | - | - | Class will be spent working on final project |
| 11 - 10 May | No Class | - | - | - |
| 12 - 17 May | Group 5 Presentation | Mumford et al. (2008) | WPA #9 | Surveys, Posting Surveys online |
| 13 - 24 May | Group 4 Presentation | Jessup, Bishara & Busemeyer (2008) | WPA #10 | More advanced trial feedback |
| 14 - 31 May | Project Work | None | - | - |
| - 14 June | Project Due | No Class | - | - |
If you want to work on projects or assignments outside of class, Inquisit is also installed in the computer rooms in the front building. Unfortunately you won’t be able to install Inquisit on your own laptops or personal computers using the university licence.
Here are some useful links for finding examples of code, findings answers to questions and a good introductory tutorial.
| Link | Description |
|---|---|
| Millisecond test Library | Library of common Experiments programmed in Inquisit. |
| Inquisit Forums | Forums where people ask questions about programming in Inquisit. |
| Ron Dotsch Tutorial | A good tutorial on programming a simple experiment. |
Inquisit is a commonly used software for programming Experiments in psychology. One of the advantages Inquisit has over other popular alternatives, such as psychtoolbox in Matlab, Psychopy or Java, is that it is very easy to get started programming your own Experiments. Inquisit is designed specifically for running Experiments in psychology, so requires very little programming experience.
In this course you will use Inquisit as a gateway for learning how to program your own experiments. Each week we will consider a different Experimental design from psychology, and learn how to program key features in Inquisit. By the end of the course you should be able to implement your own basic experiments in Inquisit, continue to learn Inquisit, or be confident enough to move to more specialized programs if required. You should also leave with a better understanding of Experimental design that will transfer to any program you chose to use in the future.
This is not a traditional course – in this course you will ‘learn-by-doing’ in class. Each week we will discuss concepts as a group, before getting in to hands on applications of the matrial, learning as you go.
Each week I will distribute the article that we will discuss the following week. The only other materials you need are the WPAs, which will be linked to directly above:
Before each class you will be asigned an article to read. The start of the class will be spent discusing this article. We will discuss their research question, their experimental design, and their results. In particular we will focus on how their design allows them to address their research question and interpret their results. This will include good features of their design, that you might want to emulate, and bad features, that you might want to improve.
We will also discuss similarities between their design and the experiments you have programmed in previous weeks, to help you get started on programming it. Finally, we will discuss new features in Inquisit that you will need to use in order to program key parts of the design. You will then move on to the weekly programming assignment.
During each class you will work on a series of programming tasks called a Weekly Programming Assignment (WPA). You can do this alone, but I encourage you to discuss and/or work with the people around you. The questions on WPAs will guide you through how to implement different features of an Experiment in Inquisit. At the end of class, you will email your work on the WPA to me to receive credit.
The WPAs are designed to be challenging. Your primary goal should be to work hard, ask questions, and understand/complete as much as possible. It is much better for you to complete half the assigned work, but understand it completely, than to complete everything by copying someone else with no understanding. The only way to fail your assignment is to not turn it in. You are not expected to continue working on WPAs outside of class. However, each week we will build on what you have learnt the week before. Therefore, I strongly encourage you to continue working on the assignment outside of class so that you do not fall behind.
While I encourage you to work on and discuss the WPAs with those around you, it is very important that each student’s work is his/her own. Do not turn in any assignments that you did not contribute to or do not fully understand.
While I will keep track of how often you submit your WPAs, I will not grade them. I will only give you individual feedback if your work looks especially poor, or especially good. Complete answers to WPAs will be posted during each class. In general though you can tell if you are getting it right by running your code yourself. If, after class, you have specific questions about the assignment, please email me or come to my office and I will be very happy to help you.
In the second half of the course I will not be assigning papers each week. Instead you will do so. In the first week you will form into groups of 4 students, and each group will be assigned a week to present. Your job, as a group, is to find a paper that uses an experimental design that you are interested in, or is relevant for your research. You then have to prepare a presentation of this paper including; the research question they are investigating, the design they use, good or bad points of the design, and what they find.
At least two weeks before your assigned presentation you must email me the paper that you will be presenting, and tell me which features of the design you particularly want to learn how to program. The paper you pick should include novel features that we haven’t covered. I will then prepare a WPA based on this information.
You can also discuss potential papers with me, if you are unsure what would be an appropriate paper to choose.
Your final project is to program a working experiment based on either: 1) The paper you presented in class, or 2) Your own research you are conducting. Unlike the WPAs this experiment should contain all features of the experiment as reported in the paper, including instruction pages. You will also need to put comments throughout your code explaining what each section of the code does.
In the final 2 weeks all class time will be reserved for working on your final projects. While you can discuss with and get help from other students, you will each need to submit your own final project with your own comments and explanations.
When submitting your Final Project you should send me both the Experiment Script File, and any additional files used by the Experiment (e.g. Images etc.). You can submit your final project by either emailing your script, images etc. directly to me, or by emailing me a link to a dropbox folder containing the relevant files.
The deadline for submitting your Final Project is now the 14th of June (14/06/2018).
This is a pass / fail course. Whether you pass is dependant on whether: 1) You attend class and submit WPAs; 2) Your presentation is satisfactory, and 3) Submission of a satisfactory final project. Passing the course is not difficult. If you work hard, ask lots of questions, turn in your WPAs, give a thoughtful presentation and complete the final project, you’ll pass the class. If you never ask questions, habitually fail to turn in your WPAs, don’t give a presentation and turn in a poor quality final project, you may fail the course.
Attendance at class will be considered when deciding your grade. Therefore, if you can’t attend a class, there are certain actions you need to take. These depend upon whether you know in advance you will be attending or not.
If something unexpected happens (e.g. sickness, family emergency, car/train breakdowns etc.) and you have to miss class for a week this is ok. In this situation it would be good if you can let me know after class that you missed it and why. This does not have to be immediately after class, just sometime in the next few days when you have time. It would also be beneficial for you to catch up on the work in your own time, so that you don’t fall behind. If you miss several classes, then we might need to talk about ways to make sure you don’t fall behind. Also if this happens on a week where you are due to present then we will need to discuss alternative assessments.
If you know in advance that you won’t be attending a class for a non-medical reason (e.g. work), or you unexpectedly miss a class for a non-emergency reason (e.g. slept in) then the situation is different. In this case you can miss 2 classes without penalty. If you know you will be mising more than 2 you can come to me in advance and we can discuss alternatives. If you miss your presentation week without a valid reason (see above), then you will fail the course.