PST Quality Management System Recertification

PST successfully completed our quality management system recertification audit! In order to maintain this certification, PST has demonstrated its ability to successfully operate under a comprehensive management system that meets the ISO 13485 and ISO 9001 regulatory requirements.

PST continues to be the only stimulus presentation software company operating under ISO management system standards.

In 2011 Psychology Software Tools, Inc. achieved ISO 9001:2008 certification for the design, development, production, assembly, installation and servicing of products and tools for psychology research, assessment, and education.

In 2008 Psychology Software Tools, Inc. achieved ISO 13485:2003 certification for its quality management system related to the design, development, production, assembly, integration, installation, sales and servicing of computerized systems, specialty equipment, and hardware/software accessories for human clinical assessment of psychological, physiological, and neuropsychological function using computerized stimulus presentation, accuracy and response time measures, MRI/fMRI, EEG/ERP, MEG, fNIR, and related techniques.

Common E-Prime Script Questions

Can I save what's on the screen as a bitmap?

The Canvas.SaveImage method saves the current canvas to a filename, which you specify. This method will save an image of the screen to the same folder in which your experiment file is located. You can also use an attribute reference so that the image is not overwritten if running multiple trials (e.g. Display.Canvas.SaveImage "Stimulus" & TrialList.Sample & ".bmp"). To do this for your task, you will have to insert an InLine after each of the display objects (that you wish to save an image of) with the script located in the Canvas.SaveImage example in E-Basic Help. To find this example, open E-Basic Help (in E-Studio, navigate to Help > E-Basic Help) and in the Search field enter "Canvas.SaveImage". This entry will show you the syntax necessary to save full images of what is being displayed on the screen.

Can I end an experiment early but still have an .edat2 file?

Yes, the Conditional Exit feature was introduced in the E-Prime 2.0 Professional Production Release. This feature enables you to end an experiment in the middle of the run while still collecting all of the data up until that point. To do this, simply press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace while in the middle of an experiment. This will end the experiment will ensuring that your data is still intact. While this is a built-in function of all E-Prime 2.0 Professional experiments, it can be added as InLine script to any experiment. The script looks like this:

TextStimulus.HandlesConditionalExit = True

This script will enable the conditional exit in E-Prime in any of your experiments. The HandlesConditionalExit statement is a Boolean statement that can be set to either True or False depending on the conditions of your experiment. A description of the Conditional Exit statement can be found in Knowledge Base article 2634. In Professional versions of E-Prime 2.0, the key combination that allows the conditional exit can even be altered. For more information on how to accomplish this, please see Knowledge Base article 5105.

How do I display the current trial number?

There are several methods that may be used to display the trial number on each trial. One way is to use the Sample property of the List object (i.e., TheListName.Sample) which will return the sequential number of the selected sample from the current List object. The Sample property may be used within brackets in an object (e.g., TextDisplay or any other display object) to reference the currently running sample/trial number. With this method, script is not needed, and the current trial number can be displayed right on the object! For example, if you wish to display the trial number while sampling from a List object named "TrialList", you can use the following syntax placed on the object in the Procedure that is being called from TrialList…(such as a text display object)

Method 1: Reference right on the object

• Trial #[TrialList.Sample]
  *The square brackets indicate to E-Prime that an attribute is being referenced (in this case the reference will resolve to the current Sample property of the TrialList). The "Trial #" portion of the example above will be the text displayed, and can be changed to your own specifications.


• Trial #[[ Running ].Sample]
  *If you would like to reference a more generic, or currently running list, you can use the "Running" attribute as exampled above. This syntax should also be placed on an object that is being called from the TrialList. Running in brackets here will show the name of the currently running list object, and the sample property will be returned for that same list.

Method 2: Referencing in script...

E-Prime Extensions for fMRI Update

E-Prime® Extensions for fMRI (2.0.7.39) is now compatible with
E-Prime® 2.0 Professional SP1 (2.0.10.353). If you are using an older version of E-Prime, then you must first upgrade to E-Prime 2.0 Professional SP1 before installing the EEfMRI update. To download this free update, please visit the downloads area on our Product Service and Support Site. If you have not yet registered your EEfMRI license on our site, you will need to do so to access the download. The update includes several new features, including:

• Compatibility with E-Prime 2.0 Professional SP1
• Compatibility with Celeritas®
• Support for Conditional Exit sequence
• Run Report summarizing timing and participant performance
• Updates Samples and Tutorials
• Updated documentation

New orders of EEfMRI will receive a 20% discount until October 15, 2014. To receive this discount, please use promo code: eefmri20 when placing orders via phone (412-449-0078) or email (sales@pstnet.com).

More information on the EEfMRI update is available in Knowledge Base article 5622.

More information on the compatibility between E-Prime versions and Extension versions is available in Knowledge Base article 5346.

E-Prime Trainings and Webinars

A full schedule of our webinars is available here. A new set of webinars will be announced soon!

E-Prime training is available online, at workshops, in-person at our office in Pittsburgh, PA and at your institution for private training. If you are interested in training at PST or at your institution, contact us.

New/Modified E-Prime Knowledge Base Articles and Samples

• 5623 INFO: E-Prime Extensions for fMRI 2.0. New Features
• 5346 INFO: Which version of E-Prime should I use with E-Prime Extensions?
• 5622 INFO: Upgrading E-Prime Extensions for fMRI 2.0

A new Sample has been added to our Resources:

• Joystick Sample for E-Prime 2.0.10.242+

Helpful Tips - E-Prime How To Videos

• Find and Replace
• Close All Windows
• View Menu
• E-Recovery
• Professional to Standard Experiment (.es2) File Conversion
• Adding EEfMRI Package Calls
• Adding EET Package Calls

Publications using E-Prime

PST encourages researchers to send us a notification of their publications which use E-Prime so that we may list them on our website. Recent articles added include:

• Solska, A. & Rojczyk, A. (2014): Exploring interpretation and misinterpretation of garden-path sentences in Polish. International Review of Pragmatics. Advance Online Publication. (Abstract)
• Kangas, B. D., & Bergman, J. (2014). Repeated acquisition and discrimination reversal in the squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus). Animal Cognition. 17, 221-228. (Pub Med Abstract)

• Schneider, W., Eschman, A., and Zuccolotto, A. (2012). E-Prime User's Guide. Pittsburgh: Psychology Software Tools, Inc.
• Schneider, W., Eschman, A., and Zuccolotto, A. (2012). E-Prime Reference Guide. Pittsburgh: Psychology Software Tools, Inc.

Continued... Method 2: Referencing in script

A second method of displaying the trial number is to use an InLine object to insert script. The script would set an attribute that may then be referenced in an object. Here we have an example of how to set this up in script. You will see the SetAttrib context is used to set the currently running List as an attribute. A second line of script is added to indicate how you might include another attribute to indicate the total number of trials (as you can see the total number of trials in this example is 10).

c.SetAttrib "TrialNum", c.GetAttrib(c.GetAttrib("Running")&".Sample")

c.SetAttrib "TotalTrials", 10

After this script is set up, the TrialNum can then be referenced as an attribute in any of the objects (such as a TextDisplay) to display the current trial number. To reference this, after it has been set up in script, just insert the following syntax in the object you wish to display the trial number.

Trial #[TrialNum] of [TotalTrials]

*The script above would result in the display appearing as "Trial #1 out of 10".

Thoughts?