E-Prime 3.0 Feature Survey Results

Thank you for the overwhelming response to the E-Prime 3.0 Feature Survey! We received nearly 500 completed surveys. Our design and development team continues to use your feedback to select and prioritize the features for E-Prime 3.0. Although the final feature list is not yet complete, we wanted to share some of the survey results.

Analysis of the results shows the following features would be most useful to our users:

• Find and Replace - Ability to Find/Replace Object properties in an experiment (e.g., change all backgrounds to blue, change all text to 14 point font).
• Preview Window - Ability to run experiment in a floating window for debugging purposes (e.g., start/pause/stop experiment, context variable values).
• Start from Here - Ability to start an experiment from any List Object in the experiment structure (e.g., select a section of your experiment to run) for debugging purposes.
• Survey Object - Ability to design survey/questionnaire experiments with little or no scripting (e.g., Likert scale, multiple choice, matching, bipolar, open-ended).
• Button Sub-Object - Ability to place buttons on a Slide. This feature would replace the need to use HitTest in script in order to collect a mouse/joystick/touch response on a defined target area.

We also found that the following features would be the least useful:

• Remote Notifications - Ability to send a notification (e.g., text message, email, IM, mobile app) to remotely monitor participants' start/progress/completion/performance during an experiment.
• Improved Socket-Server Device - This feature would allow inter-computer communication through script and would support social psychology experimentation with one experiment serving as a controller and participant experiments acting as the client (e.g., receiving customized stimuli based on other participant responses).
• Combo Box - Ability to present a drop-down list for the participant to choose the correct answer.

Congratulations to the iPad winner of the survey drawing - Norka Rabinovich from Southern Illinois University!

Responses to Survey Questions/Comments

User questions were included in the responses to our E-Prime 3.0 Feature Survey. Since these answers are beneficial to all of our users, we've compiled them into a list to share:

• How do I find and replace in InLine script? A quick and simple way to Find and Replace text is to use keyboard shortcuts. These keyboard shortcuts for Find / Replace are CTRL+F and CTRL+H, respectively.
• Is it possible to record audio responses? Yes. To do this, open the Experiment properties page, and then click Devices and add a SoundCapture device. The microphone device that is used in the experiment will be your default microphone device enabled in Windows. Next, add a SoundIn object to the slide in which you would like to record information. In the sub-object property page of this object, it is possible to set the maximum length of recorded vocalizations in the Buffer Size field (in ms). It should be noted, however, that EPrime does not automatically add 'timestamps' to when the vocalization began recording. In order to do this, the SRBox's 'sound key' must be utilized. The SRBox device will need to be activated in the Experiment properties page in order to add timestamps to recorded responses.
• Is there an easier way to debug/test InLine scripts? The recommended way to 'debug' your program and to see if it is running as expected is to run it using the E-Run Test feature (Professional only). This enables the user to run an experiment without collecting data. It features increased clock/trial speed as well as an Auto-Response feature. In addition to the E-Run Test feature, the Professional version of E-Prime includes the Experiment Advisor utility. The Experiment Advisor provides experiments the ability to detect design and timing errors in E-Studio and E-Run. Experiment Advisor generates findings that are displayed in the output window when you generate your experiment. Upon testing/running your experiment, Experiment Advisor creates an .xml report (which can be accessed through the Output window).

Continue reading...

Serial Response Box Price Change August 1st

Effective August 1, 2014, the price of the PST Serial Response Box and related components will increase. This price increase is necessary to offset a steady series of component cost increases which have been passed along to us from our manufacturer over the past 10 years. The current price(s) will be honored for all orders received by PST through July 31, 2014. Please see the table below for the new prices.

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.

The E-Primer

Leiden University Press recently published the first introduction book to E-Prime. Aimed at students and researchers alike, The E-Primer provides an introduction into a wide range of experiments that can be set up using E-Prime.

Many tutorials are provided to teach the reader how to develop experiments typical for the broad fields of psychological and cognitive science. Apart from explaining the basic structure of E-Prime and describing how it fits into daily scientific practice, this book also offers an introduction into programming using E-Prime's own E-Basic language. The authors guide the readers step-by-step through the software, from an elementary to an advanced level, enabling them to benefit from the enormous possibilities for experimental design offered by E-Prime.

Now available on Amazon!

Spapé M.M., Verdonschot, R.G., Van Dantzig, S., & van Steenbergen, H. (2014) The E-Primer: An introduction to creating psychological experiments in E-Prime. Leiden University Press.

New E-Prime Knowledge Base Articles

• 5607 INFO: FAQ about E-Prime Versions and Editions
• 5586 INFO: USB device compatibility with E-Prime
• 5599 INFO: Upgrading E-Prime Extensions for Tobii 2.0
• 5592 INFO: E-Prime 2.0 SP1 requires specific DirectX 11 settings
• 5590 FEATURE: Support for Celeritas™
• 4026 INFO: Operating system (Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, and XP) support in E-Prime

Popular E-Prime How To Videos

• Preparing data collection computers for E-Prime research
• Task Events
• Nested Lists
• Advanced Attributes
• Active Slide States
• Professional to Standard Experiment (.es2) File Conversion

Inside PST

PST at OHBM

PST exhibited at OHBM in Hamburg, Germany in June. We demonstrated several of our fMRI products. The Hyperion MRI Digital Projection System was clearly the favorite of the children (watching Pixar's "UP") while their parents investigated our other products. Congratulations to the iPad winner of the OHBM drawing - Ullrich Wagner from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin!

Now Hiring!

• Technical Consultant
• Research Assistant
• Mobile Applications Developer
• Software Developer II

E-Prime Common Mistakes Explained

PST Media

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:

• Robotham, L., Sauter, D. A., Bachoud-Lévi, A. C., Trinkler, I. (2011). The impairment of emotion recognition in Huntington's disease extends to positive emotions. Cortex, 47(7):880-4. Pub Med Abstract
• Pliatsikas, C., Johnstone, T., & Marinis, T. (2014): fMRI evidence for the involvement of the procedural memory system in morphological processing of a second language. PLOS ONE. 9(5): e97298.
• Pliatsikas, C., Johnstone, T., & Marinis, T. (2014): Grey matter volume in the cerebellum is related to processing of grammatical rules in a second language: a structural VBM study. The Cerebellum. 13(1), 55-63. 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: Responses to Survey Questions/Comments

• I would like the ability to read stimulus files prepared externally that are unique to each participant, so that one experiment can be programmed with an instruction to read participant-specific stimulus files. It is possible to read stimulus files prepared externally by loading them into a List object. To do this, go to the Property Pages for your List object and change the Load Method to 'File'. E-Prime will read both Text and Excel XML Spreadsheet files. To save an XML Spreadsheet in Excel, choose 'Save As' and choose XML Spreadsheet from the dropdown menu. It should be noted that E-Prime will read information from the first 'sheet' in an Excel document only. In order to assign a specific file to a specific participant, use the List-[Subject]-[Session#] format.
• Can I save text files in ANSI rather than UNICODE so that they can be read in Matlab directly? Yes, it is possible to export data files in a form other than unicode. To do this, select Export in E-DataAid. Under the 'Export To' dropdown, choose Other. This will then enable you to set various parameters relating to a command line operation.
• I would like to send TCP/IP messages, in XML for example, to a distant computer. E-Prime supports TCP/IP and UDP connections. However, there is not a GUI item to add an Experiment Device. Therefore to enable this feature, there must be User and InLine scripting involved. For further information regarding this, please consult KB Article 2528.
• I'd like to see a better organized forum where users can discuss scripts that have worked for them and possibly upload them to the forum for others to utilize/see. The new E-Prime User Forum is an excellent place to discuss and share experiments/portions of script!
• Improved video playback. In order to optimize your video playback settings for best quality and rendering, it is possible to set your codec configuration to use codecs which are most commonly used with the associated video extension (such as .avi). To do this, open the Codec Config tool (Tools --> Codec Config). It is also beneficial to allow your video (and other large files such as images) to be loaded at the beginning of a trial. In order to do this, navigate to the item Property Pages --> Common tab and set Generate PreRun to TopOfProcedure. This will greatly reduce the load time of large files (such as movie files and image files). Instead of being loaded right before the object is called upon, they will be loaded at the beginning of the experiment.
• In E-Merge, it would be usefuly to customize the merged data file in a way to contain only colums of interest. A very useful feature included in E-DataAid is the ability to arrange information in the way you wish to view it (or not view it). To do this, click the 'Arrange Columns' button the Menu bar in E-DataAid. This allows you to Add and Remove different columns as well as arrange them in a fashion that suits your needs.

Thoughts?