Introduction
Aims and topics of these lessons
These lessons…
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explain common terms and jargon in cognitive psychological psychology
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demonstrate what common experiments look like
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teach about how stimuli used in cognitive psychological experiments can be created
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teach a little bit about the computer jargon and skills necessary behind setting up your own studies
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introduce the free statistical software R
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teach you how to setup your own PsyToolkit projects (with video screen casts)
For whom are these lessons?
These lessons can be used by anyone to learn more about cognitive psychological experiments, such as the Stroop task, and how to set online studies (including online questionnaires). These lessons are suitable for secondary education, undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. They are also useful for researchers who want to use PsyToolkit in their online research.
The lessons are written in simple English without any expectations of prior knowledge of psychology. They come with links to useful resources and references.
| If you are teaching psychology, and if you would like to contribute your own lesson, or if you have comments, do not hesitate to contact me. |
Different types of lessons
There are six types of lessons.
Introductory lessons
| Lesson | Description |
|---|---|
This lesson helps students to understand the essentials of computers running PsyToolkit, and it introduces a few programs. Inkscape for creating stimuli. R for data analysis. For Microsoft users, it explains a bit about Notepad++, a free text editor for the Microsoft Operating System (OS): |
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Introduction to common terms used, such as stimulus, response, trial, task, paradigm. |
Lessons about cognitive psychological phenomena and experiments
| Lesson | Description |
|---|---|
This lesson explains and demonstrates the difference between simple and choice response time tasks. |
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This lesson shows the famous Stroop Effect, possibly the best known psychological experiment in the area of experimental cognitive psychology. |
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This lesson explains how response speed and accuracy can be affected by the spatial relationship between stimulus and response location. |
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This lesson shows how to run a simple experiment. It compares responses with the left and right hand, and it shows how a valid cue helps participants to respond faster. |
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Why is difficult to find your keys in a cluttered room? Because there are so many similar items laying around. Psychologists have carefully studied how we search for things, and how the number of distracters affects performance. |
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This lesson builds on the cueing lesson and introduces the phenomenon IOR. |
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This lesson is about when the "opposite" of normal spatial compatibility occurs (like in the Simon effect). It involves action planning, preparation, and memory. |
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Can you imagine what an object looks like when it is rotated? People find this quite difficult. Mental rotation is a popular paradigm in psychology, and it is known that men and women perform, on average, differently on this task. |
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Fitts’s Law describes the relationship between the time it takes to move your arm towards a target based on the distance between you and the target object and it’s size. That is, it takes more time to pick up something small that is far away than something that is close by, but the size of the object can compensate for that. |
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This lesson explains how your behavior can be negatively influenced by what you have seen just before. |
Lessons about other important software
In depth lessons about some of the software that you will need to become really efficient in using PsyToolkit.
| Lesson | Description |
|---|---|
If you run experiments, you will need to create visual stimuli (although you can also play sounds very easily). Inkscape is a free drawing program to do exactly this. Learn here how. |
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Some PsyToolkit lessons use the statistical software R. You can follow the lessons without understanding or using R, but if you want to do your own data analyses, you might want to understand R a bit. Of course, you can use other statistical software, like SPSS or Excel instead, depending on your projects and needs. |
How to set up a PsyToolkit study
In depth lessons about working with PsyToolkit (with videos telling you how to do things from start to finish).
| Lesson | Description |
|---|---|
Setup a questionnaire from start to finish (without embedded experiments). Everything is explained with video screen casts. |
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Setup a complete questionnaire with embedded reaction time experiment |
An extensive lesson about how to setup a study with PsyToolkit with detailed video screen-casts. This study show how to setup a reaction time experiment and how to embed it in an online questionnaire. Ideal for those who want to set up their own online study. Includes videos on how to do everything from start to finish, including designing stimuli, program experiment code, questionnaire code, data analysis, and more. |
Learn about the basic visual stimuli in PsyToolkit experiments: Bitmaps, rectangles, circles, and texts. |
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Learn more about one of the most commonly used type of stimulus in PsyToolkit experiments, the bitmap, also known as image file — lesson under construction |
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Learn how to add instructions for your participants. This not difficult, but very important, because people need to understand what they are supposed to do. |
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Learn how to add your university logo to the welcome page of your survey. |
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Learn how to send information from surveys to experiments (and vice versa)] |
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Learn how to use PsyToolkit with Prolific. Prolific is an easy way to recruit and pay participants. |
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Learn how to use PsyToolkit with MTurk. MTurk is an easy way to recruit and pay participants. |
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Learn on how to jump conditionally or unconditionally from one question to another, based on question answers or for counterbalancing. |
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Learn how to use the in and out variables. This is an advanced topic that few users will need. But if you do, this will explain all you need to know. |
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How to get equal number of participants in different conditions of my online survey |
Learning from experiment-code examples
Once you have learned the basics, you might want to see how specific things are done. The examples below give you some tips for "special" things might want to do in experiments.
| Complete experiment-scripting manual can be found here. |
| Even though some of the examples are not the most common things to do, the examples show what sort of things are possible with PsyToolkit. |
| Lesson | Description |
|---|---|
Most experiments will have a fixation point. This lesson shows you three different ways to show fixations points. |
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Use PsyToolkit tables to set up your experimental conditions |
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Most experiments require participants to press a button. This lesson explains how to measure which key was pressed for how long. |
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Explains every line of a complete experiment, including advanced participant feedback |
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Shows how to add sound stimuli to your study |
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Shows 3 bitmaps, and participant needs to click one of them. |
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Shows how participant can select and deselect items. This is useful for memory experiments |
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This is useful for tasks in which you want to train participants up to specific performance level. |
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Shows how to add a Likert scale in an experiment (rarely needed and for advanced users only) |
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Explains all the available time commands in experiments |
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Explains how to have participant enter words or numbers (not just one key) |
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Explains how to have participant enter words or numbers (not just one key) |
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Explains how to setup continuously playing music during experiment |
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Explains how to show a stimulus and let it disappear from screen while the participant can continue to give a response for a longer period. |
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Shows you how you can have condition or stimulus selection without using a table. |
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Shows you how you can play one or more videoclips within your experiments |
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Explains how you can use array variables with a detailed example (visual search task). This is an advanced topic. |
Learning from survey-code examples
| Complete survey-scripting manual can be found here. |
Once you have learned the basics, you might want to see how specific things are done. The examples below give you some tips for things people often want to do in online surveys.
| Lesson | Description |
|---|---|
Setup a questionnaire with smiley face icons to rate items (instead with text). |
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Learn how to embed a YouTube video in your online questionnaire and ask questions about it. Also explains scales and scoring in more detail. |
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Questionnaire with embedded audio/video with or without controls |
Learn how to embed audio or video that you have more control over, with videos from Google Drive, with or without controls, option to play only once and so on |
Learn step by step how to use SONA systems with your PsyToolkit questionnaire |
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Learn how to have a tickbox list at the beginning of survey to check participants consent |
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Learn how to elegantly end a survey when people turn out not to be in the target population |
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Learn how to only allow participipants with a certain ID-code, email, or number to participate |
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Learn how to ask the participant to send you some information (e.g., document or picture) |