I wanted to assess superlab5 for our lab before making any purchase suggestions to my supervisor. Our lab has been using superlab for several years and we’d really like to see if there is any substantial improvement with data output in the newest version of superlab. Sadly, the demo version won’t let me save any output. Is there any way you can help me with this? Thank you very much!
ps. In the past, we found the output from superlab hard to parse and data analysis seemed cumbersome.
There has been no change at all in the format of the saved data.
I am quite curious to know what improvements would you like to see in the output format. The current format opens easily in Excel, which then allows you to save it in a variety of other formats.
Also, are you familiar with the free Data Viewer program? It allows you to open any number of data files simultaneously and then save a merged file, and optionally transpose the data.
Thank you Hisham! I’m well aware of the Data Viewer and, to be honest, I don’t find it particularly helpful. What improvements I would like to see in the output format? In the current version of superlab (4.5), the codes/tags I have assigned for events do not appear in the output; only codes for trails show up. These tags can be instrumental in data analysis when I have hundreds of trials per participant.
More generally, I find superlab cumbersome in creating large amount of trials. The point-and-click approach is very repetitive. It would be helpful if you can offer some advanced functions for users who have basic knowledge of programming. That’s just my personal opinion.
Thank you any way. I’ll inform my supervisor and let her make the decision.
If you have lots of trials, then creating them one event at a time will indeed get cumbersome very quickly. That’s why we highly recommend that you use the stimulus lists feature, where you would then tag list items instead of events.
One of the things that we focused on in SuperLab 5 and now 5.0.1 is removing all obstacles and limitations to using stimulus lists, and there will be more focus towards that in future versions of SuperLab and less on individual events.
As for providing some advanced functions, SuperLab 5 vastly improves on version 4 in that regards, allowing rules (formerly macros) to be used at both the block and trial levels, and providing the new parameters features, which is akin to having variables in a program.