Bug in Data Output File?

SuperLab SuperLab 4 Support
1

I have attached an output file created by a program which displays math problem (eg. 1 + 2). The ‘problemset’ event that displays the problem has the correct response for all stimulus list items set to ‘Voice Key’. The Response Entry event runs next and has the correct response set to a string entry input so that the experimenter can type in whatever the participant said. In the attached output file, there are two problems.

The first occasion of Problem 1 is on line 12 (in Dataviewer). Notice that the data is written into the wrong variable fields. This appears to be a bug, as I am not controlling the data writing. I can’t reproduce this bug on purpose, it seems to happen randomly. Please advise, as I cannot read the data files into SPSS with these random totally incorrect lines - there are strings in numeric columns etc.

The first occasion of Problem 2 is on line 38 . Instead of writing the experimenter’s numeric key press into the string entry field, the key press is somehow being captured as a single key press. As an experimenter, what I see is that I have pressed the key, but the number is not echoed in the string entry field. The experimenter ends up pressing the key again, this time it is captured by the field, and is correctly stored in the data file as ‘response entry’. I can’t reproduce this purposefully either, although it happens quite frequently. I haven’t set up any numeric keypress items as input to any events - the only possible input is the spacebar key and the string entry and the voice key.

Thanks!

cs pilot.txt.zip (14.2 KB)

2

Solved problem 2

I just noticed that the participant input item for the single keypress ‘spacebar’ input device had ‘for all events’ selected. I’ve unclicked it, that should stop problem 2 from happening. So if you could help out with the problem of the ruined data lines specified in problem 1, that would be great.

3

From looking through the file, it appears that the actual response was simply that the participant/user pressed “enter.” This is an issue that we’ve recently fixed, and it will be available in 4.0.8. Other control characters could also theoretically appear (e.g. tab), so we’ve taken this into account for upcoming versions of SuperLab and the Data Viewer.

In the meantime, you can interpret entries like line 12 as the second half of line 11. Delete the newline character in a text editor. An easy way to do this is to place the cursor at the very beginning of line 12 and press the backspace key once. There should still be a correct number of tab characters for Data Viewer (or any other program) to correctly interpret the columns.