Mac Microphone Input behavior and block looping

Greetings,

I’ve encountered two issues this morning with v5.0.1 of SuperLab.

Previously an event that had a Microphone Input for a correct response would terminate as soon as the microphone detected an input if the “ignore voice key release” was selected under options.

However, it appears that this is not happening in the version I am running today. The event continues until the microphone input terminates and then it appears to wait for the duration listed in the “Voice key is considered released after XXX milliseconds of no voice key detection”.

Is this intended it causes issues with the experiments we run in our lab and I would prefer if the event would terminate at the start of the voice key detection rather than once the voice key is released. Is it possible to include this as an option or what does “ignore voice key release” really do?

As well in another program I have 32 trials linked to the Critical block. I have tried multiple methods to get the 32 trials to be shown multiple times for a total of 320 trials, but the Critical block keeps terminating after the 24th trial. I cannot figure out why it terminates after 24 trials when there are obviously 32 trials linked to the block and I was attempting to have it loop for a total of 320 trials.

I have attached my experiment folder. The critical trials should do the following:

  • appears until button 1 or 7 are pressed and held on a RB-730 button box
    picture of an object shown for 300ms
    picture of a hand shown until key is released
    screen erases and waits for microphone input
    scoring information comes up on screen and waits for key press of c,i or s

The trials run as expected, but the block terminates early and I cannot seem to get the looping to work.

I’ve tried using the looping selection of showing the block 10 times and it stops at 24.
I’ve tried When to Present by choosing to present block if criteria are not met and set the criteria to number of trials = 320 (my usual method in v4.5)
I even tried the Extra Actions of presenting a maximum of 320 trials.

I reprogrammed this experiment in v4.5 quickly this morning as I need to begin testing on Tuesday and I have no problem generating 320 trials (32 trials shown 10 times).

My lab machines are running OSX 10.5.8.

Thanks,

Marnie

Pinch1.zip (4.48 MB)

For your first issue in regards to the microphone, can you post that experiment? Please post as an Experiment Package. This can be found under the File menu within SuperLab.

For your second issue, in looking at your experiment you have several Trial-level Rules that could be limiting how many trials SuperLab presents. Some of those were imported from version 4. I suggest disabling these Rules, then you can use the Block Editor to configure the best looping options (within the Looping tab).

Here is the program where we saw the voice key triggering at the end of the event instead of as soon as it was detected. I just noticed that v4.5 did not have the “ignore voice key release” option at all. This program was created in v4.5 and worked exactly as intended. When we upgraded to v5.0, the voice key was triggering on key release.

Critical Block -> GSaur event

The scoring event should show up as soon as there is a microphone input detected. This helps our experimenters evaluate whether the microphone was a valid input or if it was triggered by noise or did not trigger at all at the onset of the sound. What we saw was a delay between the start of the sound and the display of the scoring information. Further testing seemed to indicate that the event was not ending until the sound stopped.

I have not tested whether this issue occurs in an experiment programmed in v5.0.

I haven’t had a chance to look at the looping issue, but will do so today or tomorrow and get back to you.

ObjectName8N copy.zip (8.42 MB)

Here is the program where we saw the voice key triggering at the end of the event instead of as soon as it was detected. I just noticed that v4.5 did not have the “ignore voice key release” option at all. This program was created in v4.5 and worked exactly as intended. When we upgraded to v5.0, the voice key was triggering on key release.

Critical Block -> GSaur event

The scoring event should show up as soon as there is a microphone input detected. This helps our experimenters evaluate whether the microphone was a valid input or if it was triggered by noise or did not trigger at all at the onset of the sound. What we saw was a delay between the start of the sound and the display of the scoring information. Further testing seemed to indicate that the event was not ending until the sound stopped.

I have not tested whether this issue occurs in an experiment programmed in v5.0.

I haven’t had a chance to look at the looping issue, but will do so today or tomorrow and get back to you.

Thanks for your help!

ObjectName8N_Rcc1NY.zip (8.16 MB)

Hi,

I have the exact same problem.
It seems “ignore voice key release” doesn’t work.
Regardless of whether it is ticked or not, the event always ends when the sound stopped rather than just after the sound is detected.

This problem doesn’t occur with version 4.

The fact that SuperLab 5 processes the microphone response at the end of the speaking instead of the onset was an unintended behavior change in 5.0.

Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention. It will be fixed in a 5.0.2 release in the coming months.

This issue has been fixed in the release of SuperLab 5.0.2.