stroop task

hello,
I have two questions which are probably pretty straightforward but i can’t seem to work it out.

I want to present four stimulus lists (each containing 45 words) randomly. Each word will be presented 4 times (i.e. in red, blue, green and yellow). I want the stimulus lists to be mixed up together so i gather this will be one trial?

  1. I’ve found myself having to put each word in as a single event so that i can have it in each colour. is this the only way to do this? or can i create a stimulus list with different colours of ink?

  2. I’ve connected my RB-730 to my computer and intalled it. It responds to the instructions i.e. press any key to continue, but doesn’t work when i’m showing the stimuli. I have assigned values to the buttons on the box but i’m obviously missing a step.

Thanks for your help, it’s really appreciated!
Louise

Hi Louise,

You can vary the color of the stimulus by creating a trial variable of type Color (see Experiment menu, Trial Variables).

Regarding the RB-730, is your event set to end only on the correct response by any chance?

Hisham.

I am establishing a similar experiment. I set variable type COLOR in Trial Variables for the 4 colors I desired and then set it to randomize. It words perfectly - although now I don’t see how to match a response to font color. I assume that when a font color is generated for each trial there has to be code somewhere, but cannot find how to set up Correct Response by variable COLOR. I’m sure this is simple, but my first attempt with Superlab so feeling my way around here. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

The easiest way I found to put together a color-word stroop task was to create 4 identical word lists (or however many lists are appropriate for your needs, obviously), and then change the font color for each list. That way each word list can have a separate correct response. You can create 4 separate trials (each trial mapping onto one of the four color-word lists) and then randomize trials within blocks so that the order in which the color-word combinations are presented is randomized within the block.

There may be slightly easier ways to set up such tasks, but this way doesn’t take much effort, either.

Thanks, I’ll give that a try. I had tried setting up 4 different Events (1 for each color) and randomizing them within the trial, but this only succeeded in randomizing the color. This left me with a presentation of 4 different shades of Green followed by 4 different (randomized) shades of Red, etc.

You could set up multiple events a single trial, but you’d also need a feedback on each event to tell it to skip the remaining events in the trial. (This is also one of the very very few cases where randomizing the events in a trial is not the wrong thing to do.)

There isn’t a way to tie correct responses to Trial Variables, so your options will be limited to variants of what has already been offered.

stroop task

I’m new to SuperLab as well and have been trying to program the Stroop task. In my simple version, I set up 3 blocks, 1 Trial, and 16 events-the events correspond to 4 “Congruent” conditions (e.g., Blue presented in the color blue), and 12 “incongruent” conditions (e.g., Red presented in the color Black). I’ve linked each of the events to the one Trial, and I’ve linked the Trial to each of the 3 Blocks. I’ve also randomized the events within the Trial.

Running the program seems to give me most of what I want–it correctly flags the correct responses and errors and records the reaction times for correct responses and errors. However, I would like it to give me the RTs and accuracy separately for the congruent and incongruent trials. It seems that setting up code values might work, although I’m not clear on how I would go about attaching the code values to give me what I’m looking for.

I’d be grateful for any suggestions about how to revise my program–many thanks in advance!

John

Hello John,

You should try setting up your experiment on a per trial basis. Use one event per trial and randomize trials withing a block.