In this task, you will do an experiment on yourself and then, at the end, answer some reflection questions.
First, however, we need to do several things to set up the software. Follow the instructions below to set up the experiment (there is also a video demonstration of the procedure at the end of these instructions).
The software you will use for this experiment requires Windows. (It's possible to make an online version of this same experiment using something like Ibex/PCIbex or PsychoPy, I just have not done it yet.) If you already have access to a Windows computer, you can skip to the next step. If you don't have a Windows computer, there are several options you can try:
To do the experiment we will use DMDX, which is a free software program used for running psychological experiments. To install it, follow the steps below.
There are several versions of the experiment that we're going to do: Mandarin in traditional characters, Mandarin in simplified characters, and English; each of these has two "lists" (two versions). Pick any one that you want to do, and download it:
After downloading, save the file to your desktop or another location where you can find it easily.
(When you actually run the experiment, many new files will be created in the same location where you have this file. If you want to keep your desktop tidy. you can create a folder on your desktop and then save this file inside that folder. That is what I always do.)
Press one of the "Shift" buttons many times (like 10 or 15) quickly. If you're using Windows, this might cause a window to pop up, asking you "Do you want to turn on Sticky Keys?" If this happens, there will be a blue link at the bottom of the window, saying "Go to the Ease of Access Center to disable the keyboard shortcut". Click that link, which will bring up a new window. Find the option that says "Turn on StickyKeys when SHIFT is pressed five times", and make sure you UNcheck that option.
There is an important reason why we have to do this. After you finish the experiment, you can try to think about why we turned this off.
After you've finished doing this, you should confirm that it worked. Close all the windows that were opened in this step. Now, you should be able to press SHIFT a million times, quickly, and it shouldn't cause any window to pop up.
We're almost ready to start the experiment. Make sure you're in a quiet environment with no distractions. Once you start the experiment, it's like playing a video game; you will need to pay close attention and react quickly, so you can't be distracted. The experiment should take about 5-10 minutes.
Read the rest of the instructions before you continue. Once you do the next step, the experiment programme will take over your screen, and you won't be able to see these instructions anymore (although you can still view them on another computer or your phone or whatever).
Open the "DMDX Automode" programme that you installed before. A window will open and fill up your screen. Click the "Browse" button there, and find the .rtf experiment file that you downloaded in step C. Click that file.
When you click "Run", the experiment will begin. The beginning of the experiment will show you some instructions, and then give you a chance to practice. If you need to exit the experiment at any time, click the "Esc" button.
When the experiment is over, you will have to press "Esc", and then a window will appear asking if you want to save the data. Make sure you click "Yes" to save your data!
When you're ready, do the experiment!
If you have trouble with this procedure, you may also view the video demo below.
When you've finished the experiment, continue on to the reflection questions below.
What do you think this experiment was about? That is to say, what aspect of your response do you think the researcher doing this experiment would be interested in, what kinds of data do you think the researcher would want to compare, and what do you think the results might show?
Now let's look at the experiment in a little bit more detail. Find the experiment file that you downloaded (an .rtf file) and open it to look at the code inside it. Some of the code is complicated; don't worry about all the details (in another module we will learn what the weird code means). For now I just want you to look at the words that were used in the experiment.
If you scroll down past the instructions part of the experiment, you will be able to see all the words that were actually used in the experiment. Each line looks something like this (depending, of course, on which language you used):
+111 / "農村" / * "縣城";
The number is a code that we will use when analyzing the results. The first word is the first word you saw before the main word; the last word is the word you actually responded to (i.e., the one that you had to judge was a real word or a non-word).
There are four groups of words in this experiment, which you can find based on the code. All the trials whose codes are in the 400s (i.e., 401, 402, 403, etc.) are word pairs from the "practice" part of the experiment; we can ignore these from now on. All the ones whose codes are in the 300s (i.e., 301, 302, 303, etc.) are ones that had fake words; we can ignore those as well. The important ones are the 100s and the 200s.
Look through your list of words and explore the word pairs in the 100s, and the word pairs in the 200s. These are the two groups of words that we are going to want to compare.
What do you think is the important difference between the group of words in the 100s and the group of words in the 200s? There is no right or wrong answer, and you won't be graded for this; it's just a chance for you to brainstorm.
When you have finished these activities, continue to the next section of the module: "Analyze your data".
by Stephen Politzer-Ahles. Last modified on 2021-07-12. CC-BY-4.0.