Running Experiment

Participant Handling

Before the start of your experiment, you should inform your participants on the goals, terms and conditions of your research with an information letter (ENG /NL ). After this they should agree with participating in the research by signing the informed consent (ENG /NL ).

Overview Data Flow

For a general overview of the data flow when running an experiment see the following schematic. The next few paragraphs of this section will elaborate on the data flow.

Transfer Experiment Files > Project Account

In preparation of running your experiment, you have to transfer all needed experiment files to your research account beforehand.

For EEG and Eye-tracking Experiments

First, log into your research account (on any lab computer). Put all files that are needed for your experiment in the EXP folder on the server, found at \\labssrv1\labs\[Projectaccountname]\EXP.

For Behavioural Experiments

When running experiments in the behavioural cubicles, you have to create a new folder (e.g. "MyExperiment") within the \\labssrv1\labs\[Projectaccountname]\EXP folder. You place your experiment files in this new folder. If your project includes multiple experimental files (including images, textfiles or sound), place them together with the actual experiment inside of the "MyExperiment" folder.

Multiple separate experiments can be run sequently in the same run. For this, multiple folders are needed in \\labssrv1\labs\[Projectaccountname]\EXP. Folders will be automatically and sequentially opened during a session. This happens in alphabetical and numerical order. Thus, to create a specific play order you could for example use "01_MyFirstExperiment" and "02_MySecondExperiment" as folder names.

If you are planning on running experiments in the cubicles, please look at the cubicle manual for more detailed information about correctly setting up your project account and data management.

Starting Your Experiment

For EEG and Eye-tracking Experiments

Turn on all needed computers (Stimulus/EyeLink/BioSemi). Log into the stimulus computer with your research account. Every time you log in, all files from the \\labssrv1\labs\[Projectaccountname]\EXP folder will be copied to a local EXP folder. When running your experiment, it is important to use the version located in the LocalPC-EXP (desktop shortcut of local EXP folder).

Although the contents of \\labssrv1\labs\[Projectaccountname]\EXP and LocalPC-EXP should completely match after logging in, it is strongly advised to NOT run your experiment from the server. Any network problems can cause your experiment to crash, this will not pose a problem when running locally.

Furthermore, you should specify that your data should be stored in the LocalPC-DATA folder. If this is not possible, move the data there manually before logging off from the project account. When logging off, all files from the local DATA folder will be copied to the LABSSRV1-DATA folder on the server.

For Behavioural Experiments

See section Behavioural Cubicles.