bbfloc_v5.0

This is an experiment tailored for infant and child subjects - that integrates dynamic and static stimuli of the following categories: faces, hands, cars, and scenes

a rundown:

runs alternate so that: odd runs: combined stim presentation. 7 mins and 36 seconds, w/ 6 seconds countdown, 16 second blocks that repeat three times per category with 8 sec baselines interspersed between every 3 blocks. even runs: KOSAKOWSKI STIM ONLY! 3 mins and 26s, w/ 6 seconds countdown, 16 second blocks that repeat twice per category with 8 sec baselines interspersed between each block.

Static condition stimuli for faces, hands, cars, and scenes categories were adapted from Anthony Stigliani's fLoc package (Stigliani et al., 2015). Static condition stimuli for the food category were adapted from Nidhi Jain's food stimuli (Jain et al., 2023). Dynamic condition stimuli were generated by Beth Rispoli. Heather Kosakowski's video stimuli (Kosakowski et al., 2023) were adapted to be introduced as their own condition to test for replicability.

Run CSVs are always generated in MATLAB, with each CSV being unique to a specific subject. These CSVs are then used by PsychoPy to execute the experiment.

setting up the experiment for a subject

First use the RUNME.m script to generate the run CSVs and data folders for the subject! Just input the subject's name, your laptop's user (whoami), and the run #. Second load the Psychopy runME. Input their name, the laptop user, and the run number when prompted.

set-up instructions

Clone this repository onto the computer you will use to present stimuli. Add it to your desktop.

Software requirements: Matlab and PsychoPy (v2023.2.3); python version 3.12.6

folder organization

• Three subfolders to be kept within bbfloc:
  • matlab: where the Matlab functions used to generate experiment runs will be kept.
    • RUNME: is the main matlab script used to generate unique run CSVs each subject.
  • psychopy: where the PsychoPy scripts for each experiment version will be kept.
    • Contains a folder called countdown_imgs where the countdown images for the experiment are kept.
    • Also contains a subfolder called data where the participant experiment data is kept.
      • Within this subfolder will be where folders for each participant are kept (e.g., bb01, bb02). - Within each participant folder should be a unique CSV for each run. Parfiles and log files will be automatically saved in the subject's data folder.
  • stimuli: contains two subfolders:
    • dynamic_stimuli: contains the dynamic stimuli, edited to have emoji fixations affixed onto them. Stimuli and blank baseline videos have a duration of 4s.
    • updated_static_stimuli: contains the static stimuli (1080x1080p), edited to have emoji fixations affixed onto them.
    • saxestim_wfixation_grouped: contains Heather Kosakowski's stimuli, edited to have emoji fixations affixed onto them. Stimuli have a duration of 2.6667s, blank baseline videos have 4s durations.

notes on getting psychopy to actually work on your mac

• we strongly recommend using psychopy version 2023.2.3 - any other versions give us wonky errors and crash the experiment prematurely
• if you get an iohub crash error: go to privacy and security in your System settings -> go to accessibility -> allow psychopy to control your laptop