Phonetics Lab collection of Matlab scripts for
perception experiments
For the benefit of future users,
we ask that a brief description of working scripts used in the lab be sent to Pat for posting here.
Many of the perception experiments run in the lab are scripted in Matlab. Henry can provide you with custom scripts for your experiments. In
addition, this page archives a few past scripts that can be used as
models. Be aware that these scripts include path information and
filenames that may need to be adjusted by new users, and they often
call for text files listing the stimulus files to be used in the
experiment. Descriptions of other experimental scripts are being added
as they become available. Important update in 2013: There is a new version of PsychToolbox which is not compatible with most of our existing scripts. Gradually, all the computers in the lab are being updated with the new version of PsychToolbox. Existing scripts need to be updated before they can be used with the new version.
Downloadable scripts:
Stephen Wilson's script for a visual sort experiment, for Christina Esposito and Jody Kreiman. This experiment
has subjects sort 25 audio files into 2 bins, after practicing with 10 practice
audio files. Subjects must listen to and sort every file. The audio filenames (practice and real) are listed inside
the script itself, so either name your files accordingly, or edit the script.
The output file for each subject reports how each file was sorted, and how
many times the subject listened to it. To run this script, the PsychToolbox
must be installed along with Matlab.
An identification task with on-screen picture responses: "dlxexp1a.m"
(by Stephen Wilson, for Pat Keating and Frank Manis).This script was for use with child subjects,
so it includes some visual reinforcement along the way. It assumes a
file of pictures and a file of WAV audio stimuli.
A discrimination task for children: "dlxexp1b.m" (again by Stephen Wilson, for Pat Keating and Frank Manis). Again, for use with child subjects. The calls to the audio stimulus files are specific to those filenames.
A gating task for children: "dlxexp4.m" (again by Stephen Wilson, for Pat Keating and Frank Manis), along with its associated stimulus list text file.
A target-word recognition task (is this stimulus an instance of the target word, or not?) for children: "dlxexp5.m" (again by Stephen Wilson, for Pat Keating and Frank Manis), along with its associated stimulus list text file.
Descriptions of existing scripts available from Henry (to be modified for your needs):
- display a sentence in a fixed-rate moving window and record the subject saying the sentence back
- a phoneme monitoring
task, during which listeners hear a sequence of words and are asked to press a
button whenever they hear a specific sound (here, [t]). The experiment is
preceded by a practice round with feedback.
- a word-learning study, including exposure phase (alien pictures and auditory nonwords) and test phases (auditory lexical decision, nonword
repetition, picture identification, picture naming w/ and w/o feedback)
- a passive listening task and reading words aloud
- a gating task for adults
- subjects
hear a sentence (audio file) that has a topic word in various
conditions, they rank the feasibility of the sentence, and if they
think it's feasible, they are asked to produce the sentence, which is
recorded. The program does a random ordering of sentences for each
subject and returns the ranking of each sentence, the timing of the
response, and the audio file of the production
- a forced-choice identification task, with RTs measured from onset of auditory stimuli
- an auditory lexical
decision task (preceded by priming stimuli) for adults
More archival
scripts, some of them quite preliminary, along with audio and picture
files for those experiments, are available on the archival page
for the dyslexia project.
last updated July 2011 by P. Keating
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