Memory Laboratory Readme (Draft)

Note: This document is intended to be a short overview of how to use the Memory Laboratory. For a more detailed description of the Laboratory, including a discussion of possible research questions, go to http://cognitrn.psych.indiana.edu/rgoldsto/labware.html.

Overview: This laboratory runs experiments probing either implicit or explicit memory. Students can either have the computer generate lists of nonsense 3-letter syllables, or they can create their own lists of words. The computer then exposes students to the words and tests their memory for the words via recall, recognition, or perceptual identification testing procedures.

Starting the Program: When the Laboratory is first started, a box will appear asking you to select a file to save your results to. Any time an experiment is run, the results of the experiment will automatically be saved to this file. Also, changes made to the set-up of the experiment will also be written to this file before an experiment is run. If a result file is not selected, this information will not be saved. You will be prompted to change the result file if a change is made to the experiment set-up, or, you can change the result file at any time by selecting “Change Result File” from the “File” menu. It is strongly recommended that you select a result file ending with the extension “.txt”.

Main Menu: Once a result file has been selected, a blank screen with several menus will appear:

· File Menu:

o Change Result File (Ctrl – C)

§ Allows you to change the result file (see Starting the Program, above)

o Restore Settings (Ctrl – R)

§ Allows you to restores a previously saved experiment set-up.

o Save Settings (Ctrl – S)

§ Allows you to save the current experiment settings to the most recently specified save file. If no save file has been previously specified, this option is identical to Save Settings As.

o Save Settings As (Ctrl + Shift – S)

§ Allows you to save the current experiment settings to a specified file.

o Quit (Ctrl + Q)

§ Exits the Feature Search laboratory

· Experiment Menu:

o Display Setup (Ctrl – D)

§ Brings up a dialog box which allows you to change experiment settings (see Changing Settings, below)

o Learn Words (Ctrl – L)

§ Start the Learning Phase of the experiment (see The Learning Phase, below)

o Recognition Experiment (Ctrl – G)

§ Run the recognition experiment (see Recognition Experiments, below)

o Recall Experiment (Ctrl – E)

§ Run the recall experiment (see Recall Experiments, below)

o Perceptual Identification Experiment (Ctrl – P)

§ Run the perceptual Identification experiment (see Perceptual Identification Experiments, below)

· Word Files Menu:

o Create New Word Files (Ctrl – N)

§ Create new learning and testing word files (see Creating Word Files, below).

o Edit Word Files (Ctrl – O)

§ Edit existing learning or testing word files (see Editing Word Files, below)

o Create Random Word Files (Ctrl – W)

§ Create new learning and testing word files consisting of random words (see Creating Random Word Files, below)

Changing Settings: To change the experiment settings, choose “Display Setup” from the “Experiment” menu. This will bring up the following dialog box:

Word Learning Set Up: Press the “Open” button to select the name of the file that contains the words that subjects will be trained on. “Word Display Time” refers to the amount of time that each word is displayed on the screen. Each unit is 1 millisecond. You can also control the blank period between words (which influences how much rehearsal time subjects will have). You can adjust the If “Random presentation order” is selected, then the words in the file will be displayed in a random order. If “Use Word File’s Order” is selected, then the first word that is in the file will be the first word that is shown to subjects, and so on. If you are exploring word order effects such as primacy or recency, then you should use the word file’s order.

Memory Testing Set Up: Press the “Open” button to select the name of the file that contains the words that subjects will be tested on. The “Old key” and “New key” fields let you assign the keys that subjects should press to signal “old” and “new” judgments during the recognition test (see Recognition Experiment, below). The “Display Time” field lets you set the length of time (in milliseconds) the words are displayed during the perceptual identification experiment. Thus, if you type in 5 for “Display Time,” then the word will be shown for 5 milliseconds. A display time of 15 to 30 ms may provide a challenging duration, but the exact number will depend on your materials. If you select the “Mask Word” box, then after the word has been displayed on the screen, it will be covered by a row of asterisks (see Perceptual Identification Experiment, below).

Changing type fonts: The size and font of the learning and testing words can be adjusted by the “Font” and “Font Size” menus. This is particularly useful in situations where you wish the words to have different physical appearances during training and test.

Running Experiments:

Learning Phase: Subjects will be shown all of the words in the designated file of training words. Each word will be displayed one at a time, and subjects should be instructed to try to remember the words that they see. Press <ctrl> Q to exit this experiment and return to the Main Menu, or <alt> +<F4> (or press the close button in the upper right hand corner of the screen) to terminate the Memory Laboratory.

Recognition Experiment: Subjects will be shown all of the words in the designated file of test words in a random order, and they will have to respond whether each word is old (familiar) or new (unseen). Press <ctrl> Q to exit this experiment and return to the Main Menu, or <alt> +<F4> (or press the close button in the upper right hand corner of the screen) to terminate the Memory Laboratory.

Recall Experiment: Subjects will simply be asked to type in as many of the words that they can remember as possible. They will press the “Done” button when they can no longer think of any more words. It is important that they spell the words exactly as they were on the list, and that they use lower case letters if the original words were in lower case letters. The order in which the subject types the words is not important.

Perceptual Identification Experiment: Subjects will be shown a row of asterisks and then a word will be flashed on the screen. After the word has been on the screen for the specified Display Time, it will be removed from the screen. If the Mask Word option was selected, a row of asterisks will cover the word before it is removed. Then subjects will be asked to type in the word that was flashed. Again, the spelling and case of the word should match the displayed word exactly. Press <ctrl> Q to exit this experiment and return to the Main Menu, or <alt> +<F4> (or press the close button in the upper right hand corner of the screen) to terminate the Memory Laboratory.

Word Files:

Creating Word Files: To create Word Files, select “Create New Word Files” from the “Word Files” menu. This will bring up a dialog that looks like this:

To create a Learning Word File first select the name of your file. Next, add words to the file by typing them into the Word field and pressing the Add Word button. The words should appear in the list to the right. To remove words from this list, select the words and then press the Remove Word button. Finally press the Create Learning Words File button. No file is created until you press this button. A message will pop up telling you whether or not the Word File was created successfully.

To create a Testing Word File, first select the name of your file. Next, you need to decide whether you would like this Testing Word File to be associated with a Learning Word File. If you check the “Add words from Learning File” box, every word from the specified Learning Word File will be added to the Test Word File with the specified label (the default is “OLD”). Next, add words to the file by typing them into the Word field, typing the desired Label into the Label field, and pressing the Add Word button. The words should appear in the list to the right. To remove words from this list, select the words and then press the Remove Word button. Finally press the Create Testing Words File button. No file is created until you press this button. A message will pop up telling you whether or not the Word File was created successfully.

Editing Word Files: To edit existing Word Files, select “Edit Word Files” from the “Word Files” menu. This will bring up a dialog that looks like this:

This dialog can be used to edit both Learning Word Files and Testing Word Files. First select the Word File you would like to edit by pressing the Open button. Next, add words to the file by typing them into the Word field and pressing the Add Word button. If you are editing a Testing Word File, you should also enter a label for each word. The words should appear in the list to the right. To remove words from this file, select the words and then press the Remove Word button. Finally press the Save Words File button. No changes will occur to the file until you press this button. A message will pop up telling you whether or not the changes to the Word File were saved successfully.

Creating Random Word Files: To create a random Word File, select “Create Random Word Files” from the “Word Files” menu. This will bring up a dialog that looks like this:

To create a Random Learning Word File first select the name of your file. Next, specify the number of words in the file and the length of each word. If you enter 0 in the Letter per Word field, the file will contain words of varying lengths (from 1 – 10 letters). Finally press the Create Learning Words File button. No file is created until you press this button. A message will pop up telling you whether or not the Word File was created successfully.

To create a Testing Word File, first select the name of your file. Next, you need to specify which Learning Word File to base this Testing Word File on. Every word from the Learning Word File will be added to the Testing Word File. All of the words from the Learning Word File will be given the label “OLD”. All of the newly created words will be given the label “NEW”. Next, specify the number of new words in the file and the length of each new word. If you enter 0 in the Letter per Word field, the new words will vary in length (from 1 – 10 letters). Finally press the Create Testing Words File button. No file is created until you press this button. A message will pop up telling you whether or not the Word File was created successfully.

Making your own list of words: You can also edit Word Files on your own. You can use any word processor to do this. Make certain, however, that you save the file in plain text format. The first line in your file should contain the number of words that are in the list. Then, you should type each word on a separate line. To assign a label to a word place the label after the word. The label and the word should be separated by a space. Here is an example:

3

word1 LABEL1

word2 LABEL2

bigword1 LABEL1