Open Source Software for Experiment Design and Control

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe a software package that can be used for performing such routine tasks as controlling listening experiments (e.g., simple labeling, discrimination, sentence intelligibility, and magnitude estimation), recording responses and response latencies, analyzing and plotting the results of those experiments, displaying instructions, and making scripted audio-recordings. The software runs under Windows and is controlled by creating text files that allow the experimenter to specify key features of the experiment such as the stimuli that are to be presented, the randomization scheme, interstimulus and intertrial intervals, the format of the output file, and the layout of response alternatives on the screen. Although the software was developed primarily with speech-perception and psychoacoustics research in mind, it has uses in other areas as well, such as written or auditory word recognition, written or auditory sentence processing, and visual perception.