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| Research article summary (published 30 Jan 2003): |
A simple and sensitive method to measure timing accuracy.
Full Abstract
Timing accuracy in presenting experimental stimuli (visual information on a PC or on a TV) and responding (keyboard presses and mouse signals) is of importance in several experimental paradigms. In this article, a simple system for measuring timing accuracy is described. The system uses two PCs (at least Pentium II, 200 MHz), a photocell, and an amplifier. No additional boards and timing hardware are needed. The first PC, a SlavePC, monitors the keyboard presses or mouse signals from the PC under test and uses a photocell that is placed in front of the screen to detect the appearance of visual stimuli on the display. The software consists of a small program running on the SlavePC. The SlavePC is connected through a serial line with a second PC. This MasterPC controls the SlavePC through an ActiveX control, which is used in a Visual Basic program. The accuracy of our system was investigated by using a similar setup of a SlavePC and a MasterPC to generate pulses and by using a pulse generator card. These tests revealed that our system has a 0.01-msec accuracy. As an illustration, the reaction time accuracy of INQUISIT for a few applications was tested using our system. It was found that in those applications that we investigated, INQUISIT measures reaction times from keyboard presses with millisecond accuracy.
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Author information
Author/s: De Clercq, Armand (A); Crombez, Geert (G); Buysse, Ann (A); Roeyers, Herbert (H);
Affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. armand.declercq(-atsign-)rug.ac.be
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article
Journal: Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc (Behav Res Methods Instrum Comput), published in United States. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2003-Feb; vol 35 (issue 1) : pp 109-15
Dates: Created 2003/05/01; Completed 2003/05/20; Revised 2004/11/17;
PMID: 12723785, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
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