Experigen basics 1 Intoduction
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1. gt 4 Many experiments only need one dynamic page stimulus ejs but you can have as many as you d like 10 Structure The structure of your experiment is mostly in design js 1 This file is written in standard Javascript with a few extra methods for arrays such as Shuffle chooseRandom and others 2 pairWith essentially adds a field column to your items You must add a view field column to every item so minimally you will have items items pairWith view stimulus ejs Equivalently and more cumbersomely you can add a column called view to your items txt and enter stimulus ejs in every row 3 Usually the first part of design js defines the trail block s e g item selection and randomization 4 The second part includes addStaticScreen and addBlock com mands To discuss example of a design js for a wug test the default To discuss example of an artificial language experiment design art txt 11 Read the results The database 1 There is a database at http db phonologist org somewhere in the cloud don t know where its physical location is You are welcome to use it if you d like Sometime it goes offline for a while If so wait until it goes back online again don t control it If you want to set up your own database server will be happy to send you the needed Perl scripts The database has no security to speak of If this level of2. security is not sufficient for your purposes Experigen is not for you Read the results through R even if you want to use a spreadsheet program to look at them 1 2 In R open the getresults R file Update the experimentName field which should match the one you specified in your settings css file Update the sourceurl field This is the URL of your experiment but without the initial http or the final slash with slashes changed to periods and tildes removed No dashes allowed Run the R script The results are written to wherever R s working folder is By default it s your home folder You can open the resulting csv files with your spreadsheet program What gets written to the server For each page the participant sees the server writes the following fields The experiment name which you specify in settings css The experiment s URL A user code randomly generated by the server The value from the first column of your items txt file The values of variables you associated with your items using the pairWith function Any other values from your items txt and any other variables you create will not be written Since your first column contains unique values you can use R s merge command to add the extra fields from your items txt file 12 The browser Some people won t be able to participate because they have an old browser painfully slow connection java
3. well if you don t have it 3 Initial setup 1 Download and unzip the latest version of Experigen https github com tlozoot experigen 2 Copy the web folder or just its content from Experigen to your webspace server e g a folder on your university website Experigen doesn t need any special configurations or permissions 3 You should have a functioning English wug test on your server at this point Open a browser and admire 4 Testing a website 1 The console This is your friend like Chrome s best Go to View gt Developer Developer tools Activate the console tab 2 The Cache This is your enemy Click the settings cogwheel in the developer tools and check the Disable Cache while DevTools is open box 3 Other browsers Test your website on various browsers and operating systems including Windows and phones tablets It would be foolish not to test on IE In principle Experigen should work on IE 6 Firefox 2 Safari 3 includes iOS Chrome Opera 9 This will likely cover 99 of your target audience 5 Your first edit 1 Directly on the server not recommended Use CyberDuck to navigate to the views folder and find intro ejs Click the edit icon and change something in the text No record of this change is left on your computer bad news 2 Locally with manual upload easiest Edit your local intro ejs then upload to your server overwriting the server s intro ejs Ref
4. Michael Becker michael becker stonybrook edu September 19 2014 Experigen basics 1 Intoduction Examples of what Experigen can do e Phonotactic wellformedness http experigen phonologist org russian Nonce word tasks http experigen phonologist org francais natural http experigen phonologist org saloperie Artificial languages http experigen phonologist org affop http experigen phonologist org fixed Verbal morphology http experigen phonologist org french Funny languages http experigen phonologist org hebrew http experigen phonologist org honaidah http ucl phonologist org tang chinese cantomusic Other options e Online turktools WebExp2 Ibex Farm Survey Monkey e Offline Praat PsyScope etc etc 2 Before you begin You will need these things 1 A designed experiment Have a good idea for the design of your entire experiment including instructions practice items stimuli etc If this is your first experiment look at existing experiments for inspiration 2 Web space Your university provides some e g for your personal website not blog Find out where it is 3 An SFTP program like CyberDuck There are many others 4 A plain text editor For OS X I like TextWrangler am told that Notepad is good for Windows If you use Linux you already have your favorite text editor 5 Chrome You ll need it to follow this handout Install Firefox as
5. ems items pairWith order 1 2 stem balloon stem raccoon stem possum type iamb type iamb type _ trochee sgfile ballon42 mp3 sgfile racc53 mp3 sgfile possur mp3 view _ stim ejs view _ stim ejs view _ stim ejs order 1 order 2 order 1 3 Sound files a If you have them save them in mp3 format To convert a bunch of files in one go use Adapter OS X b Optional empty out the sounds folder inside the resources folder c Upload your sound files into the sounds folder 4 Pictures and frame sentences a Pictures on the web are usually in jpg or png format It s usually a good idea to make all your pictures the same size b Optional empty out the pictures folder inside the resources folder c Upload your pictures into the pictures folder d If each item is always paired with the same picture s frame sentence s put the file names of the pictures or your frame sentences in your items txt file e If items are randomly paired with pictures frame sentences create a pictures txt frames txt file following the same procedure you did for items txt It may be as simple as a single column with file names frames in it with a column name in the first row 7 Setup 1 Use footer html in the views folder to change the text that appears in the footer You probably want to keep the footer free of links you don t want the participant to click on any links while they are doin
6. g the experiment This file is written in standard HTML use any HTML tutorial to learn more 2 Use style css in the setup folder to specify colors fonts etc For right to left languages this is where you specify direction rtl This file is written in standard CSS Use any CSS tutorial to learn more 3 Use settings js in the setup folder to specify the title of the browser tab window various default messages and the width visibilty of the progress bar This file is written in standard Javascript and specifies the properties of a Javascript object You should probably change it minimally i e just change the strings in quotes You cannot use quotes inside quotes type a single quote twice if needed The experimentName field is important The experimental results will be stored under this name in the database You can use this for instance to build the experiment with one exper imentName e g pilot then change to a different exper imentName to start with a clean slate in the database You can only use A Z a z 0 9 in this field 8 Static pages These are pages that contain instructions a demographics form a thank you note etc 1 Each page must have a button that leads to the following screen a sound button or a continue button 2 In your demographics form each field must have a unique name 3 These pages are written in EJS which is HTML that is augmented with two special tags lt g
7. resh your browser to see the result 3 Locally with syncing easy Edit your local intro ejs Then use rsync OS X and Linux believe you can rsync on Windows if you install cygwin to update the server On OS X you can use the included sync command file To not have to type your password each time see http www linuxproblem org art_9 html 4 Locally with a testing environment best requires most setup Edit your local intro ejs Use your local server e g Apache to examine the website on http localhost Setup will likely include editing httpd conf and modifying permissions 6 Upload your resources 1 Files a b File names When you create files for use with Experigen sound files pictures videos or any other kind of file that goes on the internet be conservative with the names you give them To be on the safe side only use a z 0 9 and _ Uppercase letters fancy symbols spaces etc may work on some servers but why risk it Encoding All your text files should be UTF 8 Bad things happen otherwise Do not use UTF 16 as Firefox ignores it silently Line breaks should be LF or CRLF not CR 2 items txt This is where you list the information that goes into trials a b c d e Use a spreadsheet program e g Libreoffice to make a file that has one row for each of your items If you are making a wug test for instance you will have one row for every wug and one row for eve
8. ry filler The first row in the spreadsheet will specify column names Each column name must be unique and non empty The first column in the spreadsheet is special it identifies your items It must contain unique non empty values Empty rows are allowed Export your spreadsheet to a text file In Libreoffice choose save as and under file type choose Text CSV csv Choose tab as the field delimiter and an empty string as the text delimiter Once the file is saved verify that it s UTF 8 rename it to items txt and upload it into the resouces folder Or copy the content from the spreadsheet and paste in your text file How items txt gets converted to an array of objects e Say you start with this items txt file stem ballon type iamb raccoon iamb possum trochee sgfile ballon42 mp3 racc543 mp3 possur mp3 e It will end up like this stem type sgfile balloon iamb ballon42 mp3 stem type sgfile raccoon iamb racc53 mp3 stem type sgfile possum trochee possur mp3 e Usea pairWith command to add fields e g items items pairWith view stim ejs stem balloon stem raccoon stem possum f type iamb type iamb type _ trochee sgfile ballon42 mp3 sgfile racc53 mp3 sgfile possur mp3 view _ stim ejs view _ stim ejs view _ stim ejs e Pairing with a short list recycles the values e g it
9. script is turned off etc Not a big problem in my experience you will rarely know they had a problem one or two Mechanical Turkers will complain Browsers are different from each other You will never be able to make your experiment look exactly the same on all browsers Your goal should be to just make your experiment work in the browsers your audience is using The core functions of Experigen were designed to work on IE 6 Firefox 2 Safari 3 includes iOS Chrome Opera 9 This should hopefully cover well over 99 of your target audience The actual compatibility depends on your materials To maximize your experiment s compatibility prefer standard widely implemented HTML CSS and Javascript It s wise to test with a variety of browser operating system combinations including a Windows machine and an iPad 10 6 Many people will have crappy speakers headphones and a noisy environ ment If good listening conditions are important are you expecting people to hear the place of final stops use control questions to identify poor listeners 7 Where appropriate present materials both visually and auditorily 13 Check list Before your experiment goes live check the following things 1 If using sound files and or pictures make sure that they all dis play correctly Missing sound files will cause the experiment to halt 2 Check that the server is writing everything you want it to
10. t and lt gt The contents of these tags is written in Javascript Here are some examples of useful things e lt continueButton gt makes a button The text on the button is specified in your settings js file e lt continueButton gt makes a button with an arrow on it old browser might not show it e lt makeSoundButton pharon mp3 3 gt will make a sound button Experigen will expect to find the file in whatever you specified as your sounds folder which by default is resources sounds 4 If you want to display a page piecemeal put each piece inside a div with aclass trialpartWrapper specification Be sure to close these div s like so lt div class trialpartWrapper gt lt continueButton gt lt div gt These divs will appear in order triggered by the press of a continue button or a response button You can override the default order by specifying an id for each div named part1 part2 etc 9 Dynamic pages These display a row from your items txt file 1 Column names can usually be referenced directly e g lt singular gt will display the content of the column singular of the current item 2 Alternatively use this e g lt this singular gt You will have to use it if your column name is a Javascript reserved word 3 If you want to compose a column name you have to use the this syntax e g lt this plural 1
11. write and in particular the participants responses 3 Check that all the fields in your demographics form are written correctly to the server 14 Publish It s nicer than perishing When you write your paper please acknowledge e Becker Michael amp Jonathan Levine 2014 Experigen an online experiment platform Available at github com tlozoot experigen 15 How to get help Turn to your friends and colleagues If you write to me might answer if feel like it 11
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