___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ *AGGRESSION THEMED EMOTIONAL STROOP TASK - with keyboard input* ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ last updated: 03-01-2022 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com) for Millisecond Software, LLC Script Copyright © 03-01-2022 Millisecond Software ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND INFO ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This script implements an Aggression Themed Emotional Stroop task. The classic Stroop paradigm demonstrates the interference of word meaning on naming the color in which the words are written as measured by reaction time differences to color-meaning congruent and color-meaning incongruent combinations. The Aggression Stroop takes advantage of this basic Stroop interference effect by comparing reaction times to aggression related words, positive and negative words and neutral words. The implemented procedure is based on: Smith, P. & Waterman, M. (2003). Processing bias for aggression words in forensic and nonforensic samples. Cognition and Emotion, 17, 681-701. This script uses keyboard input instead of voice recordings. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ TASK DESCRIPTION ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Participants are presented words from 5 different categories (aggression, neutral, positive, negative, color word) in four different colors (blue, red, yellow, green) and are asked to press one of four response keys to indicate the color of the words regardless of their meaning. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ DURATION ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ the default set-up of the script takes appr. 5 minutes to complete ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ DATA FILE INFORMATION ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The default data stored in the data files are: (1) Raw data file: 'emotionalstroopwithkeytboardinput_raw*.iqdat' (a separate file for each participant) build: The specific Inquisit version used (the 'build') that was run computer.platform: the platform the script was run on (win/mac/ios/android) date, time: date and time script was run subject, group: with the current subject/groupnumber session: with the current session id blockcode, blocknum: the name and number of the current block (built-in Inquisit variable) trialcode, trialnum: the name and number of the currently recorded trial (built-in Inquisit variable) Note: trialnum is a built-in Inquisit variable; it counts all trials run; even those that do not store data to the data file such as feedback trials. Thus, trialnum may not reflect the number of main trials run per block. target: the currently selected target word color: the currently selected color response: the participant's key response (scancode of response button) scancode/label for the red response button (default: 32 -> d) scancode/label for the green response button (default: 33 -> f) scancode/label for the blue response button (default: 36 -> j) scancode/label for the yellow response button (default: 37 -> k) responseCategory: the interpreted key response: "red" "green" "blue" "yellow" correct: the correctness of the response (1 = correct; 0 = incorrect) latency: the response latency (in ms); measured from onset of word (2) Summary data file: 'emotionalstroopwithkeytboardinput_summary*.iqdat' (a separate file for each participant) inquisit.version: Inquisit version run computer.platform: the platform the script was run on (win/mac/ios/android) startdate: date script was run starttime: time script was started subjectid: assigned subject id number groupid: assigned group id number sessionid: assigned session id number elapsedtime: time it took to run script (in ms); measured from onset to offset of script completed: 0 = script was not completed (prematurely aborted); 1 = script was completed (all conditions run) Note: neu = neutral; agg = aggression, col = color, neg = negative; pos = positive propcorrect_neu- propcorrect_pos: proportion correct for all 5 categories meanrt_neu- meanrt_pos: mean latencies for correct responses for all 5 categories separately bias_agg- bias_pos: Bias Scores: Difference between mean latency in categories Aggression, Color, Positive Words, Negative Words and Neutral Word condition (category mean latencies are subtracted from mean latency of Neutral condition) => positive scores: meaning of category words interfered more than meaning of neutral words on color categorization task __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1. Practice Block: 10 trials (not original; this script uses the words "one" to "ten" as practice stimuli) 2. Test Block: 125 trials (= 5 categories x 25 trials); trials are randomly sampled without replacement * error feedback given; to remove follow instructions under section TRIALS ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ STIMULI ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ * original stimuli by Smith & Waterman (2003) (due to a potential typo in the original article one word appeared under two categories (Appendix2); we replaced it with a word that is similar in length and appearance => section Editable STIMULI-> Negative Words) * each color appears 6 times in each category (the 7th pairing of word-color is random) * color words "red", "yellow", "blue" and "green" are not used as targets * 5 color words are repeats (see Smith & Waterman, 2003) ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ INSTRUCTIONS ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Instructions are not original to the task. They are provided by Millisecond Software as htm/html pages and can be edited by changing the provided htm/html files. To edit htm/html-files: open the respective documents in simple Text Editors such as TextEdit (Mac) or Notepad (Windows). ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ EDITABLE CODE ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ check below for (relatively) easily editable parameters, stimuli, instructions etc. Keep in mind that you can use this script as a template and therefore always "mess" with the entire code to further customize your experiment. The parameters you can change are: /fixationcrosspresentationtime: time (in ms) that fixation cross is presented (default: 500ms) /keyred: the red response button (default: d) /keygreen: the green response button (default: f) /keyblue: the blue response button (default: j) /keyyellow the yellow response button (default: k)