Door Opening Task

Technical Manual

Script Author: Katja Borchert, Ph.D. (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Created: December 12, 2013

Last Modified: June 07, 2023 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements the DoorOpeningTask, a Response Perseveration Task, as described in:

Matthys, W., van Goozen, S. H. M., de Vries, H., Cohen-Kettenis, P. T., & van Engeland, H. (1998). The Dominance of Behavioural Activation over Behavioural Inhibition in Conduct Disordered Boys with or without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 5, 643–651.

Duration

5 minutes

Description

Participants are asked to open doors. Opening a door is either rewarded with 1 point that is added to the total winnings or punished by 1 point being subtracted from the total winnings. The number of winning doors decreases over the course of the experiment while the number of losing doors increases. Participants can quit the experiment at any point keeping the number of points earned up to this point. A large number of doors opened is indicative of response perseveration

Procedure

1. Instruction Block
2. Block "perc100ent wins" (block.perc100_win) => optional; see editable value parameters.skip_perc100Win
...
12. Block "perc0ent wins" (block.perc0_win) => optional, see editable value parameters.skip_perc0Win

Each block potentially presents 10 doors with a pre-assigned win/loss ratio (see list.perc100_win - list.perc0_win)
=> within those 10 trials win/losses are randomly sampled (without replacement)

Matthys et al (1998) ran all 11 text blocks (max number of doors: 110) with a beginning credit of 0 points.
Win and Loss amount both equaled 1 point.

Stimuli

are provided by Millisecond; see section Editable Stimuli

Instructions

Instructions are not original and can be easily edited under section Editable Instructions
(Matthys et al, 1998, provide instructions on p.645).

Summary Data

File Name: dooropeningtask_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
inquisit.version Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
startDate Date the session was run
startTime Time the session was run
subjectId Participant ID
groupId Group number
sessionId Session number
elapsedTime Session duration in ms
completed 0 = Test was not completed
1 = Test was completed
Parameter Values
skipPerc0Win True = block.perc0_win is skipped (default)
false = block.perc0_win is run
skipPerc100Win True = block.perc100_win is skipped (default)
false = block.perc100_win is run
Summary Variable
totalNumberdoors Saves the total number of doors that could be potentially opened during the experiment
countOpendoors Tracks the number of doors openend before quit.
the more doors are opened the higher response perseveration

Raw Data

File Name: dooropeningtask_raw*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
build Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
date Date the session was run
time Time the session was run
subject Participant ID
group Group number
session Session number
blockCode Name of the current block
blockNum Number of the current block
trialCode Name of the current trial
trialNum Number of the current trial
nextOutcome Stores the win/loss status of the current door
1 = it's a win door
0 = it's a loss door
response The participant's response (here: scancode of the response key)
57 = spacebar press
16 = Q
quit Tracks whether participant has decided to quit
0 = participant is still playing
1 = participant has quit the game
latency The response latency
totalScore Tracks the total points earned (updated in trial.doorchoice)
summary variable
totalNumberdoors Saves the total number of doors that could be potentially opened during the experiment
countOpendoors Tracks the number of doors openend before quit.
the more doors are opened the higher response perseveration

Parameters

The procedure can be adjusted by setting the following parameters.

NameDescriptionDefault
responseKeyOpen Response key to open doors " " -> spacebar
responseKeyQuit Response key to quit "Q"
feedbackDuration Default presentation duration of the win/loss door feedback screen 1000ms
startcredits The number of points that participants start with
that's the amount specified in Matthys et al (1998)
0
winAmount The number of points that participants get for opening a win door 1
lossAmount The number of points that participants lose for opening a loss door 1
skipPerc100Win True = block.perc100_win is skipped
false = block.perc100_win is run (default)
skipPerc0Win True = block.perc0_win is skipped
false = block.perc0_win is run (default)
presentFeedbackSummary True = one the final page of the experiments, the total score is displayed (default)
false = one the final page of the experiments, the total score is Not displayed