Programming Behavioral Experiments with MATLAB and Psychtoolbox: 9 Simple Steps for Students and Researchers / Edition 1

by Erman Misirlisoy

Overview

Human behavior is fascinating so it’s no surprise that psychologists and neuroscientists spend their lives designing rigorous experiments to understand it. MATLAB is one of the most widely used pieces of software for designing and running behavioral experiments, and it opens up a world of quick and flexible experiment programming.

This book offers a step-by-step guide to using MATLAB with Psychtoolbox to create customisable experiments. Its pocket size and simple language allow you to get straight to the point and help you to learn fast in order to complete your work in great time. In nine simple steps, it guides you all the way from setting parameters for your experiment to analysing the output. Gone are the daunting days of working through hundreds of irrelevant and complicated documents, as in this handy book, Erman Misirlisoy coaxes you in the right direction with his friendly and encouraging tricks and tips.

If you want to learn how to develop your own experiments to collect and analyse behavioral data, then this book is a must-read. Whether you are a student in experimental psychology, a researcher in cognitive neuroscience, or simply someone who wants to run behavioral tasks on your friends for fun, this book will offer you the skills to succeed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138671928
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/17/2016
Edition description:	Student
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Erman Misirlisoy got his PhD in cognitive neuroscience from University College London. He went on to found a scientific consulting company and joined the company Peak in 2015 to help develop effective cognitive training interventions.

Table of Contents

List of figures. Acknowledgements. Introduction 1. Step 0: Preliminary notes 2. Step 1: Initialisation 3. Step 2: Setting parameters and opening up variables to store experimental conditions and data 4. Step 3: Executing for loops to iterate through trials 5. Step 4: Using if statements to define trials and present stimuli 6. Step 5: Presenting stimuli and recording responses 7. Step 6: Saving data 8. Step 7: Debugging, optimisation and functions 9. Step 8: Testing and ‘sanity checks’ on data 10. Step 9: The basics of data analysis 11. Congratulations! Index