Managing Complexity in Psychology Experiment Generation

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project will develop new technologies to advance the efficiency, precision, power, and ease of use of tools for psychology experiment generation. This proposal develops methods that will allow psychologists to cope with the growing complexity of computer based experimentation and Internet based data collection. The research addresses five specific objectives to develop an integrated approach to managing complexity in a technology family referred to as the Taming Experiment Complexity Suite (TECS). The first objective is to develop an extendable spreadsheet interface for building experiments that will dramatically reduce the learning and development time by providing a novel interface that maximizes transfer from previous computer applications knowledge and manages the complexity shown to the researcher while providing a flexible, precise, easy to use interface. The research will involve videotaped behavioral tests, task analyses, classroom tests, and experiment coverage assessment. The second objective is to create an automated data processing method using "smart" Excel Spreadsheets, PowerPoint creation programs, and web page creation. The third is to develop a precision USB microprocessor device that maintains independent 0.1 ms timing with synchronization to ERP/fMRI/physiological monitoring data collection. The fourth is develop an Internet based data collection architecture that can maintain timing precision with remote multi-site data collection. The fifth is to provide an integration of tutorial tools, paradigm library, and suite architecture to enable comprehensive experiment supervision, data management and archiving. The resulting product will enable researchers to construct cutting edge experiments in behavioral, cognitive, perceptual, physiological, and brain imaging research covering over 90% of the current computerized experimental literature. The team will draw on the expertise it has acquired developing the leading experiment generation and imaging tools that are currently used in thousands of laboratories and successfully commercializing past SBIR efforts.