This workshop introduced a variety of behavioral research tools, including how to design a basic behavioral study, how to collect responses (such as button presses and mouse clicks) and reaction times from participants, and how to save and load individual and group data.

In particular, we designed a short behavioral study where a user (participant) enters their initials, is shown some instructions, and then completes a motion detection task. Across 9 trials, the participant is shown 2-frame clips that either depict leftward motion, rightward motion, or a random change of a pixel pattern. The participant responds by indicating “l” for left, “r” for right, and “o” for other. Responses and reaction times are recorded into a trial matrix, and saved for analysis.

We also wrote a quick script that loads individual data files from the study and computes some statistics on the data (e.g. average reaction times across conditions).

The script for running the study can be found here: run_script.m

• You will also need to save the instructions image in the same folder: instructions.png

The script for analyzing the study can be found here: analysis_script.m