This tutorial video walks through the “My 8th Script” demo experiment, a complex word recall experiment that combines concepts from all seven previous scripts. Follow along by making your own copy of the script, found at: https://scripting.neurotask.com/howto/my_8th_script_advanced_experiment

This script is a word recall experiment with 2 conditions and a between-subjects design. Subjects are given an ID number when they begin and assigned to condition 1 or 2 based on whether their ID is odd or even. In both conditions, subjects have to memorize 12 words, then type the words they can recall. During recall, they are shown a “cue word” for each word in the list (a word that is loosely-related and might help them remember, such as “crust” as a hint for “cake”). These word pairings were taken from real experimental materials, so that the level of relatedness was valid and similar. The difference between condition 1 and 2 is that condition 2 is also shown the cue words during memorization, paired with the word they are related to. The goal is to see whether the cues become more useful when they are present during memorization too, as suggested by the Encoding Specificity Principle.

The script uses the same two functions as Script 6 (one containing the for-loop and one that scores subjects’ answers). It uses a block (like in Script 7) to show cue words at the bottom of the screen during recall. It incorporates the experimental elements (e.g., consent, demographic questions) seen in Script 3. Throughout the script, text is styled (in bold, underline, italics, size, color, and paragraphs) using HTML formatting.

Topics introduced: assigning subject IDs, between-subjects design, randomly assigning subjects to a condition, HTML font style formatting