Instructions for Attention Control Tasks

This document provides basic instructions on administering and scoring data for attention control tasks downloaded from the Engle Lab.

Most of the tasks require E-Prime software to use, however the Three-Minute Squared tasks are available to work on any Windows and Mac computer. Find out more about E-Prime at https://www.pstnet.com/eprime.cfm. Our lab is in no way affiliated with E-Prime or the company behind it, Psychological Software Tools Inc. (PST).

E-Prime Task Administration

Steps to complete before running your first participant

  1. After unzipping the folder, be sure to add the files to the folder (and computer) you will use to run the experiment from. This is also the folder where the data will be saved to.

  2. Go through one complete run of the task (from beginning to end). Open the E-Run file (.ebs) on the computer you will use for the experiment. Make sure that it is working on that computer. Occasionally there are compatibility issues with different Windows OS versions and E-Prime versions. It is better that you discover any issues before running your first participant. If you are having trouble getting the task to run without errors, please contact us at englelabtaskmanager@gmail.com. In the email, be sure to include information on what version of Windows and E-Prime you have installed.

  3. Exiting the task. A red screen will be displayed letting the participant know the task is finished. The experimenter will need to hit the “Q” key on the keyboard to PROPERLY exit the task. This is very important, otherwise the E-Data file will NOT be compiled and you may lose data.

  4. Optional: Creating a .txt file (You need an E-Prime license to do this). The default data file that E-Prime produces is the .edat file extension that can only be opened with the E-Data Aid software program. If you wish to create a .txt file that can be imported into any software, open the E-Studio Build file (.es) and follow the instructions in this article: Automatic Generation of Tab-Delimited Data File. After doing so generate a new E-Run file.

Data Preparation

.edat files

  1. The default data file that E-Prime produces is the .edat file extension that can only be opened with the E-Data Aid software program.
  2. You should merge multiple .edat files from all subjects into one Merged file with the E-Merge program and then export the merged file as .txt file to open in other data analysis software programs.

.txt files and R

If you are using the option to create a tab-delimited .txt data file instead of the .edat file, in order to import the text files into R you need to use a certain encoding: UCS-2LE. You will also need to import multiple files and merge them. The following R code should help you out:

library(readr)
library(purrr)
library(dplyr)

files <- list.files("path/to/folder/with/data/files", 
                    pattern = ".txt", full.names = TRUE)

data_import <- files |>
  map(\(x) read_delim(x, locale = locale(encoding = "UCS-2LE"), delim = "\t",
                      escape_double = FALSE, trim_ws = TRUE, na = "NULL")) |>
  bind_rows()

Task Scoring

Use our Web App to easily obtain scores on the attention control tasks.

For R users, see our englelab package to obtain scores on the attention control tasks.

Citations

If you are using any of the Toolbox tasks

Draheim, C., Tsukahara, J.S., Engle, R.W. (under review). Replication and extension of the toolbox approach to measuring attention control.

Draheim, et al. (2021). A toolbox approach to improving the measurement of attention control. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 150(2), 242-275. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000783

If you are using any of the Three-Minute Squared tasks

Burgoyne, A.P., Tsukahara, J.S., Mashburn. C.A., Pak, R., & Engle, R.W. (under review). Nature and Measurement of Attention Control.

If you are using the antisaccade task

Hutchison (2007). Attention conrol and the relatedness proportion effect in semantic priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(4), 645 - 662.

Unsworth et al. (2004). Working memory capacity and the antisaccade task: Individual differences in voluntary saccade control. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(6), 1302 - 1321.

If you are using the selective visual arrays task

Martin et al. (2021). The visual arrays task: Visual storage capacity or attention control? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0001048

Vogel, McCollough, & Machizawa (2005). Neural measures reveal individual differences in controlling access to working memory. Nature, 438(24), 500 - 503.

Troubleshooting

For support please contact englelabtaskmanager@gmail.com

When running the E-Prime 3 versions of the three squared tasks, we have found a display driver incompatibility on some computers that will cause the entire screen, or parts of the screen, to appear black. If you encounter display problems when running the task (e.g., stimuli not displaying properly), here are a few workarounds:

  1. Depending on your display driver, you can roll-back the display driver on your computer, using this E-Prime guide to help: https://support.pstnet.com/hc/en-us/articles/360062279813

  2. If using a 12th generation Intel processor, the E-Prime 3 version of the task may not work at all: https://support.pstnet.com/hc/en-us/articles/9930596869655

  3. If you prefer, you can use the Windows or Mac-compatible standalone version of these tasks, developed by Rich Pak (Clemson). This version of the tasks does not require E-Prime to run! Links to the standalone version of the tasks can be found on the task downloads page of the Engle Lab website.

If you translate the task into another language and want us to host the translated version on our website, then please send all the task files to englelabtaskmanager@gmail.com