Spatial Reconstruction Task

Script Author: Katja Borchert, Ph.D. (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Millisecond thanks Dr. Lok-Kin Yeung for his collaboration on this script!

Created: January 07, 2016

Last Modified: January 01, 2024 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements a computerized Spatial Reconstruction Task based on:

Watson, P.D., Voss, J.L, Warren, D.E., Tranel, D.T. and Cohen, N.J. (2013). Spatial Reconstruction by Patients with Hippocampal Damage is Dominated by Relational Memory Errors. HIPPOCAMPUS 23:570–580.

Duration

15 minutes

Description

Participants are asked to study an arrangement of 2-5 objects on the screen (objects are presented on a white square board in the center of the screen) for 20s. Then the board is cleared. After a further delay (4s), the objects reappear on the top of the board, and participants are asked to re-create the original arrangement.

by default, this script runs trials with N = 5 objects only. Code to run blocks with other N as well as code to run a mixed block are also provided under section BLOCKS.

Procedure

UserInterface:
the active canvas (= part of the screen that is used for this study) is set to be the largest possible
4:3 proportion of the current screen. Of this 4:3 canvas, the largest possible center square is used as the
'object board' to present and re-arrange the objects. This board is white; the remaining parts of the
active canvas is black.
A submit button is placed on the bottom right of the background canvas next to the 'board'.
Objects Positions are defined in % of the active canvas (not the 'board'); however, these positions are then
internally converted into the corresponding pixels of the current canvas (depends on monitor).
Objects can be positioned randomly (default) or with predetermined positions
(go to section Editable Parameters for further instructions).

Practice Block:
• by default, this script runs one practice block with N=5 objects of 5 trials (objects are randomly placed)
• each trial randomly selects the objects
• code to run N=2, N=3, N=4 object blocks as well as a mixed design block that runs all N (2-5) is provided under section BLOCKS

Test Block:
• by default, this script runs one test block with N = 5 objects (objects are randomly placed by default) of 15 trials
• each trial randomly selects the objects
• code to run N=2, N=3, N=4 blocks as well as a mixed design block that runs all N (2-5) is provided under section BLOCKS

Trial Sequence:
fixation cross (2000ms) -> Object Arrangement (20000ms) -> Empty Board (4000ms)
-> Board with objects to arrange (no time limit): divided into
a) trial.reconstruction: measures latencies until a stimulus is dropped or 'submit' button is selected
b) trial.evaluation: evaluates the responses and records final placements into data file
-> ITI (1000ms)

Notes
1. all durations are editable under section Editable Parameters
2. objects can be randomly placed or with predetermined positions for test trials (practice trials always run with random positions)
(controlled by parameters.randomPositions under section Editable Parameters)
3. objects are not repeated until all 150 stimuli have been presented

Stimuli

150 squiggles used by Neal Cohen and researchers (contact email: njc@illinois.edu).
see section Editable Stimuli

Instructions

Instructions are not original to the task. They are provided by Millisecond
as htm/html pages and can be edited by changing the provided htm/html files.
To edit htm/html-files: open the respective documents in simple Text Editors such as TextEdit (Mac)
or Notepad (Windows).

Summary Data

File Name: spatialreconstructiontask_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

Raw Data

File Name: spatialreconstructiontask_raw*.iqdat

Data Fields

Parameters

The procedure can be adjusted by setting the following parameters.