Open Office Hours – June 2 & 9, 2020

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We are pleased to announce our next two Open Office Hours! Join us at 12:00pm Eastern Time (GMT -4) on June 2nd and June 9th for two very different topics brought to you by three hosts from across our network.

On June 2, Noam Siegelman (Haskins Laboratories) is offering an Introduction to Bayesian Inference. This is a great opportunity to learn about this alternative to Null Hypothesis Significance Testing! Beginners are most welcome. View the complete event information here: https://wordsintheworld.ca/calendar-events/introduction-to-bayesian-inference/

On June 9, Eva Kehayis & Anik Nolet (McGill University) will provide insights into Ethics at a Distance, addressing the challenges and opportunities researchers face when conducting experiments online. More information about this event will be released in the coming days!

We always welcome questions during our live events, but if you have a question that you’d like answered during any upcoming Open Office Hour, you can also let us know ahead of time. This will help presenters to both ensure your questions are addressed and to gear the presentation toward the interests of the attendees. Questions can be submitted via the Words in the World website at this link: https://wordsintheworld.ca/home/open-office-hours/open-office-hours-q-a/

PsychoPy3 & Gitlab resources

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Jordan Gallant (Brock University) has recently offered an Open Office Hour on using PsychoPy3 to create and run experiments online (video & collected materials: https://bit.ly/2wshFL7). Now he has put together a series of resources for researchers who are interested in getting started with PsychoPy3, but who don’t know quite where to start.

He is offering a selection of Experiment Templates (https://gitlab.pavlovia.org/Words_in_the_World), including code for lexical decision and self-paced reading tasks in PsychoPy3, and an associated video (Template Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dY5gvzR9xo) that explains how to use the templates to create your own experiments.

If you are interested in conducting collaborative research using PsychoPy3/Gitlab, you can find detailed information about setting up projects in a series of videos here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrqzzPKPF_6ZSVeUnKk3V_FogfgogjChg

Jordan will also be hosting next week’s Open Office Hour on how to conduct collaborative research online using PsychoPy3/Gitlab, and will be available for a Q&A after his presentation!

Open Office Hours – May 12, 2020

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Thank you to everyone who has participated in our Open Office Hour series!

Our next Words in the World Open Office Hour will take place on Tuesday, May 12, at 12pm (Eastern Time, GMT -4). Jordan Gallant (Brock  University) will share his expertise using Gitlab and PsychoPy3 in collaborative remote research. Here is his summary:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has forced our research activities out of the lab and into online virtual environments. Not only has this changed the research methods available to us, but it has also fundamentally changed the way the that we work together. However, this office hour is here to say that this change need not be for the worse. Collaborative remote work can offer distinct advantages when paired with the right technology to support it. In this Open Office Hour I will discuss the merits of using online project development platforms such as Gitlab for collaborative research projects. Specifically, I will look at how PsychoPy3 and Gitlab can support the collaborative construction and administering of online experiments. In the process, I hope to instill a sense that, rather than being a quick fix for temporary problems, this is a paradigm worth carrying into the post-COVID future.“

Accompanying video tutorials: YouTube

Open Office Hours are delivered using Zoom. Passwords are sent out via email in advance of Open Office Hours. If you would like to join the Open Office Hour mailing list, please sign up here: Open Office Hours Sign-Up Form.

Open Office Hours – Week of April 20, 2020

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This Week

Join us this week on Tuesday, April 21 at 12pm EDT (GMT -4) for a look into how to use online psycholinguistic resources to run experiments without a lab. Dr. Victor Kuperman (McMaster) will lead us through an introduction to online databases and how we can combine information from different databases using R. More information here: Using online databases

Recorded Videos

Recordings of previous Open Office Hours are now available! You can currently find the following videos on YouTube:

How to collect psycholinguistic data from home: Introduction to crowdsourcing tools

Running non-chronometric experiments in Mechanical Turk

Running chronometric experiments online using PsychoPy3

Mental Lexicon 2020 Update

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If you are interested in attending the next Mental Lexicon Conference, currently scheduled for October 2020, please be advised that the organizing committee has updated their conference information.

As the present time, no changes or new decisions have been made to the timing of the conference, but organizers are prepared to make alternative arrangements as required to maintain the health and safety of our community.

The deadline for abstracts has been changed to June 1, 2020. Further extensions may take place, as necessary. 

Full information is available at the conference website: https://mentallexicon.artsrn.ualberta.ca/

Follow-up: No Lab, No Problem

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On March 31, 2020, Jordan Gallant offered an Open Office Hour on how to use PsychoPy3 to conduct experiments online. If you were unable to attend that meeting, we now have a full recording available! He has also made additional video supplements on how to use auditory stimuli and how to code a self-paced reading task.

Jordan Gallant’s introductory video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rij8sYrMC30

A supplementary video on the use of PsychPy3 with audio files can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nuJxe7h7bE&t=140s

A supplementary video on how to code a self-paced reading task can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kriPb2aBkkM

A methodological paper with an introduction to the use of PsychoPy3 in psycholinguistics (Gallant & Libben, 2019) can be found here:

No lab, no problemDownload

Open Office Hours: Running chronometric experiments online using PsychoPy3

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Our next office hour, hosted by Jordan Gallant, will introduce PsychoPy3, a new experiment development software that uses Javascript to create experiments that can be run on web-browsers.

The first part of the Open Office Hour will be dedicated to the creation of a simple lexical decision experiment. Jordan will demonstrated how it is programmed, hosted, and run using participants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk.

The second half will be a Q&A where the limitations/possibilities of PsychoPy3 and online chronometric experimentation in general can be discussed.

Host: Jordan Gallant

Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2020 

Time: 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. EST (GMT -4)

Connect via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/495738797

Open Office Hour: Non-Chronometric psycholinguistic experiments in Mechanical Turk (Part 2)

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We are continuing the Open Office Hours dedicated to programming non-chronometric psycholinguistic experiments in Amazon Mechanical Turk. All materials from the first Office Hour and the follow-up can be found at osf.io/cqa2e. The follow-up Open Hour with Victor Kuperman  will cover additional types of experiments (Cloze predictability, plausibility judgments, Rating and Likert scales). It will take place on Friday March 27 at 1-2 pm (Eastern time for US and Canada, GMT -4).

Meanwhile feel free to send your questions to Victor Kuperman (vickup@mcmaster.ca). Also note that all Open Office hours are recorded and the videos will be made available at a later time.

We hope you can join us this Friday!

Host: Victor Kuperman

Date: Friday, March 27, 2020

Time: 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. EST (GMT -4)

Connect via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/702938796

Virtual Workshop on Remote Data Collection – CUNY2020

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In light of recent events, the organizers of CUNY2020 have put together a full-day workshop on remote/online data collection. The event is will be hosted using Zoom and everyone is welcome to attend.

The event includes topics such as accessing publicly available data (e.g., neuroimaging datasets) and requesting data sharing.

When: Monday, March 23, 10:00 am – 2:00 pm EDT
Where: https://zoom.us/j/417753913

View the schedule here: pdf

COVID-19 & Open Office Hours (online)

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Due to the uncertainty surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic, many across the Words in the World network have suspended face-to-face operations including experimentation in traditional laboratory environments. We are therefore making a concerted effort to migrate as many of our research projects to an online format as possible. By moving toward this goal, we are working not only to protect the health and safety of our colleagues and research participants, but also to move forward with the majority of our research endeavours.

With these purposes in mind, we’d like to take this opportunity to introduce a new Words in the World feature: Open Office Hours. The purpose of the Open Office Hour is to provide an accessible online version of the traditional university office hour, in which our research partners hold a brief informal discussion on a topic within their expertise and take questions regarding that topic. Our first Open Office Hours are listed below and focus on online experimentation in Psycholinguistic research.

Update

A follow-up office hour with Dr. Kuperman is scheduled for Friday, March 27, from 1 – 2pm Eastern (GMT -4). See the announcement here: https://bit.ly/33K3Svy

“How to collect psycholinguistic data from home: Introduction to crowdsourcing tools”

Host: Victor Kuperman

Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Time: 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. EST (GMT -4)

Ability to collect experimental data outside of the lab is of great importance for reaching out to populations outside of university convenience subject pools. This importance is even greater when lab testing is undesirable. This first session of “open office hours” will introduce rich possibilities for data collection using crowdsourcing tools like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mturk.com). We will cover several basic types of experiments (surveys, collection of ratings, linguistic judgments, and written responses), and discuss practicalities of online testing. Several small experiments will be created and results collected and discussed.

No prior knowledge is expected. The session is designed for 20-30 minutes of an informal presentation, followed by the Q&A. Ideas for experiments are very welcome.

Connect via Zoom: https://bit.ly/394W74o

See the event listing for alternative ways to connect.

“Running chronometric experiments online using PsychoPy3″

Host: Jordan Gallant

Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2020 (GMT -4)

Time: 1 p.m. – 2 p.m. EST

Connect via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/495738797

Online experiments offer a range of possibilities and benefits that have yet to be fully explored. This office hour will introduce PsychoPy3, a new experiment development software that uses Javascript to create experiments that can be run on web-browsers. In the first half of the office hour, I will demonstrate how a simple lexical decision experiment can be 1) created, 2) hosted online, and 3) run using participants recruited via Mechanical Turk. The second half will be a Q&A where the limitations/possibilities of PsychoPy3 and online chronometric experimentation in general can be discussed.