Link Search Menu Expand Document

Stimulus

Table describing each of the stimuli that were shown during an L1 trial.

Table of contents

Referencing

id [integer]
Primary key of the Stimulus table.
Each row in this table has a unique id.
If the same stimulus is shown at two different times in a trial, those two instances will have their own row in the Stimulus table, each with its own id.
trial_id [integer]
Refers to the id in the Trial table and indicates in which (L1) trial this stimulus was shown.
object_id [integer]
A stimulus is defined by a set of features. This variable is used to identify each time the same stimulus features were used. For example, if the same white digit “3” is shown in a digit span sequence, all those instances would have the same object_id although they would have different ids (as they appeared at different times).
presentation_id [integer]
In a multitasking setting, a particular instance of a stimulus (e.g., the current letter “A”) may be used by multiple trials at the same time (e.g, in the dual N-back task). Because these are different trials, they will have different trial_id values and hence will have different rows in the Stimulus table. We use presentation_id to indicate that a given stimulus is in fact the same instance across those trials.
index_in_trial [integer]
Refers to individual stimuli within the sequence or set of stimuli shown during a trial.

When

onset [float]
Duration between the start of the trial and the appearance of the stimulus.
duration [float]
Describes for how long this stimulus was displayed in seconds.

When the stimulus is shown using an animation, duration covers the complete period between the start of the animation and the end of the animation.

Where

panel_id [string]
Identifier of the panel this stimulus is displayed over.
x_screen [integer]
X coordinates of the stimulus on the screen in pixels.
y_screen [integer]
Y coordinates of the stimulus on the screen in pixels.
x_viewport [float]
X coordinates of the stimulus on the screen expressed as a fraction of the screen width.
y_viewport [float]
Y coordinates of the stimulus on the screen expressed as a fraction of the screen height.

What

description [string]
A human readable, compact description of the main aspects of the stimulus. The description for a given stimulus depends on the task but follows a specific template for a given task. Because of this, it looks like the stimulus_description could be “parsed” and “tidied”—however, this is not the intention; parsed/tidied data will be available in other tables; description is for human readability and facilitates the understanding of the data.
source_type [enum]
A stimulus is typically created using a particular procedure/algorithm (“generator”) or is sampled from a particular set (“set”). This variable indicates which of these two applies for the current stimulus.
source [string]
Refers to the specific generator or set the stimulus belongs to. Stimuli that stem from the same source have the same data scheme and could thus be described in a table named after stimulus_source (i.e., stimulus_source indicates which table contains the full information about the stimulus; e.g., “digit1to9”).

We could include a source_count variable here that indicates how many different stimuli there are in the set; but this is probably better stored in the table that contains information about that source.

index_in_source [integer]
When a stimulus is picked from a particular set (e.g., “digits1to9”), this index refers to the index within that set.
role [enum]
Describe the role this stimulus plays in the trial (e.g., “target”).

How

animation [string]
Describes the animation that was used to show a particular stimulus.

:memo: