Since the 1980s, these complex and delicate devices have been replaced by personal computers and standard monitors, which are cheaper and easier to use. Experimental apparatus that allow researchers to present visual stimuli for very short periods of time, such as tachistoscopes, quickly became popular in most experimental psychology laboratories. Since the days of Wilhelm Wundt, experimental psychologists have studied the temporal dynamics of the cognitive processes involved in perception and attention. Support for this research was provided by Grant PSI2011-26965 from Dirección General de Investigación of the Spanish Government and Grant IT363-10 from the Basque Government.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Received: SeptemAccepted: DecemPublished: January 7, 2014Ĭopyright: © 2014 Garaizar et al. PLoS ONE 9(1):Įditor: Suliann Ben Hamed, Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive, France Despite the apparent precision and accuracy of the results, important issues related to timing setups in the presentation of visual stimuli were found, and they should be taken into account by researchers in their experiments.Ĭitation: Garaizar P, Vadillo MA, López-de-Ipiña D, Matute H (2014) Measuring Software Timing Errors in the Presentation of Visual Stimuli in Cognitive Neuroscience Experiments. The aim of this study is to measure the precision and accuracy of the timing mechanisms of some of the most popular software packages used in a typical laboratory scenario in order to assess whether presentation times configured by researchers do not differ from measured times more than what is expected due to the hardware limitations. However, external factors, often related to the technology used to display the visual information, can have a noticeable impact on the actual performance and may be easily overlooked by researchers. Most of these programs have mechanisms to control the precision and accuracy with which visual stimuli are presented as well as the response times. Because of the features provided by an abundance of specialized experimental software packages, personal computers have become prominent and powerful tools in cognitive research.
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