Stimulus manager
Provides a comprehensive system for composing stimuli and managing stimulus sets. The stimulus management screen (Figure 1) contains the following segments:
- Top navigation bar (1)
- Study navigator (2)
- Study tab bar (3)
- Stimulus set tree (4)
- View panel (5)
Creating a stimulus set
Click on the stimulus set drop-down list (Figure 2) and select Create new set.... Alternatively, you can create a new stimulus set from the trials timeline.
Navigate to a stimulus set
Click on the stimulus set drop-down list (Figure 2) and select your desired set from Existing sets. You will now be in the stimulus set root (Figure 3).
Deleting a stimulus set
In stimulus set root (Figure 3), click Delete stimulus set
WARNING: Deleting the stimulus set will also remove:
- all stimulus components derived from the stimulus set on any trials timeline they've been added to.
- any trials rules related to removed stimulus components.
- any trials rules related to the stimulus set.
The stimulus set tree (Figure 1:4)
The stimulus set tree (Figure 1:4) provides a hierarchical view of your stimulus set and is comprised of:
- Stimulus set root
- Components
- Component groups
Items can be navigated by selection and rearranged by drag and drop. You can also collapse and expand branches by clicking 
and 
respectively.
The view panel (Figure 1:5)
The view panel is where all your work is done. Select an item in the stimulus set tree (Figure 1:4) to work on that item.
Setting stimulus generation strategy
Each set of trials can allocate a stimulus set. Multiple sets of trials may allocate the same stimulus set. The generation strategy of each stimulus set determines how the stimuli are generated for each set of trials that uses that particular stimulus set. Click Generation: once to set the generation strategy:
Generate once: the stimulus set will be generated only once. The generated stimuli will be used by every set of trials that allocate that stimulus set.Always regenerate: Every set of trials that allocate the stimulus set will have it's own unique stimuli generated.
Preview stimuli
Presents the logical design of the stimulus set. Click Preview stimuli... to run a deep analysis on the composition of your stimulus set. Where problems are discovered, they're reported and fixes proposed. Component group blending and composition strategies will be used in the creation of stimuli for preview.
Stimulus selection strategy (i.e. the order of stimuli selected for presentation) is determined by settings in your trials timeline and is not reflected in the preview. Stimulus variable resolution, style (e.g. font color and size), screen position of items, display timing, etc. is determined by settings in trials timeline, trials screen and trials logic and is not reflected in the preview.
The structure of a preview stimulus component is a reflection of the composition in the stimulus set tree (Figure 3). Shown in (Figure 4), are the first two stimuli in an example preview. Each stimulus comprises a single component called Sentences. The first component contains two component groups (CRB and CGRB) reflecting that the component contains a counterbalanced group of two groups. The second component contains a single component group CNB.
