Erikson Flanker Task

This task was initially developed by Eriksen & Eriksen (1974) and is aimed at quantifying response inhibition. Reaction time and accuracy are said to be dependent upon a participant’s ability to inhibit irrelevant information.
You will need to build a behavioural flanker task using PsychoPy that conform to the requirements outlined below and allow you to measure reaction and accuracy for each condition.

Design

This is a simple ‘flat’ design with one factor – Congruency, and three levels:

  • Congruent – where the central stimuli are the same as the distractor stimuli.
  • Incongruent – where the central stimuli are different from the distractor stimuli.
  • Neutral - where the central stimuli are different from the distractor stimuli but are not expected to interfere with processing.

* You should include more factors to change the design to test your hypothesis; you must explain your choices in the summary of the experiment.

Experimental requirements

Your experiment must include the following:

  • A brief information and consent sheet.
  • At least 5 practice trials where feedback is given to the participants based on their performance.
  • Feedback in practice trials should be – correct/incorrect/no-response, too slow.
  • 20 trials in each condition. * Trials, across the three conditions, should be presented in a random order

Trial requirements:

  • The interval between trials (also known as the inter-trial-interval: ITI) should be filled with a fixation cross – the length of time the fixation trial is on the screen should vary such that it’s offset is unpredictable.
  • The target stimuli should be presented centrally.
  • The distractor stimuli should be presented peripherally.

Use your imagination

There are several aspects of the experiment that you can change freely; this means that you will be able to test your own specific hypothesis. Here is a list of somethings you can change but it isn’t comprehensive; if it isn’t specified above – you can change it.

  • Nature of the stimuli: words, pictures, letters, symbols etc.
  • Location of the stimuli: where peripheral distractors appear.
  • Nature of the task: what aspect of the target stimuli are participants asked to respond to.