Mastering PsychoPy for Psychology and Neuroscience

Explore the go/no-go paradigm, its relation to two‑choice tasks, and how reaction time, accuracy, and inhibitory control are assessed across visual and auditory stimuli, with hands‑on Pebble exercises.

Explore the outer parameters of the go no go test, including correct detection, omission and commission errors, and reaction time, to understand attention and impulsivity.

Explore how go no go tasks measure inhibition, reflect executive function development in the prefrontal cortex, and engage the SMA and autonomic nervous system for clinical insights.

Explore go/no-go tasks and ERP to compare brain responses to go and no-go stimuli. See how P3 amplitude reflects cognitive control and relates to ADHD, schizophrenia, and depression.

Explore the oddball paradigm, where unexpected stimuli capture attention and are used to measure cognitive responses in ERP studies, with standard and oddball stimuli guiding participant responses.

Oddball paradigm evokes P3 ERP around 300 ms, with larger amplitudes for unexpected stimuli, modulated by stimulus probability and linked to DLPFC activity and pupil dilation during active task engagement.

Explore the Stroop paradigm and Stroop effect, contrasting automatic word reading with controlled color naming. Learn how neutral, congruent, and incongruent stimuli reveal attention and interference in cognitive processing.

Explore the Stroop paradigm's semantic interference and facilitation, their disappearance when reading only, and the roles of ACC and DLPFC amid theories of processing speed, automaticity, and attention.

Install PsychoPy by downloading the standalone package from the official PsychoPy website and following the on-screen instructions to launch the software from the start menu or desktop icon.

Master PsychoPy’s builder to create experiments without coding, using the flow, components, and favorites panels to assemble trials with stimuli, responses, and interstimulus intervals for your first test.

Sketch the Stroop experiment framework by using color words with neutral or negative valence, assign color-based responses, and specify materials, routines, and variables.

Create a single Excel file to store variables such as words, colors, correct response, and valence, and configure PsychoPy to read these variables for each trial.

Learn to present text on the screen in PsychoPy by linking a conditions file to a text component, setting start times, durations, and colors for stroop task trials.

Configure keyboard responses in PsychoPy by defining allowed keys (left, down, right, space) with infinite duration, ensuring the routine ends on a key press, and prepare sessions and loops.

Learn to create loops in PsychoPy to repeat a routine five times, using start and end points and the loop properties, and address timing with interstimulus interval.

Learn how to add interstimulus intervals in PsychoPy to create clear trial separation, using a 500 ms ISI routine with a fixation plus sign between stimuli.

Learn to build a data-driven PsychoPy experiment by linking an Excel file to trial loops, reading words and colors via dollar signs, and storing correct responses for dynamic Stroop stimuli.

Mastering PsychoPy guides you through building an instruction page, defining keyboard responses, and structuring routines and flow for randomized or sequential trials, with end-page data handling.

Review the data from the emotional Stroop task in PsychoPy, inspect the data folder and CSV files, and extract reaction times and accuracy for statistical analysis.

Explore a facial emotion experiment to measure processing speed for happy, sad, and 50/50 stimuli, comparing individuals with depression to controls, using face gen modular software and Face Gen Modeler.

Explore Facegen modeller, a tool for creating realistic, fully customizable 3D faces by adjusting parameters like eye shape, nose size, and lip curves for diverse ages, ethnicities, and genders.

Organize and generate facial stimuli with Face Gen Modeler, creating happy, sad, 50/50 faces across age, gender, ethnicity, gaze direction, then save as jpeg for cross-cultural social cognition studies.

Set up a PsychoPy conditions file to organize facial stimuli in an Excel sheet. Use folders happy, sad, and 5050, and map each image to left or right responses.

Learn to design image-based stimuli in PsychoPy, looping face four times from an Excel file, randomizing presentation, and recording left/right responses to yield 24 trials and a fixation interval.

Adjust the background to black to match image borders, set full-screen image size with norm units, and explore height and centimeter sizing alongside opacity to create overlapping stimuli.

Explore how to create masks for facial images in PsychoPy, framing stimuli with circular, diamond, or Gaussian masks and adjusting transparency for creative effects.

Add movie clips as stimuli in PsychoPy using the movie component, select mp4, mkv, or ogg files, adjust size, and test final routine with a loop that runs zero times.

Learn to create dynamic stimuli in PsychoPy by manipulating position and size over time using the t variable and set every frame, including moving images and gradual text reveal.

Explore color dynamics in PsychoPy by switching from RGB to HSV, and control hue, saturation, and value for text stimuli.

Create the PANAS rating scale to measure positive and negative affect with a five-point Likert scale. Build the experiment in PsychoPy using an Excel conditions file and on-screen prompts.

Organize a PsychoPy mood scales project by creating a conditions file within a ratings and questionnaires folder, adding panas items in an Excel measures file, then implement routines to run.

Save a new PsychoPy file in the parnas folder, add infinite text and a slider from 1 to 5 with granularity for Excel items, and record ratings and reaction times.

Explore the mental number line task in PsychoPy by using a slider to place a number on a hidden continuum, linking estimation accuracy to mathematical performance.

Duplicate a PsychoPy experiment to execute mental number line task, configure a 1–25 slider with zero granularity, convert words to numbers, run trials, and analyze reaction times and slider responses.

Create a simple PsychoPy questionnaire with the form component by building an Excel file of questions, each with index, item text, choice type, yes/no options, and horizontal layout.

Learn how to create and run a form-based questionnaire in psychopy, retrieve questions from an Excel file, and enable randomizing of questions with customizable layout and appearance.

Master PsychoPy by adding a text submit form and a mouse component to end the routine with a valid click, recording responses and reaction times.

Learn how PsychoPy uses triggers to synchronize stimulus presentations with EEG and fMRI data, using the Com port for serial communication and precise event timing.

Learn to send triggers to an EEG device in PsychoPy by adding a serial port component, configuring the com port, and sending start and stop data at stimulus onset.

Integrate PsychoPy experiments with fMRI by waiting for scanner triggers and handling keyboard or serial port signals through routines and code components to synchronize timing.

Explore PsychoPy demos as ready-made templates to build and customize cognitive experiments, unpacked demo files, and run examples like the Sternberg task and Stroop tests.