This week I completely (as of writing) finalized the n-Back Task Presenter and have ensured it works alongside our DAQ software and fNIRS setup. I also wrote up the experimental procedure ("Experiment Checklist") and made large headway with the IRB Protocol form and Consent form for participants.
This day I and a fellow researcher in the lab collaborated to test my program and establish how to integrate it with our DAQ software. I put the finishing touches on it before review with a project supervisor for the overarching area my work is a part of. The supervisor made some comments, which I will have worked on another day.
Afterward, I began a write-up for the protocol for the study.
This day I finalized the n-Back Task Presenter program, as far as I am aware, by finishing up what notes the supervisor gave yesterday and my mentor gave this day. I added a practice space to allow participants to grow accustomed to the program before they begin the experiment. Before starting I assumed I would have it done in an hour or two, but it took over twice that to finally get a completed build to my mentor.
Afterward, I began work on writing up the IRB Protocol form and the procedure script for experiment runners.
This day I, confidently, told my mentor I would have an addition to the program in an hour or two; I had been asked to implement a section where the participant practices each task level and must accomplish an 80% correctness rate or better to move to the next level and ultimately to the actual experiment. It ended up taking me over four hours to complete because a lot of code and scene editing was required; I could not just reuse the methods from other parts of the program. Some methods could be used in this section, but many of them required radical changes. I also had to edit parts of the class responsible for generating arrays of Task objects.
Afterward, I edited a template for experiment protocol to tailor it to my study and submitted it to my mentor and project director to make comments and reply to mine. I also worked on the Consent and Protocol forms a little more, but I can only do so much since my mentor and I need to hammer out some specific details that will allow me to finally complete these documents.
This day I made more edits and further tailorings to the experimental protocal document based on comments and changes from my mentor and project manager.
Afterward, a grad student with the lab gave those present a walkthrough for the procedure of setting up and striking an experiment with a participant. Picture is of the stand holding all devices and consoles related to the fNIRS system/device.
This day I did a trial run of the experiment, fNIRS set up on me and everything. Colleages in the lab with me assisted in putting on the fNIRS becuase it is difficult to do so on yourself and assisted in troubleshooting some when the readings were not as expected before testing. I ran through about a third of what would be expected of a participant (~20min of tasks) and sent the data to one of those previously mentioned colleagues so they may begin building a parser script for live output and later-on anaysis.
Afterward, I did as much as I could to continue along with the IRB Protocol and the Consent form for participants, but without the director getting back to me about my questions there is only so much I can do over this day and the previous two days; this is to be expected when the host university is at its overall busiest.