Measuring human capabilities to synchronize in time, adapt to perturbations to timing sequences or reproduce time intervals often require experimental setups that allow recording response times with millisecond precision. Most setups present auditory stimuli using either MIDI devices or specialized hardware such as Arduino and are often expensive or require calibration and advanced programming skills. Here, we present in detail an experimental setup that only requires an external sound card and minor electronic skills, works on a conventional PC, is cheaper than alternatives and requires almost no programming skills. It is intended for presenting any auditory stimuli and recording tapping response times with within 2 milliseconds precision (up to -2ms lag). This paper shows why desired accuracy in recording response times against auditory stimuli is difficult to achieve in conventional computer setups, presents an experimental setup to overcome this and explains in detail how to set it up and use the provided code. Finally, the code for analyzing the recorded tapping responses was evaluated, showing that no spurious or missing events were found in 94% of the analyzed recordings.
翻译:测量人类在时间上同步、适应时间序列的扰动或复制时间间隔的能力往往需要实验性设置,允许以毫秒精确度记录响应时间。大多数设置都显示使用MIDI装置或Arduino等专门硬件的听觉刺激,通常费用昂贵或需要校准和高级编程技能。这里,我们详细展示了只要求外部声卡和次要电子技能的实验设置,在常规PC上工作比替代程序更便宜,几乎不需要编程技能。它旨在展示任何听觉刺激和记录在2毫秒精确度(最高为 - 2米滞后度)范围内的窃听反应时间。本文说明了为什么在常规计算机设置中难以实现对听觉刺激的反应时间的预期准确性,提出了克服这一点的实验性设置,并详细解释了如何设置和使用所提供的代码。最后,对所记录的窃听反应的分析代码进行了评估,表明在分析的录音记录中有94%的录音记录中没有发现虚假或缺失的事件。