Creating a basic E-Prime experiment
The following instructions will show you how to create a basic experiment in E-Prime. The example used
below is a lexical decision task, whereby participants are shown a string of letters and asked whether it is a
real word or not. The following is an overview of the experiment structure:
Welcome & Instructions
48 randomised trials:
Fixation cross
500ms
Stimulus & Response
Wait
500ms
Thanks & Goodbye
Explanations of certain tools or settings are presented in coloured boxes below, to aid your understanding of
some of the steps.
1. Open E-Studio from the Start menu (Start – All Programs – Misc. – E-Prime 2.0 – E-Studio)
2. Do not enable auto-updates, accept the license agreement, close the web browser that pops up and
then select Blank (Standard) when prompted.
3. In the Structure window double click on SessionProc to open it.
The SessionProc is a timeline for sequencing the order of objects as they appear throughout the experiment.
All the objects that can be used in an experiment are located in the Toolbox on the left.
4. Click and drag a TextDisplay from the Toolbox onto the SessionProc line.
5. Double click on TextDisplay1 on your SessionProc and write… “On each trial you will be presented with a
string of letters. Your task is to identify if the letters form a real word or not. Press the 'W' key if it is a
word. Press the 'N' key if it is a non-word. Please answer as quickly and as accurately as possible. There
are 48 trials in total. If you consent to taking part and understand the instructions please press the
Spacebar to begin.”
6.
Click on the Property Pages icon (circled in red below) in the top left of the TextDisplay1 window.
Within Property Pages we can change settings associated with objects, such as how long they are displayed
for and whether or not the participant can make a response.
7. Click on the Common tab and change the Name box to “Instructions”. You can also change the font type
or size under the Font tab.
8. Click on the Duration/Input tab. Change the Duration drop-down menu to Infinite. To add an input
device, click on Add, select keyboard and press OK. Click OK to exit Property Pages and exit the
Instructions object.
By setting the duration to infinite and adding an input device, when we run the experiment the instructions
will remain on the screen until the participant makes a response.
9. Click and drag a List from the Toolbox onto the SessionProc line.
The purpose of the List object is to list all the stimuli we will be using (ie. letter strings) and to record any
important features of the stimuli (eg. whether the letter strings are words or non-words).
10. Double click List1. In the first empty box under the procedure column type “TrialProc” and hit Enter.
Click Yes to create the procedure and Yes to make it the default.
The TrialProc you have just created will be a sub-procedure, or timeline, that will be repeated for every trial
(or row in the List) within the experiment. This saves us having to make one very long SessionProc.
11. Click on the Add Attribute icon (red circle above) and name it “Stimuli”. Leave the default value as it is
and click Add to create it.
12. Add a further two attributes. Call one “StimuliType” and the other “CorrectAnswer”.
13. There will be 48 trials in total so we need to add more rows to List1. To do this, click on Add Multiple
Levels (green circle above) and enter the number 47 and click OK.
14. In the Stimuli column we need to enter all the stimuli to be displayed, as shown on the following page.
Text-based stimuli, as in this example, are simply written directly into the List object. For image, sound or
video stimuli, you enter each of the file names and extensions instead. E-Prime would then locate these on
your computer, so long as the stimuli files are saved within the same folder as your E-Studio experiment file.
For example, “pumpkin.jpg” would call upon the JPG image file named “Pumpkin”.
15. In the StimuliType column we need to note whether the stimuli (ie. letter strings) are words or nonwords. Enter “word” or “non” into each of the rows, in the order shown below.
16. In the CorrectAnswer column enter what the correct response should be on each trial, as shown below.
17. Click on the Property Pages icon (circled in red above). Click on the Common tab and enter “TrialList” in
the Name box. Then click on the Selection tab. On the Order drop-down menu select Random then click
OK, and close the TrialList window.
We want the trials contained in the List object to appear to each participant in a random order to control for
order effects.
18. From the Structure window double click on TrialProc to open it.
19. Click and drag a TextDisplay from the Toolbox onto the TrialProc line, then click and drag another
TextDisplay onto the line, and then a Wait object.
20. Double click on TextDisplay1, and type “+”.
21. Click on the Property Pages icon for TextDisplay1, then the Common tab and change the Name to
“FixationCross”. Click on the Duration/Input tab and change the Duration drop-down menu to 500. Click
OK and close the FixationCross window.
22. Double click on TextDisplay2 and type “[Stimuli+”.
Using square brackets in E-Studio creates a hyperlink to an attribute (column) within the preceding List
object. So here were are telling E-Prime to look in the Stimuli column in TrialList to know what text should be
displayed on each trial.
23. Click on the Property Pages icon for TextDisplay2. On the Common tab, change the Name box to
“StimuliDisplay”. You could also change the font type and size under the Font tab.
24. Still within the Property Pages, click on the Duration/Input tab change the Duration drop-down menu to
Infinite. Click the Add button to add an input device, select keyboard and click OK. In the Allowable box
write “wn”. In the Correct box write “*CorrectAnswer+” and then click Apply. You will then be asked if
you want to set data logging to standard, to which you must click Yes. Click OK and then close the
StimuliDisplay window.
By setting the Duration to Infinite, adding an Input Device, and setting the Allowable responses, the
StimuliDisplay will remain on the screen during the running of the experiment until the participant presses
either the W key or the N key on the keyboard. By telling E-Prime what the correct answers should be, by
entering a hyperlink to the CorrectAnswer column of the preceding List, E-Prime will record the accuracy of
the participants’ responses on each trial, in addition to their response times.
25. Double click on Wait1 and from the Duration drop-down menu select 500. Click OK.
26. Open the SessionProc from the Structure window, if it’s not already still open. Click and drag a
TextDisplay onto the far right of the line.
27. Double click on TextDisplay1 and type in “Thank you for taking part in this experiment. This window will
close automatically after 5 seconds.” In the Property Pages, under the Common tab change the Name
box to “Thanks”. Under the Duration/Input tab, change the Duration drop-down to 5000. Click OK and
close the Thanks window.
28. From the E-Studio menus at the top of the window go to Edit – Experiment and select the Devices tab.
Double click on Display and change the Width and Height drop-downs to match the resolution of the
screen you are using. Most campus computers are 1024 (width) x 768 (height). Click OK.
29. Under the Startup Info tab, click on the question mark next to Session so it becomes crossed out. Tick the
boxes next to Age and Sex and click on the question marks next to them so these are no longer crossed
out.
The Start-Info tab controls what questions the participants have to answer before the experiment begins.
30. Go to File – Save or Save As to save the experiment that you have created.
31. Click on the Generate icon (red circle below) to create the experiment script. To test the script, run the
experiment all the way through to the end as if you were a participant by clicking on the Run icon (green
circle below). You will need to give yourself a unique participant number.
32. To run your experiment on participants, you can either click on the run symbol within E-Studio, as above,
or open the E-Run file that is automatically created within the same folder as your E-Studio file.
Charlotte Elwell | 2013
E-Prime v.2