Using Mathematica within E-Prime

When programming complex experiments (for example, involving the generation of stimuli online), the traditional experiment programming software are not well equipped. One solution is to give up entirely the use of such software in favor of a low-level programming language. Here we show how E-Prime can be connected to Mathematica so that the easiness and reliability of this software can be preserved while at the same time granting it the full computational power of a high-level programming language. As an example, we show how to generate noisy images with noise proportional to the rate of success of the participants with as few as 12 lines of codes in E-Prime. Psychology experiments can be rather simple, being composed of a fixed number of trials, presenting a fixed set of stimuli and collecting a fixed set of responses. For such situations, many software exists that can program the experiment rapidly and easily (such as Superlab, ERTS, InQuisit, E-Prime, DirectRT, to name a few, Stahl, 2006). However, more sophisticated experiments are sometimes required which can for example (i) continue training until a performance criterion is reached, (ii) generate random stimuli, (iii) alter stimulus differently to adapt to the participant, (iv) interpret the participant’s response and continue the experiment accordingly, etc. The possibilities are endless and we are only enumerating a few. All these possibilities can be implemented as long as a programming language is available. However, (a) very few experiment programming software offer the possibility to include lines of code within the experiment, (b) when they do, it is often