Problem with Medialab to DirectRT transfer (case 12569)

Hello,

I have an experiment programmed that is running from Medialab. The experiment contains several questionnaires programmed in Medialab, and also several DirectRT tasks that are interspersed throughout.

No DirectRT tasks are programmed back-to-back; all have Medialab questionnaires between them.

The issue I'm having is that the program will occasionally skip over some DirectRT tasks completely. It appears that the program attempts to execute the DirectRT task, but is unable to, and so the next Medialab questionnaire pops up instead.

Do you have any ideas as to what might be causing this issue? The problem occurs inconsistently...sometimes the program runs flawlessly, and other times it does not.

We are running a 2012 version of DirectRT and Windows7.
In the Track Performance document, the following errors appear when the problem occurs:

[FONT=arial]Elapsed Time: 608798ms, block 0, trial 0, stim 3, Error -2005532222, Automation error, on line 90, during CreateSurfaces of Form DDFullScreen[/FONT]
[FONT=arial]Elapsed Time: 608819ms, block 0, trial 0, stim 1, Error -2005532222, Automation error, on line 80, during FlipScreen of Form DDFullScreen[/FONT]
[FONT=arial]Elapsed Time: 608821ms, block 0, trial 0, stim 1, Error -2005532222, Automation error, on line 90, during FlipScreen of Form DDFullScreen[/FONT]
[FONT=arial]Elapsed Time: 608862ms, block 0, trial 0, stim 3, Error -2005532222, Automation error, on line 80, during FlipScreen of Form DDFullScreen[/FONT]
[FONT=arial]Elapsed Time: 608863ms, block 0, trial 0, stim 3, Error -2005532222, Automation error, on line 90, during FlipScreen of Form DDFullScreen

I've attached the main Medialab file. - Please let me know if additional files are necessary.

I would appreciate any help you can offer!

Thank you.[/FONT]

Based on the file attached to the previous post, it looks like you are trying to run your DirectRT files by directly calling them up through the .exp file. Instead, try creating as many .que files as you need that use the DirectRT item type to run your DirectRT input files. All you need to do is select the DirectRT item type and put the appropriate pathway to your DirectRT files in the File field.

Hi Jason,

It *appears* this solution may have fixed the skipping issue. Only time will tell, I suppose.

I am now getting an error message at the end of each experiment run-though that says,
"The variable v0126 is numeric but is stored is the SPSS fille as a string. It will be converted to a string to match the existing data file."

I click on "OK", but the message appears ~16 times or so for various variable names. Is there any way to get rid of this? I've tried deleting all .sav files and running the experiment again, but this did not seem to fix the issue.

Thank you!

Do you repeat any variable names in your .que files? If so, you should give each item in your .que files a unique name to prevent SPSS from renaming one of the repeated variables with the generic label like v0126.

Regarding the "stored as string" statement, this could occur if you have the "save as text" option checked for one of your .que file items that stores responses as numbers, like scale response items. If so, you can simply uncheck that option for that item in the .que files.