Direct RT v2012 and v2008 --> does not display anything (case 15027)

Hey,

I am trying to prgram an implicit attitude measure using DirectRT and I was confronted with several problems. The first issue I could already solve was that DirectRT seemed to have problems with the .csv files I saved with Windows 7. I then opened them in open office and saved them again - no more error messages now. That's the good news.

The bad news is: when a file is supposed to be opened, there is a black screen for a few seconds and afterwards the next file starts, as if the previous file had worked properly. There is no error message or anything, DirectRT just does not seem to do what the file is saying. I have between 40 and 70 trials in each file, so even if it just did not display the pictures or something the black screen would have to be displayed much longer. Perhaps you can tell me what is wrong here. I tried it under Windows XP, DirectRT v2008 as well as Windows 7, Direct RT v2012 - same problem, no matter which version. Not even the instructions are displayed - nothing. I would really appreciate your help as I am in urgent need to start my experiment before the end of the semester.

Thank you very much.
Best,

Ricarda

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Ricarda,

This is Jason Reed, the Customer Support Manager at Empirisoft. I will be happy to help you out. It would be great if you could elaborate on a few things for me to help get a sense of where the issue with this blank screen may be:

1) Exactly how and in what order are you running the attached .csv files? Are you opening them one at a time using only DirectRT? Are you running them as part of a MediaLab .exp or .que file?

2) Exactly which of the attached .csv files is showing a problem with the black screen appearing when you first open it or them?

3) Do you have all of your image, text, and stimfiles in a folder named stim? If so, is that stim folder in the same file folder as your other DirectRT input and styles.drt files?

Jason,

to answer your questions:

1) The order is: practice congruent, test congruent, practice incongruent, test incongruent. I am running them as part of a .que file, with 'filler' instruction pages in between, to give DirectRT enough time to close the previous file before opening the next one (we previoulsy had problems with this issue, too).

2) Each and every file I attached produces the same problem. It is opened and then closed one after another (with the fillers in between, which are displayed correctly via MediaLab) without displaying any of the trials and also without providing error messages.

3) Yes. I use the same constellation that works fine for another task I programmed in DirectRT, but for this task I programmed it does not work out.

I can provide you with alle the files I use, if you need them.

Please do send what other files you can, including the TrackPreformance.txt file in the DirectRT program folder. You should put them all in a single zipped compressed folder and upload it to the forum.

Here you find all my files. It might be possible that some of the paths in the .que file do not work now, as I am not sure whether I used relative paths. I will provide the trackperformance file tomorrow, as I cannot access it from here, but I already looked at it before and it said: 0 warnings, 0 errors for each of the files.

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I forgot to include one of my files in the .zip file. You find it here. But you can also just delete it from the .que file, as it is not relevant for the task and is just an introduction. I had to save it as .txt as the uploader told me .html would be an invalid file.

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Here you find the track.txt file. As far as I can see it, it does not report any problems. I also tried to run the input files directly via DirectRT without the .que file - same problem as before, but also no error messages.
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Seems the problem was that even though there were terminators (i.e. the *) in the first row of each your DirectRT input files, DirectRT did not pick up on them. I got the DirectRT files attached here to run when I deleted the * already there and replaced with an * I typed in myself. Try the attached DirectRT input .csv files on your machine and let me know if they work for you.

Wow, that really works! Thank you so much! I am really wondering how you noticed that that was the problem, I would have never thought that one * works, but another doesn't. Now I can finally start my data collection :)

What type of spreadsheet program did you use to create the input file? Did you use a version of Windows that is not English-based?