Programming a Reaction Timer Test

My friend and I are interested in creating our own version of a reaction timer test. We've only just started to use Matlab so we aren't totally familiar with everything on Matlab yet and searching on Google hasn't come up with any promising results.

It's just a simple reaction test which will be based on your sight and perhaps hearing (unsure if we would be able to program it to play a sound at random).

Need a lot of help! Thanks!

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

http://psychtoolbox.org/HomePage

You will need to use the tools there (or equivalent) if you are working with sound, as normal MATLAB sound production has too much latency and variability for use in a reaction test.

[Aaron]

Is it possible to do it without any external tools? Just the basic functions that are supplied with Matlab itself?

Answer 2

[Daniel Shub]

How accurate does the timing need to be? If you are looking for sub millisecond timing, then no. If you want centisecond timing, then you need something that gives you low level access to your video and/or audio devices (i.e., http://psychtoolbox.org/HomePage). If you want decisecond timing then

drawnow expose
id = tic;
waitforbuttonpress;
reactionTime = toc(id);

[Aaron]

Only problem is, even with that, I have no idea how to start :/

[Daniel Shub]

I suggest http://www.mathworks.co.uk/help/techdoc/learn_matlab/bqr_2pl.html

Answer 3

[Daniel Shub]

MATLAB and the toolboxes provided by TMW is very powerful for general problems. Contribution on the FEX and other places can greatly enhance the power of MATLAB for specific problems, like reaction time tasks. Learning how to use PsychToolbox could be really useful. Although I haven't used it myself, and I don't know if it does reaction time, you may also want to look at MLP

Given that you do not want to use "external tools", know very little about MATLAB, and don't seem to want to learn, then I suggest you look at PsychoPy. There is even a video tutorial which creates the Stroop task (a reaction time task) in 15 minutes.