Psykinematix

I have found that the fixation mark change to be an insufficiently demanding task for attention control. We'd like to be able to run a concurrent stair case or comparable behavioral method while another stimulus sequence is running.

In the attached example, the attentional control task is "Orientation Discrim", and the concurrent stimulus is "left right wedge fMRI". In practice the latter would be repeated 10 times (as opposed to two currently). Both of these work fine on their own. Our goal is to combine the two. An attempt to do so is also included "wedge plus orientation". However, it does not quite work.

It seems such an experiment design might be useful to other people. I wonder if any one has any insights.

Thanks in advance.

Having a concurrent staircase method for the attentional task does not seem to be a great way to control for attention since the task difficulty would increase when approaching the orientation discrimination threshold... Wouldn't it be better if one measures the orientation discrimination threshold first, then present the attentional target with a tilt corresponding to a multiple of the orientation threshold (so different subjects would have the same attentional difficulty) through a simple left/right task without changing the amplitude of the orientation difference???

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