The Two Week Crunch

Therefore, I am attempting to run all 28 of my participants in just about two weeks. Not that I’m complaining; I’m quite excited to begin to analyze and decode all of my data. There have been a few bumps in the road-there have been several participants that haven’t shown up, sometimes my button box goes on the fritz and occasionally I find myself without the correct change with which to pay them. In the end, I’m collecting some very reliable data though and it looks like everything is overall running very smoothly. I currently have 20 participants down, with just a few left to go. For the most part a lot of my participants really enjoy the lexical decision task. Quite a few have commented that trying to test themselves on whether the word is a real word in German or not is actually ‘fun’. I’m starting to dislike the boston naming task more and more as time goes on, however. Some of the words I would need more than a second to figure out what it is in English-how many of you know what an abacus is off the top of your head?! I haven’t had more than a participant or two who knows more than 10 or 12 vocabulary words in this task, which I think can be rather disappointing for them. But it is a standardized task, and it is serving its purpose, so it will stay as it is.

I got lucky in being able to store my equipment at the institute. My bag is quite heavy and lugging all of that weight around on the tram every morning is not my idea of a fun time. Securing a locked cabinet for it was a smart idea. The room I run participants in is perfectly set up and very private. I especially like that all of my participants so far have taken the study very seriously and with great diligence.

The people I work with at the institute are extraordinarily friendly. Everybody stops by to ask how everything is going and wish me luck with the day’s participants. There are weekly lunches and meetings where everybody gets caught up on the other experiments that are running and any issues that need some attention. Many of the people are friends outside of the office as well; a social network with a common passion and interest. The MPI is its own little community!

The intern whose norming data I’m collecting is on vacation this week. I’m eagerly awaiting her return so that we can start looking at all of this data and design our EEG experiment. There’s lots about the experimental design and running participants that I still have to learn concerning these kinds of studies