Director task

We have had quite a lot of request to use this paradigm, so although we are happy to share the materials, I am afraid I can't offer much support beyond this.

You can find an adapted online version of the task used in the Dumontheil et al. Dev Science 2010 paper in Gorilla (http://gorilla.sc) here: https://gorilla.sc/openmaterials/106253

Otherwise you can download the original task used in the Dumontheil et al. Dev Science 2010 paper, in E-Prime, here:

Download the task HERE

Some info about the E-Prime task:

This version has a time for responding of 4.5s, which is adequate for adolescents and adults and makes the task quicker to administer. In the Dev Science study we used 6s, because we were starting with participants aged 7-8 years old - the e-prime files can be edited if needed.

The programs are in E-Prime 2. I adapted Ian Apperly's original program and didn't know much about E-Prime so the program might appear quite clunky. There a 6 different orders of the stimuli (Tests 1 to 6). In our published study we always started with a block of the Director (or Instructor) condition, then followed by a block of the No-Director (No Instructor) condition, to avoid participants using the rules of the No-Director condition in the Director condition. The .es2 and .ebs2 are the E-Prime programs which run the different versions of the test (i.e. show the stimuli, play the sound files and record the responses).

The instructions were first read out for the Director condition, with some example images (located in the folder Practice Examples), and then participants performed the Director block. Instructions were then given for the No-Director condition, using again images that are in the Practice Example folder, and the participants performed the No-Director block. The files Instructions final Keysar.doc contains the instructions for the task that we read out loud to the participants.

The file Variables.xls contains a description of the stages to follow to use the E-Prime results files.

If you are only interested in the stimuli then the .bmp files are the stimuli images and the .wav files are the sound files (instructions, e.g. "Move the large apple left").

The files Keysar task conditions.xls and List of trials.xls contain information on the stimuli and the order of the trials (i.e. for each of the 6 test orders you can see a list of the stimuli and associated sound files).

Please get in touch if you would like to use different versions of the task that were used in our other studies.

Good luck with your research!