my definition is this
fitchify: to mistake uninformed simplification for accessible summarization. alternatively, to produce such an uninformed oversimplification.
rough day
In theory I’ve just learned a fairly valuable lesson in running experiments: always make sure you have the data analysis you’re planning to do working before you run subjects. In particular, make sure you’re really collecting what you think you’re collecting before you waste $130 of department money, the time of 12 participants, and a week of your own life running subjects.
Turns out Superlab has an extra special magical “Do not suck at the task you were designed to do” checkbox. This checkbox defaults to “off”, of course, so SuperLab starts out in the ever-helpful “Suck” mode. It wasn’t until I was puzzling over some extraordinarily long response times to fairly simple auditory stimuli that I realized that “Super”Lab was including the time showing instruction screens (and releasing the button) in the final RT measurement. Now I’m starting from zero rerunning all of the subjects for a submission that is due Thursday.
On a related note, if you’re reading this before Thursday the 15th and you are an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan please send me e-mail. I’d love to have you participate in my experiment. ;)