Scripts associated with the creation of stimuli & the presentation and analysis of behavioral and imaging tasks for the social/self stress sub-study within TAG.
Please see the video_instructions.txt file within the stimuli folder of this repository for step-by-step instructions on stimuli creation for this study. Videos were recorded on an iMac using QuickTime Player Version 10.4 with the following settings. Format: H.264, 1280x720 AAC 44100 Hz, Stereo (L R) FPS: 30
Video clips were created with the javascript file titled export_tim.jsx, which is available within the stimuli/ directory of this repository. This script was launched through Adobe After Effects CC 2018, using Adobe's ExtendScript Toolkit. Video clips were rendered via Adobe Media Encoder CC 2018.
This task was run using PsychoPy3 v3.0.0b7. Trial order was determined using mutually orthogonal latin squares (MOLS) created using the R package crossdes. Stimuli durations were determined by sampling from a gamma distribution with mean=16s for task blocks and mean=10s for rest blocks. More detailed information is contained within the script titled Stim_Duration_Script_rArBrC.R, which is available within the stimuli/ directory of this repository. This script was used to make stimulus order and timing decisions for the fMRI task.
The SPLT task is a behavioral experiment designed to assess multiple domains of social learning. Stimuli were created using PsychoMorph v.6. Each face represents an average of three NIMH-ChEFS faces. Each ChEFS face was manually delineated, averaged, and masked to remove background and hair.