Assessing the monitor warm-up time required before a psychological experiment can begin

Visual experiments in psychology, psychophysics, and cognitive neuroscience require precise control over stimulus characteristics, such as luminance and contrast. In such experiments, stimuli are most often presented using computer monitors. These monitors bear an often neglected and rarely reported...

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Main Authors: Poth, Christian H., Horstmann, Gernot
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Université d'Ottawa 2017-10-01
Series:Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.tqmp.org/RegularArticles/vol13-3/p166/p166.pdf
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author Poth, Christian H.
Horstmann, Gernot
author_facet Poth, Christian H.
Horstmann, Gernot
author_sort Poth, Christian H.
collection DOAJ
description Visual experiments in psychology, psychophysics, and cognitive neuroscience require precise control over stimulus characteristics, such as luminance and contrast. In such experiments, stimuli are most often presented using computer monitors. These monitors bear an often neglected and rarely reported source of experimental confounds and uncontrolled variation: they take a warm-up time in which their luminance systematically changes until a stable level is eventually reached. Here we demonstrate this problem by measuring luminance over time for five different monitors. Results indicate that not only the warm-up time but also the course that the warm-up takes can vary greatly between different monitors. To address this problem, we propose a simple method of approximating a monitor\IeC {\textquoteright }s warm-up time, which takes into account theoretical considerations of the specific experiment. On this basis, we suggest a standardized experimental procedure and a standardized way of reporting its results to enable experimenters to control for monitor warm-up time.
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spelling doaj.art-6dccd965fe954b4baa2903c274fec6002022-12-22T01:23:53ZengUniversité d'OttawaTutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology1913-41262017-10-0113316617310.20982/tqmp.13.3.p166Assessing the monitor warm-up time required before a psychological experiment can beginPoth, Christian H.Horstmann, GernotVisual experiments in psychology, psychophysics, and cognitive neuroscience require precise control over stimulus characteristics, such as luminance and contrast. In such experiments, stimuli are most often presented using computer monitors. These monitors bear an often neglected and rarely reported source of experimental confounds and uncontrolled variation: they take a warm-up time in which their luminance systematically changes until a stable level is eventually reached. Here we demonstrate this problem by measuring luminance over time for five different monitors. Results indicate that not only the warm-up time but also the course that the warm-up takes can vary greatly between different monitors. To address this problem, we propose a simple method of approximating a monitor\IeC {\textquoteright }s warm-up time, which takes into account theoretical considerations of the specific experiment. On this basis, we suggest a standardized experimental procedure and a standardized way of reporting its results to enable experimenters to control for monitor warm-up time.https://www.tqmp.org/RegularArticles/vol13-3/p166/p166.pdfvision sciencecrtledluminancecontrastr
spellingShingle Poth, Christian H.
Horstmann, Gernot
Assessing the monitor warm-up time required before a psychological experiment can begin
Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology
vision science
crt
led
luminance
contrast
r
title Assessing the monitor warm-up time required before a psychological experiment can begin
title_full Assessing the monitor warm-up time required before a psychological experiment can begin
title_fullStr Assessing the monitor warm-up time required before a psychological experiment can begin
title_full_unstemmed Assessing the monitor warm-up time required before a psychological experiment can begin
title_short Assessing the monitor warm-up time required before a psychological experiment can begin
title_sort assessing the monitor warm up time required before a psychological experiment can begin
topic vision science
crt
led
luminance
contrast
r
url https://www.tqmp.org/RegularArticles/vol13-3/p166/p166.pdf
work_keys_str_mv AT pothchristianh assessingthemonitorwarmuptimerequiredbeforeapsychologicalexperimentcanbegin
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