For demonstration's sake, take a situation in which you want to reveal whether a person is aware of a certain date. For example, someone is suspected to be concealing the knowledge of an upcoming terrorist attack on May 9. In this case, five different,
additional dates should be chosen randomly. For example, June 14, December 5, August 25, February 12, and March 29. From among these, one should be chosen randomly as target, for example, August 25. These should be filled in accordingly
on the starting page. Probe: MAY 09, Target: AUG 25, and the remaining four dates as Irrelevants. (Note that only the first three letters of the month are displayed, so that the length of the item texts would be the same. Shorter text may result in faster responses, which would introduce a bias.) The Experiment title may be "detect_relevant_date". The Subject ID could be "suspect_01".
All these data can be filled in automatically for a demonstration using the following button:
If you would like to do a pilot test to see that the method truly detects a relevant detail, one good way is to enter your own personal name (e.g. family name) and, as target and irrelevants, enter other, randomly chosen names. If you then complete the test in the enhanced version with, say, two blocks, it is very likely that you will be detected. (Personal names are typically highly personally relevant, and thus appear highly salient in the task.) For a control test, to show a no effect (simulating innocence), you may enter random names for all items, including probe, target, and irrelevants. Note that, in this case, the person tested should not know which item is the probe item! The mere knowledge of the relevance of this item (as the probe to be tested) can cause different responding. Thus, first the start page should be completed and the test started (by clicking the START TEST button) without the examinee seeing these details.
For the detailed mechanism of the task, as well as for how to use it (and test it programmatically), see the documentation.
Task instructions
If you make a wrong response or you are too slow to respond, a red "WRONG" or "TOO SLOW" appears below the word. You cannot correct this: the next item appears automatically.
Click on OK if you understood. You can always check these instructions again during the pauses in the task.
To make sure you correctly memorized the target detail please write it below.
TOO SLOW
WRONG
Press the space bar to begin.
This is the end of the test. You can let the test administrator know that you finished. Please do not close anything!
Results
The full data from the completed test can be downloaded as a txt file using the Download file button. The Copy to clipboard button may also be used to copy the entire data text to the system clipboard, after which
it is possible to paste it into any text editor and save it. (The data is actually automatically copied to the clipboard when changing to this screen; the button serves only in case the clipboard content is lost.) Finally, the
Start new test button may be used to return to the starting page of this application with all initial settings preserved. Note: the test data should be saved first, otherwise it will be lost.
Individual results are influenced by many factors, and so far there is no established way of making a "guilty" or "innocent" classification based on a single test. Still, an individual dCIT effect size may be
calculated, which gives basis for an approximate preliminary evalution.
For further details and information, see the documentation.