Abstract
An Apple II/FIRST system has been developed to control classical conditioning experiments, collect analog data, and to extract dependent variable measures of conditioning. With our selection of the Apple II microprocessor and an added hardware floating-point processor, we have been able to establish independent computer systems for each of our three conditioning laboratories at a fraction of the cost of our DEC PDP-8/e (which was interfaced to only one of our laboratories). Moreover, our software system, FIRST, an interactive, high-level, dictionary-based language, is a programming and control system whose flexibility and ease of programming far exceeds that experienced with our DEC PDP-8/e system (Millenson, Kehoe, Tait, á Gormezano, 1973; Tait & Gormezano, 1974). In our judgment, the Apple II/FIRST system is of unprecedented efficiency and versatility for the control, data acquisition, and data analysis of analog responses in classical conditioning experiments.
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The hardware and software development presented in this report was supported, in part, by NSF Grant BNS 76-84561, NIMH Grant MH 16841, and NIDA Grant DA 01759.
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Scandrett, J., Gormezano, I. Microprocessor control and A/D data acquisition in classical conditioning. Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation 12, 120–125 (1980). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201587
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201587