Abstract
A large and diverse set of experiments is run by a single data acquisition program. The resulting single-output file format encompassing all possible experimental paradigms allows a corresponding single program to be written to extract data from these files to accumulate descriptive statistics. However, this diversity requires extreme flexibility in specifying the classes of data to be extracted, so that, for example, any sort of sequential effects can be observed in reaction times. An additional constraint is to remove all program complexity other than that imposed by the analysis logic itself, so that psychologists can program their own data analyses. The resulting analysis program provides a general-purpose data extraction language with which the user specifies the desired classes of data to be formed into lists for further operations by the program. The language structure incorporates the natural hierarchy of the data base structure itself and provides a record-specifier syntax with which the class of records at each level of the hierarchy may be selected. Arithmetic, comparison, logical, statistical, and list processing functions are provided that allow array arguments to produce arrays of functional evaluations. These functions can be nested and otherwise combined into expressions to further define classes of data.
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Reference
Van Gelder, P., Todd, J., &Tsui, W. H. Data acquisition software for high data rate experiments.Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation, 1979,11, 192–198.
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Tsui, W.H., Van Gelder, P. A general-purpose data extraction language. Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation 11, 199–204 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205647
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205647