bRMS Generator¶

bRMS generator is two part application for creation and running of bRMS experiments.

RMS Overview¶

Repeated masking suppression (RMS) is a technique for presenting stimuli below the threshold of consciousness for long durations. RMS is closely related to Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS; Tsuchiya & Koch, 2005), but relies on different visual principles that enable its use without any apparatus additional to a computer screen and a modern computer. It is based on forward- and backward-masking, separating the target stimuli and mask in time. In RMS participants are presented with masks interleaved with a target stimulus appearing at a lower contrast level. The masking stimulus is presented for a duration of 67 ms each time, while the target is presented for a duration of only 34 ms (See figure below).

Tsuchiya, N., & Koch, C. (2005). Continuous flash suppression reduces negative afterimages. Nature neuroscience, 8(8), 1096-1101.

In breaking RMS (bRMS) - the paradigm enabled by this software package - stimuli are presented long enough for the target stimulus to break through RMS and become visible. Participants’ task is to indicate the location of the target stimulus relative to midscreen as soon as it becomes visible. Participants’ reaction times thus serve as a measure of the time they needed to become conscious of the target stimulus - or its breaking time (BT). bRMS BTs have been demonstrated to be a valid measure of prioritization for consciousness, and show convergent validity with bCFS BTs (Abir & Hassin, 2020).

Abir, Y., & Hassin, R. R. (2020). Getting to the heart of it: Multi-method exploration of nonconscious prioritization processes. Consciousness and Cognition, 85, 103005.

Installation¶

bRMS Generator - Researcher¶

Start by downloading the bRMS Generator - Researcher application. The most recent version can always be found on the GitHub releases page.

The image below shows version 1.01, but the process is the same for the most recent version.

Release link: https://github.com/nadavWeisler/BrmsGeneratorResearcher/releases/tag/1.01

Download the zip file and start the setup process.

bRMS Generator - Runner¶

Link: http://www.hujilabconscious.com/

Demo Experiment¶

Preparations¶

Download this two images and call them 2.jpg and 4.jpg

Create CSV file called “BrmsDemo.csv” struct as follow

You can see that we set two tags for each picture, their color and tha fact that they are numbers.

Main settings¶

Now I open BrmsGenerator - Researcher and set “Name” to “Demo” and “Background Color” to “#C0C0C0” (Grey).

Add Instructions¶

Now add instructions trial.

Get in instructions form.

Create new page with the text “Here is a demo experiment!” and call this trial “Instructions”.

Enter confirm and save the trial.

Add bRMS¶

Now add bRMS trial.

Get in bRMS trial form

Upload the CSV file we created before to bRMS form.

Create bRMS trial called “brms1” with all the default values and the letter ‘z’ as a choice and press the “Add” button.

Create bRMS trial called “brms2” and add the ‘x’ letter to the choices section.

Save both trials.

Download experiment¶

Download the experiment to your computer by press the “Save” button, Dont change its name.

Upload experiment JSON file¶

Log in to http://www.hujilabconscious.com/ and navigate to “Upload” web page.

Upload the JSON file downloaded earlier in the section below.

Press the “Submit” button.

Wait for success message.

Upload Stimulus¶

Compress 2.jpg and 4.jpg to Stimulus.zip and navigate to “Add stimulus” web page.

Enter experiment name, in this case - “Demo” int the following section.

Upload the ZIP file created earlier in the following section.

Wait until the age reload.

Upload stimulus¶

Compress 2.jpg and 4.jpg to Stimulus.zip and navigate to “Add stimulus” web page.

Enter experiment name, in this case - “Demo” int the following section.

Upload the ZIP file created earlier in the following section.

Wait until the age reload.

Run experiment¶

Navigate to “Dashboard” web page.

Look at the table and find Demo experiment

Press on the link tab

Export¶

Get the experiment ID from “Dashboard” web page

Navigate to “Export” web page.

Enter our experiment ID in the following section.

Press on “Submit” button

Watch how the experiment result downloaded to your computer

bRMS Generator - Researcher¶

PopUpResearcher is a desktop application which generates bRMS experiments. PopUpResearcher responsible for JSON experiment file creation, which intended to be upload to PopUpWeb.

Application Forms¶

Main Form¶

In bRMS generator - Researcher we generate new bRMS experiment JSON file. Experiment must include:

Name
At least one Trial
Background color (RGB code)

Each trial can be edited (edit button) remove (remove button) and reorder (+ and – buttons). Each trial also includes a name, block, and sub block. To save the experiment file press on the “Save” button and a file save dialog will open.

bRMS¶

bRMS experiment contains stimulus and mask parts. On the stimulus part one of your stimulus picture will appear after a fade in time.

The mask part contains several modrians in different colors, switching places and colors between each other.

The mask part is not mandatory, if you want to disable it, just set the Mask Duration to be 0.

Each component size can be change, but be aware that change one size can harm the harmony of the experiment, and please be cautious with it. First of all we need to import data CSV file, contains all stimuli names on the first column and stimulus tags on each columns, tags order are irrelevant.

CSV file example

After uploading the CSV file we could can create our bRMS trials.

We have 3 bRMS types

Mixed: Shuffle all stimulus together.
Fixed-Random: Each tag runs in a separate block.
Fixed-Fixed: Fixed order .

After choosing the bRMS type we could continue edit our bRMS trial. Mandatory (with no default):

Trial name: unique trial name, should be indicative.
Tags: list view of all stimulus tags.
Choices: buttons for experiment response. Should be numeric or alphabetic.

Extras:

Stimulus fade in time (sec)
Mondrian fade out time (sec)
All Total trial length (sec)
Mask duration (ms)
Stimulus duration (ms)
Post trial gap (ms)
Stimulus opacity (0-1)
Mondrian max opacity (0-1)
Mondrian count (count)
Rectangle count in mondrian (count)
Rectangle max width (mm)
Rectangle max height (mm)
Frame width (mm)
Frame height (mm)
Stimulus width (mm)
Stimulus height (mm)
Fixation width (mm)
Fixation height (mm)

Instructions¶

On the rich textbox , we write the content of one page and press confirm for adding.

All pages listed on the list view at the bottom of the page. We could change the pages order, duplicate or remove from the list view.

For save press the button Save.

Survey¶

There are 4 survey types

Text
Multi choice
Scale
Scale custom

After we choose a survey type we should add at least one question, the questions form will be according to the survey type, as explain in the next chapter.

Questions¶

Text Question:

Text question contain a textbox for the question text and row and columns for textbox size, row is height and columns in width.

Multi Custom Scale Question:

Multi choice and custom scale questions contains grid of options, added by write on the textbox and press Add. We can duplicate, remove and reorder the options by pressing the relevant buttons.

Also we have the prompt textbox, which contains the question itself.

Scale Question:

Scale question contains “start”, “middle” and “end” labels and “scale count”. The first, middle and last scale points will be the relevant label, the rest will be numbers.

Image¶

On Image trial we upload an image by press Choose Image button, then file dialog will open and you will be able to choose image from your computer. After choosing the image will display in the Display Image section, for save press the Save button.

Fullscreen¶

Simple trial that represent a message after which the browser will enter fullscreen mode.

bRMS Generator - Runner¶

bRMS Generator - Runner is a website that upload, run, organize and export bRMS experiments.

Web Pages¶

Upload Experiment¶

First thing we should upload our experiment. Press Choose File button and then file dialog.

Choose your experiment Json file representation (deeply suggest generating it on bRMS Generator - Researcher) and press submit.

If the submission failed, you probably have format error on your JSON file. If you familiar with json format you can try and edit the file yourself, otherwise we suggest you create new JSON file.

After the experiment submission we still need to upload the relevant stimulus, as explained in the next section.

Upload Stimulus¶

After experiment JSON file upload, we should upload our stimuli.

In bRMS generator - Web stimuli is a JPG image. You should combine all your stimuli to zip files (Its better to combine for group of 100 stimulus just to be bullet proof).

Then, upload the stimulus zip files with the relevant experiment name (which you can see in the dashboard).

Dashboard¶

In the dashboard section we can see all the experiment we made.

For each experiment we can see

Name
Id
Participants count.
Details.

We are also having a link to the experiment and able to delete it.

Export Experiment¶

In this window we can export experiment, we only need to enter experiment Id. We also can delete all the saved data (very dangerous and not recommended!). After press submit results csv file will be downloaded to your computer.

Experiment Order¶

Each note has block and sub block.

blocks and sub blocks are the way for us to order and randomize trials in our experiment.

If trial is with block number 0, its means that the trials stay fixed in his defined place.

Else, each block number trial groups switch with other block number trial group. Same rules applied on sub blocks.

For example: lets look at an random experiment.

Name	Block	Sub Block
Instructions0	0	0
bRMS1	1	1
Instructions1	1	0
Survey1	1	1
bRMS2	2	1
Instructions2	2	0
Survey2	2	1

Than the experiment will be:

Instructions0

bRMS1/2

Instructions1/2

Survey1/2

bRMS1/2 (other than the first one)

Instructions1/2 (other than the first one)

Survey1/2 (other than the first one)

jsPsych Plugin¶

For the people that feel safe with programming or have the intention to create more complicated experiment than the one we provide we extract jsPsych plugin of RMS.

You can find it here: https://github.com/nadavWeisler/jsPsychRmsPlugin

License¶

MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.