Coming from Ibex and PCIbex: Importing a Reading Experiment into Potato

Import an Ibex or PCIbex Farm experiment into Potato with potato import -f ibex: self-paced reading, maze, ratings, key responses and Latin-square lists.

potato import -f ibex reads an Ibex or PCIbex (PennController) experiment and builds a Potato project with the same items, Latin-square lists and main trial type. From Potato 2.12.0, a self-paced reading, maze, acceptability or two-key task can run with Potato's recruitment, surveys and export, or alongside an annotation task.

Ibex runs sentence-processing experiments in the browser, and PCIbex Farm hosts PennController scripts written in JavaScript. Potato has no scripting layer, so the importer reads the parts of a script that have a fixed shape and lists the rest for you to rebuild by hand.

Import an experiment

Point the importer at the experiment folder, the one with data_includes/ and chunk_includes/, as in a PCIbex Farm or Ibex project download:

bash

potato import -f ibex -i my_experiment/ -o my-study/
python potato/flask_server.py start my-study/config.yaml -p 8000

Ibex constructs the importer translates

Ibex or PCIbex	Potato
`Template("table.csv", row => newTrial(...))`	One item per CSV row, with every column kept
`newController("DashedSentence", {s: row.X})`, or classic `DashedSentence`	Self-paced reading in moving-window mode
`newController("Maze", {s: row.X, a: row.Y})`	The maze task, with the distractors from `row.Y`
`newScale(N)` with `.before` and `.after` texts, or classic `AcceptabilityJudgment`	An N-point `likert` scale with those end labels
`newKey("F", "J")` with `newText(row.X)`	A timed trial with those keys. Rename the labels to what they mean
Classic `"Question"` after a sentence	A comprehension question, with F and J for the first two answers
A `Group` or `List` column, or classic `["condition", N]` labels	A between-subjects factor `list`, one data file per list, and `batch_assignment.group_by_condition: list`

Classic Ibex items labelled ["condition", N] share group N, and list k gets the condition at position (k + N) mod (number of conditions), the usual Latin-square rotation. Items outside the square go in every list, under a different ID in each, because Potato needs item IDs to be unique across data files (Experiment Flow).

Lists keep the names the experiment gives them, such as L1 or List1.

Parts left for you to rebuild

These parts of an experiment are left out, and the output and IMPORT_REPORT.md list each one:

practice items and templates;
Message, Form and Html screens;
newTimer, Sequence and shuffleSequence ordering;
Header and Footer;
newFunction and other custom JavaScript;
images, audio and video elements, and recording;
any template whose table is not in chunk_includes/.

A trial that is none of the translated types is refused with a message, and so is an import that would have no items, or a PCIbex template whose stimulus column is missing from its table. These are reported as warnings:

a column the template reads that the table lacks;
empty stimulus cells;
two classic items with the same label in one group. Both are kept, since Ibex rotates a group by position.

Put consent and instructions on survey pages. For stimulus timing that timed trials do not cover, run the task on a jsPsych page.

Coming from Ibex and PCIbex: Importing a Reading Experiment into Potato

Import an experiment

Ibex constructs the importer translates

Parts left for you to rebuild

Further Reading