Facilities

CogLab Experimental Control Software

CogLab is the program that runs cognitive experiments. It presents stimuli, records responses, and coordinates itself with other instruments. It is temporally oriented, precisely controlling when events occur, and measuring how long subjects take to make such and such response.

CogLab runs on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. Taking advantage of the wide range of features available in Windows programming, CogLab can present more dynamic and complex stimuli than was ever previously possible. A rich experiment description language allows easy implementation of complex designs, including interactive stimuli, dual tasks, and conditional execution. The underlying design is independent of the experiment description language, so that the software will extend easily to future experiment languages, including complex graphic user interfaces. Coglab now encompasses a full driving simulator module that can be run in parallel with other stimulus presentation. In addition, Coglab has a Quake plug-in for research on navigation. CogLab attains near-millisecond accuracy. In sum, Coglab provides a robust platform for running experiments on the nature of cognition.