The following are some experiment control fragments. They illustrate the main portion of the program which implements that schedule.
Slide 3-21
Line 10 specifies that ECBasic should sleep for 60 seconds. Line 20 sets the variable START equal to the current number of pecks which have occurred since the session started. Line 30 is executed until a peck occurs (ECBasic automatically increments the variable PECKS in "background" when a keypeck is detected without any explict action through ECBASIC instructions). Line 40 operates the reinforcement mechanism for 4 seconds and then turns it off.
Slide 3-22
ECBasic sleeps for a time specified by a random element chosen from the array labeled VITIME (RANGE(1,25) selects a random element within the range of 1 to 25). Line 20 "anchors" the peck counter by setting START equal to the current number of pecks.
Slide 3-23
In this case the ECBasic is waiting at line 20 for the number of pecks to exceed the start start value by 100.
Full text and figures of journal articles on this topic are available at:
***** A POWERFUL, INEXPENSIVE EXPERIMENT CONTROLLER OR IBM PC
INTERFACE AND EXPERIMENT CONTROL LANGUAGE
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Date Last Reviewed : May 26, 2003