1.1 What is Cogsys?

Cogsys is a real-time experiment control system for Intel x86 computers running MS-DOS. It was specifically designed for conducting experiments in Cognitive Psychology. Generally, an experiment consists of a set of stimuli (for example, text, graphics, or sound) to which a subject makes responses (for example, keyboard, voice, or button). The investigator tells Cogsys which stimuli to present, and Cogsys returns the responses a subject makes. In almost all cases, a response consists of two parts: 1) a code which identifies what the response was (for example, which key was pressed) and 2) a time in milliseconds indicating how long the subject took to respond.

For the rest of this document, user refers to the investigator designing and analyzing the experiments, and subject to the person who is being presented stimuli and making responses; it is important to note that for all "production" (that is, non-testing) purposes, only subjects interact with Cogsys.

A Cogsys experiment is defined in a file called a Cogsys testlist. The testlist is a plain text file that consists of Cogsys commands that specify what stimuli to present. Cogsys stores the responses a subject makes to the testlist in another file, the outfile. The user can then use specific data analysis tools on the outfile.