jspsych-timelines

This is an open repository of timelines for jsPsych. The goal of this repository is to provide a place for researchers to share their jsPsych timelines with the community. Packages in this repository all implement a uniform structure that makes it easy to use them in your own experiments and combine them with other code.

List of available timelines

The jsPsych timelines that have been contributed by community members can be found in the /packages directory. The /packages directory also contains two template sub-folders that can be used as a starting point for contributing a timeline (see the Guidelines for contributing new timelines section).

Timelines

Timeline	Contributor	Description
arrow-flanker	Josh de Leeuw	Arrow flanker task for jsPsych
false-memory	Cherrie Chang	False memory task for jsPsych
spatial-cueing	Cherrie Chang	A shareable timeline of the Posner spatial cueing task.

Using timelines from this repository

The modules in this repository can be loaded via a CDN or via NPM. The CDN is the easiest way to get started. For example, to load the arrow-flanker timeline from the CDN, you would add the following script tag to your HTML document:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/@jspsych-timelines/arrow-flanker"></script>

This will load the timeline into the global namespace as jsPsychTimelineArrowFlanker. You can then use the timeline in your experiment like this:

const jsPsych = initJsPsych();
const timeline = jsPsychTimelineArrowFlanker.createTimeline(jsPsych, {options});
jsPsych.run([timeline]);

In the above example, timeline is a jsPsych timeline object that can be added to other timelines or used as the main timeline. The options parameter is an object that contains options for the timeline. The options are described in the documentation for each timeline.

Structure

Each timeline module exports a createTimeline() method. This method returns an object with a timeline property that can be inserted into a jsPsych timeline.

const timeline = jsPsychTimelineModule.createTimeline(jsPsych, {options})
jsPsych.run([timeline])

Timeline modules may also export a timelineUnits objects and a utils object.

The timelineUnits object contains functions that create smaller units of a timeline than the main createTimeline() method. For example, if the main timeline contains two phases (e.g., memorization and test) then there could be timelineUnits.createTestTimeline() and timelineUnits.createMemorizationTimeline(). These functions could then be used for assembling the overall timeline in a different way than createTimeline() allows. There are no constraints on what kinds of timeline creation methods can be exported in timelineUnits, other than the requirement that all methods return an object that can be added to a jsPsych timeline. Some modules may export methods to create units as small as a single trial, while others export no methods at all.

The utils object contains miscellaneous functions that may be useful when using the module. For example, if a timeline requires creating a complex stimulus that can be procedurally generated there could be a utils.createStimulus() method that returns HTML. Or if there is a timeline that involves a particular scoring system like a questionnaire with validated indicies then there could be a utils.generateScore() method. There are no constraints on what methods can be exported as part of the utils object.

Guidelines for contributing new timelines

If you would like to contribute a new timeline to this repository, please follow these steps:

1. Fork this repository
2. Create a new branch for your timeline (e.g., 'new-timeline-arrow-flanker')
3. Run npm install in the root directory of the repository to install dependencies.
4. Run npm run new and answer the prompts to create a new timeline template in the packages directory.
5. Edit the files in the new timeline directory to implement your timeline. src/index.ts is the main file that will be loaded when the timeline is used. README.md is the documentation for the timeline. examples/index.html is a basic jsPsych experiment template that you can modify to illustrate how your timeline works.
6. Run npm run build to build the timeline. This will create a dist directory with the compiled timeline.
7. Verify that the example works by opening examples/index.html in your browser.
8. Add a changeset by running npm run changeset in the main directory of the repository. This will prompt you for a description of the changes you made. This will create a new changeset file in the changesets directory.
9. Open a pull request to merge your branch into the main branch of this repository.

We welcome timelines of all kinds!

What if my timeline requires a custom plugin?

If your timeline requires a custom plugin, we'd recommend adding the plugin to jspsych-contrib before submitting the timeline here. This will make it easier for other researchers to use your plugin in their own experiments. Currently, this repository is aimed at timelines that use plugins that are published on npm.