​Participant recruitment

If you are testing healthy young adults, try to recruit students who need to take part in experiments for course credit (i.e., via the UC Berkeley Psychology Department’s Research Participation Program). This recruitment will be done via Sona Systems, as noted in the preceding link. You will have to apply to use this subject pool.

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Only recruit healthy young participants for monetary compensation (e.g., via flyers) after talking to Mariam first; this might be decided as the best course of action if students are not around, if you’re doing an fMRI study, or if the experiment for whatever reason cannot count for course credit.

 

Healthy older adults and patients will be paid for their time, and recruited either via flyers or colleagues.

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You can also explore using ResearchMatch to find older adults and patients.
Make sure this is IRB approved first!

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If you will be paying participants for their time (check with Mariam first), we typically use Tango Card. We pay 15 dollars/hour for behavioral studies (young adults, older adults, and patients). We pay 20 dollars/hour for fMRI studies. Each experimenter is responsible for using a subject payment form for keeping track of the money. Talk to Mariam about the process for Tango Card.

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If you are running online experiments, see the “Running Experiments Online” section of the Wiki for details on how to pay participants.

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Online experiments

See the Wiki section Running Experiments Online for more information.

 

 

Running rooms

The Aly Lab has two experiment running rooms ("procedure space" on the 2nd floor of Berkeley Way West. One room is a single-participant running room; the other is a large room with space for up to six participants to be run concurrently. If you plan to test one person at a time, it is best to use the single-participant room so the larger room can be reserved for those who are running multiple people at once. RAs may work in the larger room while running participants.

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When you want to use a running room, book it on the running room calendar (ask the lab manager for access). Put your name, the room that you’re using, and whether your slot is tentative or confirmed. If you book time on the running room calendar and cannot find a participant 24 hours before, release the slot so other people can use it.

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When a subject is in a running room, flip the sign on the door to indicate that an experiment is in session. Sometimes people forget to use the signs, so you should also make sure to check the calendar before opening the doors to the running rooms (lest you barge in on a participant in the middle of an experiment).

 

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Eye-tracking studies

The Aly Lab uses eye trackers that are shared across the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley. One eye tracker is currently in one of our running rooms. Talk to Mariam if you want to use the eye tracker(s).

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Our instructions and best practices document is here to help get you started using the eye tracker! This document was made based on our old eye tracker setup at Columbia, but if you are at Berkeley you can still have a look at that because it has useful tips and tricks!

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These two videos may also be useful for anyone wanting to use the eye-tracker: System Setup and Subject Setup. Also, check out this resource from Matthias Nau, which provides tips and tricks for eye tracking.

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Finally, here is some guidance on basic eye-tracking setup for PsychoPy, courtesy of Zall Hirschstein!

 

 

fMRI studies

This section will be filled in as the lab learns about scanning at Berkeley!

We will conduct our fMRI studies at Berkeley’s Brain Imaging Center. We will use the 3T Siemens Prisma scanner; in the future we may use 7T as well!

As we start scanning, we will add information about:

fMRI policies

Training

Scheduling

Safety screening

Relevant contacts