Ian Thomas wrote:
An OT “project” of mine.
A friend has Parkinson’s disease, and is getting the jitters. He was a
senior manager in a major IT corporation (he is not a programmer, did
some FORTRAN for his MSc, years ago – but he’s smart enough). About a
year ago wrote for himself a simple reaction time (mouse response to
some cue appearing on screen) in MS Excel (VBA), but he would like to
do some .NET programming, and also write something more appropriate
for his condition.
I have seen a few things on CodeProject that might be adaptable, but
most are too elaborate (games, which assume super-quick reaction time
but also are too involved in terms of story line, graphics, etc).
Over time, I would be grateful if anyone on the list can just post a
URL that I can have a look at. I’ve got him working with VS2008
Express, but might need to use a more capable / more recent IDE.
(Those of you who are aware of tests for behavioural neuroscience may
know that this is a reasonably involved area of research and testing,
*but* is also a very fertile area for internet money-raking, by
individuals whose ethical behaviour is similar to those advertising
p3nis enlargement!)
Thanks – it would be good to get a few tips.
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Ian Thomas
Victoria Park, Western Australia
Hi Ian,
Just an idea which came to me, not sure if it is much use (at least in
the short term), but it seems like a game similar to tetris (maybe even
a simpler version with only 3 or 4 shapes) might be good for testing
reaction times. You can graph the average response time from when a
shape appears to where it is placed, and see how it goes as the game
gets faster. Obviously this will not give good results after one game
(because reaction times will also depend on what shapes you have at the
bottom and ability to problem solve), but I think the data gained over
the longer term can show trends and averages/etc.
Also maybe a game that shows you three images, where two are the same
and one is different, and using left, down, right on the arrowpad you
need to select the one that doesn't match. You could once again keep the
data and graph this over the long term.
Anyway, good luck, and I'd be interested to here any progress.
--
Les Hughes
[email protected]
