Experiment Freezes and Stimuli Presentation Issues in PCIbex: Assistance Needed

[kateson]

I am a master’s student majoring in linguistics.
I am conducting my graduation research using PCIbex and have found it extremely useful.
Thank you for providing such a great platform.

However, I have encountered some issues during the experiment and would greatly appreciate your help.

Experiment details:

Experiment type: Lexical decision task with audio/visual stimuli
Estimated duration: 15 minutes
Error description:

The experiment occasionally freezes during execution, and key responses stop registering.
Sometimes, audio or visual stimuli fail to appear during the experiment.
Refreshing the page sometimes resolves the issue, but sometimes, the same error repeats multiple times.
Interestingly, the same experiment link works perfectly on some computers while consistently producing errors on others.
This happens even when using the same browser (Google Chrome).

1. Even though I have included code to preload the stimuli before the first page, preload issues occasionally occur causing delays during the experiment.

2. Audio and image stimuli should be presented together, but sometimes neither appears, the experiment freezes, and key inputs stop working.
Refreshing the page sometimes resolves the issue, but the same error persists in other cases.

Occurrence details:

The issue occurs in about 6 out of 22 participants.

Error message:

Unfortunately, no error message is displayed. However, I have considered several potential causes, such as:
A large number of audio and image files were used in the experiment.
Network instability.
Google Chrome’s autoplay policy or other browser-specific settings.

Experiment link:
I am attaching one of the links for your reference. As mentioned earlier, this link may work without issues or trigger errors depending on unknown factors.

https://farm.pcibex.net/r/LFIUUi/

Since I have already completed writing all the Java code for my experiment in PCIbex, I strongly prefer to continue using PCIbex rather than switching to another experimental software.

Since I am in a time-sensitive situation due to my graduation research, I would deeply appreciate it if you could assist me in resolving this issue as soon as possible. Thank you in advance for your help.

Best regards, Kate

[Author]

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