Garaizar, P. 1, 2 , Vadillo, M. A. 3 & Matute, H. 3
1 Departamento de Telecomunicaciones. Universidad de Deusto. Bilbao, Spain.
2 DeustoTech. Universidad de Deusto. Bilbao, Spain.
3 Departamento de Fundamentos y Métodos de la Psicología. Universidad de Deusto. Bilbao, Spain.
Nowadays psychology researchers have a wide range of experimental software alternatives to meet their visual stimuli presentation needs. Nevertheless, most of these tools have to deal with two main issues: most devices used for the presentation of the stimuli have low refresh rate (typically at 60-85 Hz) and the most widely used platforms (e.g. Microsoft Windows on a PC) are not real-time systems. This study analyses the discrepancies between the experimental timing conditions defined by the researcher when using specialized software and the actual onset and offset times of the visual stimuli detected through the Black Box Toolkit photosensors. As expected, the accuracy of timing was found to be affected not only by the experimental software itself but also by the presentation devices and the underlying platform responsiveness.