A Basic Program for the Construction of Controlled-Lag Item-Repetition Sequences

Abstract

A controlled-lag procedure is a particularly powerful and efficient means of investigating the effects of item repetition as a function of time or material intervening between the repetitions. For example, subjects may be presented with a continuous sequence of items and required to indicate whether each item is new (first presentation) or old (second presentation). The lag between the first and second presentations can be manipulated as a variable in the design. The major disadvantage of this approach is the difficulty of constructing appropriate sequences. A BASIC program is described which automatically constructs sequences of any length given experimental design specifications entered by the user.