This project is a clone of the Cyberball task (Williams et al., 2000). It has been rewritten in modern JavaScript and adds several new features including thought probes to measure task-unrelated thought (TUT) during the task.
The main configuration file is options.json. This file holds settings applicable to all conditions such as the Qualtrics URL to redirect to when the task is completed as well as the parameters to each individual condition. A wide range of variables may be manipulated including the number of confederates, the probability of each player recieving the ball, the time intervals between mind wandering (MW) probes, and the length of the task. All interface text is customizable with strings.json.
The experimental condition number and unique participant identifier must be passed from Qualtrics in the URL query string (e.g. https://cyberball.example.com?condition=2&linkid=7228260153). If the condition is not randomly assigned by Qualtrics, it will be randomly assigned at the start of the game. Similarly, if no participant ID is passed into Cyberball, a random eight digit ID will be generated. These same parameters will be passed back to Qualtrics at the end of the game along with completed=true. The query string may be recieved by Qualtrics as embedded data.
Upon completion of the task, a POST request containing JSON data is sent to the configured server. This includes a timestamped record of each throw and each MW probe response.
Build with Babel for support of potentially outdated participants' browsers.
Copyright © 2020, Michael Pascale. MIT Licensed.
Image assets and concept have been borrowed from the original program. This project is dependent on jQuery.