aceR

aceR is an R package around ACE data.

Getting Started

See here for a detailed install guide and annotated example.

Installation

aceR is currently only available on github.

Install the latest release from github using devtools:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("joaquinanguera/aceR")

Updates

Reinstall the package to update to the latest stable version:

devtools::install_github("joaquinanguera/aceR")

To install the beta version, use "joaquinanguera/aceR@development" in the above command. Please be aware that the beta version may have breaking changes relative to your current setup, or just bugs!

The package, as of March 2020, has transitioned to the CalVer versioning system, with the 0Y.MINOR.MICRO setup.

• 0Y: Zero-padded short year. It is assumed that if the year version rolls over, there are breaking changes between this and the last version dated to the previous year.
• MINOR: Minor version. The minor version will be rolled over for any of the following. These changes are likely to be breaking to your current pipeline.
  • new functions are added
  • existing functions take a different argument structure
  • existing functions output different data structure
• MICRO: Bug fixes. The micro version will be rolled over when internal cleanup or other changes are made that should have no obvious impact to the user.

Brief release notes

24.0.0 (Current):

Bug Fix:

• Fixes an issue with loading the demographics.csv file caused by a duplicate PID column populated by the Nexus backend: #51

21.7.0:

New features:

• proc_by_module() on (forwards and backwards) spatial span now returns a modified spatial span, (span_overall / length_overall) + span_correct, in addition to the original span_overall metric
• post_clean_chance() now cleans Filter responses independently by k for each of the 5 target/distractor number conditions. Subthreshold performance on one k condition will leave metrics intact for the other conditions.
• clarified some argument descriptions in the post_clean_chance() help page

21.6.0:

New features:

• trim_initial_trials() allows discarding the first N trials or the first N% of trials from each participant's raw trialwise data loaded in with load_*_bulk()
• proc_by_module() now returns attention span measures (time between mistakes) for ACE Explorer SAAT data

Minor implementation changes:

• post_clean_low_trials() now passes through data from subjects with NA in any of their relevant trial count columns. Notable for ACE Explorer BRT data, where some versions of data do not have thumb-press conditions, but data remain valid as the participant could not have possibly responded to those trials.
• proc_by_module() now returns NA in all overall metric columns for Boxed and TNT task data from subjects who failed to complete every condition (on the basis that they did not actually complete the full task)

Bug fixes:

• Bug likely introduced in v21.2.0: load_ace_bulk() was not correctly applying post-hoc just-in-case cleaning of trial accuracy and RT columns to SAAT data since it was split into submodules for SAATSUSTAINED and SAATIMPULSIVE
• post_clean_*() now handle wide-processed ACE Classroom data properly (module-specific BID and time columns)
• proc_ace_complete() incorporates these fixes, now handles ACE Classroom data properly as well

21.5.0:

New features:

• Now handles ACE Explorer modules: ADP (face switch) and Color Selection
• Now outputs hit, miss, correct rejection, and false alarm counts for modules where d' is calculated (SAAT, TNT, Filter)

Bug fixes:

• Now throws an error when load_ace_bulk() is called with data_type = "classroom", as this argument value has been deprecated since v21.1.1 in favor of the more specific options of "email" and "pulvinar"

Minor implementation changes:

• Filter now uses proc_by_condition() under the hood for d' and k, consistent with other modules that calculate d'

21.4.0:

New features:

• post_reduce_cols() now takes an additional argument metric_names_exclude to drop all column names matching a particular string stem
• load_sea_bulk() now identifies practice trials in newer versions of SEA data and groups them with the data for their respective modules. These trials are left in the loaded trialwise data, but ignored when calculating metrics with proc_by_module().

Bug fixes:

• Typo fixed so that SEA reading comprehension and reading fluency both process through proc_by_module()
• Processed SEA arithmetic verification cost columns renamed to de-duplicate different cost types
• Fixes bug introduced in v21.0.0 that caused some older SEA files not to load in via load_sea_bulk() when they are missing the math_recall_orientation column. Again, we do not impute any values for that column (so metrics can't be calculated by Math Recall orientation if it's not there) but the rest of the modules in the file will load in as normal again.

Minor implementation changes:

• Couple more columns in SEA data are coerced to lowercase to smoothen subsequent module processing
• More tests written to check that SEA processing returns no errors, etc.

21.3.0:

Contains critical change to data calculations, please update ASAP.

New functions:

• proc_ace_complete() is a new wrapper function that allows users who do not wish to modify any arguments to run ACE data through, start to finish. This function calls the following workhorse functions, in order. Use with care! The wrapper function effectively hard-codes argument settings for the component data processing functions. Users who wish to tinker with arguments and mid-processing choices should continue to use the functions for individual data processing steps.
• load_ace_bulk()
• trim_rt_trials_range(cutoff_min = 200)
• proc_by_module(output = "wide")
• post_clean_low_trials(.min_trials = 5)
• optionally, post_clean_chance(cutoff_dprime = 0, cutoff_2choice = 0.5, cutoff_4choice = 0.25) with overall set based on user preference
• post_reduce_cols() with a specific subset of output columns
• and writes processed data to CSV with write_csv()

Bug fixes:

• Calculation has been changed, please re-run your stuff! Thank you @mattminder for identifying that ace_dprime() was incorrectly calculating the denominator of hit and false alarm rate across all trials, instead of only across hit/miss and CR/FA trials respectively. This impacts d' metrics for SAAT and TNT data, not Filter data. (Importantly, the incorrect calculation changed d' values, tending to make them lower, but should not have affected rank-order relationships between participants' d' scores.)
• post_clean_chance() was not fully updated to expect the two split SAAT modules. It should be now!

21.2.0:

Major implementation changes that may break current pipelines:

• The ACE SAAT task is now treated as two separate modules, SAATSUSTAINED and SAATIMPULSIVE. load_ace_bulk() takes raw SAAT as per usual, but now outputs the trialwise data as two separate modules. This should work for all ACE data types, no matter whether both SAAT conditions are included in the same log file (ACE Classroom) or exported as distinct log files (ACE Explorer). proc_by_module() and the post_clean_*() processing functions all now expect SAAT data to be broken up into two submodules, as output by the updated load_ace_bulk(). Now, SAAT processed output columns will take the form SAATIMPULSIVE.XYZ.overall instead of, say, SAAT.XYZ.impulsive. Overall SAAT metrics across both task conditions will no longer be output, as the conditions are cognitively distinct enough that they should not be analyzed together.

21.1.1:

Minor implementation changes:

• load_ace_bulk() argument app_type has been renamed to data_type to clarify the fact that it differentiates data varieties from the same app (like emailed vs Pulvinar-style data from ACE Classroom), and to avoid user mental interference with other functions where app_type differentiates between "classroom" and "explorer"
• load_ace_bulk(data_type = "email")/load_ace_bulk(data_type = "pulvinar") now recodes all valid (>0) BRT RTs as "correct" before adjusting for other app behavior. This should adjust for older versions of the app marking late BRT RTs as "incorrect", which is technically invalid because it's impossible to give an incorrect BRT response.
• Both post_clean_*() functions now take a new argument, extra_demos, to allow users to pass in a character vector of custom demographic columns to pass through to the cleaned processed data. In the event that users hand-code processed data from proc_by_module() with new demographic identifiers, they can now manually specify those columns to be handled with app-default demographics.

21.1.0:

New outputs:

• load_ace_bulk() now creates the trial_number column if it's not found in the raw data, counting from 0 for each participant/module/condition (so, like in the Boxed task, counting will start over from 0 for the next condition by the same participant). Should only activate for data from very old versions of ACE, where trial number was not automatically written out by the app.

Major implementation changes:

• load_ace_bulk() now NAs out all RTs less than 150 ms as "no response".
• trim_rt_trials() previously did both range-based and SD-based scrubbing, always doing any SD scrubbing after range scrubbing. These features have now been split into two functions, trim_rt_trials_range() and trim_rt_trials_sd(), to allow for greater customization of the behavior of either function. Both functions now allow certain modules to be un-scrubbed with the exclude argument. trim_rt_trials_range() now takes two length-1 arguments for the minimum and maximum range cutoffs, as opposed to the old functionality where both cutoffs were specified in a length-2 vector.

Minor implementation changes:

• post_clean_chance() now takes an app_type argument with either "classroom" or "explorer" as values, to account for differing numbers of choices (and differing chance-level accuracy values) in the Task Switch task between ACE Classroom and Explorer.
• Slowly, app output messages are being rendered in color with the crayon package. Successful processing messages should be rendered in green, non-fatal warnings rendered in yellow, and errors rendered in red.

21.0.1:

Bug fixes:

• ace_dprime() (called under the hood to process summaries for SAAT and TNT, among others) now explicitly calculates hit and FA counts with na.rm = TRUE, so should stop returning NA for participants with trials NA'd out by cleaning functions like trim_rt_trials().

21.0.0:

New outputs:

• proc_by_module() now outputs additional accuracy columns from a recoded version of accuracy, where all late trials are labeled as incorrect irrespective of their original response. (Only appears in data with valid RT/response-window mappings. May not appear for very old ACE Classroom data.)

Minor implementation changes:

• Removing instances of deprecated dplyr functions like funs() (totally removed?) and the *_at()/*_if() functions (in progress) to keep up with best practice and silence deprecation errors from dplyr
• Subtle changes under the hood to silence cosmetic warnings that don't signify unexpected failure to process

20.5.0:

Minor implementation changes:

• load_ace_bulk(): Internal changes to replace_nas() to accommodate changes in how tibble data types behave with base R bracket indexing. Fixes a breaking error with aceR and newer versions of tidyverse packages. Package now requires dplyr >= 1.0.0.
• ACE Explorer Boxed: Now forcibly recodes accuracy based on button_pressed and position_is_top
• ACE Explorer Filter: Now forcibly recodes accuracy based on button_pressed and cue_rotated. Retains previous recoding from earlier versions of the task when button_pressed was not included.
• ACE BRT: Now more strict about checking for handedness in demographics. If handedness does not match "right" or "left", module_brt() throws warning through proc_by_module().

20.4.0:

Minor implementation changes:

• ACE BRT: Only Classroom BRT is checked for rt != inter_time_interval. Explorer BRT is now unmodified in this respect.

Bug fixes:

• In June (ish?) 2020, ACE Explorer began labeling Flanker cues as A vs. B, instead of A/B vs. C/D. Previous versions of load_ace_bulk() would thus accidentally mis-code all responses when displayed_cue == "B". The code now splits Flanker cues into A vs. B or A/B vs. C/D depending on whether C/D are present in the data. This is a necessary update for anyone looking to process ACE Explorer Flanker data in the new format.

20.3.0:

Minor implementation changes:

• ACE Explorer task switch: accuracy is now manually recoded to check that the color or shape of the pressed button is equal to either the color or shape displayed, depending on the cue

Bug fixes:

• In June (ish?) 2020, ACE Explorer began collecting and outputting SAAT data as two separate tasks for the impulsive and sustained conditions. Previous versions of load_ace_bulk() would accidentally remove data from each player's second SAAT module as "duplicated". The code now considers task condition when de-duplicating raw data. This is a necessary update for anyone looking to process ACE Explorer SAAT data in the new format.

20.2.0:

New outputs of proc_by_module() added:

• ACE spatial cueing: For newer Explorer data that has a "neutral" condition, outputs costs for neutral - incongruent and neutral - incongruent
• ACE filter: Outputs Snodgrass-corrected d'. Use with caution when trial counts are low!
• ACE modules in general:
  • where response window summaries are output, now outputs minimum response window as well
  • For ACE Explorer data, now outputs practice_count, or the number of practice rounds that subject did for that module. Note that at the max value, 5 rounds, it does not currently differentiate between whether the subject maxed out practice and failed the last round, or passed the last round.

Bug fixes:

• proc_by_module() failed when app_type = "explorer" and output = "wide" because it attempted to drop a column that didn't exist in demographics
• load_ace_bulk() now returns all tap_.*_rt columns in forward/backward spatial span data as double instead of character
• post_clean_low_trials() checks for the minimum trial count only in at-all-responded trials within each condition. Previously, was accidentally checking within early-responded trials, which is likely too strict of a response requirement.

Now requires dplyr >= 0.8.0 as well. Tidyverse updates are generally solid about backwards compatibility, so we boldly go for more sensible features!

20.1.1:

Previously, no recoding was done on no-go "RTs" in go/no-go ACE tasks (SAAT and TNT). Now, these no-go RTs are coded as -99. This is not included in RT summary statistics, but these trials are counted in ace_count().

20.1.0:

New functions nest_ace_raw() and unnest_ace_raw(), to pull loaded ACE data into traditional unnested dataframe form for custom analysis, and to re-package ACE data back into nested form for analysis with proc_by_module().

Example Scripts

See here for example scripts.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING for development notes and guidelines.

Branches

master

Stable release branch. Supports the newest version of the ACE Explorer app. Mostly backwards compatible with data from older ACE apps (e.g. ACE Classroom). However, early builds of ACE Classroom were often unstable, and there may be idiosyncratic problems in legacy ACE Classroom data that cannot be repaired by aceR.

development

Development of new features, i.e. non-trivial changes. All development is for features intended for the master branch.

classroom

Backwards-compatible stable release branch for data from older ACE apps. Use only when processing older ACE data, for example from ACE Classroom. No longer actively maintained.