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We are a privately owned British company run by psychologists for psychologists. We specialize in tools that enable psychologists working in the behavioural sciences to quickly and easily test and improve the millisecond timing accuracy of their computer-based experiments.

Our key product aimed at the human research market is the “Black Box Toolkit”. This acts as a programmable virtual human who can detect and respond to stimulus events with millisecond accuracy. It enables you, the researcher, to check the millisecond presentation and response accuracy of your own experiment. This is accomplished whilst running in-situ on your own equipment with no modification needed. Crucially once sources of timing error are identified the experiment, or resulting data, can be adjusted accordingly. Alternatively, the kit can take over timing duties completely when combined with its own response pad.

We have discovered many sources of timing error that can be present within computer-based experiments. These millisecond-timing errors apply whether you use a recognized experiment generator or write your own software. Without the ability to detect where these errors occur, replication can be difficult and at worse, there can be a systematic conditional bias. These are not millisecond timing errors found only in artificial tests, these are errors found in active psychologist’s current experiments!

Unfortunately, timing errors are not wholly generalizable and vary from machine to machine, across operating systems and within the experiment itself based on the settings you choose. If you took the same experiment and ran it on two machines, it is likely that millisecond presentation and response timings would differ. Human error can also influence how experiments are constructed.

To enable you to control sources of timing error we advocate use of Black Box Toolkit with each new experiment you construct or make use of new equipment. In a cross-modal study, you might need to start a visual presentation 20 milliseconds later for it to be exactly synchronized with a corresponding auditory stimulus. Without the Black Box Toolkit, you would never know you needed to make such a correction. Could your research be fatally flawed?