THE EXPERIMENTER MODULE OF THE DSMAC (DYNAMIC SEQUENTIAL MULTIATTRIBUTE CHOICE) INTERFACE

The DSMAC (Dynamic Sequential MultiAttribute Choice) interface is a pr ocess-tracing methodology that permits a researcher to investigate sub jects' behaviors in an optional-stopping task. In such an environment, an individual decides after each piece of acquired information whethe r to make a choice between a pair of competing alternatives or to acqu ire additional information. DSMAC consists of two modules-an experimen ter and a subject interface. The former allows the researcher to speci fy all of the relevant experimental parameters for a particular study, which is subsequently used as input by the latter. The bimodular natu re of DSMAC significantly reduces the set-up time required for constru cting novel stimuli for new experiments. DSMAC runs on a Macintosh com puter. It is compatible with most Mactintosh models that use a system 7.0 (or higher) operating system. The source code was written in Think Pascal 4.0.1.