Dualmod

Dualmod is a software tool designed to facilitate the creation and management of dual n-back tasks, a type of cognitive task used in neuroscience and psychology research. The tool allows researchers to generate dual n-back tasks, which involve participants maintaining two separate sequences of items in working memory and reporting when a target item matches the item that occurred n steps back in the sequence. Dualmod supports various configurations, including different types of stimuli (e.g., letters, numbers, colors) and different values of n, making it a versatile tool for studying working memory and cognitive control.

The software is typically used in conjunction with experimental software that presents the stimuli and collects participant responses. Dualmod can generate tasks with different levels of difficulty, allowing researchers to study the effects of task demand on cognitive performance. It also supports the generation of practice trials, which can help participants become familiar with the task before the actual experiment begins.

Dualmod is available as a standalone application for Windows and MacOS, as well as a plugin for the Psychtoolbox, a popular toolbox for creating visual stimuli and collecting responses in MATLAB. The software is free and open-source, and its source code is available on GitHub. Dualmod has been used in a variety of research studies, including investigations of the neural correlates of working memory and the effects of aging on cognitive performance.