Tutorial on Designing, Implementing, and Analyzing a Degraded Image Paradigm: A Facial Expression-Decoding Task Example

Although various versions of degraded image tasks exist, the complete process of creating these tasks can be effortful, time-consuming, and costly. The aim of the present tutorial is to provide a step-by-step, user-friendly, economical guide to creating a degraded image task using freely available resources, and provide resources to create multiple experiments adaptable to address many research questions. We demonstrated the utility of this method by designing, implementing, and analyzing a facial expression-decoding task, and confirmed the validity of the task by replicating often-found sex differences in face processing. Using this tutorial will enable new investigators with limited prior experience and available funding to quickly and easily design experiments using degraded image tasks, thereby reducing the delay between idea conceptualization and data acquisition.