The best way to train researchers is to form a team of very experience seniors who are experienced in the methods of the laboratory and allow them to hold training sessions with the supervision of a graduate student, lab manager, or investigator on the project.

Rules of the lab should be confirmed with every incoming research assistant before they are fully admitted to the lab (and these might be amended into the future depending on experiences by the investigators):

• Food and/or Drinks are not permitted around any workspace that contains a PC, Mac, or any physio recording devices of any kind;
• Outside researchers are not permitted to work inside the areas of the lab – this is due to the confidential and private documents that are stored behind the locked doors of the lab that only trained personnel should have access to;
• RAs should arrive to the lab 15 minutes prior to their experiment slot and be ready and waiting for participants approximately 5-10 minutes before their arrival (e.g., 5-10 minutes prior to the hour);
• RAs should not be permitted to miss experimental slots – this could be grounds for dismissal given the way it portrays the lab in a negative way and shows disrespect to participants;
• Participants should try to provide some sort of notice if they wish to cancel an experiment before arriving at the lab; e.g., experiments should actively advertise participants should try to provide 24 hours notice that they cannot attend a lab session so that they may be cancelled effectively and another participant may sign up – this will be at the discretion of Professor Page-Gould, however and is subject to change;
• If participants are not comfortable doing experiments at any time, it’s the researchers responsibility to ensure the participant leaves the lab in a state that was equal to the state they arrived (if positive), and ensuring that the participant has any questions answered and any resources they may need to address their concerns (e.g., contact information, clear answers to questions they have about procedures, etc.). They should also be able to withdraw at any point after entering the lab door without any penalty to their credits as promised (unless they show up to the door and indicate they would like to cancel their participation – which would be a simple cancellation).

Researchers should be trained thoroughly for psychophysiology procedures, but this should be avoided for new students as much as possible. These students will probably have no experience running participants in any sort of experimental procedure and it’s best to have them start on behavioural and self-report experiments before assigning them to these more complex procedures.

• These sessions will typically take between 1.5-2 hours in duration, so researchers and the trainers should allocate this much time for the session;
• During the course of training, researchers should be trained on the software, the room structures, the troubles that can be encountered when using the equipment, and how to properly hookup a participant;
• Once the session is over, researchers should pair-up and ensure they are not making errors when the participant is present – this will ensure the participant respects and acknowledges the skills of the researcher (to allow for their trust during the experiment);
• An experienced graduate student and/or the lab manager should monitor these sessions to ensure that the hookups are done appropriately – given the smaller size of the lab (RA-wise), this should be much easier to complete;
• A secondary session should be provided to explain why psychophysiology is necessary for the purposes of the lab, and how each measure works so that when participants are curious about the measures (or as the researcher hooks each measure up), they can explain this coherently to participants – again providing the demonstration of training and skills necessary to gain a participant’s trust.