Knowledge Base

Score Behaviors Manually After Acquisition

Aim

To add new or edit existing behavior scores in your trials.

Prerequisites

• You have defined behaviors in the Manual Scoring Settings.
• You have acquired one trial and its corresponding video.

Procedure

1. Choose Acquisition > Manual Scoring.
2. Choose the trial, and when it applies, the arena in which you want to score behaviors.
3. To enable the scoring mode, click the Start scoring mode button.
4. Follow one or more of the procedures below.
5. When finished, click the Stop scoring mode button.

Tip: Before editing existing data, click the Save button on the toolbar. This will save a copy of the current behavior scores. In case you make mistakes when editing, you can always revert to that copy by clicking Undo. For more information, see Saving the track edits.

To Score a Behavior With a Duration

This applies to behaviors defined as Mutually exclusive and Start-stop. See Define the behaviors that you want to record manually.

1. Play the video to the point where the behavior starts.
2. To score the behavior at that point in the video, click the color button with the behavior name at the left side of the plot. The button is highlighted in red.
3. Play the video forward. As you play the video, a colored bar appears at the left of the hairline. If you play the video backward, the color bar is reduced in length.
4. Pause the video where the behavior stops. To score the end of the behavior, click again the button at the left, so it is not highlighted anymore.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 to add more instances of the behavior.

To Score a Point Event

Point events are events with no duration. See Define the behaviors that you want to record manually.

1. Play the video to when the behavior occurs.
2. To score the behavior at that point in the video, click the color button with the behavior name at the left side of the plot.
3. Play the video further. The point event is displayed as a vertical segment.

Notes

• After clicking the Start scoring mode button, the video image shows [On] and the message next to the button changes to Scoring on. When you play the video, behavior scores do not change until you click the corresponding button at the left side of the plot.
• If you want to hide the center point to make the subject more visible, choose Track Visualization or Integrated Visualization or Track Editor, and de-select the body points on the right-hand pane. Next, close and re-open the experiment.
• When you click the button for a behavior, the name of the behavior is displayed on the video image. To show/hide and customize this text, choose Show/Hide > Text Features.
• When you score the start of a behavior (either Mutually exclusive or Start-Stop) and then you reach the end of the trial without scoring the end of the same behavior, that behavior is considered to last until the last sample. If the behavior is defined as Start-stop, a complementary behavior ("not-behavior") is added at the end of the behavior you scored. This means that the statistics of the complementary behavior is increased by 1.
• Behaviors that are defined as Initially Active in the Manual Scoring Settings are shown as active throughout the trial, if you do not edit them.
• If you want to show the arena and zones during the scoring sessions, click the Show/Hide button at the top-left corner, and choose Arena features.

See Also

• Edit the duration of manually-scored behaviors
• Replace a behavior with another one
• Delete a manually-scored behavior
• Score behaviors in different arenas
• Score behaviors of two or more subjects

Edit the Duration of Manually-Scored Behaviors

Aim

To increase or reduce the duration of instances of behaviors already scored in your trial. This way you can improve the match between what you see in the video and the behavior scores.

Note: This applies to all behavior types but Point events.

Prerequisites

• You have scored behaviors manually. See Score behaviors manually.

Procedure

1. Open the Manual Scoring screen (Acquisition > Manual Scoring).
2. Choose the trial, and when it applies, the arena in which you want to score the behaviors.
3. Follow one or more of the procedures below.

Tip: Before editing existing data, click the Save button on the toolbar. This will save a copy of the current behavior scores. In case you make mistakes when editing, you can always revert to that copy by clicking Undo. For more information, see Saving the track edits.

To Extend the Duration to a Specific Time Point

1. Play the video up to when the behavior ends.