Detective Simulation Program

The simulation is written to run on PCs. To download it for your own use, click here, then Save to your computer. Once you have done that, Unzip the files. Inside the Detective Simulation folder, open the file labeled TorqueDemo.exe. The simulation home page will be displayed. You can run the simulation in any of the four modes used in our experiment, depending on whether you check or uncheck Option A (interruption) and Option C (cycling).

In order to learn how to play the game, click on “Start Practice.” (Note: If the program fails to open, or if it crashes during play, you likely don’t have sufficient computational and/or graphics capability.)

The simulation opens to the first room of the practice scenario. To begin, press the Up Arrow, which will move you forward and will open the first dialogue box. The practice simulation will provide you with the tools you need to run the detective simulation and will give you practice at navigating the environment. The instructions will be in the form of clues that you'll pick up as you move through the simulation, and the nature of the game will be explained as you go along.

After you have gained sufficient experience through the Practice simulation, you can return to the menu on the home page and enter the actual Detective Simulation, by clicking on “Start Mission”. You’ll be asked for your name, and you’ll need to use a unique character string each time you run the program.

Your job will be to collect clues for three crimes, integrate the clues into a full understanding of what happened for each crime, and solve as many of the cases as you can. Each case is investigated in its own separate house, each of which holds multiple clues about a given case. For each case, there are 7 rooms, and in each room, there are 5 clues. You will have a total of 100 minutes from the beginning of the game until it's over. During that time, you want to get as far as possible toward understanding the nuances of all three cases so that you can solve them and answer detailed questions about them. (Note: The additional tests given to participants in our study are available from Nancy Franklin)

Not all clues are as they seem, so you should keep an eye out for how they relate to each other, how they embellish each other, and how they may contradict each other. You will have a clock counting down as you work on these cases, and the program will exit when you've timed out, so you should stay focused and move through the program as quickly as you can. The clock will appear in the lower left hand corner, so you can keep track of your progress. As you play the game, it's very important that you move back and forth between ALL THREE scenes so that you keep yourself at about the same level of progress through each of the three crimes. It's up to you to make the decision to move from crime scene to crime scene without being prompted. You need to remember to do that ongoingly, throughout the game.

You will always be told which object you must investigate (i.e., click on) next. Clicking on an item before it is available will result in an error. You can always go back and click on an object you had investigated previously, and you will be given the same information as before.

Good luck!

Note: This program is registered with Creative Commons. You may modify and use the program for non-commercial purposes only.