The promise of object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming may provide a way in which programs for running experiments can be created with a minimum of effort without sacrificing flexibility or generality. In this approach, a new experiment is created by defining descendents of an object hierarchy that “inherit” most of the behavior common to some general paradigm, but “override” the methods that are specific to the new experiment. An object hierarchy for implementing common cognitive psychology paradigms is described as an illustration.