Millisecond Forums

Conditional formatting for instruction timing?

https://forums.millisecond.com/Topic18053.aspx

By jessrh - 1/8/2016

For my Inquisit task, I want to allow participants to move through instruction slides only after a pre-set number of seconds. That is, I'd like participants to only be able to press the space bar to advance to the next set of instructions after a timing delay (for example, after 8 seconds of presentation). Is there a way to format my instructions such that participants can't skip through them? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, 

Jess

By Dave - 1/10/2016

If you use standard instruction pages (<page> or <htmlpage> elements) displayed via /pre- and /postinstructions attributes, you can configure a minimum period via the <instruct> element's /wait attribute. The /wait attribute determines how long in milliseconds to wait before allowing the subject to move to the next instruction page. Thus specifying

<instruct>
...
/ wait = 8000
...
</instruct>

in your script will enforce a minimum display time of 8 seconds for any instruction page. Only then are participants able to move on to the next.

If, on the other hand, you intend to display your instructions via standard <trial> elements, you can use the <trial>'s /beginresponsetime attribute to enforce the minimum

<trial instructionstrial>
...
/ validresponse = (57)
/ beginresponsetime = 8000
</trial>

or alternatively using /isvalidresponse

<trial instructionstrial>
...
/ validresponse = (57)
/ isvalidresponse = [trial.instructionstrial.latency >= 8000]
</trial>