blank cells in Excel (self-paced reading)

[Paula]

Hello,

I am just starting to discover PsychoPy and I know nothing (yet) about Python, in particular, or programming, in general. So, I am using the Builder (and trying to see what is in the Coder).

I am just exploring PsychoPy probably to use it afterwards with our eyetracker, but now I was just trying to do some experiments that I have already done with E-Prime or PsyScope. I am trying to build a self-paced reading and I actually did it, but I have one problem (which is also a problem for PsyScope but not for E-Prime). I cannot use lists with sentences of different size, that is, with different number of segments, for instance:

     \John \ runs. 

     \John \ likes \ to \ run.

If I have a blank cell like I do in the first sentence, PsychoPy presents a segment of other sentence or the text "nonsense" in the blank space.

I tried to created different groups (routines inside a loop): one for each group of sentence with the same size (number of segments), but I was unable to randomize the presentation of groups (for instance, present one sentence of group 1 - 2-segments group - and after one sentence of group 2 - 3-segments group). For instance, I created two routines for group 1 (seg_1 and seg_2) with a loop and three routines for group 2 (seg_1, seg_2 and seg_3) with a loop. After I defined a loop for the two groups. Sentences are randomly presented inside each group but sentences of group 2 are always presented only after all sentences of group 1 have been presented.

I would like to know if it is possible to go around blank cell in Excel and/or if there is a way to randomize stimuli of different groups (routines inside loops).

Thanks,

Paula

[Jonathan Peirce]

I guess PsychoPy is not willing to set a text stimulus with no text. But what about if you set the text in that cell to be a space, so it isn't empty but also isn't visible? I don't remember if that gets squished when the file is imported.

Jon

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[Paula]

Hi Jon,

Thanks a lot for your answer. It works, but this is not the best solution, since I will have to tell participants to press the space bar (or other key) whenever there is an empty screen. Having sentences with different lengths is very frequent in reading studies (and, of course, in real life), so, it would be nice to have a solution to this problem. 

I think that one possible solution would be to create different procedures, one for each group of stimuli, and randomize between groups (I implemented this solution in E-Prime and it worked). Would that be possible?

Thanks,

Paula

[Jeremy Gray]

Hi Paula,

In your example, the last word of the sentence ends with a period. If this is always the case, you could not worry about the sentence length at all: Just keep presenting words until the word that is displayed ends with a period. To do this, have a code component in the routine, inside a loop (e.g., named "trials"), with the variable "word" set to contain each word of the sentence. In the End routine box, put something like this (not sure I have the syntax right):

if word.endswith('.'):

    trials.finished = True

Have the nReps for the loop be at least as long as your longest sentence in the experiment, or maybe just 1000 which should always be long enough.

--Jeremy

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[Paula]

Hi Jeremy, 

Thanks for your answer. 

I tried to implement your solution but I did not succeed (yet, I hope). I will keep trying (as I wrote, I am just starting).

Paula