Select one of x text displays to show

[Rob Manchester]

Hi

Question about coding 'best practice' here. I need to insert something into an E-Prime program whereby depending on a variable value (iBlockCount) the screen should display one particular ‘text display’ from a set of text displays. The particular text display I want to show varies depending on the value of the variable (the displays relate to the message shown at the start of a 'block' of trials in an experimental paradigm'.

To achieve this I've created a List item with procedures listed within in it,and then put each ‘text displays’ in its own individual procedure within the list item. I thought I could then get the code to dynamically  select which level of the list item (and therefore which procedure and text display) to run, based on the variable value. I first tried to do this by setting the 'weight' of the list levels dynamically, so that only the one I want to show has a weight>0. With the list item set to run one repetition sequentially I thought this would just show the required text display and no others. However this failed to not show the text displays in levels with weight=0 (the code used is commented-out of the code below).

What I've done instead is to alter the duration of the text displays so that the ones I don't want to show are set to duration=0 (code below). However this seems pretty clunky, and I get flickers where presumably the duration=0 text displays are showing for 1 refresh. Is there a better way of selecting 1 of x text displays to show?

On a separate point, is there a way of setting the duration to ‘(infinite)’ using the code. I couldn't get E-prime basic to recognise either '(infinite)' of just 'infinite' as valid values, so I've had to use duration=1000000 as a proxy.

 

Thanks
Rob

If iBlockCount = 1 Then

'set weights doesn't seem to work, so set duration instead

  'StartScreen.SetWeight 1, 1

  'StartScreen.SetWeight 2, 0

  pressToStart.duration=1000000

  pressToContinue.duration=0

Else

  'StartScreen.SetWeight 1, 0

  'StartScreen.SetWeight 2, 1

      pressToStart.duration=0

      pressToContinue.duration=1000000

      debug.print pressToContinue.duration

End If

[David McFarlane]

Rob,

Not sure I fully understand what you are up to
here. But here are couple of ways to pick one level from a List.

1) Set the Order of the List to Counterbalance --
see
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/e-prime/JtLh6DxqCbs
for discussion. Note that the E-Studio GUI
allows Counterbalancing only by Subject, Session,
or Group, but see
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/e-prime/CHntiIUbUmc
for how to use inline code to counterbalance by other attributes.

2) Use List.GetAttrib directly -- see the
"Factor.GetAttrib" topic in the E-Basic Help facility.

BTW, for anyone who does find a need to
manipulate List Weights at runtime, please see
discussion at https://groups.google.com/d/topic/e-prime/FZ8FkYs3o2U .

Also, if you really do need to "run" a stimulus
without it doing anything (as opposed to simply
bypassing it with a Goto and Label), then you
might accomplish that by setting Duration to 0
*and* setting OnsetSync to "(none)". See the
"RteRunnableInputObject.OnsetSync" topic in the
E-Basic Help facility, and review the Critical
Timing chapter in the User's Guide that came with E-Prime.

As for setting an "infinite" Duration in code --
you could figure that out yourself just by
setting some Duration to "(infinite)" and then
looking at the generated code (that's how I
figure out a lot of this stuff). If you do that,
you should find that "(infinite)" translates
simply to a Long value of -1 (negative one) in
code, e.g., StimText.Duration = -1 means an
infinite Duration. (To be fair, I know this
factoid because EP1.0 explicitly used -1 for
infinite in the GUI, we did not get an
"(infinite)" option way back then. Sometimes
making things more convenient also makes things harder.)

-----
David McFarlane
E-Prime training
online: http://psychology.msu.edu/Workshops_Courses/eprime.aspx
Twitter: @EPrimeMaster (https://twitter.com/EPrimeMaster)

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At 9/28/2014 12:54 PM Sunday, Rob Manchester wrote:
>Question about coding 'best practice' here. I
>need to insert something into an E-Prime program
>whereby depending on a variable value
>(iBlockCount) the screen should display one

>particular ‘text display’ from a set of text

>displays. The particular text display I want to
>show varies depending on the value of the
>variable (the displays relate to the message
>shown at the start of a 'block' of trials in an experimental paradigm'.
>
>To achieve this I've created a List item with
>procedures listed within in it,and then put each

>‘text displays’ in its own individual

>procedure within the list item. I thought I
>could then get the code to dynamically select
>which level of the list item (and therefore
>which procedure and text display) to run, based
>on the variable value. I first tried to do this
>by setting the 'weight' of the list levels
>dynamically, so that only the one I want to show
>has a weight>0. With the list item set to run
>one repetition sequentially I thought this would
>just show the required text display and no
>others. However this failed to not show the text
>displays in levels with weight=0 (the code used
>is commented-out of the code below).
>
>What I've done instead is to alter the duration
>of the text displays so that the ones I don't
>want to show are set to duration=0 (code below).
>However this seems pretty clunky, and I get
>flickers where presumably the duration=0 text
>displays are showing for 1 refresh. Is there a
>better way of selecting 1 of x text displays to show?
>
>On a separate point, is there a way of setting

>the duration to ‘(infinite)’ using the code.