Trial termination key?

[MiekeS]

Hi Jeremy!
My collaborators and I are working on an experiment that consists of a battery with multiple tasks. We noticed that we sometimes have issues with loading the resources completely. Unfortunately, if the resources aren’t loaded properly for a specific trial, the experiment gets stuck (for instance because it’s waiting to play a non-loaded test audio file).

We were therefore wondering whether it’ll be possible to implement some sort of ‘abort key’, which terminates the trial. So, the idea would be that if the experiment gets stuck due to non-loaded resources, the participant can be instructed to press a key (say ‘Q’) and then all other remaining commands in the trial are skipped and the next trial starts. Would such a function be possible?

(By the way, we will be running this experiment supervised via Zoom, so the participant will only be instructed to hit this key if needed.)

Thank you!

[Jeremy]

Hi Mieke,

Even though that probably won’t fit an actual data collection scenario, let me note that the debugger has a button “Next screen” in the “Log” tab and a button “Reach” in the “Sequence” tab

You could add newKey("Q").callback( end() ) as the very first command in newTrial to make a press on that key immediately end the trial

Jeremy

[Mieke]

Hi Jeremy,

Thank you! I indeed use the ‘Reach’ button for this purpose often while testing, but the Debugger will be hidden during data collection. I will try the command straight away!

Best,
Mieke

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