Self-Paced Reading Block

In a self-paced reading experiment, subsequent parts of a sentence are shown one fragment at a time. The participant controls when each fragment is shown by pressing the space bar. The parameters of the selfpacedreading block are summarized below.

id: Optional.
String that identifies this block in later analysis of results.
content: Conditionally required, aselfpacedreading block must always contain either a content or a contentlist element.
This element can be defined as a single String, in which case the text is automatically broken up into words.
Example: content = String. Alternatively, this element can be defined as a list of Strings, to manually break up a sentence into fragments. Example: content = [String, String, ...].
contentlist: Conditionally required, aselfpacedreading block must always contain either a content or a contentlist element.
This element is defined as a list in which a combination of String elements or list of Strings as element may occur.
Example: contentlist = [String, [String, String, ...], ...].

Note

Be careful, the content and contentlist of the selfpacedreading block differ in syntax and in use than those from the questionanswer block.

preview_type: Optional, defaults to dashes.
Keyword taking the value of either dashes, spaces, hide_punctuation or centered. This parameter controls the preview type of the task as further explained in Preview types.
Example: preview_type = "spaces".
font: Optional.
font that specifies the font used for the current block.

Example usage

The code below illustrates how the selfpacedreading block might be used.

experiment {
    selfpacedreading {
        content = "Even the sun goes down, heroes eventually die"
    }
    selfpacedreading {
        content = ["Horoscopes often lie,", "and sometimes y"]
    }
    selfpacedreading {
        contentlist = [
            ["Nothin is for sure,", "nothin is for certain,", "nothin lasts forever"],
            "But until they close the curtain, it is him and I: Aquemini"
        ]
    }
}

The DSL code above illustrates the different methods that can be used to define a self-paced reading experiment. In the first selfpacedreading block, content is assigned a String value. As such, the sentence is automatically divided into words, which are shown one-by-one to the participant. The first thing the participant will see is:

---- --- --- ---- ----, ------ ---------- ---

When the participant presses the space bar, the next word will become visible:

Even --- --- ---- ----, ------ ---------- ---

After another space bar press:

---- the --- ---- ----, ------ ---------- ---

This continues until all words have been shown. The second selfpacedreading block shows how you can control the way a sentence is split up. For this sentence, the participant will initially see:

Horoscopes often lie, --- --------- -

Followed by:

---------- ----- ---, and sometimes y

However, it would be rather annoying if you had to add a selfpacedreading block for each individual sentence. The third selfpacedreading block shows how the contentlist element can be used to define multiple sentences. Note that each individual sentence can be defined using either a single String or a list of Strings. In other words, the first sentence in this selfpacedreading block would show multiple words at a time:

Nothin is for sure, ------ -- --- -------, ------ ----- -------

But the second sentence would be shown word by word:

But ----- ---- ----- --- -------, -- -- --- --- -: --------

Preview types

The self-paced reading experiment can be presented in different ways, which will be illustrated here. The default presentation method dashes shows dashes for the sentence segments not part of the current word stimuli, such as:

---- the --- ---- ----, ------ ---------- ---

The presentation method spaces shows white spaces for the sentence segments not part of the current word stimuli, such as:

 the              ,

The presentation method hide_punctuation shows dashes for the sentence segments not part of the current word stimuli, even for punctuation. Punctuation is still shown when following the stimuli word. One example is:

---- the --- ---- ----- ------ ---------- ---

The presentation method centered shows just the current word stimuli including any following punctuation. For the initial, fully hidden preview a cross ("+") will be presented instead. One example is:

down,