How to create one experiment file which contains multiple, non-randomized conditions, with trials within each condition being randomized?

Builder
1

Hello. We are looking to run an experiment using words, about 600 in total. We have four trials:

  1. Trial A: sort words based on the color of the text
  2. Trial B: sort words based on the kind of category they belong to
  3. Trial C: think of another word associated with the presented word
  4. Trial D: determine whether a presented word is old or new

Trial D will always be the last one of the four, but the other three will be sorted in different orders in order to counterbalance our experiment.

The six conditions we have are therefore ABCD, ACBD, BACD, BCAD, CABD, CBAD

In all four trials, the words will be one of two colors.

My goals for the experiment are:

  • have a popup asking which “version” (condition) the participant is in (1, 2, 3, … 6)
  • the experiment then pull up the correct .xlsx or .csv files associated with that condition in the correct order
  • have the color of the words be determined at random (out of two colors), rather than being predefined within an excel sheet.
  • order of words is also chosen at random (but I have this currently, no issues here)

I’m struggling with creating one psychopy experiment file that contains all 6 possible condition orderings, where I indicate at the start of the experiment which condition a participant should be given. I’ve tried following the psychopy tutorial on creating blocks & conditions files, but I’m struggling with incorporating a way to indicate at the start of the experiment which condition the participant is part of (1, 2, 3, … or 6) & then having the trials run in the correct order.

I’m also struggling with making the color of the word chosen at random, rather than being predefined within an xlsx/csv spreadsheet.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I may need to have 6 different experiments to represent each condition, but I’d really like to have just one experiment file containing all 6 condition options.

Is what I’m looking to do feasible within the builder? Should I focus on just coding my script, rather than working with the GUI? Thank you, if any more clarification is needed I’m happy to provide it.

OS (e.g. Win10):

OS X El Capitan

PsychoPy version

1.85.4

Standard Standalone? (y/n)
Yes