Buttons response

The buttons response construct is a container that can house one or more buttons to record values and actions, and move the study forward.

Creating a buttons response

Buttons responses can be added to instructions, questionnaires and trials timelines. To add a keyboard response to a trials timeline, click New item. To add a buttons response to instructions or questionnaires, click New response. Select Response - buttons from the type list and select one of the following creation options:

New: create a new buttons response.
Copy: copy another buttons response from the current study.
Clone (from a different trial): clone another buttons response (trials timeline only).

Editing buttons response

If the buttons response is a sub-construct of trials:

Click anywhere along its row (Figure 1) to open the editor.

Figure 1. Open construct editor (Psychstudio)

Figure 1. Open construct editor

If the buttons response is not on the trials timeline (e.g. in a questionnaire or instructions):

Click Edit in the top left corner of the construct (Figure 2). To save your changes, click Save in the bottom right corner of the editor to save your changes.

Figure 2. Open construct editor (Psychstudio)

Figure 2. Open construct editor

Adding a button

In edit mode, click Add button in the button table, and then click Add when you're done.

Removing a button

In edit mode, click Delete on the button row you wish to remove.

WARNING: Deleting a button will also delete any trials rules related to that button.

Randomizing button order

When two or more buttons are present, you can randomize their layout order from inside the editor (Figure 3) by selecting

Randomize button order

For example, in Figure 3, two buttons are assigned:

False → leftmost placement
True → rightmost placement

When randomization is enabled, False will be randomly allocated to either leftmost or rightmost placement and True will be randomly allocated to one of the positions that remain (in this case there will be only one). Randomization remains consistent across all trials.

Figure 3. Randomize button order example (Psychstudio, 2020)

Cloning buttons

In order to maintain the same button order across multiple trial procedures and/or multiple trial blocks, you can clone a buttons response on the trials timeline to keep a consistent layout across all buttons. So for example, if a randomized button layout produced the layout as seen in Figure 3 above (False on the left, True on the right) every Response - buttons in every trial block and trial procedure in the entire experiment will contain the same layout (False left, True right) when using a clone.

click New item
select the Response - buttons type (Figure 4)
select the Clone (from a different procedure) creation option (Figure 4)
select the buttons response item you wish to clone (Figure 5)

Figure 4. Cloning a buttons response (Psychstudio, 2020)

Figure 5. Select the buttons response you previously created (Psychstudio, 2020)

Figure 5. Select a buttons response you've previously created (Psychstudio, 2020)

Editing timing (trials timeline only)

In edit mode, the following properties can be set via the timing table:

Start mode
- Fixed: start time will be measured from the beginning of the trials timeline.
- Offset from previous item: start time will be measured from the end of the previous item on the trials timeline. If there is no previous item, or the timeout of the previous item is set to nil(infinite), then start time will be measured from the beginning of the trial.
Start time (ms): when to initiate construct.
Duration mode
- Fixed: duration will be a fixed time period.
- Random: duration will be a random time period bound by minimum and maximum values.
- Factor: duration will be a randomly chosen level from the factor selected.
- Level: duration will be set to the value of the chosen level.
Timeout (ms): duration of construct presence.