Slider Component¶

A Slider uses mouse input to collect ratings, all sliders have the same basic structure (a line, rectangle or series of dots to indicate the range of values, several tick marks and labels, a marker) but their appearance can be varied significantly by changing the style parameter. For example, a radio style Slider features several dots and a circular marker, while a scrollbar style Slider features a translucent rectangle with a long marker like the page scrollbar on a website.

Categories:: Responses
Works in:: PsychoPy, PsychoJS

Parameters¶

Basic¶

The required attributes of the stimulus, controlling its basic function and behaviour

Name: Everything in a PsychoPy^® experiment needs a unique name. The name should contain only letters, numbers and underscores (no punctuation marks or spaces).

Start: When the Slider Component should start, see Defining the onset/duration of components.

Expected start (s): If you are using frames to control timing of your stimuli, you can add an expected start time to display the component timeline in the routine.

Start type

How do you want to define your start point?

Options:

time (s)
frame N
condition

Stop: When the Slider Component should stop, see Defining the onset/duration of components.

Expected duration (s): If you are using frames to control timing of your stimuli, you can add an expected duration to display the component timeline in the routine.

Stop type

How do you want to define your end point?

Options:

duration (s)
duration (frames)
time (s)
frame N
condition

Force end of Routine: Should setting a rating (releasing the mouse) cause the end of the Routine (e.g. trial)?

Styles

Discrete styles to control the overall appearance of the slider.

Options:

slider
rating
radio
scrollbar
choice

Ticks (if :ref:`slidercomponent-styles` isn’t ==’radio’): The ticks that will be place on the slider scale. The first and last ticks will be placed on the ends of the slider, and the remaining are spaced between the endpoints corresponding to their values. For example, (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) will create 5 evenly spaced ticks. (1, 3, 5) will create three ticks, one at each end and one in the middle.

Labels: The text to go with each tick (or spaced evenly across the ticks). If you give 3 labels but 5 tick locations then the end and middle ticks will be given labels. If the labels can’t be distributed across the ticks then an error will be raised. If you want an uneven distribution you should include a list matching the length of ticks but with some values set to None.

Granularity (if :ref:`slidercomponent-styles` isn’t ==’radio’): Specifies the minimum step size (0 for a continuous scale, 1 for integer rating scale)

Starting value: Value of the slider befre any response, leave blank to hide the marker until clicked on

Layout¶

How should the stimulus be laid out on screen? Padding, margins, size, position, etc.

Size [w,h]: Size of this stimulus (either a single value or x,y pair, e.g. 2.5, [1,2]). The slider is oriented horizontally when the width is greater than the height, and oriented vertically otherwise. Default is (1.0, 0.1)

Position [x,y]: Position of this stimulus (e.g. [1,2] )

Spatial units

Spatial units for this stimulus (e.g. for its position and size), see Units for the window and stimuli for more info.

Options:

from exp settings
deg
cm
pix
norm
height
degFlatPos
degFlat

Orientation

Orientation of this stimulus (in deg)

Options:

-360
360

Flip: By default the labels will be on the bottom or left of the scale, but this can be flipped to the other side.

Appearance¶

How should the stimulus look? Colors, borders, styles, etc.

Label color: Color of all labels on this slider

Marker color: Color of the marker on this slider

Line color: Color of all lines on this slider

Color space

In what format (color space) have you specified the colors? See Color spaces for more info.

Options:

Opacity: Vary the transparency, from 0.0 (invisible) to 1.0 (opaque)

Contrast: Contrast of the stimulus (1.0=unchanged contrast, 0.5=decrease contrast, 0.0=uniform/no contrast, -0.5=slightly inverted, -1.0=totally inverted)

Style tweaks

Tweaks to the style of the slider which can be applied on top of the overall style - multiple tweaks can be selected.

Options:

labels45: Rotate all labels 45°
triangleMarker: Replace the marker with a triangle pointing towards the line

Formatting¶

How should this stimulus handle text? Font, spacing, orientation, etc.

Font: What font should the text be displayed in? Locally, can be a font installed on your computer, saved to the “fonts” folder in your PsychoPy^® user folder, or the name of a Google Font. Online, can be any web safe font or a font file added to your resources list in Experiment settings.

Letter height: Letter height for text in labels

Data¶

What information about this Component should be saved?

Read only: Should participant be able to change the rating on the Slider?

Save onset/offset times: Store the onset/offset times in the data file (as well as in the log file).

Sync timing with screen refresh: Synchronize times with screen refresh (good for visual stimuli and responses based on them)

Store rating: store the rating

Store rating time: Store the time taken to make the choice (in seconds)

Store history: store the history of (selection, time)

Testing¶

Tools for testing, debugging and checking the performance of this Component.

Disable Component: Disable this Component

Validate with…: Name of the Validator Routine to use to check the timing of this stimulus. Options are generated live, so will vary according to your setup.