content

Experiments

content sets the body text of an instructions page, shown below the title heading. It is displayed only on instructions trials.

It is an older sibling of the body column: content is shown first and body is shown in the same place immediately after, so a filled-in body overwrites content. Prefer body in new trial files.

Syntax

Type the instructions text straight into the cell.

HTML is allowed, so you can format the text with tags such as <b>, <br> and <span style="color:...">.

You can also drop %variable% placeholders into the text and they are filled in with the current values before the screen is shown: recorded responses (%response%, %rt%, %correct%, %responseCode%), aggregates such as %rt.avg% and %correct.perc%, participant details, and your own variables.

Options

Value	Behavior
empty cell	Nothing displayed
any other value	Rendered as HTML in the body area of the instructions page, starting 120px from the top of the screen

Nothing else in the cell is given a special meaning.

Defaults & missing values

If the column is absent, or the cell is left empty, nothing is written into the body area of that screen: the trial runs exactly as if the column were not there.

The column header is matched case-insensitively and surrounding spaces are ignored, so Content and CONTENT work as well.

Works with

• body: fills the same area right after content, so whatever is in body wins. Use one or the other on a given row.
• title and head: fill the heading above the body text. On mobile, whether a heading is present changes the layout used when the text is too long for the screen.
• type and stimFormat: only instructions trials display this column, and type set to form never does.
• color: can recolour the text. On feedback screens the same area carries the feedback text rather than this column.
• presTime, responseWindow, button1, keyboard: control how and when the instructions screen advances, without changing how the text is displayed.
• Results: the per-trial value is echoed into the results file, like every recognized column present in the trial file.

Examples

type	content	button1
instructions	In this task you will see words on the screen. Press A if the word is old and L if it is new.	Continue

type	title	content
instructions	Results	You answered %correct.perc% correctly with an average of %rt.avg% ms.

type	content	presTime
instructions	<p>Get ready...</p><p><b>The task starts in 3 seconds.</b></p>	3000

Real instruction content is typically several sentences of task instructions, very often mixing inline HTML (<b>, <br>, <span style="color:...">) to emphasize keys or colors. This real pattern shows the HTML behavior more concretely than the short constructed rows above:

type	content
instructions	If an <b><span style="color:#FF700A;">ORANGE</span></b> square appears, press the <b>SPACE</b> key on the keyboard.

Tips & gotchas

• The text always starts 120px from the top of the screen, whether or not a heading is shown above it. You cannot move it up by leaving title empty.
• content shows only on instructions trials. It has no effect on image, word, audio, video, survey or form trials.
• The same area of the screen is reused by built-in screens (feedback text, screenouts, consent rejection, calibration, warnings, loading errors), so text appearing there does not always come from this column.

Caution

If you fill in both content and body on the same row, only body is visible. The content text is written first and then replaced.

Common combinations

content appears in these worked recipes:

• End-of-block summary: Show participants their accuracy and average response time on a summary screen after a block of scored trials.
• Counterbalanced key mapping: Give half the participants one response-key mapping and half the reversed mapping, with matching instructions for each.