color

Experiments

Per-trial text-color control for specific screen elements (fixation cross, individual word stimuli, trial text, feedback text) or the whole page. The colors are applied when the trial is shown and cleared when it ends.

Syntax

Put a single color in the cell, either a color name like blue or a hex code like #FF0000, to color all text on the page for that trial.

To color specific elements instead, list target:color pairs separated by ;, for example stim1:green;stim2:red;fixation:yellow. Write the pairs without spaces around : and ;. Colors must be names or hex codes; function syntax such as rgb(...) is not accepted.

Options

Recognized target keys:

Target	Element affected
color (or single-value form)	all page text
fixation	the fixation cross
stimN (e.g. stim1, stim2)	word stimulus N; word stimuli only
trialText	the trial text
feedback	the feedback text on the trial’s feedback screen
anything else	silently unused

Defaults & missing values

If the column is absent or the cell is left empty, the trial falls back to its textColor cell. If that is also empty, no per-trial coloring happens at all.

At the end of the trial the colors are cleared: page text returns to the experiment’s overall text color, and element-specific colors are removed.

Works with

• textColor: serves as the fallback source of the same syntax; a filled-in color cell wins over textColor.
• Feedback: a whole-page color also colors the feedback text instead of the experiment’s default feedback color; a feedback:<color> target colors the feedback text too and takes precedence over the whole-page color.
• stimN targets affect only word stimuli; image stimuli are not affected.

Examples

type	stim1	stimFormat	color
test	apple	word	blue

Whole-page text (including the word) is blue for this trial.

type	stim1	stim2	stimFormat	fixation	color
test	left	right	word	500	stim1:green;stim2:red;fixation:yellow

Word 1 green, word 2 red, fixation cross yellow.

type	stim1	stimFormat	feedback	color
practice	apple	word	600	feedback:#FF0000

Feedback text shown in red.

Tips & gotchas

• Only the first color or target list in the cell is read; anything after it is ignored.
• Write pairs without spaces around : and ;; a pair with spaces around the separators is silently ignored.
• Target keys are case sensitive: trialText must be camelCase exactly, and Fixation would be ignored.
• Stimulus targets must be exactly stim followed by the number (stim1, stim2, …); any other key containing “stim” can break the trial.
• Color values cannot contain parentheses or spaces, so rgb()/hsl() are not usable in this column.

Caution

A filled-in cell with no letters or digits at all (for example only punctuation) breaks the experiment while it loads. Always use a color name, a hex code, or target:color pairs.

Common combinations

color appears in these worked recipes:

• Stroop colour naming: Show colour words in matching or clashing ink and score keyboard responses to the ink colour.