Deadline with timeout message

Enforce a response deadline and tell participants when they miss it, without interrupting trials they answer in time.

When to use it

Speeded tasks need participants to feel the deadline, and a silent timeout does not teach anyone to go faster: the trial just vanishes and the participant may not even notice they were too slow. This recipe enforces the deadline and shows a message only on missed trials, so answered trials keep their rhythm. If you want trial-by-trial accuracy coaching as well, the Accuracy feedback block recipe covers the full correct, incorrect, and timeout grammar.

Trial file

type	stimFormat	title	content	stim1	responseWindow	keyboard	key	feedback	feedbackTime	button1
instructions		Beat the deadline	Press F if the word names an animal and J if it does not. You have 1.5 seconds per word; slow trials will tell you so.							NEXT
test	word			HORSE	1500	f j	f	timeout: Too slow. Answer before the word disappears	800
test	word			BOTTLE	1500	f j	j	timeout: Too slow. Answer before the word disappears	800
test	word			PIGEON	1500	f j	f	timeout: Too slow. Answer before the word disappears	800
test	word			CARPET	1500	f j	j	timeout: Too slow. Answer before the word disappears	800
test	word			RABBIT	1500	f j	f	timeout: Too slow. Answer before the word disappears	800
test	word			MIRROR	1500	f j	j	timeout: Too slow. Answer before the word disappears	800

How it works

The numeric responseWindow of 1500 is the deadline: it opens when the word appears and closes 1500 ms later, recording the response as timeout and auto-advancing when nothing was pressed. That timeout outcome is what the feedback grammar branches on. The cell holds a single timeout: message segment and nothing else, so on answered trials no segment matches and the feedback screen is skipped entirely; only missed trials pause for the message. The timeout: key has to be spelled out even in fuller feedback cells, because a timed-out trial never falls through to incorrect: or a catch-all.

Keep the cell free of bare text: a segment without a colon is a catch-all, shown on every answered trial, which would put a screen between every trial and its successor. key still scores each response in the results, it just never surfaces as feedback here.

feedbackTime set to 800 makes the message self-dismissing, preserving the task’s pace. An empty cell is not a faster alternative; it replaces the auto-advance with a NEXT button and hands the pacing back to the participant. Non-numeric values are worse still: something like fast is read as a 0 ms delay, so the message flashes for about one frame. Feedback only runs on test and practice trials, so the instructions row shows nothing.

Variations

• Add correct: and incorrect: segments to the same feedback cell to coach accuracy as well as speed (see the Accuracy feedback block recipe).
• Vary the pressure per row by changing responseWindow; the recorded timeout rate tells you when a deadline is too strict.
• Count the deadline from stimulus offset instead of onset with responseWindow afterStim_1500, paired with a presTime to take the stimulus down.
• Show responders their speed by adding a catch-all segment such as You took %rt% ms to feedback; variables are substituted before the cell is parsed.