Hi everybody,

I wish to run a dot probe task and emotional stroop task. In addition to words, I wish to use symbols from MS word as stimuli in inquisit.

However, I realized a lot of symbols turn up as "?". Some symbols I wish to use include, "Y hat", "s square", "sigma".

I thought about inserting them as image stimuli but that would only work for the dot probe task. I would not be able to assign colors to them in the emotional stroop task. Any ideas?

In Inquisit 4, this is a matter of picking a font that has those symbols and entering them in the editor. On Windows, you can use Windows character map tool to pick and insert them.

Hello Dave,

I've installed Inquisit 4 and it appears that I still can't get the symbols to work. I picked symbols font. Subsequently, I copied and paste the symbols from word and alot of them appears as "?". For example, "α" becomes "a" and for "y bar" (can't do symbol here). In addition, symbols such as x2 requires superscript which I do not think inquisit supports. Or does it?

All help greatly appreciated!

<text statisticssymbolstop>
/ items = statisticssymbols
/ position = (50%, 40%)
/ fontstyle = ("Symbol", 2.60%, true, false, false, false, 5, 1)
/ txcolor = (0, 0, 0)
</text>

<text statisticssymbolsbottom>
/ items = statisticssymbols
/ position = (50%, 60%)
/ fontstyle = ("Symbol", 2.60%, true, false, false, false, 5, 1)
/ txcolor = (0, 0, 0)
</text>

<text neutralsymbolstop>
/ items = neutralsymbols
/ position = (50%, 40%)
/ fontstyle = ("Symbol", 2.60%, true, false, false, false, 5, 1)
/ txcolor = (0, 0, 0)
</text>

<text neutralsymbolsbottom>
/ items = neutralsymbols
/ position = (50%, 60%)
/ fontstyle = ("Symbol", 2.60%, true, false, false, false, 5, 1)
/ txcolor = (0, 0, 0)
</text>

<item statisticssymbols>
/ 1 = "µ"
/ 2 = "ß"
/ 3 = "a"
/ 4 = "?"
/ 5 = "X"
/ 6 = "n"
/ 7 = "y ¯"
/ 8 = "s"
/ 9 = "s2"
/ 10 = "s"
</item>

<item neutralsymbols>
/ 1 = "`"
/ 2 = "("
/ 3 = "!"
/ 4 = "@"
/ 5 = "#"
/ 6 = "$"
/ 7 = "%"
/ 8 = "^"
/ 9 = "&"
/ 10 = "*"
</item>

Star,

see the attached file. Everything works perfectly fine in Inquisit 4 as far as I can tell. You mereley need to enter the unicode characters you want as detailed previously.

Hmm, this is weird, your attached file is fine!

But despite adding the symbols using the character map from windows or copying from your script, it still turns up at ? or other wrong symbols.

Am I doing something wrong here or is it the way I wrote the <item> script?

<item statisticssymbols>
/ 1 = "µ"
/ 2 = "ß"
/ 3 = "a"
/ 4 = "?"
/ 5 = "X"
/ 6 = "n"
/ 7 = "y ¯"
/ 8 = "s"
/ 9 = "s2"
/ 10 = "s"
</item>

It does not matter whether you enter the characters directly in /items or use an <item> element. Feel free to try that w/ the script I provided. I don't know what you are doing wrong, I'm afraid. But I'd recommend you start with a new file, i.e., do *not* use the one you already have -- that file's character encoding is already botched (i.e., it's not unicode).

Hi Dave,

I've been an idiot! I changed all the symbols and I just saved the file... in Inquisit 3 format. This time round, I changed the symbols and select "save as" Inquisit 4 script. Everything is fine now!

Just want to thank you for your help and to post the solution for others who might have the same problem.

Thanks for the update. Yes, that explains it. Inquisit 4 supports Unicode, whereas Inquisit 3 does not (it relies on the system's code page). Thus it is a matter of character encoding (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page for the technically interested). Character codes that are meaningful in UTF-8 Unicode mean nothing whatsoever / do not exist in code page based character encodings (hence the '?'s).

Regards,

~Dave

Dear Dave,

It seems there are symbols there are not available in the windows character map tool.

For example:

1) y ̅ (y bar)

2) D¯ (D bar)

3) s²p (Squared pooled variance; superscript 2 with subscript p)

4) H0 and H1 (subscript 0 and 1)

Images are out of the question because it wouldn't work with the stroop task. Any clues?

You need to pick a font that has those characters in the first place.

Note:

- Not each and every conceivable variant of a given character exists in Unicode (e.g. super- and subscripted letters; cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_subscripts_and_superscripts).

- Not each and every Unicode font will include each and every Unicode character. Many will only make a certain subset available, otherwise fonts would be huge (> 40 MB).

As for comprehensive lists of defined Unicode characters, you may consult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters and http://unicode-table.com or any other of the various available online resources.

Thank you Dave.

I managed to solve it so I thought I'll share it here.

For subscripts:

Character Map - > Arial Unicode MS font -> Check Advanced View -> Group by Unicode Subrange -> Super/Subscript

For macron its a little tricky:

Character Map - > Tahoma font -> Check Advanced View -> Group by Unicode Subrange ->Combining Diacritical Marks

Type the character (e.g. y) and double click on "Combining Macron".

Glad everything works!