Calling commands

Commands can manipulate elements and the content they contain.

Types of commands

PennController has three main types of commands:

Element commands have two subtypes:

  • Action command: Directly manipulates an element.
  • Test command (PennController equivalent of a conditional statement): Runs a test on an element, and executes different code blocks depending on the success or failure of the test.
note

In the BasicTutorial experiment, we’ll only use action commands, which we’ll refer to just as “commands”.

Commands

Commands do at least one of three things:

  • Manipulate an element’s visual content
  • Trigger an element-related event
  • Control an element’s interaction with the participant

For example, the print command prints an element to the screen (manipulates visual content), and the play command causes an element to start playing (triggers element-related event).

Calling a command

instructions
  1. Call the play command on the "fish-audio" Audio element to start audio playback.
  2. Call the print command on the "fish-sentence" Text element and "fish-plural" Image element to print them to the screen.
  3. Click Refresh or Open in new tab to run the experiment.

When you call a command, you must precede it with a period . and follow it with a pair of parentheses ().


@// Type code below this line.
@
@// Remove command prefix
@PennController.ResetPrefix(null)
@
@// Experimental trial
@newTrial("experimental-trial",
@    newAudio("fish-audio", "2fishRoundTank.mp3")
+        .play()
@    ,
@    newText("fish-sentence", "The fish swim in a tank which is perfectly round.")
+        .print()
@    ,
@    newImage("fish-plural", "2fishRoundTank.png")
+        .print()
@)

Evaluating an experiment script

If you run the experiment, it once again immediately ends and displays the message “The results were successfully sent to the server. Thanks!”.

That’s odd, didn’t we add elements and commands?

This reveals a crucial aspect of PennController: it executes experiment scripts sequentially and continuously, unless it’s told to pause.

The current experiment script is executed as follows:

  1. Remove the command prefix for all commands.
  2. Start the "experimental-trial" trial.
  3. Create the "fish-audio” Audio element and play it.
  4. Create the "fish-sentence" Text element and print it.
  5. Create the "fish-plural" Image element and print it.
  6. End the "experimental-trial" trial.

When the "experimental-trial" trial ends, the whole experiment ends because there are no more trials, and the experiment sends its results to the server (the PCIbex Farm). All of this occurred within a few milliseconds!

In order to give a participant time to actually interact with an experiment, your experiment must include elements and commands that explictly pause experiment script execution.