Often an experiment will require presentation of stimulus pairs. For example, a lexical priming task may have prime-target pairs such DOCTOR/NURSE that are meant to be presented together on a given trial.
Stimulus pairs are defined in Inquisit by creating two stimulus elements for the first and second members of each pair, then linking selection of the second with that of the first. For example:
<text firstname> / items = ("BILL", "LINDON") / select = noreplace </text> <text lastname> / items = ("CLINTON", "JOHNSON") / select = text.firstname.currentindex </text>
For firstname, select = noreplace means that whenever firstname is presented, it randomly selects without replacement which specific item is shown. For lastname, select = current(firstname) indicates that whenever a lastname is presented, it selects the item corresponding to the currently selected firstname item.
The trial below presents both stimuli:
<trial person> / stimulustimes = [0 = firstname; 100 = lastname] / response = anyresponse </text>
On each run of this trial, BILL is always followed by CLINTON and LINDON is always followed by JOHNSON.