I'm using the PsychoPy coder to create a random dot motion task in speed-accuracy trade-off situation. I want to have a letter for fixation point to inform subject if they are in "speed" condition or in "precision" (on every trial), so I first thought of simply drawing a text.stim (like "S" or "P"). But I heard that text.stim was pretty slow to draw and because of the dynamic nature of the RDK task if the text.stim needs to much time I'm afraid that it will impact the display of the dots.
I'm I right? And if so what would be the best way to draw the "fixation letters"?
Well it seems that I found the answer in the TextStim reference manual so I put it here in case someone needs it:
Performance OBS: in general, TextStim is slower than many other visual stimuli, i.e. it takes longer to change some attributes. In general, it’s the attributes that affect the shapes of the letters: text, height, font, bold etc. These make the next .draw() slower because that sets the text again. You can make the draw() quick by calling re-setting the text (myTextStim.text = myTextStim.text) when you’ve changed the parameters.
So the slowing seems to concern the changing of the attributes which is not my situation.