Compound Screen and flickery screen

Hello,

I'm currently using Direct RT Version 3.0.27. I wonder could you help me with the following problems:

1) The study involves presenting an orienting stimulus (+) followed by a brief prime which is followed by the target word. Participants must press one of two keys to make a decision about whether they associate the target word more with MALENESS or FEMALENESS. I'd like to have an instruction line appear on the screen throughout stating something like "Press R if you associate the word with MALE and press I if you associate the word with FEMALE". I'm able to get the +/prime/target word sequence to appear for all the trials, but I'm unable to have the instruction line appear even after using the compound-screen technique that is instructed in the manual.

2) I'm also having a problem where the presentation flickers on screen noticeably and annoyingly. I tried switching the colors from white text on black screen to black text on white screen but it is really bothersome both ways. My professor's DirectRT study last year did not exhibit this problem, and I tried running that file again just now and I still don't have the problem, so there may be something wrong with my file.

I am attaching my file here and would greatly appreciate your giving me some information and ideas on how we might address these problems.


Sincerely,


Jing Chen