Customizing response options for scale items

I am running the 2004 version and I am trying to create a task in which participants choose between 2 response options. However, I need the response to be chosen by typing (rather than clicking) as we are measuring response time as well as the response itself. I have 2 questions:

#1: Is there a way to hide the scale option boxes? We are informing participants what keys to use in the instructions and do not want people to use the mouse.

#2: The default for 2 response options would be to press the "1" and "2" keys. Is there any way to allow for text keys (specifically A and L) to be used instead? If not, we want the response options to be spread out more on the keyboard (e.g., 3 and 8). Is there a way to specify 3 and 8 as the only acceptable key presses? I thought about using 8 response options with the boxes hidden but this would allow for non-valid responding (i.e., 1,2,4,5,6,7).

Thank you for any suggestions you might have.

Sandra

DirectRT may be a better alternative for time-precision critical experiments; however MediaLab has the capability to complete what you need.

1. The easiest way to hide a scale response is to add an extra ( l or t ) paramater. If you specify l2000, the scale responses will be drawn 2000 points to the left of their default position - if the monitor can't span this wide, the items will be drawn off screen. Does this make sense?
See the following for more information on this parameter: [url]http://www.empirisoft.com/medialab/help/queparameters.htm#left[/url]

2. This is another feature in which DirectRT excels; however psudeo solutions are available for MediaLab. The easiest way I can think of to accomplish what you need done would be to launch an EXE using the .EXE item type. The executeable being launched would need to intercept any keys that you don't want used, and keep them from ever being intercepted by MediaLab. By doing something like this, you would also be able to redirect other keys to actually send the software a numerical key. For instance, if you pressed A or L, you could use a program to redirect these keys to 1 or 2, etc.

If programming is not your forte, you could look into a program such as [url]http://www.autohotkey.com/[/url] to help accomplish this task.

I hope this helps!