1
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Kominsky JF, Carey S. Infants' representations of michottean triggering events. Cognition 2024; 250:105844. [PMID: 38850841 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105844] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/20/2023] [Revised: 04/24/2024] [Accepted: 05/31/2024] [Indexed: 06/10/2024]
Abstract
The classic Michottean 'launching' event is consistent with a real-world Newtonian elastic collision. Previous research has shown that adult humans distinguish launching events that obey some of the physical constraints on Newtonian elastic collisions from events that do not do so early in visual processing, and that infants do so early in development (< 9 months of age). These include that in a launching event, the speed of the agent can be 3 times faster (or more) than that of the patient but the speed of the patient cannot be detectably greater than the speed of the agent. Experiment 1 shows that 7-8-month-old infants also distinguish canonical launching events from events in which the motion of the patient is rotated 90° from the trajectory of the motion of the agent (another outcome ruled out by the physics of elastic collisions). Violations of both the relative speed and the angle constraints create Michottean 'triggering' events, in which adults describe the motion of the patient as autonomous but not spontaneous, i.e., still initiated by contact with the causal agent. Experiments 2 and 3 begin to explore whether infants of this age construe Michottean triggering events as causal. We find that infants of this age are not sensitive to a reversal of the agent and patient in triggering events, thus failing to exhibit one of the signatures of representing an event as causal. We argue that there are likely several independent events schemas with causal content represented by young infants, and the literature on the origins of causal cognition in infancy would benefit from systematic investigations of event schemas other than launching events.
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2
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Ronconi L, Cantiani C, Riva V, Franchin L, Bettoni R, Gori S, Bulf H, Valenza E, Facoetti A. Infants' reorienting efficiency depends on parental autistic traits and predicts future socio-communicative behaviors. Cereb Cortex 2024; 34:40-49. [PMID: 38696607 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae089] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2023] [Revised: 01/29/2024] [Accepted: 02/21/2024] [Indexed: 05/04/2024] Open
Abstract
Attentional reorienting is dysfunctional not only in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but also in infants who will develop ASD, thus constituting a potential causal factor of future social interaction and communication abilities. Following the research domain criteria framework, we hypothesized that the presence of subclinical autistic traits in parents should lead to atypical infants' attentional reorienting, which in turn should impact on their future socio-communication behavior in toddlerhood. During an attentional cueing task, we measured the saccadic latencies in a large sample (total enrolled n = 89; final sample n = 71) of 8-month-old infants from the general population as a proxy for their stimulus-driven attention. Infants were grouped in a high parental traits (HPT; n = 23) or in a low parental traits (LPT; n = 48) group, according to the degree of autistic traits self-reported by their parents. Infants (n = 33) were then longitudinally followed to test their socio-communicative behaviors at 21 months. Results show a sluggish reorienting system, which was a longitudinal predictor of future socio-communicative skills at 21 months. Our combined transgenerational and longitudinal findings suggest that the early functionality of the stimulus-driven attentional network-redirecting attention from one event to another-could be directly connected to future social and communication development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luca Ronconi
- School of Psychology, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Via Olgettina, 58, 20132 Milan, Italy
- Division of Neuroscience, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Via Olgettina, 60, 20132 Milan, Italy
| | - Chiara Cantiani
- Child Psychopathology Unit, Scientific Institute, IRCCS Eugenio Medea, Via Don Luigi Monza, 20, 23842 Lecco, Italy
| | - Valentina Riva
- Child Psychopathology Unit, Scientific Institute, IRCCS Eugenio Medea, Via Don Luigi Monza, 20, 23842 Lecco, Italy
| | - Laura Franchin
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento, Corso Bettini, 84, 38068 Rovereto, Italy
| | - Roberta Bettoni
- Department of Psychology, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1, 20126 Milano, Italy
| | - Simone Gori
- Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo, Piazzale Sant'Agostino, 2, 24129 Bergamo, Italy
| | - Herman Bulf
- Department of Psychology, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell'Ateneo Nuovo, 1, 20126 Milano, Italy
| | - Eloisa Valenza
- Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, Via Venezia 8, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy
| | - Andrea Facoetti
- Developmental and Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, Department of General Psychology, Via Venezia 8, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy
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Hagihara H, Zaadnoordijk L, Cusack R, Kimura N, Tsuji S. Exploration of factors affecting webcam-based automated gaze coding. Behav Res Methods 2024:10.3758/s13428-024-02424-1. [PMID: 38693440 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-024-02424-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 04/09/2024] [Indexed: 05/03/2024]
Abstract
Online experiments have been transforming the field of behavioral research, enabling researchers to increase sample sizes, access diverse populations, lower the costs of data collection, and promote reproducibility. The field of developmental psychology increasingly exploits such online testing approaches. Since infants cannot give explicit behavioral responses, one key outcome measure is infants' gaze behavior. In the absence of automated eyetrackers in participants' homes, automatic gaze classification from webcam data would make it possible to avoid painstaking manual coding. However, the lack of a controlled experimental environment may lead to various noise factors impeding automatic face detection or gaze classification. We created an adult webcam dataset that systematically reproduced noise factors from infant webcam studies which might affect automated gaze coding accuracy. We varied participants' left-right offset, distance to the camera, facial rotation, and the direction of the lighting source. Running two state-of-the-art classification algorithms (iCatcher+ and OWLET) revealed that facial detection performance was particularly affected by the lighting source, while gaze coding accuracy was consistently affected by the distance to the camera and lighting source. Morphing participants' faces to be unidentifiable did not generally affect the results, suggesting facial anonymization could be used when making online video data publicly available, for purposes of further study and transparency. Our findings will guide improving study design for infant and adult participants during online experiments. Moreover, training algorithms using our dataset will allow researchers to improve robustness and allow developmental psychologists to leverage online testing more efficiently.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hiromichi Hagihara
- Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University 1-2 Yamadaoka, Suita-shi Osaka, 565-0871, Japan.
- International Research Center for Neurointelligence (WPI-IRCN), The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Study, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan.
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 5-3-1 Kojimachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 102-0083, Japan.
- The Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo, 2-11-16, Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0032, Japan.
| | - Lorijn Zaadnoordijk
- Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
| | - Rhodri Cusack
- Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
| | - Nanako Kimura
- Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan
| | - Sho Tsuji
- International Research Center for Neurointelligence (WPI-IRCN), The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Study, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan
- The Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo, 2-11-16, Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0032, Japan
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4
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Steffan A, Zimmer L, Arias-Trejo N, Bohn M, Dal Ben R, Flores-Coronado MA, Franchin L, Garbisch I, Wiesmann CG, Hamlin JK, Havron N, Hay JF, Hermansen TK, Jakobsen KV, Kalinke S, Ko ES, Kulke L, Mayor J, Meristo M, Moreau D, Mun S, Prein J, Rakoczy H, Rothmaler K, Oliveira DS, Simpson EA, Sirois S, Smith ES, Strid K, Tebbe AL, Thiele M, Yuen F, Schuwerk T. Validation of an open source, remote web-based eye-tracking method (WebGazer) for research in early childhood. INFANCY 2024; 29:31-55. [PMID: 37850726 PMCID: PMC10841511 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12564] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/19/2023] [Revised: 09/25/2023] [Accepted: 09/30/2023] [Indexed: 10/19/2023]
Abstract
Measuring eye movements remotely via the participant's webcam promises to be an attractive methodological addition to in-person eye-tracking in the lab. However, there is a lack of systematic research comparing remote web-based eye-tracking with in-lab eye-tracking in young children. We report a multi-lab study that compared these two measures in an anticipatory looking task with toddlers using WebGazer.js and jsPsych. Results of our remotely tested sample of 18-27-month-old toddlers (N = 125) revealed that web-based eye-tracking successfully captured goal-based action predictions, although the proportion of the goal-directed anticipatory looking was lower compared to the in-lab sample (N = 70). As expected, attrition rate was substantially higher in the web-based (42%) than the in-lab sample (10%). Excluding trials based on visual inspection of the match of time-locked gaze coordinates and the participant's webcam video overlayed on the stimuli was an important preprocessing step to reduce noise in the data. We discuss the use of this remote web-based method in comparison with other current methodological innovations. Our study demonstrates that remote web-based eye-tracking can be a useful tool for testing toddlers, facilitating recruitment of larger and more diverse samples; a caveat to consider is the larger drop-out rate.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adrian Steffan
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
| | - Lucie Zimmer
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
| | | | - Manuel Bohn
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
- Institute of Psychology, Leuphana University Lüneburg
| | | | | | - Laura Franchin
- Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Trento
| | - Isa Garbisch
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen
| | - Charlotte Grosse Wiesmann
- Research Group Milestones of Early Cognitive Development, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
| | - J. Kiley Hamlin
- Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia
| | - Naomi Havron
- School of Psychological Sciences & Center for the Study of Child Development, University of Haifa
| | | | | | | | - Steven Kalinke
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
| | - Eon-Suk Ko
- Department of English Language and Literature, Chosun University
| | - Louisa Kulke
- Developmental Psychology with Educational Psychology, University of Bremen
| | | | | | - David Moreau
- School of Psychology and Centre for Brain Research, University of Auckland
| | - Seongmin Mun
- Department of English Language and Literature, Chosun University
| | - Julia Prein
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
| | - Hannes Rakoczy
- Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Göttingen
| | - Katrin Rothmaler
- Research Group Milestones of Early Cognitive Development, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
| | | | | | - Sylvain Sirois
- Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
| | | | - Karin Strid
- Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg
| | - Anna-Lena Tebbe
- Research Group Milestones of Early Cognitive Development, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
| | - Maleen Thiele
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
| | - Francis Yuen
- Department of Psychology, The University of British Columbia
| | - Tobias Schuwerk
- Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
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5
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Bass I, Mahaffey E, Bonawitz E. Children Use Teachers' Beliefs About Their Abilities to Calibrate Explore-Exploit Decisions. Top Cogn Sci 2023. [PMID: 38033200 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12714] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/08/2023] [Revised: 11/14/2023] [Accepted: 11/17/2023] [Indexed: 12/02/2023]
Abstract
Models of the explore-exploit problem have explained how children's decision making is weighed by a bias for information (directed exploration), randomness, and generalization. These behaviors are often tested in domains where a choice to explore (or exploit) is guaranteed to reveal an outcome. An often overlooked but critical component of the assessment of explore-exploit decisions lies in the expected success of taking actions in the first place-and, crucially, how such decisions might be carried out when learning from others. Here, we examine how children consider an informal teacher's beliefs about the child's competence when deciding how difficult a task they want to pursue. We present a simple model of this problem that predicts that while learners should follow the recommendation of an accurate teacher, they should exploit easier games when a teacher overestimates their abilities, and explore harder games when she underestimates them. We tested these predictions in two experiments with adults (Experiment 1) and 6- to 8-year-old children (Experiment 2). In our task, participants' performance on a picture-matching game was either overestimated, underestimated, or accurately represented by a confederate (the "Teacher"), who then presented three new matching games of varying assessed difficulty (too easy, too hard, just right) at varying potential reward (low, medium, high). In line with our model's predictions, we found that both adults and children calibrated their choices to the teacher's representation of their competence. That is, to maximize expected reward, when she underestimated them, participants chose games the teacher evaluated as being too hard for them; when she overestimated them, they chose games she evaluated as being too easy; and when she was accurate, they chose games she assessed as being just right. This work provides insight into the early-emerging ability to calibrate explore-exploit decisions to others' knowledge when learning in informal pedagogical contexts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ilona Bass
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University
- Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
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Shore MJ, Bukovsky DL, Pinheiro SGV, Hancock BM, Liptrot EM, Kuhlmeier VA. A survey on the challenges, limitations, and opportunities of online testing of infants and young children during the COVID-19 pandemic: using our experiences to improve future practices. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1160203. [PMID: 37384169 PMCID: PMC10296766 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1160203] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2023] [Accepted: 05/18/2023] [Indexed: 06/30/2023] Open
Abstract
In developmental psychology, the widespread adoption of new methods for testing children does not typically occur over a matter of months. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated social distancing requirements created a sudden need among many research groups to use a new method with which they had little or no experience: online testing. Here, we report results from a survey of 159 researchers detailing their early experiences with online testing. The survey approach allowed us to create a general picture of the challenges, limitations, and opportunities of online research, and it identified aspects of the methods that have the potential to impact interpretations of findings. We use the survey results to present considerations to improve online research practices.
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Waddington O, Proft M, Jensen K, Köymen B. Five-year-old children value reasons in apologies for belief-based accidents. Child Dev 2023; 94:e143-e153. [PMID: 36692288 PMCID: PMC10952182 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13893] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/25/2023]
Abstract
Accidents can be intent-based (unintended action-unintended outcome) or belief-based (intended action-unintended outcome). As compared to intent-based accidents, giving reasons is more crucial for belief-based accidents because the transgressor appears to have intentionally transgressed. In Study 1, UK-based preschoolers who were native English speakers (N = 96, 53 girls, collected 2020-2021) witnessed two intent-based or belief-based accidents; one transgressor apologized, the other apologized with a reason. Five-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, favored the reason-giving transgressor following a belief-based accident but not an intent-based accident (where an apology sufficed). In Study 2, 5-year-olds (N = 48, 25 girls, collected 2021) distinguished between "good" and "bad" reasons for the harm caused. Thus, 5-year-old children recognize when reasons should accompany apologies and account for the quality of these reasons.
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Affiliation(s)
- Owen Waddington
- Division of Psychology, Communication and Human Neuroscience, School of Health SciencesUniversity of ManchesterManchesterUK
| | - Marina Proft
- Georg‐Elias‐Müller‐Institute for PsychologyGeorg‐August‐University GöttingenGöttingenGermany
| | - Keith Jensen
- Division of Psychology, Communication and Human Neuroscience, School of Health SciencesUniversity of ManchesterManchesterUK
| | - Bahar Köymen
- Division of Psychology, Communication and Human Neuroscience, School of Health SciencesUniversity of ManchesterManchesterUK
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8
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Ahl RE, Hannan K, Amir D, Baker A, Sheskin M, McAuliffe K. Tokens of virtue: Replicating incentivized measures of children’s prosocial behavior with online methods and virtual resources. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 2023. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2023.101313] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/05/2023]
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9
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Capparini C, To MPS, Reid VM. Should I follow your virtual gaze? Infants' gaze following over video call. J Exp Child Psychol 2023; 226:105554. [PMID: 36208491 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105554] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2022] [Revised: 09/12/2022] [Accepted: 09/12/2022] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Abstract
From 10 months of age, human infants start to understand the function of the eyes in the looking behavior of others to the point where they preferentially orient toward an object if the social partner has open eyes rather than closed eyes. Thus far, gaze following has been investigated in controlled laboratory paradigms. The current study investigated this early ability using a remote live testing procedure, testing infants in their everyday environment while manipulating whether the experimenter could or could not see some target objects. A total of 32 11- and 12-month-old infants' looking behavior was assessed, varying the experimenter's eye status condition (open eyes vs closed eyes) in a between-participant design. Results showed that infants followed the gaze of a virtual social partner and that they preferentially followed open eyes rather than closed eyes. These data generalize past laboratory findings to a noisier home environment and demonstrate gaze processing capacities of infants to a virtual partner interacting with the participants in a live setup.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chiara Capparini
- Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, United Kingdom; Center for Research in Cognition & Neuroscience (CRCN), Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles 1050, Belgium.
| | - Michelle P S To
- Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, United Kingdom
| | - Vincent M Reid
- School of Psychology, University of Waikato, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand
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Wang J(J, Bonawitz E. Children’s Sensitivity to Difficulty and Reward Probability When Deciding to Take on a Task. JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2022.2152032] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Jinjing (Jenny) Wang
- Department of Psychology, Rutgers University – New Brunswick, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA
- Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University – New Brunswick, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA
| | - Elizabeth Bonawitz
- Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
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11
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Kominsky JF. The challenges of improving infant research methods. INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT 2022. [DOI: 10.1002/icd.2332] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Jonathan F. Kominsky
- Learning Sciences Department Harvard Graduate School of Education Cambridge Massachusetts USA
- Cognitive Science Department Central European University Vienna Austria
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12
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Zaadnoordijk L, Cusack R. Online testing in developmental science: A guide to design and implementation. ADVANCES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR 2022; 62:93-125. [PMID: 35249687 DOI: 10.1016/bs.acdb.2022.01.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
At present, most developmental psychology experiments use participants from a mere subsection of the world's population. Moreover, like other fields of psychology, many studies in developmental psychology suffer from low statistical power due to small samples and limited observations. Online testing holds promise as a way to achieve more representative and robust, better powered experiments. As participants do not have to visit in person, it is easier to access populations living further away from a developmental lab, enabling testing of more diverse populations (e.g., urban vs rural areas, various different nationalities or geographies), both within and beyond the researcher's home country. Furthermore, due to the codified nature of browser-based online testing, it is possible for multiple labs to carry out the exact same study, allowing for better replications. Because of these advantages, developmental researchers have started to move experiments online so that caregivers and their children can participate from their home environments. However, the transition from traditional lab testing to remote online testing brings many challenges. Laboratory studies of infant and child development are typically conducted under highly standardized conditions to control factors, such as distractors, distance to the screen, movement, and lighting, and often rely on specialized equipment for measuring behavior. In this chapter, we provide a guide for researchers considering online testing of a developmental population. The different sections comprise an overview of the decision-making processes and the state-of-the-art advances associated with, as well as tangible recommendations for, online data collection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lorijn Zaadnoordijk
- Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
| | - Rhodri Cusack
- Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
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13
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Bánki A, de Eccher M, Falschlehner L, Hoehl S, Markova G. Comparing Online Webcam- and Laboratory-Based Eye-Tracking for the Assessment of Infants' Audio-Visual Synchrony Perception. Front Psychol 2022; 12:733933. [PMID: 35087442 PMCID: PMC8787048 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733933] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2021] [Accepted: 12/06/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Online data collection with infants raises special opportunities and challenges for developmental research. One of the most prevalent methods in infancy research is eye-tracking, which has been widely applied in laboratory settings to assess cognitive development. Technological advances now allow conducting eye-tracking online with various populations, including infants. However, the accuracy and reliability of online infant eye-tracking remain to be comprehensively evaluated. No research to date has directly compared webcam-based and in-lab eye-tracking data from infants, similarly to data from adults. The present study provides a direct comparison of in-lab and webcam-based eye-tracking data from infants who completed an identical looking time paradigm in two different settings (in the laboratory or online at home). We assessed 4-6-month-old infants (n = 38) in an eye-tracking task that measured the detection of audio-visual asynchrony. Webcam-based and in-lab eye-tracking data were compared on eye-tracking and video data quality, infants' viewing behavior, and experimental effects. Results revealed no differences between the in-lab and online setting in the frequency of technical issues and participant attrition rates. Video data quality was comparable between settings in terms of completeness and brightness, despite lower frame rate and resolution online. Eye-tracking data quality was higher in the laboratory than online, except in case of relative sample loss. Gaze data quantity recorded by eye-tracking was significantly lower than by video in both settings. In valid trials, eye-tracking and video data captured infants' viewing behavior uniformly, irrespective of setting. Despite the common challenges of infant eye-tracking across experimental settings, our results point toward the necessity to further improve the precision of online eye-tracking with infants. Taken together, online eye-tracking is a promising tool to assess infants' gaze behavior but requires careful data quality control. The demographic composition of both samples differed from the generic population on caregiver education: our samples comprised caregivers with higher-than-average education levels, challenging the notion that online studies will per se reach more diverse populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anna Bánki
- Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Martina de Eccher
- Department for Psychology of Language, Georg-Elias-Müller-Institut für Psychologie, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Lilith Falschlehner
- Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Stefanie Hoehl
- Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Gabriela Markova
- Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
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