Supplementary data for the following paper: Crowdsourced measurement of reaction times to audiovisual stimuli with various degrees of asynchrony.

Supplementary data for the following paper: Bazilinskyy, P., & De Winter, J. C. F. (2018). Crowdsourced measurement of reaction times to audiovisual stimuli with various degrees of asynchrony. Human Factors, 60, 1192–1206

Crowdsourced measurement of reaction times to audiovisual stimuli with various degrees of asynchrony

Objective: This study was designed to replicate past research concerning reaction times to audiovisual stimuli with different stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) using a large sample of crowdsourcing respondents. Background: Research has shown that reaction times are fastest when an auditory and a visual stimulus are presented simultaneously and that SOA causes an increase in reaction time, this increase being dependent on stimulus intensity. Research on audiovisual SOA has been conducted with small numbers of participants. Method: Participants (N = 1,823) each performed 176 reaction time trials consisting of 29 SOA levels and three visual intensity levels, using CrowdFlower, with a compensation of US$0.20 per participant. Results were verified with a local Web-in-lab study (N = 34). Results: The results replicated past research, with a V shape of mean reaction time as a function of SOA, the V shape being stronger for lower-intensity visual stimuli. The level of SOA affected mainly the right side of the reaction time distribution, whereas the fastest 5% was hardly affected. The variability of reaction times was higher for the crowdsourcing study than for the Web-in-lab study. Conclusion: Crowdsourcing is a promising medium for reaction time research that involves small temporal differences in stimulus presentation. The observed effects of SOA can be explained by an independent-channels mechanism and also by some participants not perceiving the auditory or visual stimulus, hardware variability, misinterpretation of the task instructions, or lapses in attention. Application: The obtained knowledge on the distribution of reaction times may benefit the design of warning systems.Intelligent VehiclesHuman-Robot InteractionBiomechatronics & Human-Machine Contro

Central nervous system physiology

This is the second chapter of the series on the use of clinical neurophysiology for the study of movement disorders. It focusses on methods that can be used to probe neural circuits in brain and spinal cord. These include use of spinal and supraspinal reflexes to probe the integrity of transmission in specific pathways; transcranial methods of brain stimulation such as transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial direct current stimulation, which activate or modulate (respectively) the activity of populations of central neurones; EEG methods, both in conjunction with brain stimulation or with behavioural measures that record the activity of populations of central neurones; and pure behavioural measures that allow us to build conceptual models of motor control. The methods are discussed mainly in relation to work on healthy individuals. Later chapters will focus specifically on changes caused by pathology

Recipes for replication:Applying open science principles to research software development and data collection with cognitive tasks

During the past decade, science witnessed a replication crisis where many findings of published research could not be reproduced by other researchers. Attempts to address this "replication crisis" have identified several avenues for improvement, such as making science more open. This allows for more transparency in the scientific workflow, thus reducing a researcher's degrees of freedom and enabling researchers to check each other's work more extensively. Open science is a multifaceted concept, but in practice, there seems to be a strong focus on pre-registration of research designs, open data, and open access publications. However, between the research design and data/publication, there is the phase of data collection. So far, this phase has received relatively little attention even though it is an essential part of the scientific workflow. Hence, this dissertation focuses on open data collection in the behavioral domain, with an emphasis on cognitive tasks. In modern behavioral science, cognitive task procedures are often automated by software running on a computer. Hence, the focus is on research software development and data collection with cognitive tasks, which are evaluated from the perspective of five schools of thought on open science: the democratic, infrastructure, pragmatic, measurement, and public school. I discuss how applying open science principles to research software development and behavioral data collection with cognitive tasks may address the replication crisis and may improve the quality of science in general