U Can Touch This:How Tablets Can Be Used to Study Cognitive Development

New technological devices, particularly those with touch screens, have become virtually omnipresent over the last decade. Practically from birth, children are now surrounded by smart phones and tablets. Despite being our constant companions, little is known about whether these tools can be used not only for entertainment, but also to collect reliable scientific data. Tablets may prove particularly useful for collecting behavioral data from those children (1–10 years), who are, for the most part, too old for studies based on looking times and too young for classical psychophysical testing. Here, we analyzed data from six studies that utilized touch screen tablets to deliver experimental paradigms in developmental psychology. In studies 1 and 2, we employed a simple sorting and recall task with children from the ages of 2–8. Study 3 (ages 9 and 10) extended these tasks by increasing the difficulty of the stimuli and adding a staircase-based perception task. A visual search paradigm was used in study 4 (ages 2–5), while 1- to 3-year-olds were presented with an extinction learning task in study 5. In study 6, we used a simple visuo-spatial paradigm to obtain more details about the distribution of reaction times on touch screens over all ages. We collected data from adult participants in each study as well, for comparison purposes. We analyzed these data sets in regard to four metrics: self-reported tablet usage, completeness of data, accuracy of responses and response times. In sum, we found that children from the age of two onwards are very capable of interacting with tablets, are able to understand the respective tasks and are able to use tablets to register their answers accordingly. Results from all studies reiterated the advantages of data collection through tablets: ease of use, high portability, low-cost, and high levels of engagement for children. We illustrate the great potential of conducting psychological studies in young children using tablets, and also discuss both methodological challenges and their potential solutions

Web technology and the Internet

Das Internet ist eine der bedeutendsten Errungenschaften der Menschheit. Dies gilt nicht nur für wirtschaftliche und soziale, sondern auch für wissenschaftliche Belange. In der Psychologie würde die Nutzung des Internets und der dahinter stehenden Webtechnologien es erlauben, ressourcenunabhängig und mit einer höheren Aussagekraft zu forschen. Daher war das Ziel dieser Dissertation einerseits die systematische Untersuchung von grundlegenden Faktoren wie Präsentations- und Messgenauigkeit (Studien 1 - 3), andererseits aber auch die Untersuchung innovativer Ansätze um die quantitative Datenerhebung in der Psychologie zu erweitern (Studien 4 - 6). Zusammengefasst konnten wir zeigen, dass Webtechnologie-basierte Experimente eine wertvolle Erweiterung der Werkzeuge in der psychologischen Reaktionszeit-, Videodaten- und Eye-Tracking-Forschung darstellen, weshalb es gilt, diese neuen Technologien breit einzusetzen, um die immensen Möglichkeiten von Online-Forschung effektiv nutzen zu können

Looking Tasks Online: Utilizing Webcams to Collect Video Data from Home

Online experimentation is emerging as a new methodology within classical data acquisition in psychology. It allows for easy, fast, broad, and cheap data conduction from the comfort of people’s homes. To add another method to the array of available tools, here we used recent developments in web technology to investigate the technical feasibility of online HyperText Markup Language-5/JavaScript-based video data recording. We employed a preferential looking task with children between 4 and 24 months. Parents and their children participated from home through a three-stage process: First, interested adults registered and took pictures through a webcam-based photo application. In the second step, we edited the pictures and integrated them into the design. Lastly, participants returned to the website and the video data acquisition took place through their webcam. In sum, we were able to create and employ the video recording application with participants as young as 4 months old. Quality-wise, no participant had to be removed due to the framerate or quality of videos and only 7% of data was excluded due to behavioral factors (lack of concentration). Results-wise, interrater reliability of rated looking side (left/right) showed a high agreement between raters, Fleiss’ Kappa, κ = 0.97, which can be translated to sufficient data quality for further analyses. With regard to on-/off-screen attention attribution, we found that children lost interest after about 10 s after trial onset using a static image presentation or 60 s total experimental time. Taken together, we were able to show that online video data recording is possible and viable for developmental psychology and beyond

Age-related increase of image-invariance in the fusiform face area

Face recognition undergoes prolonged development from childhood to adulthood, thereby raising the question which neural underpinnings are driving this development. Here, we address the development of the neural foundation of the ability to recognize a face across naturally varying images. Fourteen children (ages, 7–10) and 14 adults (ages, 20–23) watched images of either the same or different faces in a functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation paradigm. The same face was either presented in exact image repetitions or in varying images. Additionally, a subset of participants completed a behavioral task, in which they decided if the face in consecutively presented images belonged to the same person. Results revealed age-related increases in neural sensitivity to face identity in the fusiform face area. Importantly, ventral temporal face-selective regions exhibited more image-invariance – as indicated by stronger adaptation for different images of the same person – in adults compared to children. Crucially, the amount of adaptation to face identity across varying images was correlated with the ability to recognize individual faces in different images. These results suggest that the increase of image-invariance in face-selective regions might be related to the development of face recognition skills

Looking tasks online

Online experimentation is emerging as a new methodology within classical data acquisition in psychology. It allows for easy, fast, broad, and cheap data conduction from the comfort of people’s homes. To add another method to the array of available tools, here we used recent developments in web technology to investigate the technical feasibility of online HyperText Markup Language-5/JavaScript-based video data recording. We employed a preferential looking task with children between 4 and 24 months. Parents and their children participated from home through a three-stage process: First, interested adults registered and took pictures through a webcam-based photo application. In the second step, we edited the pictures and integrated them into the design. Lastly, participants returned to the website and the video data acquisition took place through their webcam. In sum, we were able to create and employ the video recording application with participants as young as 4 months old. Quality-wise, no participant had to be removed due to the framerate or quality of videos and only 7% of data was excluded due to behavioral factors (lack of concentration). Results-wise, interrater reliability of rated looking side (left/right) showed a high agreement between raters, Fleiss’ Kappa, $\kappa$ = 0.97, which can be translated to sufficient data quality for further analyses. With regard to on-/off-screen attention attribution, we found that children lost interest after about 10 s after trial onset using a static image presentation or 60 s total experimental time. Taken together, we were able to show that online video data recording is possible and viable for developmental psychology and beyond

Development of Face Detection in Preschool Children

We investigated the ability to detect a face among other visual objects in a complex visual array in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children, as well as in adults. To this end, we used a visual search paradigm implemented on a touch-tablet device. Subjects (N = 100) saw up to eighty 3 x 3 visual search arrays and had to find and tap upon a target – a face or a car – among eight objects that served as distractors. Our data revealed a relative face detection advantage, which did not differ in its extent between children and adults. This suggests, that beginning in young childhood and ending in adulthood, face detection performance advances as a consequence of other cognitive functions like a general advance in visual search performance. Our study closes a gap of knowledge about the development of face detection – as a prototype for social stimuli and their capacity to attract attention – from early to middle childhood. The project's manuscript was - submitted to the International Journal of Behavioral Development on 28-Mar-2017 - submitted in revised form on 27-Jun-2017 - accepted on 03-Sep-2017 - published online first on 02-Nov-2017 - published in the print issue 42(2):439-444 on 01-Jul-2018 and can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025417738058 Full text-requests may be directed to the first author. Internal project name: KENNID