Comparable performance on a spatial memory task in data collected in the lab and online

Online data collection offers a wide range of benefits including access to larger and more diverse populations, together with a reduction in the experiment cycle. Here we compare performance in a spatial memory task, in which participants had to estimate object locations following viewpoint shifts,...

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Published inPloS one Vol. 16; no. 11; p. e0259367
Main Authors Segen, Vladislava, Avraamides, Marios, Slattery, Timothy, Colombo, Giorgio, Wiener, Jan Malte
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 29.11.2021
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Adolescent
Adult
Biology and Life Sciences
Cameras
Computer and Information Sciences
COVID-19
Data Collection
Data entry
Data processing
Dementia
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Errors
Experiments
Female
Humans
Internet
Laboratories
Male
Medicine and Health Sciences
Memory
Memory tasks
Mental task performance
Methods
Personal computers
Photic Stimulation
Psychological research
Psychology
Social Sciences
Spatial ability
Spatial analysis
Spatial Memory
Supervision
Task Performance and Analysis
Virtual reality
Young Adult
United Kingdom
United Kingdom > UK
Cyprus
Singapore
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Summary:Online data collection offers a wide range of benefits including access to larger and more diverse populations, together with a reduction in the experiment cycle. Here we compare performance in a spatial memory task, in which participants had to estimate object locations following viewpoint shifts, using data from a controlled lab-based setting and from an unsupervised online sample. We found that the data collected in a conventional laboratory setting and those collected online produced very similar results, although the online data was more variable with standard errors being about 10% larger than those of the data collected in the lab. Overall, our findings suggest that spatial memory studies using static images can be successfully carried out online with unsupervised samples. However, given the higher variability of the online data, it is recommended that the online sample size is increased to achieve similar standard errors to those obtained in the lab. For the current study and data processing procedures, this would require an online sample 25% larger than the lab sample.
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Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0259367