Department of Psychology, Wichita State University, 1845 North Fairmount Wichita, Kansas, 67260-0034, USA.
Behav Res Methods. 2014 Mar;46(1):159-72. doi: 10.3758/s13428-013-0357-7.
In psychology research studies, the goals of the experimenter and the goals of the participants often do not align. Researchers are interested in having participants who take the experimental task seriously, whereas participants are interested in earning their incentive (e.g., money or course credit) as quickly as possible. Creating experimental methods that are pleasant for participants and that reward them for effortful and accurate data generation, while not compromising the scientific integrity of the experiment, would benefit both experimenters and participants alike. Here, we explored a gamelike system of points and sound effects that rewarded participants for fast and accurate responses. We measured participant engagement at both cognitive and perceptual levels and found that the point system (which invoked subtle, anonymous social competition between participants) led to positive intrinsic motivation, while the sound effects (which were pleasant and arousing) led to attentional capture for rewarded colors. In a visual search task, points were awarded after each trial for fast and accurate responses, accompanied by short, pleasant sound effects. We adapted a paradigm from Anderson, Laurent, and Yantis (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(25):10367-10371, 2011b), in which participants completed a training phase during which red and green targets were probabilistically associated with reward (a point bonus multiplier). During a test phase, no points or sounds were delivered, color was irrelevant to the task, and previously rewarded targets were sometimes presented as distractors. Significantly longer response times on trials in which previously rewarded colors were present demonstrated attentional capture, and positive responses to a five-question intrinsic-motivation scale demonstrated participant engagement.
在心理学研究中，实验者的目标和参与者的目标通常不一致。研究人员希望参与者认真对待实验任务，而参与者则希望尽快获得激励（例如金钱或课程学分）。创建让参与者感到愉悦并因努力和准确的数据生成而获得奖励的实验方法，同时又不影响实验的科学完整性，将使实验者和参与者都受益。在这里，我们探索了一种基于分数和声音效果的游戏化系统，该系统奖励参与者快速准确的反应。我们测量了参与者在认知和感知层面的参与度，发现分数系统（它在参与者之间引发了微妙的、匿名的社会竞争）激发了积极的内在动机，而声音效果（它们令人愉悦且令人兴奋）则吸引了注意力对受奖励的颜色。在视觉搜索任务中，每次快速准确的反应后都会获得分数，并伴有短暂而愉悦的声音效果。我们改编了 Anderson、Laurent 和 Yantis（美国国家科学院院刊，2011b，108（25）：10367-10371）的范式，参与者在其中完成了一个培训阶段，在此阶段，红色和绿色目标与奖励（分数奖金乘数）有概率关联。在测试阶段，没有分数或声音，颜色与任务无关，之前奖励的目标有时会作为干扰出现。在之前奖励的颜色出现的情况下，反应时间明显延长，表明注意力被吸引，对五项内在动机量表的积极反应表明参与者的参与度。
