Bochynska Agata, Dillon Moira R
Department of Psychology, New York University, New York City, NY, United States.
Front Psychol. 2021 Dec 20;12:734592. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734592. eCollection 2021.
Online developmental psychology studies are still in their infancy, but their role is newly urgent in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the suspension of in-person research. Are online studies with infants a suitable stand-in for laboratory-based studies? Across two unmonitored online experiments using a change-detection looking-time paradigm with 96 7-month-old infants, we found that infants did not exhibit measurable sensitivities to the basic shape information that distinguishes between 2D geometric forms, as had been observed in previous laboratory experiments. Moreover, while infants were distracted in our online experiments, such distraction was nevertheless not a reliable predictor of their ability to discriminate shape information. Our findings suggest that the change-detection paradigm may not elicit infants' shape discrimination abilities when stimuli are presented on small, personal computer screens because infants may not perceive two discrete events with only one event displaying uniquely changing information that draws their attention. Some developmental paradigms used with infants, even those that seem well-suited to the constraints and goals of online data collection, may thus not yield results consistent with the laboratory results that rely on highly controlled settings and specialized equipment, such as large screens. As developmental researchers continue to adapt laboratory-based methods to online contexts, testing those methods online is a necessary first step in creating robust tools and expanding the space of inquiry for developmental science conducted online.
在线发展心理学研究仍处于起步阶段，但鉴于新冠疫情以及线下研究的暂停，其作用变得尤为紧迫。针对婴儿的在线研究能否替代基于实验室的研究？在两项无人监督的在线实验中，我们采用变化检测注视时间范式对96名7个月大的婴儿进行了研究，发现婴儿并未像之前在实验室实验中那样，对区分二维几何形状的基本形状信息表现出可测量的敏感性。此外，虽然婴儿在我们的在线实验中会分心，但这种分心并不能可靠地预测他们辨别形状信息的能力。我们的研究结果表明，当在小型个人电脑屏幕上呈现刺激时，变化检测范式可能无法激发婴儿的形状辨别能力，因为婴儿可能无法感知到两个离散事件，其中只有一个事件显示出独特的变化信息并吸引他们的注意力。因此，一些用于婴儿的发展范式，即使那些看似非常适合在线数据收集的限制和目标的范式，可能也无法产生与依赖高度控制的环境和专业设备（如大屏幕）的实验室结果一致的结果。随着发展心理学研究人员继续将基于实验室的方法应用于在线环境，在网上测试这些方法是创建强大工具和扩展在线发展科学探究空间的必要第一步。
