Kim Andy J, Grégoire Laurent, Anderson Brian A
School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, 3715 McClintock Ave, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA.
Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
Behav Res Methods. 2024 Dec 18;57(1):18. doi: 10.3758/s13428-024-02552-8.
In the field of psychological science, behavioral performance in computer-based cognitive tasks often exhibits poor reliability. The absence of reliable measures of cognitive processes contributes to non-reproducibility in the field and impedes the investigation of individual differences. Specifically in visual search paradigms, response time-based measures have shown poor test-retest reliability and internal consistency across attention capture and distractor suppression, but one study has demonstrated the potential for oculomotor measures to exhibit superior reliability. Therefore, in this study, we investigated three datasets to compare the reliability of learning-dependent distractor suppression measured via distractor fixations (oculomotor capture) and latency to fixate the target (fixation times). Our findings reveal superior split-half reliability of oculomotor capture compared to that of fixation times regardless of the critical distractor comparison, with the reliability of oculomotor capture in most cases falling within the range that is acceptable for the investigation of individual differences. We additionally find that older adults have superior oculomotor reliability compared with young adults, potentially addressing a significant limitation in the aging literature of high variability in response time measures due to slower responses. Our findings highlight the utility of measuring eye movements in the pursuit of reliable indicators of distractor processing and the need to further test and develop additional measures in other sensory domains to maximize statistical power, reliability, and reproducibility.
在心理科学领域，基于计算机的认知任务中的行为表现往往可靠性较差。缺乏对认知过程的可靠测量方法导致了该领域研究结果的不可重复性，并阻碍了对个体差异的研究。特别是在视觉搜索范式中，基于反应时间的测量方法在注意力捕获和干扰项抑制方面的重测信度和内部一致性都很差，但有一项研究表明眼动测量方法有可能表现出更高的可靠性。因此，在本研究中，我们调查了三个数据集，以比较通过干扰项注视（眼动捕获）和注视目标的潜伏期（注视时间）来测量的学习依赖性干扰项抑制的可靠性。我们的研究结果显示，无论关键干扰项的比较情况如何，眼动捕获的分半信度都高于注视时间，在大多数情况下，眼动捕获的信度落在个体差异研究可接受的范围内。我们还发现，与年轻人相比，老年人的眼动信度更高，这可能解决了衰老文献中因反应较慢而导致反应时间测量高度可变的一个重大局限性。我们的研究结果突出了在寻求干扰项处理可靠指标时测量眼动的实用性，以及在其他感官领域进一步测试和开发更多测量方法以最大化统计效力、可靠性和可重复性的必要性。
