Doing Experimental Psychological Research from Remote: How Alerting Differently Impacts Online vs. Lab Setting

Abstract

Due to pandemic-imposed restrictions on lab-based research, we have recently witnessed a flourishing of online studies in experimental psychology, based on the collection of fine behavioral measures such as reaction times (RTs) and accuracy. However, it remains unclear whether participants’ alerting levels may have a different impact on behavioral performance in the online vs. lab setting. In this work we administered online and in-lab the dynamic temporal prediction (DTP) task, which requires an implicit modulation of participants’ alerting by alternating experimental conditions implying either slower or faster response rates. We then compared data distribution, RTs, accuracy, and time-on-task effects across the adult lifespan between the settings. We replicated online and across the whole age range considered (19–69 y) all the task-specific effects already found in-lab (both in terms of RTs and accuracy) beyond the overall RTs delay typical of the online setting. Moreover, we found an interaction between the setting and task-specific features so that participants showed slower RTs only in experimental conditions implying a less urgent response rate, while no RTs delay and a slight accuracy increase emerged in faster conditions. Thus, the online setting has been shown to be methodologically sound in eliciting comparable effects to those found in-lab. Moreover, behavioral performance seems to be more sensitive to task-induced alerting shifts in the online as compared to the lab setting, leading to either a heightened or reduced efficiency depending on a faster or slower response rate of experimental conditions, respectively.