Open AccessComparable performance on a spatial memory task in data collected in the lab and online
Author(s) -
Vladislava Segen,
Marios N. Avraamides,
Timothy J. Slattery,
Giorgio Colombo,
Jan Wiener
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0259367
Subject(s) - sample (material) , computer science , sample size determination , task (project management) , data collection , range (aeronautics) , data mining , statistics , mathematics , chemistry , management , chromatography , economics , composite material , materials science
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.