Warburton, M. orcid.org/0000-0001-5309-4424, Campagnoli, C. orcid.org/0000-0002-9794-4475, Mon-Williams, M. orcid.org/0000-0001-7595-8545 et al. (2 more authors) (2025) Input device matters for measures of behaviour in online experiments. Psychological Research, 89. 29. ISSN 0340-0727
Abstract
Studies of perception, cognition, and action increasingly rely on measures derived from the movements of a cursor to investigate how psychological processes unfold over time. This method is one of the most sensitive measures available for remote experiments conducted online, but experimenters have little control over the input device used by participants, typically a mouse or trackpad. These two devices require biomechanically distinct movements to operate, so measures extracted from cursor tracking data may differ between input devices. We investigated this in two online experiments requiring participants to execute goal-directed movements. We identify several measures that are critically influenced by the choice of input device using a kinematic decomposition of the recorded cursor trajectories. Those using a trackpad were slower to acquire targets, mainly attributable to greater times required to initiate movements and click on targets, despite showing greater peak speeds and lower variability in their movements. We believe there is a substantial risk that behavioural disparities caused by the input device used could be misidentified as differences in psychological processes. We urge researchers to collect data on input devices in online experiments and carefully consider and account for the effect they may have on their experimental data.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 03 Dec 2024 15:48 |
Last Modified: | 03 Dec 2024 15:48 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s00426-024-02065-1 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:220326 |