Adaptation to high-frequency vibrotactile stimulations fails to affect the clock in young children

PsySuite: An android application designed to perform multimodal psychophysical testing

In behavioral sciences, there is growing concern about the inflation of false-positive rates due to the amount of under-powered studies that have been shared in the past years. While problematic, having the possibility to recruit (lots of) participants (for a lot of time) is realistically not achievable for many research facilities. Factors that hinder the reaching of optimal sample sizes are, to name but a few, research costs, participants' availability and commitment, and logistics. We challenge these issues by introducing PsySuite, an Android app designed to foster a remote approach to multimodal behavioral testing. To validate PsySuite, we first evaluated its ability to generate stimuli appropriate to rigorous psychophysical testing, measuring both the app's accuracy (i.e., stimuli's onset, offset, and multimodal simultaneity) and precision (i.e., the stability of a given pattern across trials), using two different smartphone models. We then evaluated PsySuite's ability to replicate perceptual performances obtained using a classic psychophysical paradigm, comparing sample data collected with the app against those measured via a PC-based setup. Our results showed that PsySuite could accurately reproduce stimuli with a minimum duration of 7 ms, 17 ms, and 30 ms for the auditory, visual, and tactile modalities, respectively, and that perceptual performances obtained with PsySuite were consistent with the perceptual behavior observed using the classical setup. Combined with the high accessibility inherently supported by PsySuite, here we ought to share the app to further boost psychophysical research, aiming at setting it to a cheap, user-friendly, and portable level.

A novel Android app to evaluate and enhance auditory and tactile temporal thresholds. ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY. IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY. ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2021;2021:5885-5888. [PMID: 34892458 DOI: 10.1109/embc46164.2021.9630028] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0]

With this work, we introduce a novel Android app designed to monitor and enhance auditory and tactile temporal sensitivity. To assess the app's reliability, we tested its technical performance evaluating stimuli production's accuracy (i.e., onset, offset, and duration of stimulation). To validate the app with participants we generated temporal intervals, using either sounds or vibratory stimuli, by implementing two versions of a Two-Alternative Forced-Choice (2AFC) task. Auditory and tactile temporal sensitivity of 12 participants was evaluated using this procedure. To investigate whether temporal abilities could be enhanced using the app, participants were then divided into two groups: one group was trained for four days on the auditory temporal task, while the other was trained for four days on the tactile temporal task. Results suggest that the app can i) effectively measure auditory and tactile temporal thresholds and ii) be used to enhance temporal abilities through perceptual learning. The accessibility of the experimental protocols, combined with our findings, fosters the app's involvement in rehabilitation programs, for example, with a specific focus on sensory disabilities that are associated with temporal deficits (e.g., deafness and Parkinson).Clinical Relevance- The current work introduces a novel app that can be used to monitor and improve temporal abilities, in both the auditory and the tactile modalities.