Smart phone, smart science: how the use of smartphones can revolutionize research in cognitive science

ESMira: A decentralized open-source application for collecting experience sampling data

This paper introduces ESMira, a server and mobile app (Android, iOS) developed for research projects using experience sampling method (ESM) designs. ESMira offers a very simple setup process and ease of use, while being free, decentralized, and open-source (source code is available on GitHub). The ongoing development of ESMira started in early 2019, with a focus on scientific requirements (e.g., informed consent, ethical considerations), data security (e.g., encryption), and data anonymity (e.g., completely anonymous data workflow). ESMira sets itself apart from other platforms by both being free of charge and providing study administrators with full control over study data without the need for specific technological skills (e.g., programming). This means that study administrators can have ESMira running on their own webspace without needing much technical knowledge, allowing them to remain independent from any third-party service. Furthermore, ESMira offers an extensive list of features (e.g., an anonymous built-in chat to contact participants; a reward system that allows participant incentivization without breaching anonymity; live graphical feedback for participants) and can deal with complex study designs (e.g., nested time-based sampling). In this paper, we illustrate the basic structure of ESMira, explain how to set up a new server and create studies, and introduce the platform's basic functionalities.

Laughter in everyday life: an event-based experience sampling method study using wrist-worn wearables

Laughter is a universal, nonverbal vocal expression of broad significance for humans. Interestingly, rather little is known about how often we laugh and how laughter is associated with our personality. In a large, event-based, experience sampling method study (N = 52; k = 9,261 assessments) using wrist-worn wearables and a physical analogue scale, we analyzed belly laughs and fit of laughter events in participants' everyday life for 4 weeks. Additionally, we assessed associations with laughter frequency such as personality, happiness, life satisfaction, gelotophobia (i.e., fear of being laughed at), and cheerfulness. Validating our new measurement approach (i.e., wearables, physical analogue scale), laughter events elicited higher happiness ratings compared to reference assessments, as expected. On average, participants reported 2.5 belly laughs per day and on every fourth day a fit of laughter. As expected, participants who were happier and more satisfied with their life laughed more frequently than unhappier, unsatisfied participants. Women and younger participants laughed significantly more than men and older participants. Regarding personality, laughter frequency was positively associated with openness and conscientiousness. No significant association was found for gelotophobia, and results for cheerfulness and related concepts were mixed. By using state-of-the-art statistical methods (i.e., recurrent event regression) for the event-based, multi-level data on laughter, we could replicate past results on laughing.

TEST-RETEST RELIABILITY AND RELIABLE CHANGE INDEX OF MOBILE APPLICATION NEUROCOGNITIVE TEST AMONG MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETES

CONTEXT

A mobile application neurocognitive assessment has been used in place of equipment intensive computerized neurocognitive assessment protocol. A previous study reported high to very high test-retest reliability of neurocognitive assessment using the mobile application in healthy adults, but no studies have examined test-retest reliability, reliable change indices (RCIs), and sex effect in middle school and high school populations when conducted 1 year apart.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study was to examine the test-retest reliability and RCIs of baseline data collected at 2-time points approximately 1 year apart using a mobile application neurocognitive rest in middle school and high school athletes. The secondary purpose of the study was to investigate the sex difference in neurocognitive measures.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional study.

SETTING

Institutional.

PATIENTS OR OTHER PARTICIPANTS

172 middle school and high school healthy student-athletes (mean age=13.78±1.59 years old).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S)

Mobile application neurocognitive rest scores (reaction time, impulse control, inspection, and memory).

RESULTS

The result from the study demonstrated that neurocognitive measures had low test-retest reliability across a 1-year time period in middle and high school settings. Upon retesting, reaction time and inspection time improved significantly in both middle and high school athletes, and impulse control showed significant improvement in middle school athletes. More athletes in middle school showed more RCI improvements compared to high school athletes. While both males and females demonstrated improvements in neurocognitive measures throughout adolescence, males outperformed females on reaction time and impulse control.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings from the study indicate unacceptably low test-retest reliability of a mobile application neurocognitive test most likely due to cognitive development occurring throughout adolescence. Additionally, significant RCIs were noted. These naturally occurring improvements due to cognitive development could mask the post-concussion deficits. The findings warrant consideration of age and sex on the neurocognitive performance of middle and high school athletes.

Can we measure individual differences in cognitive measures reliably via smartphones? A comparison of the flanker effect across device types and samples

Research deployed via the internet and administered via smartphones could have access to more diverse samples than lab-based research. Diverse samples could have relatively high variation in their traits and so yield relatively reliable measurements of individual differences in these traits. Several cognitive tasks that originated from the experimental research tradition have been reported to yield relatively low reliabilities (Hedge et al., 2018) in samples with restricted variance (students). This issue could potentially be addressed by smartphone-mediated administration in diverse samples. We formulate several criteria to determine whether a cognitive task is suitable for individual differences research on commodity smartphones: no very brief or precise stimulus timing, relative response times (RTs), a maximum of two response options, and a small number of graphical stimuli. The flanker task meets these criteria. We compared the reliability of individual differences in the flanker effect across samples and devices in a preregistered study. We found no evidence that a more diverse sample yields higher reliabilities. We also found no evidence that commodity smartphones yield lower reliabilities than commodity laptops. Hence, diverse samples might not improve reliability above student samples, but smartphones may well measure individual differences with cognitive tasks reliably. Exploratively, we examined different reliability coefficients, split-half reliabilities, and the development of reliability estimates as a function of task length.

Does online masked priming pass the test? The effects of prime exposure duration on masked identity priming

Masked priming is one of the most important paradigms in the study of visual word recognition, but it is usually thought to require a laboratory setup with a known monitor and keyboard. To test if this technique can be safely used in an online setting, we conducted two online masked priming lexical decision task experiments using PsychoPy/PsychoJS (Peirce et al., 2019). Importantly, we also tested the role of prime exposure duration (33.3 vs. 50 ms in Experiment 1 and 16.7 vs. 33.3 ms in Experiment 2), thus allowing us to examine both across conditions and within-conditions effects. We found that our online data are indeed very similar to the masked priming data previously reported in the masked priming literature. Additionally, we found a clear effect of prime duration, with the priming effect (measured in terms of response time and accuracy) being stronger at 50 ms than 33.3 ms and no priming effect at 16.7 ms prime duration. From these results, we can conclude that modern online browser-based experimental psychophysics packages (e.g., PsychoPy) can present stimuli and collect responses on standard end user devices with enough precision. These findings provide us with confidence that masked priming can be used online, thus allowing us not only to run less time-consuming experiments, but also to reach populations that are difficult to test in a laboratory.

Examination of the reliability and feasibility of two smartphone applications to assess executive functioning in racially diverse older adults

Inclusion of Black participants in clinical research is a national priority. Mobile applications and remote data collection may increase study access for diverse populations. This study examined the reliability and feasibility of two mobile smartphone application-based cognitive measures in a diverse middle aged and older adult sample. Black (n = 44; Mage = 59.93) and non-Hispanic white (NHW; n = 50; Mage = 61.06) participants completed traditional paper-based neuropsychological testing and two app-based measures, Arrows and Number Match. Intraclass correlations demonstrated poor to moderate reliability (range: .417-.569) between performance on the app-based versions and performance on the traditional versions. Performance score differences by racial group were not statistically significant. Both Black and NHW participants rated the app-based measures as feasible and acceptable, though Black participants endorsed a stronger likelihood of future use. These findings add to the growing literature on remote cognitive testing .

Parental Report via a Mobile App in the Context of Early Language Trajectories: StarWords Study Protocol

Social sciences researchers emphasize that new technologies can overcome the limitations of small and homogenous samples. In research on early language development, which often uses parental reports, taking the testing online might be particularly compelling. Due to logistical limitations, previous studies on bilingual children have explored the language development trajectories in general (e.g., by including few and largely set apart timepoints), or focused on small, homogeneous samples. The present study protocol presents a new, on-going study which uses new technologies to collect longitudinal data continuously from parents of multilingual, bilingual, and monolingual children. Our primary aim is to establish the developmental trajectories in Polish-British English and Polish-Norwegian bilingual children and Polish monolingual children aged 0-3 years with the use of mobile and web-based applications. These tools allow parents to report their children's language development as it progresses, and allow us to characterize children's performance in each language (the age of reaching particular language milestones). The project's novelty rests on its use of mobile technologies to characterize the bilingual and monolingual developmental trajectory from the very first words to broader vocabulary and multiword combinations.

Learning Safety Through Public Serious Games: A Study of "Prepare for Impact" on a Very Large, International Sample of Players

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in serious games (SGs), i.e., digital games for education and training. However, although the potential scalability of SGs to large player populations is often praised in the literature, available SG evaluations did not provide evidence of it because they did not study learning on large, varied, international samples in naturalistic conditions. This article considers a SG that educates players about aircraft cabin safety. It presents the first study of learning in a SG intervention conducted in naturalistic conditions with a very large, worldwide sample, which includes 45,000 players who accepted to answer a knowledge questionnaire before and after playing the game, and more than 400,000 players whose in-game behavior was analyzed. Results show that the SG led to improvement in players' knowledge, assessed with different metrics. Moreover, analysis of repeated play shows that participants improved their in-game safety behavior over time. We also focus on the role of making errors in the game, showing how they led to improvement in knowledge. Finally, we highlight the theoretical models, such as error-based learning and Protection Motivation Theory, that oriented the game design, and can be reused to create SGs for other domains.

Stress research during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic confronts stress researchers in psychology and neuroscience with unique challenges. Widely used experimental paradigms such as the Trier Social Stress Test feature physical social encounters to induce stress by means of social-evaluative threat. As lockdowns and contact restrictions currently prevent in-person meetings, established stress induction paradigms are often difficult to use. Despite these challenges, stress research is of pivotal importance as the pandemic will likely increase the prevalence of stress-related mental disorders. Therefore, we review recent research trends like virtual reality, pre-recordings and online adaptations regarding their usefulness for established stress induction paradigms. Such approaches are not only crucial for stress research during COVID-19 but will likely stimulate the field far beyond the pandemic. They may facilitate research in new contexts and in homebound or movement-restricted participant groups. Moreover, they allow for new experimental variations that may advance procedures as well as the conceptualization of stress itself. While posing challenges for stress researchers undeniably, the COVID-19 pandemic may evolve into a driving force for progress eventually.

Can we use the internet to study speech production? Yes we can! Evidence contrasting online versus laboratory naming latencies and errors

The closure of cognitive psychology labs around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented in-person testing. This has caused a particular challenge for speech production researchers, as before the pandemic there were no studies demonstrating that reliable overt speech production data could be collected via the internet. Here, we present evidence that both accurate and reliable overt articulation data can be collected from internet-based speech production experiments. We tested 100 participants in a picture naming paradigm, where we manipulated the word and phonotactic frequency of the picture names. We compared our results to a lab-based study conducted on different participants which used the same materials and design. We found a significant word frequency effect but no phonotactic frequency effect, fully replicating the lab-based results. Effect sizes were similar between experiments, but with significantly longer latencies in the internet-collected data. We found no evidence that internet upload or download speed affected either naming latencies or errors. In addition, we carried out a permutation-style analysis which recommends a minimum sample size of 40 participants for online production paradigms. In sum, our study demonstrates that internet-based testing of speech production is a feasible and promising endeavour, with less challenges than many researchers (anecdotally) assumed.

Squats in Surveys: Investigating the Feasibility of, Compliance With, and Respondents' Performance on Fitness Tasks in Self-Administered Smartphone Surveys Using Acceleration Data

Digital health data that accompany data from traditional surveys are becoming increasingly important in health-related research. For instance, smartphones have many built-in sensors, such as accelerometers that measure acceleration so that they offer many new research possibilities. Such acceleration data can be used as a more objective supplement to health and physical fitness measures (or survey questions). In this study, we therefore investigate respondents' compliance with and performance on fitness tasks in self-administered smartphone surveys. For this purpose, we use data from a cross-sectional study as well as a lab study in which we asked respondents to do squats (knee bends). We also employed a variety of questions on respondents' health and fitness level and additionally collected high-frequency acceleration data. Our results reveal that observed compliance is higher than hypothetical compliance. Respondents gave mainly health-related reasons for non-compliance. Respondents' health status positively affects compliance propensities. Finally, the results show that acceleration data of smartphones can be used to validate the compliance with and performance on fitness tasks. These findings indicate that asking respondents to conduct fitness tasks in self-administered smartphone surveys is a feasible endeavor for collecting more objective data on physical fitness levels.

A clinical trial on a brief motivational intervention in reducing alcohol consumption under a telehealth supportive counseling

It is known that among those seeking to cease consumption of alcohol, there can be as high as a 50% relapse rate in the first 12 months. Different tools for treatments have been developed, such as telehealth, with the aim of helping this population. As a result of this demand, technology has gained strength in recent years. A new point of view about the treatment will broaden our knowledge far beyond just efficacy. It seems that understanding the mechanisms that lead to treatment success is as important as knowing its effectiveness. Therefore, the present study examined the relationships between Brief Motivational Intervention by telephone (BMI), motivational stage, outcome, and coping strategies using path analysis. In the post-evaluation, variables such as BMI (randomized individuals), motivational stage and decreased consumption of alcohol reached statistical significance (p<.001), suggesting that BMI might improve motivational stage and reduced consumption of alcohol. In terms of coping, the results also indicate that positive thinking might be a variable of interest when planning to decrease alcohol consumption. More research is needed to recognize the potential of new technology in the health area and to uncover the innumerable possibilities of using these tools as a strategy to help alcohol users.

Possibilities, Problems, and Perspectives of Data Collection by Mobile Apps in Longitudinal Epidemiological Studies: Scoping Review

BACKGROUND

The broad availability of smartphones and the number of health apps in app stores have risen in recent years. Health apps have benefits for individuals (eg, the ability to monitor one's health) as well as for researchers (eg, the ability to collect data in population-based, clinical, and observational studies). Although the number of health apps on the global app market is huge and the associated potential seems to be great, app-based questionnaires for collecting patient-related data have not played an important role in epidemiological studies so far.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to provide an overview of studies that have collected patient data using an app-based approach, with a particular focus on longitudinal studies. This literature review describes the current extent to which smartphones have been used for collecting (patient) data for research purposes, and the potential benefits and challenges associated with this approach.

METHODS

We conducted a scoping review of studies that used data collection via apps. PubMed was used to identify studies describing the use of smartphone app questionnaires for collecting data over time. Overall, 17 articles were included in the summary.

RESULTS

Based on the results of this scoping review, there are only a few studies that integrate smartphone apps into data-collection approaches. Studies dealing with the collection of health-related data via smartphone apps have mainly been developed with regard to psychosomatic, neurodegenerative, respiratory, and cardiovascular diseases, as well as malign neoplasm. Among the identified studies, the duration of data collection ranged from 4 weeks to 12 months, and the participants' mean ages ranged from 7 to 69 years. Potential can be seen for real-time information transfer, fast data synchronization (which saves time and increases effectivity), and the possibility of tracking responses longitudinally. Furthermore, smartphone-based data-collection techniques might prevent biases, such as reminder bias or mistakes occurring during manual data transfers. In chronic diseases, real-time communication with physicians and early detection of symptoms enables rapid modifications in disease management.

CONCLUSIONS

The results indicate that using mobile technologies can help to overcome challenges linked with data collection in epidemiological research. However, further feasibility studies need to be conducted in the near future to test the applicability and acceptance of these mobile apps for epidemiological research in various subpopulations.

Feasibility and initial validation of 'HD-Mobile', a smartphone application for remote self-administration of performance-based cognitive measures in Huntington's disease

OBJECTIVE

Smartphone-based cognitive assessment measures allow efficient, rapid, and convenient collection of cognitive datasets. Establishment of feasibility and validity is essential for the widespread use of this approach. We describe a novel smartphone application (HD-Mobile) that includes three performance-based cognitive tasks with four key outcome measures, for use with Huntington's disease (HD) samples. We describe known groups and concurrent validity, test-retest reliability, sensitivity, and feasibility properties of the tasks.

METHODS

Forty-two HD CAG-expanded participants (20 manifest, 22 premanifest) and 28 healthy controls completed HD-Mobile cognitive tasks three times across an 8-day period, on days 1, 4, and 8. A subsample of participants had pen-and-paper cognitive task data available from their most recent assessment from their participation in a separate observational longitudinal study, Enroll-HD.

RESULTS

Manifest-HD participants performed worse than healthy controls for three of four HD-Mobile cognitive measures, and worse than premanifest-HD participants for two of four measures. We found robust test-retest reliability for manifest-HD participants (ICC = 0.71-0.96) and with some exceptions, in premanifest-HD (ICC = 0.52-0.96) and healthy controls (0.54-0.96). Correlations between HD-Mobile and selected Enroll-HD cognitive tasks were mostly medium to strong (r = 0.36-0.68) as were correlations between HD-Mobile cognitive tasks and measures of expected disease progression and motor symptoms for the HD CAG-expanded participants (r = - 0.34 to - 0.54).

CONCLUSIONS

Results indicated robust known-groups, test-retest, concurrent validity, and sensitivity of HD-Mobile cognitive tasks. The study demonstrates the feasibility and utility of HD-Mobile for conducting convenient, frequent, and potentially ongoing assessment of HD samples without the need for in-person assessment.

The great typography bake-off: comparing legibility at-a-glance

Typography plays an increasingly important role in today's dynamic digital interfaces. Graphic designers and interface engineers have more typographic options than ever before. Sorting through this maze of design choices can be a daunting task. Here we present the results of an experiment comparing differences in glance-based legibility between eight popular sans-serif typefaces. The results show typography to be more than a matter of taste, especially in safety critical contexts such as in-vehicle interfaces. Our work provides both a method and rationale for using glanceable typefaces, as well as actionable information to guide design decisions for optimised usability in the fast-paced mobile world in which information is increasingly consumed in a few short glances. Practitioner summary: There is presently no accepted scientific method for comparing font legibility under time-pressure, in 'glanceable' interfaces such as automotive displays and smartphone notifications. A 'bake-off' method is demonstrated with eight popular sans-serif typefaces. The results produce actionable information to guide design decisions when information must be consumed at-a-glance. Abbreviations: DOT: department of transportation; FAA: Federal Aviation Administration; GHz: gigahertz; Hz: hertz; IEC: International Electrotechnical Commission; ISO: International Organization for Standardization; LCD: liquid crystal display; MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology; ms: milliseconds; OS: operating system.

A review on the ability of smartphones to detect ultraviolet (UV) radiation and their potential to be used in UV research and for public education purposes

The effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation on life on Earth have continuously been the subject of research. Over-exposure to UV radiation is harmful, but small amounts of exposure are required for good health. It is, therefore, crucial for humans to optimise their own UV exposure and not exceed UV levels that are sufficient for essential biological functions. Exceeding those levels may increase risk of developing health problems including skin cancer and cataracts. Smartphones have been previously investigated for their ability to detect UV radiation with or without additional devices that monitor personal UV exposure, in order to maintain safe exposure times by individuals. This review presents a comprehensive overview of the current state of smartphones' use in UV radiation monitoring and prediction. There are four main methods for UV radiation detection or prediction involving the use smartphones, depending on the requirements of the user: devoted software applications developed for smartphones to predict UV Index (UVI), wearable and non-wearable devices that can be used with smartphones to provide real-time UVI, and the use of smartphone image sensors to detect UV radiation. The latter method has been a growing area of research over the last decade. Built-in smartphone image sensors have been investigated for UV radiation detection and the quantification of related atmospheric factors (including aerosols, ozone, clouds and volcanic plumes). The overall practicalities, limitations and challenges are reviewed, specifically in regard to public education. The ubiquitous nature of smartphones can provide an interactive tool when considering public education on the effects and individual monitoring of UV radiation exposure, although social and geographic areas with low socio-economic factors could challenge the usefulness of smartphones. Overall, the review shows that smartphones provide multiple opportunities in different forms to educate users on personal health with respect to UV radiation.

How do Spanish speakers read words? Insights from a crowdsourced lexical decision megastudy

Vocabulary size seems to be affected by multiple factors, including those that belong to the properties of the words themselves and those that relate to the characteristics of the individuals assessing the words. In this study, we present results from a crowdsourced lexical decision megastudy in which more than 150,000 native speakers from around 20 Spanish-speaking countries performed a lexical decision task to 70 target word items selected from a list of about 45,000 Spanish words. We examined how demographic characteristics such as age, education level, and multilingualism affected participants' vocabulary size. Also, we explored how common factors related to words like frequency, length, and orthographic neighbourhood influenced the knowledge of a particular item. Results indicated important contributions of age to overall vocabulary size, with vocabulary size increasing in a logarithmic fashion with this factor. Furthermore, a contrast between monolingual and bilingual communities within Spain revealed no significant vocabulary size differences between the communities. Additionally, we replicated the standard effects of the words' properties and their interactions, accurately accounting for the estimated knowledge of a particular word. These results highlight the value of crowdsourced approaches to uncover effects that are traditionally masked by small-sampled in-lab factorial experimental designs.

LAB: Linguistic Annotated Bibliography - a searchable portal for normed database information

This article presents the Linguistic Annotated Bibliography (LAB) as a searchable Web portal to quickly and easily access reliable database norms, related programs, and variable calculations. These publications were coded by language, number of stimuli, stimuli type (i.e., words, pictures, symbols), keywords (i.e., frequency, semantics, valence), and other useful information. This tool not only allows researchers to search for the specific type of stimuli needed for experiments but also permits the exploration of publication trends across 100 years of research. Details about the portal creation and use are outlined, as well as various analyses of change in publication rates and keywords. In general, advances in computational power have allowed for the increase in dataset size in the recent decades, in addition to an increase in the number of linguistic variables provided in each publication.

Information and Communication Technologies, a Promising Way to Support Pharmacotherapy for the Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia

Health care systems face an expansion in the number of older individuals with a high prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases and related behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSDs). Health care providers are expected to develop innovative solutions to manage and follow up patients over time in the community. To date, we are unable to continuously and accurately monitor the nature, frequency, severity, impact, progression, and response to treatment of BPSDs after the initial assessment. Technology could address this need and provide more sensitive, less biased, and more ecologically valid measures. This could provide an opportunity to reevaluate therapeutic strategies more quickly and, in some cases, to treat earlier, when symptoms are still amenable to therapeutic solutions or even prevention. Several studies confirm the relationship between sensor-based data and cognition, mood, and behavior. Most scientific work on mental health and technologies supports digital biomarkers, not so much as diagnostic tools but rather as monitoring tools, an area where unmet needs are significant. In addition to the implications for clinical care, these real-time measurements could lead to the discovery of new early biomarkers in mental health. Many also consider digital biomarkers as a way to better understand disease processes and that they may contribute to more effective pharmaceutical research by (i) targeting the earliest stage, (ii) reducing sample size required, (iii) providing more objective measures of behaviors, (iv) allowing better monitoring of noncompliance, (v) and providing a better understanding of failures. Finally, communication technologies provide us with the opportunity to support and renew our clinical and research practices.

A serious game to explore human foraging in a 3D environment

Traditional search tasks have taught us much about vision and attention. Recently, several groups have begun to use multiple-target search to explore more complex and temporally extended "foraging" behaviour. Many of these new foraging tasks, however, maintain the simplified 2D displays and response demands associated with traditional, single-target visual search. In this respect, they may fail to capture important aspects of real-world search or foraging behaviour. In the current paper, we present a serious game for mobile platforms, developed in Unity3D, in which human participants play the role of an animal foraging for food in a simulated 3D environment. Game settings can be adjusted, so that, for example, custom target and distractor items can be uploaded, and task parameters, such as the number of target categories or target/distractor ratio are all easy to modify. We are also making the Unity3D project available, so that further modifications can also be made. We demonstrate how the app can be used to address specific research questions by conducting two human foraging experiments. Our results indicate that in this 3D environment, a standard feature/conjunction manipulation does not lead to a reduction in foraging runs, as it is known to do in simple, 2D foraging tasks.

A Spanish Adaptation of the Computer and Mobile Device Proficiency Questionnaires (CPQ and MDPQ) for Older Adults

Technology can help support the goal of many older adults to live independently, though cognitive, attitudinal, and other barriers often result in a “digital divide” in which older adults use and adopt new technology at a lower rate compared to younger adults. Due to the many potential benefits of technology it is not surprising that interest in tools that assess technology proficiency among older adults has increased. These tools can help support older adult technology research and training. However, to understand these issues more broadly, especially cross-cultural determinants of technology proficiency, translated, validated, and standardized measures of proficiency are necessary. For example, according to the last Eurobarometer (European Commission, 2015), Spain has experienced the largest increase in technology adoption among European Union nations in the past few years, indicating potential cultural mediation of technology adoption and use. To benefit the investigation of cross-cultural differences and their causes, we adapted the Mobile Device Proficiency Questionnaire (MDPQ) and Computer Proficiency Questionnaire (CPQ) for older adults in Spain, including the full and brief forms of each measure. Consistent with English versions of the questionnaires, the scales and their subscales were found to be reliable and valid measures of mobile device and computer proficiency in Spanish older adults. However, in contrast to earlier studies, the factor structure for both questionnaires simplified into two factors for the population under study. We conclude that the Spanish versions of the MDPQ and CPQ can be employed as useful tools for measuring mobile device and computer proficiency in the Spanish older adult population for research and training purposes.

Smartphone and a freely available application as a new tool to record locomotor activity rhythm in large mammals and humans

Daily pattern of locomotor activity (LA), one of the most studied rhythms in humans and rodents, has not been widely investigated in large mammals. This is partly due to the high cost and breakability of used automatic devices. Since last decade, smartphones are becoming ubiquitous. Meanwhile, several applications detecting activity by using internal sensors were made available. In this study, we assumed that this device could be a cheaper and easier way to measure the LA rhythm in humans and large mammals, like camel and goat. A smartphone application (Nokia Mate Health), normally used to quantify physical activities in humans, was chosen for the study. To validate the rhythm data obtained from the smartphone, LA rhythm was simultaneously recorded using an automatic device, the Actiwatch-Mini®. Results showed that the smartphone provided a clear and significant daily rhythm of LA. The visual assessment of the superimposed LA rhythm's curves in all three species showed that the smartphone application displayed similar rhythms as those recorded by the Actiwatch-Mini. Highly significant positive correlation (p≤ 0.0001) exists between the two recording rhythms. The daily periods were both the same at 24.0 h. Acrophases were also significantly similar and occurring around mid-day: 11:40 ± 0.35 h vs 11:41 ± 0.35 h for the camel, 11:25 ± 0.19 h vs 11:37 ± 0.25 h for the goat and 13:04 ± 0.11 h vs 13:51 ± 0.28 h for humans using smartphone and Actiwatch, respectively. The related mesor and amplitude were also close between the two recording devices. Results indicate clearly that using smartphones constitutes a reliable cheap tool to study LA rhythm for chronobiology studies, especially in laboratories facing lack of funding.

Skip, Skip, Skip, Accept!!!: A Study on the Usability of Smartphone Manufacturer Provided Default Features and User Privacy

Smartphone manufacturer provided default features (e.g., default location services, iCloud, Google Assistant, ad tracking) enhance the usability and extend the functionality of these devices. Prior studies have highlighted smartphone vulnerabilities and how users’ data can be harvested without their knowledge. However, little is known about manufacturer provided default features in this regard—their usability concerning configuring them during usage, and how users perceive them with regards to privacy. To bridge this gap, we conducted a task-based study with 27 Android and iOS smart-phone users in order to learn about their perceptions, concerns and practices, and to understand the usability of these features with regards to privacy. We explored the following: users’ awareness of these features, why and when do they change the settings of these features, the challenges they face while configuring these features, and finally the mitigation strategies they adopt. Our findings reveal that users of both platforms have limited awareness of these features and their privacy implications. Awareness of these features does not imply that a user can easily locate and adjust them when needed. Furthermore, users attribute their failure to configure default features to hidden controls and insufficient knowledge on how to configure them. To cope with difficulties of finding controls, users employ various coping strategies, some of which are platform specific but most often applicable to both platforms. However, some of these coping strategies leave users vulnerable.

A Smartphone App to Assess Alcohol Consumption Behavior: Development, Compliance, and Reactivity

BACKGROUND

There are disadvantages-largely related to cost, participant burden, and missing data-associated with traditional electronic methods of assessing drinking behavior in real time. This potentially diminishes some of the advantages-namely, enhanced sample size and diversity-typically attributed to these methods. Download of smartphone apps to participants' own phones might preserve these advantages. However, to date, few researchers have detailed the process involved in developing custom-built apps for use in the experimental arena or explored methodological concerns regarding compliance and reactivity.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to describe the process used to guide the development of a custom-built smartphone app designed to capture alcohol intake behavior in the healthy population. Methodological issues related to compliance with and reactivity to app study protocols were examined. Specifically, we sought to investigate whether hazard and nonhazard drinkers would be equally compliant. We also explored whether reactivity in the form of a decrease in drinking or reduced responding ("yes") to drinking behavior would emerge as a function of hazard or nonhazard group status.

METHODS

An iterative development process that included elements typical of agile software design guided the creation of the CNLab-A app. Healthy individuals used the app to record alcohol consumption behavior each day for 21 days. Submissions were either event- or notification-contingent. We considered the size and diversity of the sample, and assessed the data for evidence of app protocol compliance and reactivity as a function of hazard and nonhazard drinker status.

RESULTS

CNLab-A yielded a large and diverse sample (N=671, mean age 23.12). On average, participants submitted data on 20.27 (SD 1.88) out of 21 days (96.5%, 20.27/21). Both hazard and nonhazard drinkers were highly compliant with app protocols. There were no differences between groups in terms of number of days of app use (P=.49) or average number of app responses (P=.54). Linear growth analyses revealed hazardous drinkers decreased their alcohol intake by 0.80 standard drinks over the 21-day experimental period. There was no change to the drinking of nonhazard individuals. Both hazard and nonhazard drinkers showed a slight decrease in responding ("yes") to drinking behavior over the same period.

CONCLUSIONS

Smartphone apps participants download to their own phones are effective and methodologically sound means of obtaining alcohol consumption information for research purposes. Although further investigation is required, such apps might, in future, allow for a more thorough examination of the antecedents and consequences of drinking behavior.

MEGALEX: A megastudy of visual and auditory word recognition

Using the megastudy approach, we report a new database (MEGALEX) of visual and auditory lexical decision times and accuracy rates for tens of thousands of words. We collected visual lexical decision data for 28,466 French words and the same number of pseudowords, and auditory lexical decision data for 17,876 French words and the same number of pseudowords (synthesized tokens were used for the auditory modality). This constitutes the first large-scale database for auditory lexical decision, and the first database to enable a direct comparison of word recognition in different modalities. Different regression analyses were conducted to illustrate potential ways to exploit this megastudy database. First, we compared the proportions of variance accounted for by five word frequency measures. Second, we conducted item-level regression analyses to examine the relative importance of the lexical variables influencing performance in the different modalities (visual and auditory). Finally, we compared the similarities and differences between the two modalities. All data are freely available on our website ( https://sedufau.shinyapps.io/megalex/ ) and are searchable at www.lexique.org , inside the Open Lexique search engine.

A Week Without Using Social Media: Results from an Ecological Momentary Intervention Study Using Smartphones

Online social media is now omnipresent in many people's daily lives. Much research has been conducted on how and why we use social media, but little is known about the impact of social media abstinence. Therefore, we designed an ecological momentary intervention study using smartphones. Participants were instructed not to use social media for 7 days (4 days baseline, 7 days intervention, and 4 days postintervention; N = 152). We assessed affect (positive and negative), boredom, and craving thrice a day (time-contingent sampling), as well as social media usage frequency, usage duration, and social pressure to be on social media at the end of each day (7,000+ single assessments). We found withdrawal symptoms, such as significantly heightened craving (β = 0.10) and boredom (β = 0.12), as well as reduced positive and negative affect (only descriptively). Social pressure to be on social media was significantly heightened during social media abstinence (β = 0.19) and a substantial number of participants (59 percent) relapsed at least once during the intervention phase. We could not find any substantial rebound effect after the end of the intervention. Taken together, communicating through online social media is evidently such an integral part of everyday life that being without it leads to withdrawal symptoms (craving, boredom), relapses, and social pressure to get back on social media.

The Moderating Role of Intellectual Humility in the Adoption of ICT: A Study Across Life-Span

Literature has shown age-related differences in the adoption process. In this way, it is very important to encourage the adoption of ICT by the elderly, in order to maintain their independence in daily life. However, some specific cognitive variables were not considered in theoretical models until a decade ago. One of the emerging fields in this area is the science of learnable intelligence, which investigates the role of thinking dispositions. The variable which we have focused on is intellectual humility. For this propose, a sample of 306 participants from 18 to 87 years was selected. Age was selected as a predictor variable. Intellectual humility was tested as a moderator between aging and ICT adoption, more precisely computer and mobile devices. The model fitted the theoretical proposal. However, the subscale known as Independence of the intellect and ego was the only one to fulfill all the requirements for the moderational analysis. The findings suggest a moderational effect that might enhance the ICT adoption. These results are of interest in the field of personal development and training purposes in life-span.

Validation of motion perception of briefly displayed images using a tablet

Motion perception of briefly displayed images has been reported to be abnormal in clinical populations afflicted with schizophrenia, major depression, autism, Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy. These abnormalities have been measured using CRT monitors connected to a computer. Given that the use of this experimental set-up in clinical environments can be difficult, we tested whether motion perception of briefly displayed images could also be measured using a tablet. For 13 participants, we found similar estimates of motion discrimination on a tablet and a CRT. This validates a tablet to measure motion perception of briefly displayed images.

Cognitive Testing in People at Increased Risk of Dementia Using a Smartphone App: The iVitality Proof-of-Principle Study

Background

Smartphone-assisted technologies potentially provide the opportunity for large-scale, long-term, repeated monitoring of cognitive functioning at home.

Objective

The aim of this proof-of-principle study was to evaluate the feasibility and validity of performing cognitive tests in people at increased risk of dementia using smartphone-based technology during a 6 months follow-up period.

Methods

We used the smartphone-based app iVitality to evaluate five cognitive tests based on conventional neuropsychological tests (Memory-Word, Trail Making, Stroop, Reaction Time, and Letter-N-Back) in healthy adults. Feasibility was tested by studying adherence of all participants to perform smartphone-based cognitive tests. Validity was studied by assessing the correlation between conventional neuropsychological tests and smartphone-based cognitive tests and by studying the effect of repeated testing.

Results

We included 151 participants (mean age in years=57.3, standard deviation=5.3). Mean adherence to assigned smartphone tests during 6 months was 60% (SD 24.7). There was moderate correlation between the firstly made smartphone-based test and the conventional test for the Stroop test and the Trail Making test with Spearman ρ=.3-.5 (P<.001). Correlation increased for both tests when comparing the conventional test with the mean score of all attempts a participant had made, with the highest correlation for Stroop panel 3 (ρ=.62, P<.001). Performance on the Stroop and the Trail Making tests improved over time suggesting a learning effect, but the scores on the Letter-N-back, the Memory-Word, and the Reaction Time tests remained stable.

Conclusions

Repeated smartphone-assisted cognitive testing is feasible with reasonable adherence and moderate relative validity for the Stroop and the Trail Making tests compared with conventional neuropsychological tests. Smartphone-based cognitive testing seems promising for large-scale data-collection in population studies.

Users of the main smartphone operating systems (iOS, Android) differ only little in personality

The increasingly widespread use of mobile phone applications (apps) as research tools and cost-effective means of vast data collection raises new methodological challenges. In recent years, it has become a common practice for scientists to design apps that run only on a single operating system, thereby excluding large numbers of users who use a different operating system. However, empirical evidence investigating any selection biases that might result thereof is scarce. Henceforth, we conducted two studies drawing from a large multi-national (Study 1; N = 1,081) and a German-speaking sample (Study 2; N = 2,438). As such Study 1 compared iOS and Android users across an array of key personality traits (i.e., well-being, self-esteem, willingness to take risks, optimism, pessimism, Dark Triad, and the Big Five). Focusing on Big Five personality traits in a broader scope, in addition to smartphone users, Study 2 also examined users of the main computer operating systems (i.e., Mac OS, Windows). In both studies, very few significant differences were found, all of which were of small or even tiny effect size mostly disappearing after sociodemographics had been controlled for. Taken together, minor differences in personality seem to exist, but they are of small to negligible effect size (ranging from OR = 0.919 to 1.344 (Study 1), η_p² = .005 to .036 (Study 2), respectively) and may reflect differences in sociodemographic composition, rather than operating system of smartphone users.

Modernizing Relationship Therapy through Social Thermoregulation Theory: Evidence, Hypotheses, and Explorations

In the present article the authors propose to modernize relationship therapy by integrating novel sensor and actuator technologies that can help optimize people's thermoregulation, especially as they pertain to social contexts. Specifically, they propose to integrate Social Thermoregulation Theory (IJzerman et al., 2015a; IJzerman and Hogerzeil, 2017) into Emotionally Focused Therapy by first doing exploratory research during couples' therapy, followed by Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs). The authors thus suggest crafting a Social Thermoregulation Therapy (STT) as enhancement to existing relationship therapies. The authors outline what is known and not known in terms of social thermoregulatory mechanisms, what kind of data collection and analyses are necessary to better understand social thermoregulatory mechanisms to craft interventions, and stress the need to conduct RCTs prior to implementation. They further warn against too hastily applying these theoretical perspectives. The article concludes by outlining why STT is the way forward in improving relationship functioning.

Smartphones and Cognition: A Review of Research Exploring the Links between Mobile Technology Habits and Cognitive Functioning

While smartphones and related mobile technologies are recognized as flexible and powerful tools that, when used prudently, can augment human cognition, there is also a growing perception that habitual involvement with these devices may have a negative and lasting impact on users' ability to think, remember, pay attention, and regulate emotion. The present review considers an intensifying, though still limited, area of research exploring the potential cognitive impacts of smartphone-related habits, and seeks to determine in which domains of functioning there is accruing evidence of a significant relationship between smartphone technology and cognitive performance, and in which domains the scientific literature is not yet mature enough to endorse any firm conclusions. We focus our review primarily on three facets of cognition that are clearly implicated in public discourse regarding the impacts of mobile technology - attention, memory, and delay of gratification - and then consider evidence regarding the broader relationships between smartphone habits and everyday cognitive functioning. Along the way, we highlight compelling findings, discuss limitations with respect to empirical methodology and interpretation, and offer suggestions for how the field might progress toward a more coherent and robust area of scientific inquiry.

A smartphone "app"-delivered randomized factorial trial targeting physical activity in adults

Rapid technological development has challenged researchers developing mobile moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) interventions. This 12-week randomized factorial intervention aimed to determine the individual and combined impact of a self-monitoring smartphone-app (tracking, feedback, education) and two theory-based modules (goal-setting, points-based feedback) on MVPA, key psychosocial outcomes, and application usage. Adults (N = 116; M _age  = 41.38 ± 7.57) received (1) a basic self-monitoring app, (2) the basic app plus goal setting, (3) the basic app plus points-based feedback, or (4) the basic app plus both modules. All individuals increased MVPA by more than 11 daily minutes. Those with points-based feedback demonstrated still higher levels of MVPA and more favorable psychosocial and app usage outcomes across the intervention. Those with access to in-app goal setting had higher levels of app usage relative to those without the component. It is imperative that effective digital intervention "ingredients" are identified, and these findings provide early evidence to this effect. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT02592590.

Arithmetic on Your Phone: A Large Scale Investigation of Simple Additions and Multiplications

We present the results of a gamified mobile device arithmetic application which allowed us to collect vast amount of data in simple arithmetic operations. Our results confirm and replicate, on a large sample, six of the main principles derived in a long tradition of investigation: size effect, tie effect, size-tie interaction effect, five-effect, RTs and error rates correlation effect, and most common error effect. Our dataset allowed us to perform a robust analysis of order effects for each individual problem, for which there is controversy both in experimental findings and in the predictions of theoretical models. For addition problems, the order effect was dominated by a max-then-min structure (i.e 7+4 is easier than 4+7). This result is predicted by models in which additions are performed as a translation starting from the first addend, with a distance given by the second addend. In multiplication, we observed a dominance of two effects: (1) a max-then-min pattern that can be accounted by the fact that it is easier to perform fewer additions of the largest number (i.e. 8x3 is easier to compute as 8+8+8 than as 3+3+…+3) and (2) a phonological effect by which problems for which there is a rhyme (i.e. "seis por cuatro es veinticuatro") are performed faster. Above and beyond these results, our study bares an important practical conclusion, as proof of concept, that participants can be motivated to perform substantial arithmetic training simply by presenting it in a gamified format.

Can Programming Frameworks Bring Smartphones into the Mainstream of Psychological Science?

Smartphones continue to provide huge potential for psychological science and the advent of novel research frameworks brings new opportunities for researchers who have previously struggled to develop smartphone applications. However, despite this renewed promise, smartphones have failed to become a standard item within psychological research. Here we consider the key issues that continue to limit smartphone adoption within psychological science and how these barriers might be diminishing in light of ResearchKit and other recent methodological developments. We conclude that while these programming frameworks are certainly a step in the right direction it remains challenging to create usable research-orientated applications with current frameworks. Smartphones may only become an asset for psychology and social science as a whole when development software that is both easy to use and secure becomes freely available.

"Kind and Grateful": A Context-Sensitive Smartphone App Utilizing Inspirational Content to Promote Gratitude

BACKGROUND

Previous research has shown that gratitude positively influences psychological wellbeing and physical health. Grateful people are reported to feel more optimistic and happy, to better mitigate aversive experiences, and to have stronger interpersonal bonds. Gratitude interventions have been shown to result in improved sleep, more frequent exercise and stronger cardiovascular and immune systems. These findings call for the development of technologies that would inspire gratitude. This paper presents a novel system designed toward this end.

METHODS

We leverage pervasive technologies to naturally embed inspiration to express gratitude in everyday life. Novel to this work, mobile sensor data is utilized to infer optimal moments for stimulating contextually relevant thankfulness and appreciation. Sporadic mood measurements are inventively obtained through the smartphone lock screen, investigating their interplay with grateful expressions. Both momentary thankful emotion and dispositional gratitude are measured. To evaluate our system, we ran two rounds of randomized control trials (RCT), including a pilot study (N = 15, 2 weeks) and a main study (N = 27, 5 weeks). Studies' participants were provided with a newly developed smartphone app through which they were asked to express gratitude; the app displayed inspirational content to only the intervention group, while measuring contextual cues for all users.

RESULTS

In both rounds of the RCT, the intervention was associated with improved thankful behavior. Significant increase was observed in multiple facets of practicing gratitude in the intervention groups. The average frequency of practicing thankfulness increased by more than 120 %, comparing the baseline weeks with the intervention weeks of the main study. In contrast, the control group of the same study exhibited a decrease of 90 % in the frequency of thankful expressions. In the course of the study's 5 weeks, increases in dispositional gratitude and in psychological wellbeing were also apparent. Analyzing the relation between mood and gratitude expressions, our data suggest that practicing gratitude increases the probability of going up in terms of emotional valence and down in terms of emotional arousal. The influences of inspirational content and contextual cues on promoting thankful behavior were also analyzed: We present data suggesting that the more successful times for eliciting expressions of gratitude tend to be shortly after a social experience, shortly after location change, and shortly after physical activity.

CONCLUSIONS

The results support our intervention as an impactful method to promote grateful affect and behavior. Moreover, they provide insights into design and evaluation of general behavioral intervention technologies.

Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology

The present paper provides insight into an emerging research discipline called Psychoinformatics. In the context of Psychoinformatics, we emphasize the cooperation between the disciplines of psychology and computer science in handling large data sets derived from heavily used devices, such as smartphones or online social network sites, in order to shed light on a large number of psychological traits, including personality and mood. New challenges await psychologists in light of the resulting "Big Data" sets, because classic psychological methods will only in part be able to analyze this data derived from ubiquitous mobile devices, as well as other everyday technologies. As a consequence, psychologists must enrich their scientific methods through the inclusion of methods from informatics. The paper provides a brief review of one area of this research field, dealing mainly with social networks and smartphones. Moreover, we highlight how data derived from Psychoinformatics can be combined in a meaningful way with data from human neuroscience. We close the paper with some observations of areas for future research and problems that require consideration within this new discipline.

Self-Guided Reading: Touch-Based Measures of Syntactic Processing

A novel online reading methodology termed Self-Guided Reading (SGR) is examined to determine if it can successfully detect well-studied syntactic processing behaviours. In SGR, a participant runs their finger under masked text in order to reveal a sentence. It is therefore similar to self-paced reading in presentation of stimuli, but different in the motion that the participant makes to interact with the stimuli. The phenomena of relative clause, adverb and noun phrase/sentential attachment are utilised to allow comparison to previous research that employed self-paced reading and eye-tracking. SGR was able to detect the predicted processing behaviours in all sentence types. Moreover, once design choices and task effects are accounted for, SGR was the most consistent in triggering a motor movement change at the predicted point in the sentence. Able to provide a semi-continuous reading measure at low cost, SGR should be investigated further to uncover the full potential of the method for psycholinguistic research.

A Thousand Words Are Worth a Picture: Snapshots of Printed-Word Processing in an Event-Related Potential Megastudy

In the experiment reported here, approximately 1,000 words were presented to 75 participants in a go/no-go lexical decision task while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Partial correlations were computed for variables selected to reflect orthographic, lexical, and semantic processing, as well as for a novel measure of the visual complexity of written words. Correlations were based on the item-level ERPs at each electrode site and time slice while a false-discovery-rate correction was applied. Early effects of visual complexity were seen around 50 ms after word onset, followed by the earliest sustained orthographic effects around 100 to 150 ms, with the bulk of orthographic and lexical influences arising after 200 ms. Effects of a semantic variable (concreteness) emerged later, at around 300 ms. The overall time course of these ERP effects is in line with hierarchical, cascaded, interactive accounts of word recognition, in which fast feed-forward influences are consolidated by top-down feedback via recurrent processing loops.

Proactive and Reactive Response Inhibition across the Lifespan

One expression of executive control involves proactive preparation for future events, and this contrasts with stimulus driven reactive control exerted in response to events. Here we describe findings from a response inhibition task, delivered using a smartphone-based platform, that allowed us to index proactive and reactive inhibitory self-control in a large community sample (n = 12,496). Change in stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) when participants are provided with advance information about an upcoming trial, compared to when they are not, provides a measure of proactive control while SSRT in the absence of advance information provides a measure of reactive control. Both forms of control rely on overlapping frontostriatal pathways known to deteriorate in healthy aging, an age-related decline that occurs at an accelerated rate in men compared to women. Here we ask whether these patterns of age-related decline are reflected in similar changes in proactive and reactive inhibitory control across the lifespan. As predicted, we observed a decline in reactive control with natural aging, with a greater rate of decline in men compared to women (~10 ms versus ~8 ms per decade of adult life). Surprisingly, the benefit of preparation, i.e. proactive control, did not change over the lifespan and women showed superior proactive control at all ages compared to men. Our results suggest that reactive and proactive inhibitory control partially rely on distinct neural substrates that are differentially sensitive to age-related change.

Speech error and tip of the tongue diary for mobile devices

Collections of various types of speech errors have increased our understanding of the acquisition, production, and perception of language. Although such collections of naturally occurring language errors are invaluable for a number of reasons, the process of collecting various types of speech errors presents many challenges to the researcher interested in building such a collection, among them a significant investment of time and effort to obtain a sufficient number of examples to enable statistical analysis. Here we describe a freely accessible website http://spedi.ku.edu that helps users document slips of the tongue, slips of the ear, and tip of the tongue states that they experience firsthand or observe in others. The documented errors are amassed, and made available for other users to analyze, thereby distributing the time and effort involved in collecting errors across a large number of individuals instead of saddling the lone researcher, and facilitating distribution of the collection to other researchers. This approach also addresses some issues related to data curation that hampered previous error collections, and enables the collection to continue to grow over a longer period of time than previous collections. Finally, this web-based tool creates an opportunity for language scientists to engage in outreach efforts to increase the understanding of language disorders and research in the general public.