MiniCog: a method for administering psychological tests and experiments on a handheld personal digital assistant

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Psychological Assessment

Background:

• Handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) offer a cost-effective solution for administering psychological tasks.
• Field-based and longitudinal study designs require accessible and repeatable testing equipment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and present MiniCog, a software package for authoring and administering response time tasks on PDAs.
• To enable efficient data collection and automated analysis for psychological research.

Main Methods:

• Software development for PDA-based task administration.
• Implementation of features for script authoring, trial presentation, and single-button response recording.
• Data storage with user ID, demographics, notes, and time-stamps for later upload and analysis.

Main Results:

• MiniCog allows for the creation of custom response time tasks on PDAs.
• The software records responses, response times, user demographics, and notes.
• Automated calculation of mean response time and error rate is integrated.

Conclusions:

• MiniCog provides a practical and portable solution for administering response time tasks.
• The software supports field research and longitudinal studies by simplifying data collection and analysis.
• This tool enhances the feasibility of using PDAs for psychological assessments.