A jsPsych touchscreen extension for behavioral research on touch-enabled interfaces

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Science
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Psychology

Background:

• Online experiments are prevalent in behavioral science.
• Keyboards remain the primary input, despite widespread touchscreen use.
• Existing tools often overlook touchscreen input methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce an open-source touchscreen extension for jsPsych.
• Evaluate if standard behavioral findings persist on touchscreens.
• Assess the validity of touchscreen data for online experiments.

Main Methods:

• Developed an open-source touchscreen extension for the jsPsych framework.
• Administered two perceptual decision-making tasks (random-dot kinematogram, Stroop task) via touchscreen and keyboard.
• Compared performance metrics and observed effects between input methods.

Main Results:

• Similar psychometric curves were observed for the random-dot kinematogram on both touchscreens and keyboards.
• Significant task, congruency, and sequential congruency effects were detected in the Stroop task for both input versions.
• Performance metrics were comparable across touchscreen and keyboard versions for both tasks.

Conclusions:

• The open-source touchscreen extension is a viable tool for online behavioral data collection.
• Touchscreen devices can reliably capture data for forced-choice tasks in online experiments.
• This extension broadens the scope of online behavioral research to include touchscreen interactions.