Smartphones may be the new hot tool in cognitive psychology
research, according to a paper in the online journal PLoS ONE.
Cognitive psychology, which explores how people perceive, think,
remember, and more, often relies on testing volunteers that come
to a research facility to participate in behavioral experiments.
This data collection method generally results in relatively
small, homogeneous group of test subjects, which can bias the
results and limit the extent to which researchers can interpret
their data. Collecting data via smartphones, on the other hand,
may be the answer to this long-standing issue by helping
scientists reach larger and more varied populations, the
researchers suggest. To illustrate, the authors have begun a
large-scale iPhone/iPad-based language study investigating
people's ability to distinguish words from similar non-words,
for example, "table" versus "tible." They began the project in
December 2010 and have already collected data from 4,157
subjects. For comparison, a study on a s