An important subfield of research within Psychology that aligns the most with methods in natural sciences is Experimental psychology, best exemplified in current disciplines of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. This paradigm consists of experimental tasks involving presentation of series of stimuli and recording of individual responses. In the last two decades, a number of specialized software have been developed which allow researchers to construct experiments and collect data through computers on cognitive processes of perception, attention, decision making, etc. In the previous five years, due to effects of the pandemic, there was rapid developments in the areas of online experimentation and testing. In that regard, there are a number of different free and paid software packages that allow researchers to host their study experiments online and details of a few have been given below (Kochari, 2019; Lumsden, 2019).
Lioness Lab (https://lioness-lab.org/)- Lioness Lab is a free web based platform to develop and host interactive online experiments useful in psychology. It remains one of its kind in allowing an interactive space where number of users can simultaneously participate in experiments involving interacting with other users. It has a user-friendly GUI that allows researchers to develop, test, and share experiments online, without great deal of programming experience.
E-Prime (https://pstnet.com/products/e-prime/)- E-Prime is one of the most comprehensive software packages available for designing and collecting data for behavioral experiments. E-prime Go is the recently released add on to the software which allows researchers to send experiments directly to participants online and collect data. E-prime is known for its intuitive design (GUI without any programming), customization options, quick debugging and integration with external devices (Paid)
PsyToolKit (https://www.psytoolkit.org/)- It is a free to use online toolkit for demonstrating, programming and running cognitive psychology experiments and surveys. It allows online data collection, storage and analysis for a library of various experiments and questionnaires, and develop new ones as well.
js Psych (https://www.jspsych.org/)- It is a free community built and maintained JavaScript library that can be optimized for stimulus display and reaction time data collection for behavioral experiments. It provides a flexible framework for developing wide range of laboratory like experiments that can run online.
Psycho JS (https://github.com/psychopy/psychojs)- It is a JavaScript library that supports running neuroscience, psychology, and psychophysics experiments in web browsers. It is the online version of the PsychoPy Python Library and scripts generated through the PsychoPy builder interface can be directly run on PsychoJS.
Gorilla (https://gorilla.sc/)- It is a specialized online experiment builder that provides a flexible GUI and set of tools to design and host behavioral experiments online. It was aimed at lowering access barriers such that students and researchers can run online experiments regardless of programming and networking knowledge.
Inquisit Web (https://www.millisecond.com/)- It is an online precision software for building cognitive, social, neurophysiological experiments, and allow diverse functions such as mass testing and use on mobile devices. The focus of development has been on high precision and high control; however, it requires users to download the software instead of running it on browsers (Paid).
References
Lumsden, J. (2019). So, you want to run an online experiment? SAGE Ocean, Tools & Technology. https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/how-to-run-an-online-experiment
Kochari, A. R. (2019). Conducting Web-based experiments for numerical cognition research. Journal of Cognition, 2(1). 39. https://dx.doi.org/10.5334%2Fjoc.85
Giamattei, M., Yahosseini, K. S., Gächter, S., & Molleman, L. (2020). LIONESS Lab: a free web-based platform for conducting interactive experiments online. Journal of the Economic Science Association, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40881-020-00087-0
E-Prime Go (2020). Psychology Software Tools Inc. Retrieved from https://www.pstnet.com
Stoet, G. (2017). PsyToolkit: A novel web-based method for running online questionnaires and reaction-time experiments. Teaching of Psychology, 44(1), 24-31. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0098628316677643
de Leeuw, J. R. (2015). jsPsych: A JavaScript library for creating behavioral experiments in a web browser. Behavior Research Methods, 47(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0458-y
Gallant, J., & Libben, G. (2019). No lab, no problem: Designing lexical comprehension and production experiments using PsychoPy3. The Mental Lexicon, 14(1), 152-168. https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.00002.gal
Anwyl-Irvine, A. L., Massonnié, J., Flitton, A., Kirkham, N., & Evershed, J. K. (2020). Gorilla in our midst: An online behavioral experiment builder. Behavior research methods, 52(1), 388-407. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-019-01237-x
Inquisit Web [Computer software]. (2020). Retrieved from https://www.millisecond.com
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