Conducting linguistics research online: A practical introduction using JsPsych
The participants of this workshop are kindly asked to bring their own laptops.
Dr James Brand (Charles University)
A growing trend in linguistics has been the recent shift towards using online based research. This has largely been driven by the wealth of resources that now exist that make conducting research easy, efficient and even enjoyable. One particularly popular tool is JsPsych, which can be used to program experiments, which can range from the simple (e.g. lexical decision) to complex (e.g. eye-tracking), thus researchers have very few restrictions on what types of experiments they can now run online. There are also fewer limitations in terms of the types of data that can be collected from participants (e.g. audio, text, video), all through a web browser. This means that participants can take part in online research anywhere in the world, on a computer or a mobile device, and of course in a laboratory too. The main tricky thing is learning how to use JsPsych…
however it is just a learning curve, and once you have an understanding of the basics you can rapidly learn how to program more complex experiments. This will be the core goal of the workshop – to acquire the basics so you can achieve the complex.
To attend this workshop you do not need to have any experience with programming or online research in general. If you have experience working with programming languages, you will still hopefully learn lots of new things.
The materials will be focused on learning from the bottom up, so the development of skills and knowledge through practical experience will be key – everybody is welcome and will be supported. You simply need a laptop and enthusiasm.
This workshop will aim to provide you with the following learning outcomes:
- A conceptual understanding of online research workflows
- A practical knowledge of how JsPsych works
- A technical capacity to run your own research online
The structure of the workshop is as follows:
i. Introduction to online research, JsPsych and Cognition.run. You will be able to get used to the different interfaces used to build your experiments and understand how JsPsych code works.
ii. Workflows for building experiments. You will be able to put together the basic building blocks of an experiment, using different plugins to make a working psycholinguistics experiment.
If you have any questions before the workshop please contact James at james.brand@ff.cuni.cz