Cajal Institute launches a Facebook application to test a psychological theory

Neuroethology group Cajal Institute, CSIC has launched a Facebook application to study visual intelligence. This is an application that offers a series of games, all based on the estimated number of pencils that appear in images. The game asks to spend just three minutes to the users. Polavieja Gonzalo Garcia, who runs the studio with Angel C. Roman and Alfonso Perez, says the goal is to demonstrate a theory. She has been testing it on animals, but now the group want to endorse its validity on humans. This could not have gone to the social network if the number of participants in the experiment were not sufficient. They need a thousand valid responses but expect to get between two thousand and ten thousand. The application is in English and Castilian. It will display players the score after completing the test.

Polavieja Garcia did not detail the theoretical aspects of the experiment because public awareness of the objectives could contaminate the participants and influence their behaviour during the experiment.

The application will help for statistical purposes as well. The app will also use data from the profiles of Facebook members, who will participate such as; age, gender and country of origin, but their evaluation will completely anonymous.

“We will comply with the code of the CSIC Bioethics,” said one of the group members. Researchers do not have any precedent that will be used on Facebook to raise a scientific experiment. “Yes there have been proposals put forward from a site specifically created for an experiment or used the information flow in social networks like Twitter, to draw scientific conclusions, but we have not located any Facebook application created specifically for an experimental purpose. Social networks are a new tool for a completely valid investigation,” he said.

The game says, it’s easy and looks for vitality. “We will analyze the data every day to extend the test”. To detect the participation of people in a spirit of deception, the test itself contains some evidence to show if the participant gives a reasonable answer. These are a few filters to get the full reliability of the test.

The whole game is based on the ability to estimate quantities. This is to check the rules of brain function in the estimation of a number of objects that cannot be counted one by one.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Feb 10 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.