title: Online recruitment and testing of infants with Mechanical Turk.
abstract: Testing infants in the laboratory is expensive in time and money; consequently, many studies are underpowered, reducing their reproducibility. We investigated whether the online platform, Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), could be used as a resource to more easily recruit and measure the behavior of infant populations. Using a looking time paradigm, with users' webcams we recorded how long infants aged 5 to 8months attended while viewing children's television programs. We found that infants (N=57) were more reliably engaged by some movies than by others and that the most engaging movies could maintain attention for approximately 70% of a 10- to 13-min period. We then identified the cinematic features within the movies. Faces, singing-and-rhyming, and camera zooms were found to increase infant attention. Together, we established that MTurk can be used as a rapid tool for effectively recruiting and testing infants.
authors.affiliation: Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada.
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.affiliation: Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cabral
authors.affiliation: Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada.
authors.forename: Ronak
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Patel
authors.affiliation: Brain and Mind Institute, Western University, London, Ontario N6A 5B7, Canada. Electronic address: rhodri@cusacklab.org.
authors.forename: Rhodri
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cusack
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D063045:Crowdsourcing; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D020407:Internet; D008297:Male; D018579:Patient Selection; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software; D013690:Television
keywords: Amazon Mechanical Turk; Crowdsourcing; Infant behavior; Online research