Moving online: Comparing executive function and visual attention performance online and in the laboratory – A brief report

Amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic behavioural researchers have had to look for alternatives to the more traditional laboratory-based method of collecting data. One method gaining popularity in behavioural research is online studies. This is in part because online methods offer researchers a platform to build, recruit, administer, and track experiments remotely. Though beneficial in a number of ways there remains historical concerns over whether online research technology can accurately measure human responses (e.g., whether a button press thousands of miles away is accurately recorded by the host server) and replicate a laboratory environment. The aim of this study was to compare effectiveness and efficiency performance on a number of cognitive behavioural tasks measuring executive function and visual attention across an online and laboratory sample. A sample of 21 laboratory participants were matched against a sample of 21 online participants for age, physical activity, and expertise. All participants completed six tasks of executive function (two for inhibition, shifting, and updating, respectively) and two tasks of visual attention. Independent samples t-tests showed no significant differences in age, physical activity and expertise suggesting appropriate group matching. Also, t-test results suggested no significant differences in effectiveness of efficiency performance for any inhibition, shifting, or visual attention task. Significant differences were found in Digit Span Task (i.e., updating) efficiency. Overall, the results support the use of online methods when using cognitive behavioural tasks and suggest such results are accurate representations of individual ability.