Abstract
The exponential rise in use of mobile consumer electronics has presented a great potential for research to be conducted remotely, with participants numbering several orders of magnitude greater than a typical research paradigm. Here, we attempt to demonstrate the validity and reliability of using a consumer game-engine to create software presented on a mobile tablet to assess sensorimotor synchronization, a proxy of rhythmic ability. Our goal was to ascertain whether previously observed research results can be replicated, rather than assess whether a mobile tablet achieves comparable performance to a desktop computer. To achieve this, younger (aged 18–35 years) and older (aged 60–80 years) adult musicians and non-musicians were recruited to play a custom-designed sensorimotor synchronization assessment on a mobile tablet in a controlled laboratory environment. To assess reliability, participants performed the assessment twice, separated by a week, and an intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was calculated. Results supported the validity of this approach to assessing rhythmic abilities by replicating previously observed results. Specifically, musicians performed better than non-musicians, and younger adults performed better than older adults. Participants also performed best when the tempo was in the range of previously-identified preferred tempos, when the stimuli included both audio and visual information, and when synchronizing on-beat compared to off-beat or continuation (self-paced) synchronization. Additionally, high ICC values (>0.75) suggested excellent test–retest reliability. Together, these results support the notion that consumer electronics running software built with a game engine may serve as a valuable resource for remote, mobile-based data collection of rhythmic abilities.
Highlights
IntroductionMunster-Segev et al, 2017; Rye Hanton et al, 2017)
In recent years, mobile technology has advanced to the level where it has become possible to collect data from people remotely for research purposes, to assess things such as blood flow, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, gait statistics, cognitive function, and psychological state to name a few (Harrison et al, 2011; Mishra et al, 2016; Michard, 2017; Rhythmic Ability on a Mobile TabletMunster-Segev et al, 2017; Rye Hanton et al, 2017)
It was shown that overall performance largely yielded excellent test–retest reliability. These results show that tablet-based mobile platforms can be a valid and reliable means to collect measures of sensorimotor synchronization ability
Summary
Munster-Segev et al, 2017; Rye Hanton et al, 2017) Despite this uptick in remote data collection, real concerns exist regarding the validity and reliability of remote data collection devices and software. Rather, replicating previously established findings using a paradigm that demands high temporal precision will provide important evidence toward the validity of tablet-based data collection to assess rhythmic ability. This goal is in-line with our previous validation of using tablets to assess spatial attention (Rolle et al, 2015, 2017), except the current paradigm places greater demands on the tablet’s timing/processing ability in terms of stimulus presentation and data collection, which occur simultaneously and continuously
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