Abstract
Introduction: The global pandemic has required researchers to rely on virtual interactions and online platforms. Others have compared performance between on-line and web-based assessments (questionnaires; see Riva, Teruzzi, & Anolli, 2003), although the reliability of conducting psychophysical studies via Zoom has yet to be established. The present study investigated the reliability and validity of experimental results collected over Zoom. Methods: An audiovisual motion perception paradigm, previously used in-person, was deployed via Zoom. Participants selected an oddball video that contained varying speeds of two moving discs amongst an array of two other videos with constant motions. One of the videos in each array included a sound (or not in the control condition) that occurred at the collision point of the two discs. In-person findings showed participants reliably detected the oddball video (Kominsky et al., 2017), and that performance was modulated for sound conditions (Soma Tsutsuse, Vibell, & Sinnett, 2020). This paradigm allows for a direct comparison of reaction time, accuracy, and lag across platforms using time-sensitive videos synced with auditory stimuli. Results: In-person results showed that participants were significantly more accurate for conditions without sound compared to with sound, and exhibited faster reaction times for unnatural targets without sound. There was no significant interaction between motion type and sound. Similar results were observed for the online condition. Importantly, when directly comparing performance between in-person and online conditions, no significant effect was observed. Participants of both in-person and online conditions showed similar accuracy rates between testing modalities. Lastly, no differences were found in video presentation times, suggesting no lag differences online compared to in-person. Conclusion: The lack of lag and similarity of results across platforms suggests that experimental data can be collected over Zoom reliably and accurately with this paradigm. Furthermore, the virtual replication reflects promising experimental integrity of online platforms.