Regensburg 2013 – scientific programme

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AGjDPG: Arbeitsgruppe junge DPG

AGjDPG 4: Big Data (joint with SOE)

AGjDPG 4.7: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 14, 2013, 12:00–12:30, H37

Web-Based Cognitive Science: Harnessing the Power of the Internet to Study Human Cognition — •Christopher Y. Olivola — University of Warwick, UK

The Internet provides a unique and powerful tool for the social sciences, allowing researchers to collect data and carry out experiments at scales that were previously unfeasible. So far, web-based social science has mainly focused on aggregate behaviors and large-scale phenomena. In contrast, the enormous potential of the Internet has been much less utilized by behavioral scientists studying individual behaviors and their underlying cognitive processes. In this presentation, I will discuss several examples of how web-based research methods can both aid the study of cognition and directly clarify its contents. In particular, I will highlight 4 distinct ways in which cognitive scientists can utilize the Internet: (1) running web-based experiments with large samples of human participants (at low cost); (2) using online games to collect data from intrinsically motivated participants (for free); (3) studying *naturally* occurring online individual behaviors; (4) measuring the contents of memory and the dynamics of attention over time. I will conclude by discussing how students and researchers with a quantitative background (e.g., physicists) can utilize the web to advance our understanding of human cognition.