Analyzing touchscreen movements could reshape the science of human behaviour
As you swipe on your smartphone throughout the day—checking your email or making a purchase—you’re leaving behind digital clues about how your brain makes decisions. New research from the University of Alberta suggests these everyday movements could be a powerful tool for studying human behaviour.
The phrase “moving is thinking” has been the driving force behind research in the Actions in Complex Environments Laboratory (ACELab) for a decade. “We can actually understand a lot of what’s going on inside someone’s head by carefully measuring what’s going on outside their head,” explains Chapman, an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation.
Craig Chapman
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In a recent study, Chapman and his collaborators in the Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute found that everyday devices like smartphones and tablets can collect the same kind of movement data as specialized lab equipment and traditional mouse-tracking tests. This discovery could be a game changer, allowing researchers to gather insights from thousands of people remotely, instead of bringing small groups into a lab.
“We went out into the wild and grabbed the data from people on their own devices in their own homes,” says Chapman.
Traditionally, decision-making research has focused on button clicks, capturing only the final choice rather than the physical process behind it. If movement tracking is used, it’s typically limited to mouse-tracking. But Chapman’s approach makes movement an integral part of the equation.
“Most other research has just focused on the what: What did you choose? What was the end result? But my lab really likes to focus on the how: How did you choose? How did your body physically move to enact that decision for you?”
Every decision we make involves movement, whether we’re reaching for an item or walking across a room to open a door. The way we move—our speed, hesitation, or path—reveals insights into the decision-making process.
Smartphones and tablets are particularly valuable for this kind of research. Touchscreen movements more closely mimic real-world actions compared to a computer mouse, which operates in a less natural way. Still, Chapman notes that any form of movement tracking provides valuable data on how decisions unfold.
For the study, Chapman’s team designed three tasks to assess different types of decisions: comparing numbers, verifying sentence accuracy and selecting a preferred photo from a set.
“We wanted to choose a range of tasks that varied in as many different dimensions as we could,” says Chapman. The researchers measured reaction time, movement time and the curvature of movement paths on the screen. Their results showed that touch devices closely mirrored real-world reaching behaviours.
“We think touch devices are perhaps even better for revealing movement signatures of decision-making because you have to move and interact in a more realistic way,” says Chapman. “We believe the brain is having to control the swiping movements as though they are real reaching movements. They have to cover more time and space and, as a result, are more susceptible to the factors that influence real reaching.”
This ability to collect behavioural movement data through everyday devices has far-reaching potential. For example, movement tracking could enhance traditional questionnaires in corporate hiring and assessments, making them more precise and efficient.
“Now they can give you a questionnaire on a tablet or smartphone and get movement signatures of decision-making that are way more sensitive, which means the process is more powerful and more efficient.”
Health care is another area where this research could make an impact. Providers could use movement tracking to remotely monitor rehabilitation progress. In sports, teams and athletes could leverage this data to optimize performance and guide return-to-play decisions.
“There’s this wealth of data that people aren’t grabbing,” says Chapman. “I want other academics to look at this and say, now I can go get thousands of people to participate in my experiments in a day. The scalability of research implied by this work is massive.”
| By Adrianna MacPherson
This article was submitted by the University of Alberta, a Troy Media Editorial Content Provider Partner.
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