Participants
First: Thank you for considering participating in a study with the Pieces of Mind Lab! Our work depends on your voluntary contribution of your time and attention, and we appreciate you!
Please see the relevant section below for more information about the type of study you will participate in.
Mobile Eye Tracking
If you have been recruited for or are considering participating in a mobile eye tracking experiment, this information is for you.
Collecting eye tracking data allows us to study where people look, both during natural behaviors and while we present to them on screens. This information helps us with our research in a few ways. First, eye tracking is often used as a control, to be sure we know where our experimental participants are looking, so we know exactly what image is appearing on their retina. Second, eye tracking provides interesting data in its own right – we are interested to find out more about how people move their eyes to explore the visual world to gather information about different objects or scene elements.
Before participating in a mobile eye tracking study in our lab, please read about the risks and benefits in our consent form at the link below. A research team member will review this form with you on the day of your appointment and answer any questions you have, and you will be asked to sign it in their presence to indicate your consent to participate at that time. If you have questions or concerns about the risks described here, please either contact a research team member ahead of time or bring your questions with you to your experimental appointment. Please keep your appointment time once you sign up!
Mobile eye tracking consent form
Neuroimaging (fMRI)
If you have been recruited for or are considering participating in a neuroimaging experiment, this information is for you.
One of the main objectives in our lab is to study how the brain processes visual stimuli under different task conditions. For studies of brain function, we use Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to measure the brain. If you have been recruited for an fMRI study conducted by our lab, please download and read BOTH of forms linked below at your earliest convenience. The first is our consent form for neuroimaging studies. This form provides a description of what to expect in an fMRI session, as well as details about the potential risks and benefits of participating in an fMRI experiment. The second form is a screening form, which will ask you about some medical risk factors which could preclude you having an fMRI scan. We want to be sure that (1) it is safe for you to have an fMRI scan, and (2) that you understand the risks and benefits before you arrive at the MRI scanning facility. This serves two purposes: It assures that you have adequate time to consider your choice (which is entirely voluntary!) to participate, and it allows researchers to plan appropriately for data collection. We note that fMRI experiments are expensive to carry out and must be scheduled well in advance, so we ask that you please communicate with the researchers about any questions or concerns you have as far in advance of the scan date as possible.
A research team member will review both the consent form and the screening form with you either first thing on the day of your appointment or some time before the scheduled day, and will answer any questions you have. (You can ask questions prior to this time too.) You will be asked to sign the consent form in their presence to indicate your consent to participate at that time.
Behavioral (Psychophysics)
If you have been recruited for or are considering participating in a behavioral experiment, this information is for you.
As a part of our research program we often collect purely behavioral data; that is , we measure reaction times, error rates, and sometimes eye movements during different visual tasks. This helps us understand how easy or difficult different tasks based on different visual features are, which informs our neuroimaging work and is often of scientific interest on its own! Participating in these studies is entirely voluntary, and is compensated with SONA credits. Before participating in these studies, please read about the risks and benefits in our consent form at the link below. A research team member will review this form with you on the day of your appointment, and you will be asked to sign it in their presence to indicate your consent to participate at that time. If you have questions or concerns about the risks described here, please either contact a research team member ahead of time or bring your questions with you to your experimental appointment. Please keep your appointment time once you sign up!