Tablet-based Data Collection 1 Using Tablets to Collect Data from Young Children

Mobile, touch-screen devices are increasingly ubiquitous in children’s lives. The extensive use of such devices provides both a challenge and an opportunity for developmental psychologists. While more research is needed to understand the nature and consequences of young children’s interactions with such devices, they nevertheless present an exciting opportunity for data collection. We describe a simple method for creating cross-platform, interactive tablet experiments using open web-based resources. We illustrate this method by collecting data from children 1–5 years old in a simple word-recognition paradigm and show that it yields reliable accuracy and reaction time data; we provide code for this experiment for the use of other researchers. Tablets should be considered as a viable method for collecting low-cost, well-controlled developmental data. Tablet-based Data Collection 3