About the Timing Research Forum

Timing Research Forum (TRF) is an open aca­d­e­m­ic society for pro­mot­ing mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary research on timing and time per­cep­tion. Estab­lished in 2016 by Sundeep Teki and Argiro Vatakis, the aim of TRF is to bring togeth­er researchers with an inter­est in under­stand­ing time on a single plat­form and encour­age open science and col­lab­o­ra­tion amongst its mem­ber­ship through orga­niz­ing con­fer­ences, and sharing rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and resources.

This blog post was written by three members of the TRF:

Prof Vir­ginie van Wassen­hove, Uni­ver­sité Paris-Saclay

Dr Argiro Vatakis, Pan­teion University

Dr Fuat Balci, Koç University

What did you do using Gorilla and what did you find?

We used Gorilla to create the Blurs­day data­base. The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and asso­ci­at­ed lock­downs trig­gered world­wide changes in the daily rou­tines of human expe­ri­ence. The Blurs­day data­base pro­vides repeat­ed mea­sures of sub­jec­tive time and related process­es from par­tic­i­pants in nine coun­tries tested on 14 ques­tion­naires and 15 behav­iour­al tasks during the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. A total of 2,840 par­tic­i­pants com­plet­ed at least one task, and 439 par­tic­i­pants com­plet­ed all tasks in the first session.

The data­base and all data col­lec­tion tools realised with Gorilla are acces­si­ble to researchers for study­ing the effects of social iso­la­tion on tem­po­ral infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing, time per­spec­tive, deci­sion-making, sleep, metacog­ni­tion, atten­tion, memory, self-per­cep­tion and mind­ful­ness. Blurs­day includes quan­ti­ta­tive sta­tis­tics such as sleep pat­terns, per­son­al­i­ty traits, psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being and lock­down indices.

The data­base pro­vides quan­ti­ta­tive insights on the effects of lock­down (strin­gency and mobil­i­ty) and sub­jec­tive con­fine­ment on time per­cep­tion (dura­tion, passage of time and tem­po­ral dis­tances). Per­ceived iso­la­tion affects time per­cep­tion, and we report an inter-indi­vid­ual central ten­den­cy effect in ret­ro­spec­tive dura­tion estimation.

You can read the pub­lished study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022–01419‑2.

Find the study pro­to­col here: https://osf.io/359qm/.

And find all the tasks and ques­tion­naires on Gorilla Open Mate­ri­als here:

English (https://app.gorilla.sc/openmaterials/278377)

French (https://app.gorilla.sc/openmaterials/27809)

Greek (https://app.gorilla.sc/openmaterials/281196)

Turkish (https://app.gorilla.sc/openmaterials/286114) 

Japan­ese (https://app.gorilla.sc/openmaterials/286482)

 

How did Gorilla make your life or research better, easier or faster?

Easy sharing with col­lab­o­ra­tors, ease of dis­tri­b­u­tion to poten­tial par­tic­i­pants, ease of progress track­ing in terms of par­tic­i­pant recruitment.

 

How did you arrive at the deci­sion to take your research online with Gorilla?

We were looking for an easy way to code and imple­ment very fast numer­ous tasks and ques­tion­naires that col­leagues could easily share and replicate.

Gorilla was avail­able in both GUI and coding inter­faces. It was modular and easy to imple­ment. The clone feature enabled fast sharing. The selec­tive sharing feature enabled proper col­lab­o­ra­tive work.

 

What were your con­cerns about taking your research online?

We had timing con­cerns but this study (https://peerj.com/articles/9414/) was very helpful in doc­u­ment­ing most con­cerns we had.

What is the most excit­ing piece of work or research you’ve ever done?

Vir­ginie: I am very excited about this recent work: Spon­ta­neous α Brain Dynam­ics Track the Episod­ic “When”.

Argiro: A number of exper­i­ments (under review or to be pub­lished) under the EU project https://chronopilot.eu/.

Fuat: The doll house for my daugh­ter and then https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0812709106.

 

What do you believe to be true that you cannot prove (yet)?

Vir­ginie: Free will is real.

Fuat: Free will is unreal!

 

What real-world problem do you see that your research could impact?

Vir­ginie: I would like our next big study to be about how one’s faulty ability to imagine the future alters one’ deci­sion-making in the present.

Fuat: Res­cu­ing symp­toms of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive and neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­ders by fixing the dis­rupt­ed inter­nal clock.

 

What is the biggest advan­tage of online research methods?

Inclu­sion, large-scale col­lab­o­ra­tion, putting lab psy­chol­o­gy to the test.