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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3549 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 16, 2022

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In the real world, with significant effect sizes" were important qualifiers there - so if it replicates but doorways make you 3% more likely to forget (instead of like 30% as in the study) wouldn't count, and I'm not even sure what to think about video game doorways having similar effects to real world doorways

How would you feel about the following test?

  1. Have some variety of demanding, finicky task you want done on mturk. Probably something like "read a dull passage of marketing copy that is long enough to require scrolling, answer a couple questions about it".

  2. Set the task up such that it is structured in batches of 10.

  3. During the 8th task of 10, once they've scrolled a bit down, have a janky popup that blocks the screen and says "Time for a break! (Staying hydrated by drinking a glass of water|Maintaining your bloodflow by having a good stretch) can help you feel more rested "Feeling tired? {Grabbing a drink of water|Taking a moment to stretch} can help you retain focus." and a 60 second countdown.

  4. When they get back, have a "bug" where they can't scroll back up.

  5. Measure performance on each task in the batch.

A positive result would look like "performance on task 8 was better in the good stretch than the cup of water group, p < 0.02" and also like not finding performance differences on tasks 1 to 7 with p < 0.02 using the same methodology, and would also only be considered positive if the effect size were substantial (1.2x as many mistakes in the water group as in the stretching group, say).

BTW, for your reference I'd estimate probably 2-5% that the above would get a positive result. The doorway research totally smells like the type of research that'll fail to replicate. It just doesn't smell like the type of thing where, if I said "that smells like it won't replicate" 100 times, I would only expect to be wrong one of those times.

(also yeah, after writing that all out it sounds like a lot of work to test, so unless we're talking about a quite large 99:1 bet I actually don't have the attention span for it).

I don't think a significant fraction the mturkers would actually get up and get a glass of water, at a guess. You're sitting down at your desk to do a bunch of mturking, maybe you'll tab out to reddit for 60 seconds, but get water because it's on the screen?

If the 'door effect' was real, and the stretch and water suggestions worked every time, why wouldn't stretching have a similar effect? It's a visceral distraction. lol

and even without said problems, still seems very annoying

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