Psycholinguistics not boring for once, ayy!

What is jsPsych?

The 'js' in jsPsych stands for JavaScript, so a programming language. jsPsych itself is a framework designed for creating behavioural experiments that can be deployed online. If you want to conduct experiments online, jsPsych is most likely the way to go. Here are some Pros & Cons for using jsPsych that might help you decide if it offers what you need:

Pros

  • There is no need for any proprietary software that might or might not work on your machine to create or run experiments; any code editor can be used or even a plain text editor in a pinch.
  • Created experiments can easily be integrated into any kind of web hosting.
  • There is no graphical user interface; experiments are 'code-only': This makes jsPsych extremely flexible.
  • jsPsych supports many kinds of stimuli (text, image, audio, video) and response types (keyboard, mouse input, voice, eye tracking, mouse tracking)

Cons

  • There is no graphical user interface; experiments are 'code-only': Not as accessible for people without any programming experience.
  • The equipment (computer, headphones, etc.) the participant uses can vary a lot and influence results.
  • Timing (e.g. stimulus duration and reation times) is less accurate than in controlled offline lab experiments with dedicated software. This is relevant for experiments that rely on extremely precise timing; most experiments don't require that much precision. For more information see "The Timing Mega-Study" by Bridges et al., 2020.

Resources

  • The official jsPsych documentation: Includes tutorials, as well as examples for using the official plugins. Make sure to choose the version you want in the header.
  • The jsPsych GitHub: Includes all the documentation and all jsPsych files, like plugins etc.
  • The jsPsych community contributions GitHub: Non-official plugins by community members that are not maintained or extensively tested but offer a variety of different features.
  • The GitLab repo with the files from the INF workshops on jsPsych.

We wish you a lot of fun and good luck! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to write the contact person(s) for jsPsych support (listed on the INF website).