We need your consent to proceed
Overview
This research is being conducted by researchers at the Max-Planck-Institute for Empirical Aesthetics. In case of questions you can contact {{contact_email_on_error}}.
The purpose of this online form is to give you information to help you decide whether you want to take part in a research study. This online consent form includes the following information:
- Purpose of the study.
- Why the study is being done.
- The things that you will be asked to do if you are in the study.
- Any known risks involved.
- Any potential benefits.
Purpose
The purpose of this project is to characterize internal representations in audition and vision. Specifically, we would like to understand how predictive mechanisms in perception rely on experience, learning and memory. We hope to use the judgments and interactions made by the experiment participants to infer the mechanisms of the auditory and visual systems. The long-term goals of this project are to understand how humans derive information from sound and vision, and potentially to help engineer machines that can replicate our abilities (e.g. in sound/image recognition and computer vision) and to help improve perceptual abilities in people whose hearing or sight is impaired.
Procedure
If you volunteer to participate in this study, you will be asked to perform simple tasks using your keyboard or mouse while listening to sounds, or while observing images or videos. For example, you may be asked to judge how pleasant a particular sound or an image is, or to categorize sounds or images (e.g., if a sound or an image is that of a car or a cow), or to judge other basic features of sounds or images (e.g., how frequently do you encounter this type of sound or image? how aesthetically pleasing you consider a particular sound or image?). The specific sounds, images, and videos used will vary, but may include: recordings of ambient sounds, noise-bursts, speech, music, simple tones, naturalistic images, animated images, comics, faces, objects, geometric shapes, fractal images, or videos of natural environments. In some cases, you may be asked to make a voice or video recording, for example, you may be asked to record your finger-tapping in response to a sound or video, or to record yourself speaking or singing. If the experiment will contain these elements we will ask for an additional consent, consenting to these additional elements is voluntary.
In some experiments, we may use mild deception, i.e., we may not explain the full truth regarding an experimental task (for example we will not tell you that an image was generated by an artificial computer system and not a human). Mild deception will only be used in some experiments where we need to prevent biasing the participants before taking the experiment. The experiment will take you approximately {{ experiment.estimated_duration_in_minutes|round|int }} minutes to complete.
Voluntary participation
Your participation in this research is voluntary. You are free to refuse to take part, and you may stop taking part at any time. You are free to discontinue participation in this study at any time without penalty. The investigator may withdraw you from this research if circumstances arise which warrant doing so.
Confidentiality
No personal identifiers (e.g. your name or contact data) will be collected or used at any stage of the experiment. Thus, the experimental data is anonymous.
We will also collect some demographic data (e.g. age, gender, country of residence) as well as information about your learning and exposure history (e.g. musical experience playing an instrument, years of formal education, languages spoken).
All of the information we obtain during the research will be kept confidential. We will only save your anonymized Amazon’s Mechanical Turk IDs in our system, in order to distinguish participants who have already taken part on this or other experiments. MTurk worker IDs will not be used to derive your real identity, will not be shared with anyone outside of the research team and will be deleted after use.
We will only share with collaborators demographic, aggregated or extracted data without personal identifiers (not indexed by Amazon’s Mechanical Turk IDs).
The data for this study will be stored in a confidential manner for a duration of 10 years for the purpose of helping scientific replications. Anonymized data could be published in open access data repository accompanying publications of the study.
Security
Data will be stored temporarily on external servers and desktops/laptops that are password protected. The data will be then stored permanently in the institute servers with hard disks encrypted using industry-standard encryption software. No data will be stored permanently on external servers. Theft of an individual laptop/desktop or stolen hard drive will yield no usable personal identifiers. All backup hard drives (Apple Time Machine, etc) will have encryption (FileVault2) enabled. All USB keys used for transporting protected data will be encrypted USB devices.
Risks / discomforts
There are no risks for participating in this study beyond those associated with normal computer use.
Benefits
Although it may not directly benefit you, this study may benefit society by helping us understanding how humans derive information from sound and vision, and potentially to help engineer machines that can replicate our abilities (e.g. in sound recognition and computer vision) and to help improve perceptual abilities in people whose hearing or sight is impaired.
Compensation
If you satisfactorily complete the study, you will receive approximately ${{ "{:.2f}".format(experiment.var.wage_per_hour) }} per hour to compensate you for your participation.
Disclaimer
Although researchers will not use your MTurk ID to derive your real identity, your MTurk ID could be linked to your Amazon public profile page if a data breach takes place. Thus, you may wish to restrict what information you choose to share publicly.
Your rights
You have the right to information regarding the data relating to you that is stored at the Max-Planck-Institute, the right to correct inaccurate data, and the right to demand the deletion of data in cases of inadmissible data storage and the right to data portability. You also have the right to submit an objection to the supervisory authority. For the Max-Planck-Society, this is the Bayerische Landesamt für Datenschutzaufsicht, Postfach 606, 91511 Ansbach, Germany.
Contact information
If you have any questions about this research, do not hesitate to contact {{contact_email_on_error}}. If you have any questions about your rights or treatment as a participant in this research project, please contact (nori.jacoby@ae.mpg.de).
Consent
By consenting to participate, you acknowledge that you are 18 years or older, have read this consent form, agree to its contents, and agree to take part in this research. If you do not wish to consent, please close this page and return the HIT on Mechanical Turk.