You are being invited to take part in a research study. Before you decide to participate in this study, it is important that you understand why the research is being done and what it will involve. Please take the time to read the following information carefully. Please ask the researcher if there is anything that is not clear or if you need more information.
This project aims to collect data that can be used to evaluate formal accounts of causal learning, categorization, and language learning and to track how knowledge about these areas is transformed when passed from person to person.
You will be presented with some information (e.g., a written narrative, hypothetical scenarios, or scientific data) and will then be asked to make one or more judgments about that information, or decisions based upon it. In some cases you will be asked to provide explanations or justifications for your responses, typically in the form of a short paragraph. The task will not involve deception or emotionally disturbing materials - just simple questions about categories, causal relationships, and languages.
The task you will perform will be one or more of the following:
Your total expected time commitment for this study is: 12-15 minutes.
There are no direct benefits to you as a participant; however, by furthering our understanding of human cognition, this research will benefit society by helping with the development of automated systems that can better solve problems that are computationally challenging, but that people can solve easily with little formal guidance.
Risks associated with participation in this study are minimal. You may feel slight discomfort answering some questions, but you may refrain from answering any questions that make you uncomfortable and may withdraw your participation at any time even after completing the experiment without penalty.
We will not be asking for any personally identifying information, and we will handle responses as confidentially as possible. Your name, or your Worker IDs will never be tied to your responses on this survey. However, we cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information transmitted over the Internet. To minimize this risk, data containing anything that might be personally identifiable (e.g. Worker IDs) will be encrypted on transfer and storage and will only be accessible to qualified lab personnel. We will be keeping data collected as part of this experiment indefinitely. This anonymized data (containing neither Worker IDs nor IP addresses) may be shared with the scientific community and corporate sponsors.
For your participation, you will receive $2.00, plus a bonus of up to $2.00.
If you are on Mturk and for any reason you do not complete the study (e.g. technical difficulties, or a desire to stop), we will only be able to pay you if you send an email through MTurk, or by emailing the researcher, anonymized, at anonymized.edu. If you have any questions about the study, feel free to contact anonymized or the Principal Investigator, anonymized, at anonymized.edu.
I understand the information that was presented and that:
I hereby give my consent to be the subject of your research.