How Alena used Prolific to understand cognitive processes through interactivity
Alena is a technology company working in the mental health space that combines evidence-based therapy and cutting edge neuroscience to overcome the various limitations of mainstream therapy.
The task
Alena’s main research goal is to understand and measure the cognitive processes that drive our emotions, behaviors, and responses. Traditionally, investigations into human behavior have relied on people being able to articulate how they feel, what their experiences have been/are, and have a good recollection of distant and near memories. This means that mental health support is more difficult to obtain for people who struggle with cognitive or language barriers.
Alena, therefore, aims to simulate real-life situations and analyze people’s actions, feelings, and reactions as they happen. Through computational neuroscience, Alena can find out why people behave the way they do in a much more accessible way.
The challenge
One of the main challenges with this research was that data had to be robust, along with reliable and stable measurement, to adhere to medical restrictions. Alena runs its own Research & Development, meaning that anonymity, ethics, and most importantly trust, are all essential within their research.
Alena also had to decide where to host their studies. Alongside the plethora of online research facilitators, Alena also had the option to run their research face-to-face within hospitals. Reliable and honest participants were a deciding factor, as they would be critical to the success of the research.
The solution
Alena chose Prolific to facilitate this research based on the quality of its participants. CEO and CoFounder, Mandana Ahmadi noted that although she had used MTurk before, she felt that Prolific participants were a happier and more engaged group, meaning they were more likely to pay attention and interact with research in a more truthful way. In fact, Prolific was voted as the best Cloudwork site for treating participants fairly.
Prolific participants seem to be a very different group of people. They are engaged, I can trust them, it feels like they’re happier! Which is what we look for. [...] These are people who feel respected, protected and cared for.
Alena then went on to run two main types of studies on the Prolific platform. The first was a questionnaire-style survey, used to determine a baseline for their mental health. An example of the second type of study was a game where participants were paired with a stranger and asked to describe a picture to them. The other participant would then have to pick out the picture that was described to them from a lineup.
We play these kinds of games as children. And we behave similarly as adults when we describe things to other people. Alena then uses their statistical analysis of behavior and a computational model of the participants to measure health of the cognitive function, and from there suggest a suitable intervention to help improve it.
The results
Through this research, Alena discovered that they could pick up subtle signals that can suggest a person suffers from social anxiety. This automated treatment assignment is the first of its kind, and is as new to academia as it is to the people who will be using it.
This is only the beginning of Alena’s research into picking up these subtle signals. In fact, they will be releasing a public app in late December/early January. This will include similar kinds of games to further investigate the signs that people could be struggling with their mental health, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
