I have been programming a response time task which is typically done using the mouse because people claim it’s more precise. This task only requires a response, you wouldn’t be dragging the cursor on the screen.
Is that the case with Pavlovia? Should I use the mouse instead of using the spacebar?
Do you find that participants tend to have mouses available or do they revert to using the pad which is said to be less precise?
Thank you!
Offline, PsychoPy (currently) gives much better timing via the keyboard than the mouse, at least if you use the Keyboard class rather than the older event module:
https://www.psychopy.org/api/iohub/device/keyboard.html
Online, you might be best sticking with the keyboard: people using either mice or trackpads is just another source of variability you probably want to avoid (I suspect there is a lot more processing at the operating system level to detect track pad clicks compared to mouse buttons, as clicks have to be differentiated from a lot of other ambiguous responses).
Some consideration of timing measures (using keyboards, online and offline) is given in our preprint here:
Thank you so much for this! What you said is very much in line with my thoughts: I would be introducing potential differences in response times just because someone is using the pad instead of the mouse. I will read the sources you suggested!