Mobile telephones have significant potential for use in psychological research, possessing unique characteristics— not least
their ubiquity—that may make them useful tools for psychologists. We examined whether it is possible to measure reaction times
(RTs) accurately using Adobe Flash Lite on mobile phones. We ran simple and choice RT experiments on two widely available
mobile phones, a Nokia 6110 Navigator and a Sony Ericsson W810i, using a wireless application protocol (WAP) connection to
access the Internet from the devices. RTs were compared within subjects with those obtained using a Linux-based millisecond-accurate
measurement system. Results show that measured RTs were significantly longer on mobile devices, and that overall RTs and distribution
of RTs varied across devices.
This research and S.R. were supported by a fellowship from the ESRC Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution (ELSE).
N.S. was supported by ESRC Grants ESRC RES-062-23-0952, ESRC RES-000-22-2459, and ESRC RES-000-23-1372.