Online testing can make assessing cognitive constructs like executive functions (EFs) more accessible and reduce barriers to coming into a lab, research, or clinic setting. It can also make it easier to administer tasks to collect the massive sample sizes needed for biobank initiatives.
However, in-lab and online EF tasks can differ because participants may complete online tasks in various contexts. So, it is unclear how closely EFs assessed in-lab and online are related.
We used our unique twin sample with both in-lab and online EF tasks to examine how latent variables of EFs assessed in-lab and online are related at phenotypic, environmental, and genetic levels.
The In-lab Common and Online Common EF factors were perfectly genetically correlated but phenotypically separable. So, these EF factors have the same genetic underpinnings but may be differentially influenced by environmental factors. We also found similar relationships between In-lab Common EF, Online Common EF, and an in-lab g factor across phenotypic, genetic, and environmental levels.
These findings indicate that online task-based EF assessments could be a viable strategy when coming into a lab or clinic isn’t accessible and for increasing EF task sample sizes in large-scale studies, which could be crucial to fields like digital therapeutics, health tech, and large-scale data collection initiatives like biobanks.
Sam Freis 