The offline lab will be located in Trier. It will be equipped with the latest eye-tracking technology.
The offer will be available to the psychological profession for data collection. "An important and further step towards Open Science," says Mueller. "Researchers will be given the opportunity to preregister research questions and methods of their studies with us and then have data collected free of charge in our lab. The data will be archived in PsychArchives and made available to the scientific community, depending on the licensing model selected."
A ZPID survey among members of the German Psychological Society (DGPs) showed that there is a need for such a lab in all areas of psychology and therefore a broad spectrum of research topics can be expected.
"I was appealed by the mixture of service and technology"
Mueller says about her new job at ZPID: "I was particularly appealed by the mixture of service and technology. Besides data analysis, planning experiments and getting them to run has always been my favourite part in my own research projects. Due to my focus in somatosensory research in connection with the methods eye tracking and fMRI, I often had to come up with creative solutions for experimental setups." Now she is very excited to see which research questions from the different fields of psychology will be addressed at ZPID.
Mueller previously worked as a postdoc fellow at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen in the Department of General Psychology. She also received her doctorate there in 2014. Her research focuses on reference systems of somatosensory target stimuli and neuronal processing of haptic features.
"Dr. Mueller is a proven expert in exactly those areas that we need at ZPID to set up and operate PsychLab. I am very much looking forward to the cooperation and the new data collection services that Dr. Mueller will develop for our users", says ZPID Director Prof. Michael Bosnjak.
The aim of ZPID is to cover the entire empirical research cycle and to offer research-based infrastructure services for psychology and related disciplines for each phase: information services, study planning, data collection and data analysis services - including PsychLab - as well as archiving and publication services.