Free Classic Experiments
Demos for Teaching

What we care about

We are psychological researchers and programmers,

  • who care about achieving excellence in research and assessment
  • who want researchers and clinicians to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by the Internet
  • who care about making excellent programs and frameworks for psychological experiments
  • who want to help beginning programmers to develop their own online experiments

We are fanatic about making sure our products run smoothly and our basic frameworks is rock solid.

We keep up with the latest Internet technologies and security threats, because we are fascinated by by the rapid developments. This is a good thing, because now our clients don't have to worry about all of this.

Psychology as a science has been under some distress in the past few years, with hard-to-replicate experiments, cases of outright fraude and other examples of questionable research practices. We aim to stimulate the 'best practice' of doing research. We cannot enforce honesty, but we can stimulate experimenters to take advantage of NeuroTask as a platform for easy sharing of experiments, data, and materials.

We want our contribution to be

  • the best possible online platform for students and researchers to conduct psychological experiments
  • a platform that supports transparent research and fosters exchange of materials
  • a resource for the study of psychology in the form of classic experiments and stimuli
  • free access to diagnostic neuropsychological tests for regions in the world that need this

Our history

1999

In 1999, the good old days of the Internet, Jaap Murre builds the memory.uva.nl website with a memory improvement course in Dutch and English. The course also included interactive memory trainers and tests in JavaScript, which had to run under Internet Explorer 5. A search in Google for 'memory improvement course' still brings this course up as the number one hit.

2001

Our most popular test, the Daily News Memory Test, was taken by over 400 subjects. This test was updated several times per week by the Ph.D. student on this project, Steve Janssen, with questions about Dutch and international news events. The goal was to track the forgetting curve of public events. We were delighted with such a large number of subjects!

2003

The power of online experiments in psychology becomes clear: In December 2003, the international version of the Daily News Memory Test has been taken by over 24,000 subjects. This test would run for about ten years.

2005

More tests have been added. The Galton-Crovitz test is available in five languages.

2007

The by now somewhat outdated homepage welcomes visitors in six languages. A long list of tests is available. Subjects can review their past test scores and take tests they have not yet done yet. Over 100,000 tests have been taken at this point by subjects in a dozen countries, ranging from 11 to 80 years in age.

2012-current

The site has received a facelift with a new design.

2010-2013

In 2010, Jaap Murre founds a new company with the University of Amsterdam: UvA NeuroTest BV. The company focusses on providing online neuropsychological tests for clinicians A range of research portals is built as well. The company is terminated in 2013.

2014

Jaap Murre and Nick Daems found new company: NeuroTask BV, which site you are currently visiting.

NeuroTask founders

Jaap Murre

Jaap Murre headshot

Jaap Murre is Full Professor of Theoretical Neuropsychology at the Psychology Department of the University of Amsterdam. In the Fall of 2015, he became program chair of the Brain and Cognition Group. His research focusses on learning, memory, and the brain, using a variety of techniques: computational modelling, experimentation online and in the lab, and brain imaging. The NeuroTask company combines both his interests in developing experiments online and in improving the best practice of psychological research ... and programming.

Unlike many full professors, Jaap still likes to write his own software. He wrote his first program, a multiple regression in APL, in 1983, in one uninterrupted sitting of eight hours. Much of his work since then has involved computer simulations of neural networks. Since 1999, he has pioneered psychological experimentation online, resulting in dozens of publications based on online experiments in which over 100,000 subjects have participated over the years (see History above).

In 2007-2014, he was chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Psychology Department, promoting standards for best practice in research. With his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam, he is involved in developing a large-scale 'Advanced Neuropsychological Neuropsychological Infrastructure' for neuropsychological diagnosis, which has recently seen a spin-off of which Jaap Murre is CEO (see ANDI Norms). It provides provides high-quality norms, based on healthy controls, to clinicians and researchers.

He was also one of the supervisers of a large-scale study into the effects of online brain training on cognition in elderly healthy subjects and recovering stroke patients, see the TAPASS website (in Dutch only), and co-founder of the SeniorMinds Institute. Another project in which he has been involved recently is the development of the Amsterdam Cognition Scan, an online neuropsychological test battery that can be taken by patients in the unmonitored setting, that is without a neuropsychologist present.

E-mail: jaap@murre.com

Nick Daems

Nick Daems headshot

Nick Daems is an expert programmer and scientist, educated in artificial intelligence, computer science, and cognitive psychology. He also nearly completed a pre-medical degree, but since his true passion is programming, he decided to pursue a career in software development.

E-mail: nick@nikk.nl