Preregistration of a forking path – What does it add to the garden of evidence?

Preregistration has many advantages, which have been pointed out in Steve Lindsay’s post yesterday and many other places. The most important advantage is probably that it demonstrates without doubt that the hypotheses and data-analysis path chosen for a study were not chosen in response to the data with an eye towards obtaining the desired results. […]

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Arguments for Preregistering Psychology Research

Richard Shiffrin’s 2018 PNAS article on the nature of scientific progress is beautifully written, erudite, and insightful. I learned a lot from it and agree with most of his arguments. But with the greatest respect I would like to counter Shiffrin’s expressions of doubt regarding the value of preregistering research plans. Those doubts were lightly […]

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Hippopotamus sauce or handcuffs for the Texas sharpshooter: #PSprereg digital event on preregistration

We all want to be free. Freedom of choice is perhaps one of the most foundational principles of western societies, and it can empower lives. As academics, we cherish academic freedom, and academic freedom has been called essential to democracy for very good reasons. However, no matter how enthusiastically we may endorse academic freedom, we […]

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Perfect unison or perfect fourth? Practice makes perfect only with exposure during musical interval training

There are only a handful of things in life that have the ability to cross social, generational, cultural, and economic boundaries. Music is one of them! Whether you are on stage in a symphony hall, a sold-out concert arena, or in the bathroom shower, there is likely a musician in all of us. But what […]

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As easy as Do-Re-Mi: Is there a correlation between musical ability and executive function?

Musical training encompasses a broad range of skills, which likely rely on a similarly large range of cognitive abilities. Consider the act of sight-reading, in which a musician plays from a piece of sheet music they have never seen before. The musician must read the upcoming notes (a feat of translating visual information into a […]

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Freedom of choice vs. undisclosed flexibility: Researcher degrees of freedom in model-based inference

When we talk about statistical modeling, we often encounter the concept of “degrees of freedom.”  Remember?  It’s the n-1 in t[n-1] or the [1] in χ2[1].  In our off-the-shelf statistical procedures, the degrees of freedom refers to the information content of some statistical construct.  It can loosely be thought of as the number of independent […]

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#caninecog: Providing a permanent home for the discussion

During the last 10 days we published a series of posts that discussed the latest research on canine cognition, stimulated by a special issue of the Psychonomic Society’s journal Learning & Behavior. The digital event has now been given a permanent home at this portal, from which you can access all posts. Here is a […]

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From capuchin tantrums to #caninecog: The importance of fairness

Many parents of three- and four-year old children learn very quickly that tantrums can be averted by dividing a cookie into two parts when the child “wants” two cookies or using two cups that are the same size when serving drinks. These tricks mediate the sense of equity or “fairness” that even young humans feel […]

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#caninecog: Loyal to a fault–when obeying deceptive commands may be adaptive

Dogs’ undeniable loyalty to humans has allowed them to carve out a unique niche in our society, quite unlike the status of any other species. Once predominantly utilized as hunting companions and guardians, dogs are now ubiquitous in human life, offering faithful companionship and service. Thanks to their eagerness to cooperate with humans and unquestioning […]

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