Vocal sounds, including both speech and non-speech sounds, have been found to activate the Superior Temporal Sulci and Gyri in comparison to non-vocal sounds. These regions, termed Temporal Voice Areas (TVAs), are considered to be involved in early voice processing and therefore critical for social interaction. TVA activation has been examined in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to determine if the characteristic difficulties in social communication and interaction are linked to an impaired early voice processing. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), one study found typical brain activation in TVAs for 15 out of 16 autistic participants (Schelinski et al., 2016), whereas another found atypical activation in 4 out of 5 autistic participants (Gervais et al., 2004).

 

Here, the inconsistencies in the previous literature propel Gautier et al. (2023) to examine brain activation of TVAs with a larger sample size (26 ASD and 26 non-ASD participants). Gautier et al. (2023) will present vocal sounds and non-vocal sounds to both groups of participants during fMRI and predict that fewer participants in the ASD group will show a preferential response to voices in TVAs compared to the non-ASD group. These results would suggest that symptoms of ASD interfere with early stages of social interaction, at the level of voice processing.

 

This Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated in an initial round by the co-recommenders and another two rounds of in-depth review by two expert reviewers. With these revisions, the recommenders judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/538m4
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

 

References
 
1. Gautier, R., Houy-Durand, E., Barantin, L., Briend, F. & Latinus, M. (2023). Cortical voice processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/538m4

An interviewee in an intelligence interview can face competing interests in disclosing information: The value in cooperating because, for example, information given leads to the arrest of a narcotics gang, making the neighbourhood safer; and the risk that disclosing the information leads to reprisals from the gang. Different pieces of information will compete with each other for disclosure, depending on this balance of risks to self-interest. According to the disclosure-outcomes management model of Neequaye et al., information will be disclosed more with a high than low probability of reward, as might be straightforwardly expected, but this difference will be larger when there is a low probability of cost rather than a high probability. The high probability of cost will induce more a variable response to the possible benefits.

Neequaye et al. (2024) invited participants to assume the role of an informant, with the goal of maximizing their points according to stated probabilities of costs and benefits of disclosing pieces of information relating to given scenarios. The degree to which each type of information was disclosed in a subsequent interview wase assessed. Perceived benefits positively influenced the likelihood of disclosing information. The crucial interaction, obtained in a Pilot study, was not significant in the pre-registered replication. The study had decent power to pick up an interaction the same size as found in the pilot, but not half the size, which would still have been interesting.

 

The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria.

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that was used to answer the research question was generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

 

 

Neequaye, D. A., Luke, T. J., & Kollback, K. (2024). Managing Disclosure Outcomes in Intelligence Interviews [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 11 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tfp2c

It is increasingly recognised that resolving the climate crisis will require not only the reform of law and government policy but collective grassroots action to change individual behaviour and put public pressure on political leaders, companies and institutions to cut emissions. The capacity, however, for individual citizens to take such steps is limited by lack of knowledge/awareness of means and opportunities as well as psychological barriers that can make such actions seem impossible, fruitless or against the person's immediate self-interest. Interventions designed to overcome these obstacles and promote individual behaviour change have met with only limited success, with many based on weak psychological evidence and the outcome measures used to evaluate their success prone to error and bias.

 

In the current submission, Castiglione et al. (2024) propose a series of five studies to test, evaluate, and optimise a longitudinal intervention for engaging young adults (aged 18-35) in individual and collective climate action. Building on existing theory and evidence, the authors have designed an intensive 6-week educational intervention that draws on 12 psychological factors linked to pro-environmental behaviour, including emotional engagement, self-efficacy, collective efficacy, theory of change, cognitive alternatives, perceived behavioral control, implementation intentions, social norms, self-identity, collective identity, appraisal, and faith in institutions. Through the use of ecological momentary assessment (EMA), they plan to measure these targeted psychological correlates as well as individual and collective climate engagement of participants before and after the intervention (and in active groups vs. controls), and then again after a further three months.

 

The current submission is novel in being the first at PCI RR (and possibly the first RR anywhere) to propose an incremental programmatic workflow that combines two innovations: a single Stage 1 protocol leading to multiple Stage 2 outputs (under the PCI RR programmatic track) and a prespecification in which the design of the intervention in later studies is (for now) determined only broadly, with specific parameters to be shaped by the results of the first set of studies (under the PCI RR incremental registrations policy). This particular Stage 1 manuscript specifies the design of study 1 in two samples (high-school and university students in Italy; producing one Stage 2 output for each sample) and the general design of subsequent studies. The details of this later research in study 2 (in the same two populations) and study 3 (university students in the Netherlands) will be developed sequentially based on the results of the previous Stage 2 outputs and the state of the literature at that time.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA). Following the completion of study 1, the authors will submit an updated Stage 1 manuscript for re-evaluation that updates the plans for later studies accordingly, hence the current recommendation is labelled "Part 1".

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/zh3w9 (under temporary private embargo)
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

 

 

Castiglione, A., Brick, C., Esposito, G., & Bizzego, A. (2024). A climate action intervention to boost individual and collective climate mitigation behaviors in young adults. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/zh3w9

For centuries, the ubiquity of language and music across human societies has prompted scholars to speculate about their cross-cultural origins as well as their shared and unique characteristics. Depending on the extent to which contemporary theories emphasise the role of biology vs. culture, a range of hypotheses have been proposed concerning expected similarities and differences in song and speech. One class of hypotheses stemming from cultural relativism assumes a lack of universal regularities in song and speech, and therefore predicts no systematic cross-cultural relationships. On the other hand, more recent evolutionary hypotheses such as the social bonding hypothesis, motor constraint hypothesis, and sexual selection hypothesis all predict differences or similarities in specific characteristic of vocalisations, such as pitch regularity, pitch interval size, and melodic contour. Existing results are mixed in their support of these predictions.

 

In the current study, Ozaki et al. (2022) embark on an ambitious project to elucidate cross-cultural similarities and differences between speech and song in 81 different linguistic varieties spanning 23 language families. Understanding precisely how song and speech are related is methodologically challenging due to the multitude of confounds that can arise in comparing natural recordings. Here the authors overcome these difficulties with four types of carefully controlled recordings: singing, recitation of sung lyrics, spoken description of the song, and instrumental version of the sung melody. The authors will then examine six features that are amenable to reliable comparison, including pitch height, temporal rate, pitch stability, timbral brightness, pitch interval size, and pitch declination. With this data in hand, the authors will ask which acoustic features differ reliably between song and speech across cultures, with the expectation that song will exhibit higher pitch, slower rate and more stable pitch than speech. At the same time, the authors expect song and speech to be reliably similar in the characteristics of timbral brightness, pitch intervals and pitch contours. In addition to these confirmatory tests, the authors will explore variation across a range of additional stimulus characteristics and ancillary research questions.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 2. At least some data/evidence that will be used to answer the research question has been accessed and partially observed by the authors, but the authors certify that they have not yet observed the key variables within the data that will be used to answer the research question AND they have taken additional steps to maximise bias control and rigour.

 

 

 

1. Ozaki, Y., Savage P. E. et al. (2022). Similarities and differences in a global sample of song and speech recordings, in principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/jdhtz

Social media is a popular tool for online discussion and debate, bringing with it various forms of hostile interactions –  from offensive remarks and insults, to harassment and threats of physical violence. The nature of such online toxicity has been well studied, but much remains to be understood regarding strategies to reduce it. Existing theory and evidence suggests that a range of responses – including those that emphasise prosociality and empathy – might be effective at mitigating online toxicity. But do such strategies work in practice?

 

In the current study, Young Reusser et al (2023) propose an experiment to test the effectiveness of three types of responses to online toxicity – Benevolent Correction (including disagreement), Benevolent Going Along (including joking/agreement), or Retaliation (additional toxicity) – on how able participants feel to contribute to conversations, their belief that the toxicity would be reduced by the intervention, and their belief that justice had been restored. The findings promise to shed light on approaches for improving the health of online discourse.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/hfjnb (under temporary private embargo)

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that will be used to answer the research question yet exists and no part will be generated until after IPA. 

 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

 

1. Young Reusser, A. I., Veit, K. M., Gassin, E. A., & Case, J. P. (2023). Responding to Online Toxicity: Which Strategies Make Others Feel Freer to Contribute, Believe That Toxicity Will Decrease, and Believe that Justice Has Been Restored? In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/hfjnb