Comparative research is how evidence is generated to support or refute broad hypotheses (e.g., Pagel 1999). However, the foundations of such research must be solid if one is to arrive at the correct conclusions. Determining the external validity (the generalizability across situations/individuals/populations) of the building blocks of comparative data sets allows one to place appropriate caveats around the robustness of their conclusions (Steckler & McLeroy 2008).

In the current study, Alley and colleagues (2023) tackled the external validity of comparative research that relies on subjects who are either university students or participating in experiments via an online platform. They determined whether data from these two types of subjects have measurement equivalence - whether the same trait is measured in the same way across groups.

Although they use data from studies involved in the Many Labs replication project to evaluate this question, their results are of crucial importance to other comparative researchers whose data are generated from these two sources (students and online crowdsourcing). The authors show that these two types of subjects do not often have measurement equivalence, which is a warning to others to evaluate their experimental design to improve validity. They provide useful recommendations for researchers on how to to implement equivalence testing in their studies, and they facilitate the process by providing well annotated code that is openly available for others to use.

After one round of review and revision, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria and awarded a positive recommendation.

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 2. At least some data/evidence that was used to answer the research question had been accessed and partially observed by the authors prior to Stage 1 IPA, but the authors certify that they had not yet observed the key variables within the data that were used to answer the research question AND they took additional steps to maximise bias control and rigour.

 

 

• Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
• Collabra: Psychology
• F1000Research
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open

 

 

1. Pagel, M. (1999). Inferring the historical patterns of biological evolution. Nature, 401, 877-884. https://doi.org/10.1038/44766

 

2. Steckler, A. & McLeroy, K. R. (2008). The importance of external validity. American Journal of Public Health 98, 9-10. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2007.126847

 

3. Alley L. J., Axt, J., & Flake J. K. (2023). Convenience Samples and Measurement Equivalence in Replication Research [Stage 2 Registered Report] Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports​. https://osf.io/s5t3v

Understanding and mitigating the environmental effects of human expansion is crucial for ensuring long-term biosustainability. Recent research indicates a steep increase in urbanisation – including the expansion of cities – with global urban extent expanding by nearly 10,000 km^2 per year between 1985 and 2015 (Liu et al, 2020). The consequences of these human modified environments on animal life are significant: in order to succeed, species must adapt quickly to environmental changes, and those populations that demonstrate greater behavioural flexibility are likely to cope more effectively. These observations have, in turn, prompted the question of whether enhancing behavioural flexibility in animal species might increase their resilience to human impacts.

 

In the current research, Logan et al. (2022) will use a serial reversal learning paradigm to firstly understand how behavioural flexibility relates to success in avian species that are already successful in human modified environments. The authors will then deploy these flexibility interventions in more vulnerable species to establish whether behavioural training can improve success, as measured by outcomes such as foraging breadth, dispersal dynamics, and survival rate.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was submitted via the programmatic track and will eventually produce three Stage 2 outputs focusing on different species (toutouwai, grackles, and jays). Following two rounds of in-depth review, the recommender 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/346af
 
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. Liu, X., Huang, Y., Xu, X., Li, X., Li, X., Ciais, P., Lin, P., Gong, K., Ziegler, A. D., Chen, A., et al. (2020). High-spatiotemporal-resolution mapping of global urban change from 1985 to 2015. Nature Sustainability, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0521-x

 

2. Logan, C.J., Shaw, R., Lukas, D. & McCune, K.B. (2022). How to succeed in human modified environments, in principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/346af

Subjective tinnitus is a common disorder in which people experience a persistent sound in the absence of any external source. The underlying causes of tinnitus are debated – although the condition is strongly associated with hearing loss resulting from auditory damage, much remains to be understood about the neural processes that give rise to the phantom perception. Various classes of neurophysiological theories have been proposed, including the “altered gain” model – in which neurons in the auditory pathway increase their responsiveness to compensate for reduced auditory input following hearing loss – and the “noise cancellation” model – in which disrupted feedback connections from limbic regions are unable to tune out phantom signals. Although these theories account for much observed data, they have not been conclusively supported, and their ability to explain tinnitus is limited by the fact that hearing loss and tinnitus can arise independently and at different times.

 

In the current study, Reisinger et al. (2024) tested an emerging alternative theory based on a Bayesian predictive-coding framework (Sedley et al., 2016) in which the alteration of perceptual priors leads the auditory system to expect a sound that, if functioning normally, it should not expect. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) in a sample of tinnitus patients (and carefully-matched controls for age, gender, and level of hearing loss), they asked whether tinnitus is associated with anticipatory brain activation, tuned to the carrier-frequency of an expected auditory stimulus. Specifically, the authors predicted that if the predictive-coding framework is correct then individuals with tinnitus should show different regularity-dependent pre-activations of carrier- frequency-specific information compared to the control group, while tone carrier-frequencies should be processed normally in tinnitus patients. They also predicted that any such pre-activations should not be related to levels of reported subjective tinnitus distress, as measured with the short version of the Tinnitus Questionnaire (mini-TQ).

 

The results broadly confirmed the hypotheses, with some caveats. Statistically significant differences in regularity-dependent pre-activations were observed between the tinnitus and control groups, however – curiously – the effects appear to be driven by below-chance decoding in the control group, complicating the interpretration. At the same time, consistent with expectations, frequency processing did not differ significantly between individuals with and without tinnitus, and the observed pre-activations were not significantly related to tinnitus distress. Overall, the findings cautiously support the conclusion that chronic tinnitus is associated with maladaptively upregulated predictive neural processing, and that this phenomenon is unlikely to be explained by either tinnitus distress or hearing loss.

 

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 and awarded a positive recommendation.

 

 

Level of bias control achieved: Level 3. At least some data/evidence that was used to the answer the research question had been previously accessed by the authors (e.g. downloaded or otherwise received), but the authors certify that they had yet observed any part of the data/evidence prior to Stage 1 IPA.

 

 

• Brain and Neuroscience Advances
• Cortex
• F1000Research
• Imaging Neuroscience
• In&Vertebrates
• NeuroImage: Reports
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research and Practice
• Royal Society Open Science

 

 

1. Reisinger, L., Demarchi, G., Rösch, , S., Trinka, E., Obleser, L., & Weisz, N. (2024). Registered Report: Are anticipatory auditory predictions enhanced in tinnitus and independent of hearing loss? [Stage 2] Acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/9wqjh

 

2. Sedley, W., Friston, K. J., Gander, P. E., Kumar, S., & Griffiths, T. D. (2016). An integrative tinnitus model based on sensory precision. Trends in Neurosciences, 39, 799-812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2016.10.004

The world is seemingly awash with conspiracy theories – from well-trodden examples such as fake Moon landings, the 9/11 truth movement, and Holocaust denial, to relative newcomers including COVID as a bioweapon, QAnon, and the belief that the science of climate change has been invented or falsified. While there is a public perception that conspiracy theories are becoming more prevalent, recent evidence suggests that the rate of conspiracism is relatively stable over time (Uscinski et al., 2022). At any point in history, it seems that a certain proportion of people find themselves vulnerable to conspiracy beliefs, but what distinguishes those who do from those who don’t, and what are the causal factors?

 

In the current study, Liekefett et al. (2023) investigated the critical role of rumination – a perseverative and repetitive focus on negative content leading to emotional distress. In particular, the authors asked whether one component of rumination referred to as brooding (dwelling on one’s worries and distressing emotions) has a specific causal role in the formation of conspiracy beliefs. In a series of preliminary experiments, the authors first established a procedure for successfully inducing rumination, identifying various boundary conditions and requirements for a successful design. In the main study (N=1,638 to 2,007 depending on the analysis), they asked whether the induction of brooding causes a significant increase in conspiracy beliefs. Manipulation checks were also included to confirm intervention fidelity (independently of this hypothesis), and exploratory analyses tested the effect of various moderators, as well as the causal role of a complementary manipulation of reflection – a component of rumination in which attention is focused on the issue at hand rather than one’s emotions.

 

As expected by the authors' preliminary work, manipulation checks independently confirmed the effectiveness of the brooding intervention. In answer to the main research question, participants who brooded over the worries and negative emotions associated with an issue were more susceptible to conspiracy beliefs compared to a control group. However, while this effect of brooding was statistically significant, the confidence interval of the effect size estimate overlapped with the authors' proposed smallest effect size of interest (d = 0.20), suggesting that the practical value of the effect remains to be determined.

 

Overall the findings are consistent with a range of psychological theories suggesting that rumination induces negative affect and/or narrows attention to negative information, which in turn may make conspiracy theories seem more probable and render individuals more vulnerable to cognitive bias. The authors note the importance of future work to define the smallest effect of practical significance, analagous to the criteria used to determine the 'minimal clinically important difference’ in medical research.

 

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 and awarded a positive recommendation.

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/y82bs
 
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:
 

• Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Collabra Psychology
• Experimental Psychology
• International Review of Social Psychology
• Journal of Cognition
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open

 

References
 

1. Uscinski, J., Enders, A., Klofstad, C., Seelig, M., Drochon, H., Premaratne, K. & Murthi, M. (2022) Have beliefs in conspiracy theories increased over time? PLOS ONE 17: e0270429. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270429

2. Liekefett, L. Sebben, S. & Becker, J. C. (2023). The Effect of Brooding about Societal Problems on Conspiracy Beliefs: A Registered Report. Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/3e8wc

Mindset theories suggest that the mere belief in the malleability of human abilities can help one to develop related performance. On the other hand, one and the same performance situation can also be experienced in various affective ways, which differently contribute to performance outcomes. One theoretically justifiable premise is that appraising a performance situation as a “threat” instead of “challenge” is associated with maladaptive responses, such as impaired cardiovascular mobilization. If people could experience performance situations as positive challenges, this might also improve performance outcomes. Drawing from these connected premises, the synergistic mindset intervention was developed and tentatively found to help adolescents in stressful situations (Yeager et al., 2022).
 
In the present registered report, Behnke et al. (2024) built on the above to test whether the synergistic mindset intervention can help individuals in competitive gaming situations. The authors utilized one of the leading esport games, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive​, and recruited its active players (N=300) into randomized control and intervention groups. The participants competed in a cash-prize tournament involving measures of affective experience and cardiovascular responses. Behnke et al. (2024) hypothesized the synergistic mindset group (SMI) to show greater challenge affective responses and superior performance outcomes. 
 
Although the SMI produced a number of positive outcomes such as more beneficial stress mindsets, the hypotheses were not corroborated but the results supported a null. This may be related to the observation that participants generally experienced the intervention positively, which, in turn, limits the potential for improving affective and physiological responses. These rigorous null results are informative by directing the SMI research program toward test designs where more participants experience strong negative stress responses. Moreover, the results encourage researchers to reassess the underlying auxiliary hypotheses regarding affective responses and performance outcomes, the relationships of which may be complicated by situational factors that are not yet fully understood.
 
The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review. Three out of the four Stage 1 experts returned to review and, due to the study’s exceptionally high level of transparency, the reviewers had only minor requests for revision. As all the requested revisions were implemented carefully, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria and awarded a positive recommendation.
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/z3adb
 
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.

 

 

• Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Collabra: Psychology
• F1000Research
• Journal of Cognition
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open

 

References
 
1. Behnke M., Lakens D., Petrova K., Chwiłkowska P., Kaczmarek L. D., Jamieson J. P., & Gross J. J. (2024) Applying a Synergistic Mindsets Intervention to an Esports Context. Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports https://osf.io/53z8e

 

2. Yeager D.S., Bryan C.J., Gross J.J., Murray J., Krettek D., Santos P., ... & Jamieson J.P. (2022) A synergistic mindsets intervention protects adolescents from stress. Nature 607, 512–520. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04907-7