Decision-making based on limited information is a common occurrence. Whether it is the possibility of a cheaper product elsewhere or the unknown qualifications of election candidates, people are regularly forced to make a decision under ignorance or uncertainty. In such situations, information about certain events is unavailable or too costly to acquire and people rely on subjective probability allocation to guide decision-making processes. This allocation seems to result in what is known as ignorance priors, i.e., decision-makers assigning equal probabilities to each possible outcome within a given set. How events are grouped or partitioned is often subjective and may influence probability judgments and subsequent decisions. In such cases, the way the choices within a choice set are presented may shape the perceived likelihood of different outcomes. Understanding the impact of partitioning on probability estimation is crucial for both psychological and economic theories of judgment and decision-making.

In the current work, Ding and Feldman (2025) conducted a replication study of one of the foundational works on the topic: Fox and Rottenstreich (2003). In the original work, the authors provided exploratory evidence indicating that the framing of a situation affects the way individuals perceive probabilities of possible outcomes. They showed that people assigned uniform probabilities to sets of events described in a problem, such that the way the events are described partly determined people’s partitioning of those events and evaluations of the probabilities of the possible outcomes. Additionally, this partitioned framing affected judgments both under conditions of ignorance (where individuals have no information and rely solely on uniform probability assignments) and uncertainty (where individuals have some information but still rely on heuristics influenced by partitioning). This suggests that priors resulting from the inference of available evidence are sometimes partly contaminated by partitioning bias, affecting both uninformed and partially informed decision-making processes. As a consequence, the partitioning of events into different subsets might lead to varying evaluations of a single situation, resulting in inconsistencies and poorly calibrated probability assessments.

Ding and Feldman (2025) conducted a replication work on Studies 1a, 1b, 3, and 4 from Fox and Rottenstreich (2003). Their close replication relies on original data (US participants, Prolific, N=603) with a large statistical power (>95%). The replication aimed to assess whether the partitioned framing affects prior formation under ignorance (Studies 1a, 1b, and 4) and uncertainty (Study 3). The authors also proposed an extension examining estimations of complementary events contrasting estimations of the probabilities of the events happening versus the probabilities of the events not happening.

Overall, the authors successfully replicated the original study based on their pre-registered evaluation criteria, finding support for partition dependence for most scenarios under scrutiny, yet with weaker effect sizes than the original studies. Out of the eleven Cohen’s h estimated by the replication study, one is consistent with the original study’s estimate (i.e., the original point estimate lies within the confidence interval of the replication), seven go in the same direction but are smaller (i.e., same sign for the estimated effect but the original point estimate is outside the CI of the replication), and two are not statistically different from zero (i.e., the CI of the replication includes zero).  

This Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over one round of in-depth review by two expert reviewers and a second round of review by the recommender. After the revisions, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria and therefore awarded a positive recommendation.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

1. Ding, K. & Feldman, G. (2025). Revisiting Partition Priming in judgment under uncertainty:
Replication and extension Registered Report of Fox and Rottenstreich (2003) [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/xdpkt

 

2. Fox, C. R. & Rottenstreich, Y. (2003). Partition priming in judgment under uncertainty. Psychological Science, 14, 195-200. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.02431

When we familiarise with new faces over repeated exposures, it is generally in situations that have meaning for us. Seeing a face more often tends to go along with learning more about the person, and their likely contexts and actions. In this Registered Report, Noad and Andrews (2024) tested whether meaningful context during exposure improves the consolidation of faces into long-term memory. Participants were shown video clips from the TV series Life on Mars, either in their original chronological sequence, which provides meaningful context, or in a scrambled sequence. It was expected that the original sequence would provide a better conceptual understanding, and this was confirmed by free recall and structured question tests. Face recognition memory was tested with images of the actor from the original clips (‘in show’) and the same actor from another show (‘out-of-show’), to test whether memory was modulated by the similarity of appearance to that at encoding. Face recognition was tested immediately after exposure and after four weeks, to allow time for consolidation. As expected, recognition memory was better for participants in the meaningful context condition, and for in-show faces. However, meaningful context did not lead to less forgetting of the faces at the follow up test, even for in-show faces, which did not support the original predictions. An exploratory analysis found that a metric of overlap between pairs of participants’ conceptual understanding was related to overlap in the set of faces they recognised. This relationship was stronger after four weeks, which suggests increased interaction of conceptual knowledge and face recognition after consolidation.

 

The Stage 2 manuscript was assessed over two rounds of review, and the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria for recommendation.

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/8wp6f
 
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:

 

 

References
 
1. Noad, K. & Andrews, T. J. (2024). The importance of conceptual knowledge when becoming familiar
with faces during naturalistic viewing [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/thgrz

Chronic pain is a major cause of disability that can often poorly managed with pharmacological treatments. This has prompted the exploration of other interventions like resizing illusions of body parts in augmented reality. These illusions have shown promise in conditions like osteoarthritis and complex regional pain syndrome, but it remains unclear how they alter the neural representation of body parts in the brain. The study by Hansford and colleagues aims to investigate these mechanisms in healthy participants, using somatosensory steady state evoked potentials (SSEP) and self-report questionnaires.

 

The study will involve finger stretching in an augmented reality setup that allows the researchers to independently manipulate visual and tactical stimulation. Assuming that multisensory stimulation indeed produces a robust illusion, the researchers will quantify the somatosensory evoked potentials in multisensory, unisensory, and two non-illusion control conditions. The study will provide inights into the neural mechanisms of these illusions and lay the ground for future investigations of these processes as a potential treatment for chronic pain.

 

The manuscript was evaluated over seven rounds of in-depth review by the recommender and three expert reviewers. After substantial revisions, 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/u6gsb
 
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. Hansford, K. J., Baker, D. H., McKenzie, K. J., & Preston, C. E. J. (2023). Somatosensory Response Changes During Illusory Finger Stretching. In principle acceptance of Version 7 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/u6gsb

There are two fundamental processes that the brain engages in: statistical learning and selection. Indeed, past work has shown these processes often come together: People can use a task-irrelevant stimulus to predict a target stimulus even in different modalities (crossmodal statistical learning), thereby enhancing the processing of the target stimulus (selection). Further, people can learn where a distractor will be in order to efficiently suppress it (selecting out), using task irrelevant stimuli in the same modality (within-modality statistical learning).
 
In two experiments Jagini and Sunny found that people did not learn to use a task-irrelevant stimulus from a different modality (cross modal statistical learning) to suppress a distractor (selecting out). They also found that people had little awareness of the relation between the predictor task-irrelevant stimulus and the location of the distractor. The results may reflect limits on what can be achieved unconsciously.

 

Following peer review, 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/qjbmg
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 6. No part of the data or evidence that was used to answer the research question existed prior to Stage 1 in-principle acceptance.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

 

 

1. Jagini, K. K. & Sunny, M. M. (2023). No reliable effect of task-irrelevant cross-modal statistical regularities on distractor suppression. Stage 2 Registered Report, acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/d8wes

Ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights is a global concern, exemplified by goal 5.6 of the Sustainable Development Goals (UN General Assembly, 2015). Whilst the range of contraceptive options have increased, our understanding of the impacts of use for women are inadequate and represent a key barrier to positive change in policies and practices. In particular, we have few consensuses on the expected impacts of hormonal contraceptive use on women's sexuality and wellbeing.

 

In the current programmatic submission, Botzet et al. (2023) argue that this inconclusive evidence base could be due to the wide heterogeneity in responses, the impacts of this heterogeneity upon attrition, differences in contraceptive methods and dosage effects, confounders, and the potential for reverse causality. Tackling some of these potential factors, Botzet (2023) explore whether hormonal contraceptive use influences sexuality and well-being outcomes, and whether (and to what extent) the effects vary between women. To achieve this they have proposed analysis of longitudinal data from the German Family Panel (PAIRFAM) which includes annual waves of data collection from >6500 women, with separate Stage 2 submissions planned to report findings based on sexuality and well-being. The proposed work will progress our understanding of the impact of hormonal contraceptives by overcoming limitations of more common research approaches in this field, and has the potential to contribute to a more contextualised view of the impact of their impacts in real-world practice.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over three 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 3: At least some of the data/evidence that will be used to answer the research question already exists AND is accessible in principle to the authors BUT the authors certify that they have not yet accessed any part of that data/evidence.

 

 

• Collabra: Psychology
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open
  
  

 

Botzet, L. J., Rohrer, J. M., Penke, L. & Arslan, R. C. (2023). Hormonal Contraceptive Use and Women's Sexuality and Well-Being: Estimating Treatment Effects and Their Heterogeneity Based on Longitudinal Data. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/kj3h2

 

UN General Assembly (2015). Transforming our world : the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 21 October 2015, A/RES/70/1. Available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/57b6e3e44.html [accessed 27 September 2023]