Paid loot boxes, i.e. randomised monetization methods that are similar to lottery-type gambling, have become prominent features of contemporary gaming (e.g., Macey & Bujić, 2022). Because the design structures of loot boxes vary and the value of their virtual rewards is not always clear-cut, many countries now struggle how to deal with them legally and in practice (see Drummond et al., 2020). Belgium is one of the few countries that have officially interpreted loot box monetization to widely belong under gambling regulation. Mobile games that monetize with paid loot boxes in Belgium should thus apply for a gambling license, and companies should generally not offer paid loot boxes to local underage players at all.
 
In this Stage 1 Registered Report, Xiao (2022) has constructed a careful plan for testing whether the “ban” in Belgium has made the local mobile game market distinct in terms of paid loot boxes. The work builds on a rapidly accumulating literature and evolving methods (e.g., Xiao et al., 2021). The author will carry out a systematic qualitative investigation of the country’s top 100 (iPhone) mobile games to investigate whether paid loot box design components have indeed been removed from the products -- and if not, whether related game companies operate with a required gambling license. Additionally, Xiao (2022) will assess Belgium’s overall paid loot box prevalence in comparison to other countries and carry out a field experiment to test whether players can easily circumvent the local regulation by transporting or downloading different versions of software.
 
The study will produce valuable evidence regarding the effectiveness of loot box regulation in general, and more specifically, the results should be of utmost interest to Belgian legal authorities. To ensure the transparency and validity of the chosen methods as well as upcoming interpretations, the registered report format allowed the research design to be reviewed in three rounds before data collection. Three experts, representing the fields of law and gaming, reviewed the Stage 1 manuscript twice and agreed upon the acceptance of all details. Finally, the recommender carried out a third iteration with further requested revisions, which was followed by in-principle acceptance. 

 

Unconscious priming effects have fascinated not just psychologists but also ad-makers and consumers alike. A related phenomenon in perception is illustrated by presenting participants with two-tone images, which are degraded versions of images of objects and scenes. These two-tone images look like and are indeed judged as meaningless dark and light patches. Upon presenting the actual template image, however, the two-tone image is accurately recognized. This perceptual learning is abrupt, robust, and long-lasting (Daoudi et al., 2017). Surprisingly, Chang et al. (2016) showed that such perceptual disambiguation of two-tone images can happen even in the absence of conscious awareness of having seen the template image. 

 

Halchin et al. (2023) in the current study propose to conduct a conceptual replication of Chang et al. (2016) with important modifications to the procedures to address limitations with the earlier work. Specifically, there was no explicit manipulation of levels of conscious awareness of the template images in the original study. Therefore, miscategorization of low-confidence awareness as unaware could have led to an erroneous conclusion about unconscious priors guiding perceptual learning. Such miscategorization errors and how to tackle them are of interest to the broader field of consciousness studies. Furthermore, a conceptual replication of Chang et al. (2016) is also timely given that prior related work suggests that masking impairs not only conscious awareness of visual features but also blocks processing of higher-level information about the images (e.g. object category). 

 

To address the issues identified above, Halchin et al. (2023) propose to experimentally manipulate conscious awareness by masking the template image very quickly (i.e., a short stimulus onset asynchrony; SOA) or by allowing some more time to induce weak and strong conscious awareness, respectively. The SOAs were validated through pilot studies. Furthermore, they include a four-point perceptual awareness scale instead of the original yes/no options to gauge participants’ subjective awareness of the template images. The authors also propose multiple experiments to include different ways of testing participants’ objective ability to identify the masked template images. Last but not least, the proposed design includes a stronger control condition than the original study by using masked images created from related images (e.g. belonging to the same semantic category). Depending on the results obtained in the main experiments, the inclusion of this control allows the authors to conduct a third experiment to investigate whether the results in the first two can be explained by semantic priming. The proposed study is sufficiently powered (as demonstrated through simulations), and Bayesian statistical procedures will be used to test the main hypotheses. In summary, the proposed work offers a significant improvement in terms of experimental procedures over the original study. If the Chang et al. (2016) results are replicated, the stronger design in the current study is likely to lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying unconscious priors guiding perceptual learning. On the other hand, a failure to replicate not just Chang et al. (2016)’s results but also effects across the three experiments in the current study would raise legitimate questions about the reality of unconscious information guiding perceptual learning. 

 

The study plan was refined across two rounds of review, with input from two external reviewers who both agreed that the proposed study is well designed, timely, and scientifically valid. The recommender then reviewed the revised manuscript and judged that the study met the Stage 1 criteria for in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/juckg
 
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.
 
List of eligible PCI-RR-friendly journals:

 

• Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Collabra: Psychology
• Cortex
• Journal of Cognition
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research and Practice
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica
• Swiss Psychology Open

 

 

1. Daoudi, L. D., Doerig, A., Parkosadze, K., Kunchulia, M. & Herzog, M. H. (2017). The role of one-shot learning in #TheDress. Journal of Vision, 17, 15-15. https://doi.org/10.1167/17.3.15 

 

2. Chang, R., Baria, A. T., Flounders, M. W., & He, B. J. (2016). Unconsciously elicited perceptual prior. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niw008 

 

3. Halchin, A.-M., Teuful, C. & Bompas, A. (2023). Can one-shot learning be elicited from unconscious information? In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/juckg

According to the sensory recruitment framework, the visual cortex is at least in part responsible for maintaining information about elementary visual features in visual short term memory. Could an early visual area, constantly taking in new information, really be responsible for holding information for up to a second? But conversely, could higher order regions, such as frontal regions, really hold subtle sensory distinctions? It must be done somewhere. Yet the existing evidence is conflicting. Phylactou et al. addressed this question by applying transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to disrupt early visual areas at intervals up to a second after stimulus presentation to determine the effect on visual short term memory performance. In this way, they causally influenced the sensory cortex at relevant times while tightening up on possible confounds in earlier research.

 

They found that TMS applied to the occipital hemisphere at each of 200ms and 1000ms after presentation of a brief visual stimulus disrupted stimuls detection on a visual short term memory test. These findings support sensory recruitment, which claims that both perceptual and memory processes rely on the same neural substrates in the visual cortex.

The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated by two expert reviewers. Based on detailed responses to the reviewers' comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 2 criteria for 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 Stage 1 IPA. 

 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

 

 

1. Phylactou, P., Shimi, A. & Konstantinou, N. (2023). Causal evidence for the role of the sensory visual cortex in visual short-term memory maintenance, acceptance of Version 13 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/64hdx

Language production is associated with a distinct lateralised pattern of brain activation biased toward the left cerebral hemisphere. This also applies to writing. It has also been shown to be modulated by handedness, with less pronounced lateralisation in left-handers. However, in recent decades the use of handwriting has declined significantly while the use of smartphones has exploded. To date, no study has explored whether the same neural correlates of written language production found for handwriting also hold for typing on a smartphone.

 

In the current study, Samsouris et al. (2023) will use functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD) to measure blood flow velocity within cerebral hemispheres to investigate this question. This technique is particularly suited for this purpose because it provides better control for the movement confounds associated with a writing task and the technical challenges of using a smart device than other neuroimaging techniques like fMRI or M/EEG. The authors hypothesise that there will be no difference in left cerebral lateralisation for handwriting and typing on a smartphone. They also expect to replicate previous findings of weaker lateralisation in left-handers in written language production when typing on a smartphone. To isolate the effect of written language production, both these conditions will be corrected for their corresponding motor component using control conditions without a linguistic component.

 

The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over 6 rounds of in-depth review by the recommender and two expert reviewers, before issuing in-principle acceptance.

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/j7egz
 
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. Samsouris, C., Badcock, N. A., Vlachos, F., & Papadatou-Pastou, M. (2023). Cerebral laterality as assessed by functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound in left-and right-handers: A comparison between handwriting and writing using a smartphone. In principle acceptance of Version 7 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/j7egz

COVID-19 has been suspected to have long-lasting effects on cognitive function. The SARS-CoV-2 virus may enter the central nervous system (Frontera et al., 2020; Miners, Kehoe, & Love, 2020), explaining the observed detrimental effects of COVID-19 on verbal planning and reasoning (Hampshire et al., 2021; Wild et al., 2021), executive function (Hadad et al., 2022), and long-term memory (Guo et al., 2022). In particular, Guo et al. (2022) used verbal item recognition and non-verbal associative memory tasks. Weinerova et al. (2024), in the current study, propose to conduct a replication of Guo et al. (2022), but specifically, to disentangle the effect of COVID-19 infection status on both memory type (item vs. associative) and stimulus modality (verbal vs. non-verbal). Furthermore, Weinerova et al. (2024) propose to analyze cognitive function based on vaccination status before infection to provide a critical test of the potential protective effects of vaccination on cognitive function.

Data collection has been completed with 325 participants after exclusion criteria were applied (COVID group N = 232, No COVID group N = 93). Simulations assuming an effect size observed in Guo et al. (2022), a Bayesian t-test comparing the groups, and a Bayes Factor of 6 indicated that N = 320 is sufficient to detect an effect on 79% of simulations. The main analyses will be conducted using a Bayesian ANCOVA that allows for the inclusion of control variables such as age, sex, country, and education level. Both accuracy and reaction times from the item and associative recognition tasks will be analyzed as the dependent variables. In one analysis, vaccination status will be included as a between-subjects factor, to understand whether vaccination status at the time of infection influences subsequent cognitive function. 

It is important to note that participants were recruited through long-COVID Facebook groups and clinics. Therefore, the results must be interpreted carefully to avoid generalizing to all COVID-19 infections. The data are part of a larger longitudinal study, and the current pre-registration applies only to the baseline timepoint for a cross-sectional analysis. The remaining longitudinal data collection is ongoing and is not part of the current pre-registration.  

The study plan was refined after one round of review, with input from three external reviewers who all agreed that the proposed study was well-designed and scientifically valid. The recommender then reviewed the revised manuscript and judged that the study met the Stage 1 criteria for in-principle acceptance (IPA).

 

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/tjs5u (under temporary private embargo)
 
Level of bias control achieved: Level 3. At least some data/evidence that will be used to the answer the research question has been previously accessed by the authors (e.g. downloaded or otherwise received), but the authors certify that they have not yet observed ANY part of the data/evidence.
 
List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:

 

 

 

1. Frontera, J., Mainali, S., Fink, E.L. et al. Global Consortium Study of Neurological Dysfunction in COVID-19 (GCS-NeuroCOVID): Study Design and Rationale. Neurocrit Care 33, 25–34 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12028-020-00995-3

2. Guo, P., Benito Ballesteros, A., Yeung, S. P., Liu, R., Saha, A., Curtis, L., Kaser, M., Haggard, M. P. & Cheke, L. G. (2022). COVCOG 2: Cognitive and Memory Deficits in Long COVID: A Second Publication From the COVID and Cognition Study. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2022.804937  

3. Hadad, R., Khoury, J., Stanger, C., Fisher, T., Schneer, S., Ben-Hayun, R., Possin, K., Valcour, V., Aharon-Peretz, J. & Adir, Y. (2022). Cognitive dysfunction following COVID-19 infection. Journal of NeuroVirology, 28(3), 430–437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13365-022-01079-y  

4. Hampshire, A., Trender, W., Chamberlain, S. R., Jolly, A. E., Grant, J. E., Patrick, F., Mazibuko, N., Williams, S. C., Barnby, J. M., Hellyer, P. & Mehta, M. A. (2021). Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from COVID-19. EClinicalMedicine, 39, 101044. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2021.101044

5. Miners, S., Kehoe, P. G., & Love, S. (2020). Cognitive impact of COVID-19: looking beyond the short term. Alzheimer's research & therapy, 12, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13195-020-00744-w 

 

6. Weinerova, J., Yeung, S., Guo, P., Yau, A., Horne, C., Ghinn, M., Curtis, L., Adlard, F., Bhagat, V., Zhang, S., Kaser, M., Bozic, M., Schluppeck, D., Reid, A., Tibon, R. & Cheke, L. G. (2024). Changes in memory function in adults following SARS-CoV-2 infection: findings from the Covid and Cognition online study. In principle acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/tjs5u

7. Wild, C. J., Norton, L., Menon, D. K., Ripsman, D. A., Swartz, R. H. & Owen, A. M. (2022). Disentangling the cognitive, physical, and mental health sequelae of COVID-19. Cell Reports Medicine, 3, 100750. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100750