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) investigate the critical role of rumination – a perseverative and repetitive focus on negative content leading to emotional distress. In particular, the authors ask 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 proposed study (of up to N=1,638), they will then ask whether the induction of brooding causes a significant increase in conspiracy beliefs. Manipulation checks will be included to confirm intervention fidelity (independently of this hypothesis), and exploratory analyses will test 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.

 

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/y82bs
 
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:
 

• Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Experimental Psychology
• Journal of Cognition
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• 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). Does Brooding Meaningfully Increase the Likelihood of Believing in a Conspiracy? Stage 1 Registered Report, in principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/y82bs

There are a number of broad assumptions about memory which have penetrated societal understanding and mostly reflect supporting academic evidence e.g., that acute stress can compromise memory performance (Shields et al., 2017) and that practicing recalling critical information can help retain that knowledge (Moriera et al., 2019). The evidence base is less consistent when evaluating whether retrieval practice can protect against the negative effects of acute stress on memory, despite it being highly important for educators as to whether this specific strategy for supporting memorisation can be evidenced as especially effective under stressful conditions. A rigorous review of this mixed evidence base could provide the basis for developments in memory theory and research practice, with potential for direct educational applications.

 

Meta-analyses can play a critical role in furthering our understanding of complex cognitive mechanisms where the evidence base includes a wide range of methods, factors and effect size estimates. Furthermore, there is a lack of rigorous meta-analyses that prioritise open and reproducible processes (Topor et al., 2022) which help role-model good practice. In the current Registered Report, Mihaylova et al. (2024) have proposed a rigorous meta-analysis to systematically review and synthesise the evidence on the effects of retrieval practice for memory performance under acute stress. The work looks to be especially valuable for a) informing future research directions through a structured risk of bias evaluation, and b) generating theoretical developments through a range of confirmatory moderators (including stressor types, memory strategies, time of delay and task type). The findings of the planned analyses are expected to be of immediate interest to educational and occupational domains where memory recall is a priority.

 

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/pkrzb
 
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. Mihaylova, M., Kliegel, M, & Rothen, N. (2024). Does retrieval practice protect memory against stress? A meta-analysis. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/pkrzb

 

2. Moreira, B. F. T., Pinto, T. S. S., Starling, D. S. V., & Jaeger, A. (2019). Retrieval practice in classroom settings: A review of applied research. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 4, p. 5). Frontiers Media SA. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2019.00005 

 

3. Shields, G. S., Sazma, M. A., McCullough, A. M., & Yonelinas, A. P. (2017). The effects of acute stress on episodic memory: A meta-analysis and integrative review. Psychological Bulletin, 143, 636–675. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000100 

 

4. Topor, M. K., Pickering, J. S., Mendes, A. B., Bishop, D., Büttner, F., Elsherif, M. M., ... & Westwood, S. (2022). An integrative framework for planning and conducting Non-Intervention, Reproducible, and Open Systematic Reviews (NIRO-SR). Meta-Psychology. https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/8gu5z

Previous research has demonstrated that experimental participants – both adults and infants – can track syllable co-occurrences in an artificial speech stream. This statistical learning (SL) is thought to support word segmentation and to be a core component of language acquisition. There is also some evidence that SL, as measured through artificial language tasks, is related to individual differences in language learning. What is not well understood is the underpinnings of individual differences in SL. In the current study, van der Wulp et al. (2023) will investigate the relationship between auditory SL and musical – specifically rhythmic – abilities. This work takes advantage of recent methodological innovations which allow online assessment of SL via electroencephalography (EEG) measures of neural entrainment. Up to N=105 participants will be recruited (using a well specified optional stopping procedure) and will be exposed to an artificial language using this EEG method to measure their response to the language through the exposure phase. In addition, post-tests will assess participants’ learning of the artificial language using behavioural tasks, as well as their abilities in a battery of tasks measuring rhythmic, musical, and cognitive abilities, and their vocabulary size. Core analyses will investigate whether the neural signature of statistical learning is found at a group level (i.e. replicating previous work) and whether at the individual level this is related to rhythm perception. Bayes factors will be used to assess the extent of evidence for these hypothesized relationships over the null. Exploratory analyses will explore other relationships, including with working memory and vocabulary size. 

 

The topic of individual differences in language learning and is important, but work in this area is often underpowered, and the correlational nature of the research makes it vulnerable to HARKing. In this context, the current RR looks set to make an important contribution. The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review by the recommender and two expert reviewers, and one additional round of review by the recommender, before issuing in-principle acceptance.

 

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:
 

• Advances in Cognitive Psychology
• Brain and Neuroscience Advances
• Collabra: Psychology
• Cortex
• Experimental Psychology
  
• Imaging Neuroscience
• In&Vertebrates
• Journal of Cognition
• NeuroImage: Reports
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Studia Psychologica

 

References
 
1. van der Wulp, I. M., Struiksma, M. E., Batterink, L. J., & Wijnen, F. N. K. (2023). Investigating individual differences in linguistic statistical learning and their relation to rhythmic and cognitive abilities: A speech segmentation experiment with online neural tracking. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/2y6sx

 

The rapid methodological development in digital humanities keeps opening new possibilities to better understand our cultural artifacts and, in the process, also ourselves. Some of the historically most influential works of literary human culture are the plays of Shakespeare, which continue to be read and treasured around the world. Although the social networks of Shakespeare’s plays have attracted scientific attention already more than two decades (Stiller et al. 2003), the understanding of their complexity in terms of character networks remains limited and not fully contextualized in the larger landscape of European drama.

 

In the present registered report, Thurn and colleagues (2024) apply Kolmogorov complexity analysis to investigate the social networks in 37 existing plays of Shakespeare. The authors replicate the original work by Stiller et al. (2003) and situate the findings in a larger regional context by further analyzing over 3,000 plays available in the European Drama Corpus. Ultimately, the authors explore the relationships between (Kolmogorov) complexity and the size of character networks as well as the robustness of their results in relation to possible researcher decisions in the analytic process.

 

This Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over three rounds of in-depth review by four expert reviewers from the research fields of literature, networks, and social analysis. Based on the authors’ careful revisions and responses to the reviewers’ feedback, 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/6uw27
 
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:

 

• Collabra: Psychology
• International Review of Social Psychology
• Peer Community Journal
• PeerJ
• Royal Society Open Science
• Social Psychological Bulletin
• WiderScreen

 

 

1. Stiller, J., Nettle, D. & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2003). The small world of shakespeare’s plays. Human Nature, 14, 397-408. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-003-1013-1

2. Thurn, C., Sebben, S. & Kovacevic, Z. (2024) Using Shakespeare to Answer Psychological Questions: Complexity and Mental Representability of Character Networks. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/6uw27

Video games may provide the option of spending real money in exchange for probabilistically receiving game-relevant rewards; in effect, encouraging potentially young teenagers to gamble. The industry has subscribed to a set of regulatory principles to cover the use of such "loot boxes", including 1) that they will prevent loot box purchasing by under 18s unless parental consent is given; 2) that they will make it initially clear that the game contains loot boxes; and 3) that they will clearly disclose the probabilities of receiving different rewards.

 

Can the industry effectively self regulate? Xiao (2024) will evaluate this important question by investigating the 100 top selling games on the Apple App Store and estimating the percentage compliance to these three regulatory principles at two time points 6 months apart.

 

The Stage 1 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 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.

 

List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 

 
References
 
1. Xiao, L. (2024). Assessing compliance with UK loot box industry self-regulation on the Apple App Store: a 6-month longitudinal study on the implementation process. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/3knyb