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IdTitle * Authors * Abstract * PictureThematic fields * RecommenderReviewersSubmission date
28 Jan 2025
STAGE 1

See me, judge me, pay me: Gendered effort moralization in work and care

A gender difference in effort moralization?

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Jared Celniker and Vincent Kouassi
Effort moralization is the well known idea that, unrelated to actual performance, people doing more effort are judged better, attributed more morality and seen as better collaborators than people doing less effort. However, the series of studies on this topic mostly used vignettes with a man or a neutral protagonist. The current study by Roth et al. (2025) proposes to tackle the gender problem by testing the difference in attribution morality between a man and a woman protagonist, and two contexts: a “care” and a “work” context, mirroring the stereotypes associated with men and women.
 
The authors included two different and adequate power analyses, various interpretation of the possible effects, and filtering to ensure a high quality of data collection. They also provide a supplementary repository including the qualtrics survey, R script, and simulated data.
 
The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review. Based on ​detailed responses to the reviewers’ and the recommender’s comments, the recommender judged that the manuscript met the Stage 1 criteria and therefore awarded in-principle acceptance.​​​
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/xd87r
 
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
 
Roth, L. H. O., Tissot, T. T., Fischer, T. & Masak, S. C. (2025). See me, judge me, pay me: Gendered effort moralization in work and care. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/xd87r
See me, judge me, pay me: Gendered effort moralization in work and careLeopold H. O. Roth, Tassilo T. Tissot, Thea Fischer, S. Charlotte Masak<p>The display of high effort at work is commonly rewarded with more positive moral judgements and increased cooperation partner attractiveness. This effect was shown to hold, even if higher effort is unrelated to better performance. Yet, current ...Social sciencesAdrien Fillon2024-09-09 15:12:30 View
20 Dec 2024
STAGE 1

Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability

Does ideological malleability moderate the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice?

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Sauro Civitillo and Pete Harris
Self-affirmation may be an effective tool to reduce prejudice and discrimination against minority groups. Its hypothesised mechanism is that prejudice is a defensive act that can be reduced by reinforcing a positive image of the self. Such a reinforced self-image is meant to weaken perceived threat to one’s social identity that may be posed by minority groups, such as Muslims in majority Christian countries.
 
To address mixed evidence for the effectiveness of self-affirmation across the literature, Alnajjar et al. (2024) aim to elucidate conditions under which self-affirmation may reduce prejudice and discrimination. Whether self-affirmation has the desired effect may be moderated by an individual’s internal representation of secularism. That is, as a reaction to self-affirmation, people may flexibly endorse their feelings towards secularism to either reduce prejudice, or maintain and justify it.
 
The authors present a study design (including a three-way mixed ANOVA) in which they plan to self-affirm French participants (N=600) with differing internal representations of secularism. Across three self-affirmation conditions (i.e., self-affirmation on a threat-related value, a threat-unrelated value, and no self-affirmation), the authors will assess the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice towards Muslims. They will also assess their participants’ attitudes towards Christians and Muslims, to distinguish whether prejudice is specifically targeted against Muslims, rather than religious groups in general. In addition, the study setup considers desirability concerns and it employs multiple manipulation checks to increase robustness of results.
 
With this proposed plan, the manuscript presents a persuasive rationale that it taps into the wider concept of ‘ideological malleability’ that could be the underlying mechanism to explain a moderating effect of secularism on the effectiveness of self-affirmation in this French sample. By considering nuances of public opinion towards secularism in France specifically, the authors have identified a unique opportunity to investigate ideological malleability, which can be challenging to conceive and directly measure.
 
The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated by two experts who performed in-depth peer review across multiple rounds of revisions. The authors were very responsive in editing their manuscript based on the reviewers’ comments and dedicated much effort to increasing clarity and interpretability of their power analyses. Consequently, the revised manuscript was judged to meet the Stage 1 criteria and was awarded in-principle acceptance (IPA).
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/f4wm6
 
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. Alnajjar, Y., Badea, C., & Sternberg, B. (2024). Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability. In principle acceptance of Version 4 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/f4wm6
 
Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological MalleabilityYara Alnajjar, Constantina Badea and Béatrice Sternberg<p><em>[IMPORTANT: Abstract, method, and results were written in past tense, to simulate what these sections will look like after data collection, but no pre-registration or data collection took place yet.]</em></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Self-affirma...Social sciencesAnna Elisabeth Fürtjes2023-09-15 15:39:55 View
20 Dec 2024
STAGE 2
(Go to stage 1)

Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability

Does ideological malleability moderate the effect of self-affirmation on prejudice?

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Zoltan Dienes and Pete Harris
Self-affirmation may be an effective tool to reduce prejudice and discrimination against minority groups. Its hypothesised mechanism is that prejudice is a defensive act that can be reduced by reinforcing a positive imagine of the self. Such a reinforced self-image is meant to weaken perceived threat to one’s social identity that may be posed by minority groups, such as Muslims in majority Christian countries.
 
To address mixed evidence for the effectiveness of self-affirmation across the literature, this Registered Report (RR) was designed to elucidate conditions under which self-affirmation may reduce prejudice and discrimination. Whether self-affirmation has the desired effect may be moderated by an individual’s internal representation of secularism. That is, as a reaction to self-affirmation, people may flexibly endorse their feelings towards secularism (‘ideological malleability’) to either reduce prejudice, or maintain and justify it. This study is the first to consider whether this effect depends on a participant’s attitude that French citizens should be able to practice their religion in public places (‘historical’ secularism), or that they should hide it in public (‘new’ secularism).
 
Alnajjar et al. present a study design (i.e., three-way mixed ANOVA) in which they self-affirmed French participants (N=602) with differing internal representations of secularism. Study results demonstrated that a historical representation of secularism is associated with less effective and behavioural prejudice towards religious groups compared to a new representation of secularism. Participants’ prejudiced attitudes were larger against Muslims than against Christians. It was unexpected that new secularism was linked to negative attitudes towards religious minority groups given that the French government mandated by law that religion should not be practiced in public. Across three self-affirmation conditions (i.e., self-affirmation on a threat-related value, a threat-unrelated value, and no self-affirmation), the authors found no evidence that self-affirmation affected prejudice against religious groups, and there was no evidence that the effectiveness of self-affirmation depended on a participants representation of secularism, which contradicted their pre-registered hypotheses. This paper adds conclusive and sufficiently-powered results to a body of literature with mixed evidence for the effectiveness of self-affirmation.
 
It increased the robustness of this study that the design considered desirability concerns and employed multiple manipulation checks. By considering nuances of public opinion towards secularism in France specifically, the authors identified a unique opportunity to investigate ideological malleability, which can be challenging to conceive and directly measure. 
 
The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated by two experts who performed in-depth peer review across one round of revisions. There were no substantial changes to the introduction or the methods, the analyses were conducted as planned and additional analyses were labelled as exploratory. The revised manuscript was judged to meet the Stage 2 criteria and was awarded a positive recommendation. 
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/f4wm6
 
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. Alnajjar, Y., Badea, C., & Sternberg, B. (2024). Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological Malleability [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/st47h
 
Self-Affirmation and Prejudice Against Religious Groups: The Role of Ideological MalleabilityYara Alnajjar, Constantina Badea and Béatrice Sternberg<p>Self-affirmation has shown mixed findings when used as a prejudice reduction technique, sometimes diminishing prejudice while sometimes increasing it or having no significant effect. In a Registered Report experiment with a French representativ...Social sciencesAnna Elisabeth Fürtjes2024-07-30 11:57:10 View
04 Dec 2023
STAGE 1

Self-Control beyond inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS)

Strategies for self control: German translation and evaluation of the Self Control Strategy Scale

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Eleanor Miles, Kaitlyn Werner and Sebastian Bürgler
Self-control has shown to be a trait related to beneficial outcomes, including health, academic achievement and relationship quality. It is mostly understood as the ability to surpress immediate urges in order to achieve long-term goals, such as not watching another episode and therefore reaching a healthy amount of sleep. An emerging perspective on self-control shows that there is broader variety in applied strategies, such as removing oneself from a tempting situation, or reminding oneself of one's long-term goal, or reinterpreting the temptation.
 
Katzir et al. (2021) developed a novel instrument, the Self-Control Strategy Scale, that measured the tendency to engage in eight such strategies. In the current study, Roth et al. (2023) propose to translate the scale into German and assess its psychometric properties. Further, they will determine which strategies are related to particular outcomes that may be beneficial; for example, amount of physical activity engaged in, how healthy the diet is, exam performance and life satisfaction.
 
The Stage 1 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review by the recommender and at least two expert reviewers, before issuing in-principle acceptance.
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/s7qwk
 
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. Katzir, M., Baldwin, M., Werner, K. M., & Hofmann, W. (2021). Moving beyond inhibition: Capturing a broader scope of the self-control construct with the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS). Journal of Personality Assessment, 103, 762-776. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2021.1883627
 
2. Roth, L. H. O., Jankowski, J., Clay, G., Meindl, D., Vogt, L.-M., Wagner, V., Nordmann, A., Stenzel, L., Freiman, O., Mlynski, C., & Job, V. (2023). Self-Control beyond inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS). In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/s7qwk

Self-Control beyond inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS)Leopold H. O. Roth1, Julia Jankowski1, Georgia Clay1, Dominik Meindl1, Lisa-Marie Vogt1, Victoria Wagner1, Artemis Nordmann1, Loana Stenzel1, Olga Freiman1, Christopher Mlynski1, Veronika Job1; 1University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria<p>Self-control is crucial for goal attainment and related to several beneficial outcomes, such as health and education. For a long time, it was predominantly understood in terms of inhibition, namely the ability to suppress immediate urges for th...Social sciencesZoltan Dienes2023-07-13 13:46:30 View
14 Sep 2024
STAGE 2
(Go to stage 1)

Self-Control Beyond Inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS)

Strategies for self control: German translation and evaluation of the Self Control Strategy Scale

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Eleanor Miles, Kaitlyn Werner and Sebastian Bürgler
Self-control has shown to be a trait related to beneficial outcomes, including health, academic achievement and relationship quality. It is mostly understood as the ability to suppress immediate urges in order to achieve long-term goals, such as not watching another episode and therefore reaching a healthy amount of sleep. An emerging perspective on self-control shows that there is broader variety in applied strategies, such as removing oneself from a tempting situation, or reminding oneself of one's long-term goal, or reinterpreting the temptation.
 
Katzir et al. (2021) developed a novel instrument, the Self-Control Strategy Scale, that measured the tendency to engage in eight such strategies. In the current study, Roth et al. (2024) translated the scale into German and assessed its psychometric properties: internal consistency and retest reliability were sufficient for six or seven of the eight subscales. Further, different strategies (subscales) were related to particular outcomes; at least one strategy was related to each outcome for 20 out of 23 outcomes in health behavior, school/work achievement, life satisfaction, interpersonal functioning and pro-environmental behavior (though the particular pattern of similarities and differences would need confirming). Thus, the SCSS is a valid and reliable measure that can now be used in German.
 
The Stage 2 manuscript was evaluated over two rounds of in-depth review by the recommender and at least two expert reviewers. Following revision, 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/s7qwk
 
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. Katzir, M., Baldwin, M., Werner, K. M., and Hofmann, W. (2021). Moving beyond inhibition: Capturing a broader scope of the self-control construct with the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS). Journal of Personality Assessment, 103, 762-776. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2021.1883627
 
2. Roth, L. H. O., Jankowski, J., Meindl, D., Clay, G., Mlynski, C., Freiman, O., Nordmann, A., Stenzel, L., and Wagner, V. (2024). Self-Control beyond inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS) [Stage 2]. Acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gpmnv

Self-Control Beyond Inhibition. German Translation and Quality Assessment of the Self-Control Strategy Scale (SCSS)Leopold H. O. Roth, Julia M. Jankowski, Dominik Meindl, Georgia Clay, Christopher Mlynski, Olga Freiman, Artemis L. Nordmann, Loana-Corine Stenzel, Victoria Wagner<p>Self-control is crucial for goal attainment and related to several beneficial outcomes, such as health and education. For a long time, it was predominantly understood in terms of inhibition, namely the ability to suppress immediate urges for th...Social sciencesZoltan Dienes Sebastian Bürgler, Eleanor Miles, Kaitlyn Werner2024-06-28 11:50:25 View
24 Sep 2023
STAGE 1

Sensorimotor Effects in Surprise Word Memory – a Registered Report

Evaluating adaptive and attentional accounts of sensorimotor effects in word recognition memory

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Gordon Feld and Adam Osth
Words have served as stimuli in memory experiments for over a century. What makes some words stand out in memory compared to others? One plausible answer is that semantically rich words are more distinctive and therefore exhibit a mirror effect in recognition memory experiments where they are likely to be correctly endorsed and also less likely to be confused with other words (Glanzer & Adams, 1985). Semantic richness can arise due to extensive prior experience with the word in multiple contexts but can also arise due to sensorimotor grounding, i.e., direct perceptual and action-based experience with the concepts represented by the words (e.g. pillow, cuddle). However, previous experiments have revealed inconsistent recognition memory performance patterns for words based on different types of sensorimotor grounding (Dymarska et al., 2023). Most surprisingly, body-related words such as cuddle and fitness exhibited greater false alarm rates. 

In the current study, Dymarska and Connell (2023) propose to test two competing theories that can explain the increased confusability of body-related words: 1) the adaptive account - contextual elaboration-based strategies activate other concepts related to body and survival, increasing confusability; and 2) the attentional account - somatic attentional mechanisms automatically induce similar tactile and interoceptive experiences upon seeing body-related words leading to less distinctive memory traces. The adaptive account leads to different predictions under intentional and incidental memory conditions. Specifically, contextual elaboration strategies are unlikely to be employed when participants do not expect a memory test and therefore in an incidental memory task, body-related words should not lead to inflated false alarm rates (see Hintzman (2011) for a discussion on incidental memory tasks and the importance of how material is processed during memory tasks). However, the attentional account is not dependent on the task instructions or the knowledge about an upcoming memory test. 

Here, Dymarska and Connell (2023) have designed an incidental recognition memory experiment with over 5000 words, disguised as a lexical decision task using carefully matched pseudowords during the encoding phase. The sample size will be determined by using a sequential hypothesis testing plan with Bayes Factors. To test the predictions of the adaptive and attentional accounts, the authors derive a set of lexical and sensorimotor variables (including a body-component) after dimensionality reduction of a comprehensive set of lexical and semantic word features. The analysis will involve running both Bayesian and frequentist hierarchical linear regression to explain four different measures of recognition memory performance based on the key sensorimotor variables and other baseline/confounding variables. While this analysis plan enables a comparison with the earlier results from an expected memory test (Dymarska et al., 2023), the current study is self-contained in that it is possible to distinguish the adaptive and attentional accounts based on the effect of body component scores on hit rate and false alarm rate.

The study plan was refined across two rounds of review, with input from two external reviewers after which the recommender judged that the study satisfied the Stage 1 criteria for in-principle acceptance (IPA).
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/ck5bg
 
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
 
Dymarska, A. & Connell, L. (2023). Sensorimotor Effects in Surprise Word Memory – a Registered Report. In principle acceptance of Version 3 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://osf.io/ck5bg

Dymarska, A., Connell, L. & Banks, B. (2023). More is Not Necessarily Better: How Different Aspects of Sensorimotor Experience Affect Recognition Memory for Words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Language, Memory, Cognition. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001265 

Glanzer, M., & Adams, J. K. (1985). The mirror effect in recognition memory. Memory & cognition, 13, 8-20.

Hintzman, D. L. (2011). Research strategy in the study of memory: Fads, fallacies, and the search for the “coordinates of truth”. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(3), 253-271.
Sensorimotor Effects in Surprise Word Memory – a Registered ReportAgata Dymarska, Louise Connell<p>Sensorimotor grounding of semantic information elicits inconsistent effects on word memory, depending on which type of experience is involved, with some aspects of sensorimotor information facilitating memory performance while others inhibit it...Social sciencesVishnu Sreekumar2023-01-31 15:21:17 View
28 Dec 2021
STAGE 1
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Sight vs. sound in the judgment of music performance: Cross-cultural evidence from classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen competitions

Understanding the role of visual and auditory information in evaluating musical performance

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by David Hughes and Kyoshiro Sasaki

In this Stage 1 Registered Report, Chiba and colleagues (2021) aim to investigate how people use information from visual and auditory modalities when evaluating musical performances. Previous studies, mainly using Western music, have reported a visual dominance, but this has not yet been clearly and consistently reported. Thus, the authors propose to evaluate both the reproducibility and generalizability of the previous findings by conducting a replication study using the methodology of the previous studies and by introducing a new experimental condition in which the Tsugaru-shamisen, a unique Japanese musical instrument, is also performed. This study could represent an important turning point in the research context of performance evaluation and would be of considerable value.

This manuscript was peer-reviewed by two experts in scientific methodology and Japanese traditional music, respectively, and during the two-round peer-review process they made a number of important points, but eventually awarded the manuscript a highly positive response. I am therefore pleased to recommend that this Stage 1 Registered Report meets our Stage 1 criteria and is worthy of in-principle acceptance. I look forward to seeing the results and discussion reported in Stage 2, with the expectation that the experiment conducted by the authors will be in strict accordance with this protocol.

*The following is a very minor comment, which I hope the authors will find helpful in the future. Of course, this is not related to hypothesis construction and does not require revision: The "Blind Audition" study cited in the introduction is very impactful, but has recently been called into question, so I am at least a little cautious when citing this study. This article may be useful. https://www.wsj.com/articles/blind-spots-in-the-blind-audition-study-11571599303

URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/ry2b6

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. Chiba G, Ozaki Y, Fujii S, Savage PE (2021) Sight vs. sound in the judgment of music performance: Cross-cultural evidence from classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen competitions [Stage 1 Registered Report].  Psyarxiv, xky4j, stage 1 preregistration, in-principle acceptance of version 5 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/xky4jhttps://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/RY2B6
Sight vs. sound in the judgment of music performance: Cross-cultural evidence from classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen competitions Gakuto Chiba, Yuto Ozaki, Shinya Fujii, Patrick E. Savage<p style="text-align: justify;">​​Which information dominates in evaluating performance in music? Both experts and laypeople consistently report believing that sound should be the most important domain when judging music competitions, but experime...Social sciencesYuki Yamada Kyoshiro Sasaki2021-09-24 08:59:26 View
13 Feb 2023
STAGE 2
(Go to stage 1)
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Sight vs. sound judgments of music performance depend on relative performer quality: Cross-cultural evidence from classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen competitions [Stage 2 Registered Report]

Music is appreciated cross-modally, but is culture- and context-dependent

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Kyoshiro Sasaki and 1 anonymous reviewer
Music is not merely limited to the aural experience we garner through our auditory faculties, as commonly perceived. Rather, various studies have explored the cross-modal impact of visual stimuli on the evaluation of music. These previous studies have been confined exclusively to Western music. Hence, Chiba et al. (2023) designed a study with a focus on the Tsugaru shamisen, a renowned folk instrument indigenous to Japan, and of which the first author is an outstanding player.

The study methodology was an improved version of previous endeavors, wherein actual musical material sourced from concours performances was displayed through audio-only, video-only or both modalities. A sample of Japanese participants were then asked to evaluate the concours performances on both the piano and the Tsugaru shamisen. The results, obtained through pre-registered protocols, revealed that for both concours performances, the participants displayed a cross-modal impact of visual information on their aural evaluation of music. This effect was also found to be contingent on cultural and contextual factors. These outcomes furnish valuable evidence towards the generalizability of the interplay between sight and sound in the assessment of music.
 
The study underwent rigorous peer-review processes in both Stage 1 and Stage 2, with three experts specializing in Japanese folk music, open science, and statistics, respectively, providing their critical assessments. Following multiple rounds of revision, the final manuscript was deemed fit for recommendation.
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/ry2b6
 
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
 
Chiba G., Ozaki Y., Fujii S., & Savage P.E. (2023). Sight vs. sound judgments of music performance depend on relative performer quality: Cross-cultural evidence from classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen competitions [Stage 2 Registered Report]. Acceptance of Version 2 by Peer Community in Registered Reports. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/xky4j
Sight vs. sound judgments of music performance depend on relative performer quality: Cross-cultural evidence from classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen competitions [Stage 2 Registered Report]Gakuto Chiba, Yuto Ozaki, Shinya Fujii, Patrick E. Savage<p>Which information dominates in evaluating performance in music? Both experts and laypeople consistently report believing that sound should be the most important domain when judging music competitions, but experimental studies of Western partici...Social sciencesYuki Yamada2022-11-30 08:04:37 View
17 Jan 2023
STAGE 1
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Similarities and differences in a global sample of song and speech recordings

Exploring cross-cultural variation in speech and song

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Bob Slevc, Nai Ding and 1 anonymous reviewer
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).
 
URL to the preregistered Stage 1 protocol: https://osf.io/jdhtz
 
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.

List of eligible PCI RR-friendly journals:
 
 
References
 
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
Similarities and differences in a global sample of song and speech recordingsCorresponding authors: Yuto Ozaki and Patrick E. Savage (Keio University, Japan). Full list of 80 authors is in the manuscript<p>What, if any, similarities and differences between song and speech are consistent across cultures? Both song and speech are found in all known human societies and are argued to share evolutionary roots and cognitive resources, yet no studies ha...Social sciencesChris Chambers Nai Ding, Bob Slevc2022-09-16 16:03:10 View
15 Nov 2023
STAGE 1

Somatosensory Response Changes During Illusory Finger Stretching

Neural responses to a finger-stretching illusion in human somatosensory cortex

Recommended by ORCID_LOGO based on reviews by Harry Farmer, Alexandra Mitchell and Susanne Stoll
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
Somatosensory Response Changes During Illusory Finger Stretching Kirralise J. Hansford, Daniel H. Baker, Kirsten J. McKenzie & Catherine E. J. Preston<p>Resizing illusions, delivered using augmented reality, resize a body part through either stretching or shrinking manipulations. These resizing illusions have been investigated in visuotactile, visual-only and visuo-auditory presentations. Howev...Life Sciences, Medical SciencesD. Samuel Schwarzkopf2022-11-15 17:17:18 View