Note that this sample is conditional; I used to only check accepted submissions that included open data in their declarations, but now have switched to reviewing ALL accepted manuscripts. Will report the proportions and other #metasci data that I tag when I have been at this job for a longer while.
I've been data editing manuscripts at AP&P for a while (71 checks of accepted submissions). If we were to evaluate an #opensci practice by uptake, preregistration HAS NOT been widely conducted (~25%; 18/71) relative to providing open data (63/71). Unlikely to have really achieved anything...
You know what problem we should throw AI at? Reducing the number of clicks required to read full articles on APA PsycNet to fucking zero (after accessing the URL).
I've been pondering whether #cogsci can/will be brute forced by AI. I put my thoughts down in this blogpost, covering the current harms and promising use cases of AI; I also try to generalise from the attempt to solve Erdös problems with AI to cognitive science with a bit of philosophy of science.
I've been pondering whether #cogsci can/will be brute forced by AI. I put my thoughts down in this blogpost, covering the current harms and promising use cases of AI; I also try to generalise from the attempt to solve Erdös problems with AI to cognitive science with a bit of philosophy of science.
Can published findings be reproduced from the same data + same analysis? As part of SCORE, Miske and 127 co-authors tested this across social and behavioral science papers from 2009–2018.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
OA: osf.io/preprints/me...
1/
I think the populus is smarter than that, but UGHHHHHH
Can we stop having so-called experts massively overextending by throwing sweeping generalisations that get picked up in the media and create this unneeded mess of government policy (aka social media bans), peddling of wares or personal influence or whatever it is that people get out of this?
These effects experienced in the population are so diverse across different people; none of these explanations touch on that diversity or the current mix of evidence. Even the way we use these terms – attention / attention spans, working memory, social media use, digital screen time – are varied.
It is a massive oversimplification with no connection specified from the proposed mechanisms (dopamine/blue light/working memory limits) to the phenomena at-hand, no clear causal evidence for those connections, and with no nuance on the effect sizes. Then people recommend all sorts of nonsense.
I'm so tired of seeing this argument – as working memory is a limited resource, and as the modern environment is now so information-rich and complex, and as our brains evolved in the olden times to have dopamine reward circuity - ATTENTION SPANS ARE CRATERING INTO THE GROUND.
youtu.be/t0qq9R__XiQ
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Lauren C. Fong, Daniel Feuerriegel, et al:
Tracing the neural trajectories of evidence accumulation and motor preparation processes during voluntary decisions
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
If I learn pencil sketching, will my oriented line memory max out?
(Please say yes so I can justifiably draw more)
Would be very curious about this - how does expertise and familiarity benefit working memory? I wondrr if you could get differences in performance for the same shade* of colour but with different sliders (HSV, CIE, RGB) etc.
I did not develop this or know who did (but wish I had)! A couple of these tasks have been going "viral" recently and it makes me want to build my own fun memory game to collect some citizen science data!
You're spot on! I don't think this is a great psychophysical task but I am exactly studying some of the things you posed like how similarity between colors influences thing, how we might measure and then build models of memory, and so on!
memorymaxxing
And there are other aspects to think about here: gamifaction of the task for big data citizen science, having colour very across HSV and probing feature valurs, tinkering with multiple sliders for response, the role of interference, etc.
But I think there is much to think about! Eiko atouched on the issue pinponting what psychological mechanisms going on; I have been thinking about how to jointly infer the latent representations using task behaviour on the delayed estimation task. osf.io/preprints/ps...
By the way, I wasn't suggesting this would be a suitable psychophysical task! Delayed estimation using continuous spaces is great - actually, I have been collating open datasets using that task and others here: williamngiam.github.io/OpenWMData
And like working memory sometimes persists through all that interference too!
Yeah, totally agree on the interference - from the starting presented value and the sliders. But would be fun to model the behaviours and transformation of memory happening here, as well as think about gamification of our tasks for big data like Liqiang Huang's (2025) work.
Visual #workingmemory peeps, you're going to love this. This is super challenging - might give you pause on how we are measuring color memory...
My color memory is a 40.4/50. Please do worse so I feel better.
dialed.gg?c=3PCHDE
New preprint with Chris Nolan and Kelly Garner in which we develop a new metric - transition entropy - that can be used to measure the extent to which behaviour in cognitive tasks is based on a routine.
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
If only it were this easy to be an academic! A fun game by @forrt.bsky.social.
I reached the rank of Asst. Prof in Tenure Run! 🎓
I published 40 papers and paid $2,500 in APCs to publishers. My grant money is gone and I am exhausted. 💸
How far can you make it? Play now at forrt.org/TenureRun/
Literally putting the psycho in psychophysics.
Journal of Trends in Frontiers in Nature Human Behaviour Communications Advances
I think I'll have to wait for Nature Comms Psych Comms Advances to drop before I have a publication that has enough to make it into a Nature group journal.
(Nature Human Behaviour Comms Advances also fine).
𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀
For those in favor or against, it seems like a good one to discuss in the Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon!
#neuroskyence
doi.org/10.1038/s415...