Assessing Theoretical Conclusions With Blinded Inference to Investigate a Potential Inference Crisis

Scientific advances across a range of disciplines hinge on the ability to make inferences about unobservable theoretical entities on the basis of empirical data patterns. Accurate inferences rely on both discovering valid, replicable data patterns and accurately interpreting those patterns in terms of their implications for theoretical constructs. The replication crisis in science has led to widespread efforts to improve the reliability of research findings, but comparatively little attention has been devoted to the validity of inferences based on those findings. Using an example from cognitive psychology, we demonstrate a blinded-inference paradigm for assessing the quality of theoretical inferences from data. Our results reveal substantial variability in experts’ judgments on the very same data, hinting at a possible inference crisis

The influences of valence and arousal on judgments of learning and on recall

Much is known about how the emotional content of words affects memory for those words, but only recently have researchers begun to investigate whether emotional content influences metamemory—that is, learners’ assessments of what is or is not memorable. The present study replicated recent work demonstrating that judgments of learning (JOLs) do indeed reflect the superior memorability of words with emotional content. We further contrasted two hypotheses regarding this effect: a physiological account in which emotional words are judged to be more memorable because of their arousing properties, versus a cognitive account in which emotional words are judged to be more memorable because of their cognitive distinctiveness. Two results supported the latter account. First, both normed arousal (Exp. 1) and normed valence (Exp. 2) independently influenced JOLs, even though only an effect of arousal would be expected under a physiological account. Second, emotional content no longer influenced JOLs in a design (Exp. 3) that reduced the primary distinctiveness of emotional words by using a single list of words in which normed valence and arousal were varied continuously. These results suggest that the metamnemonic benefit of emotional words likely stems from cognitive factors

Eye See What You’re Saying: Beat Gesture Facilitates Online Resolution ofContrastive Referring Expressions in Spoken Discourse

This study investigated how beat gesture and contrastive pitchaccenting affect online contrastive reference resolution duringspoken discourse comprehension. Evidence from gazefixations indicated that beat gesture encouraged fixations totarget referents of contrastive referring expressions and thatcontrastive accenting encouraged fixations to competitorreferents of non-contrastive referring expressions. Notably,beat gesture and contrastive accenting acted independently,indicating that their effects are additive rather than interactive.Moreover, neither beat gesture nor contrastive accentingaffected an observed tendency to anticipate contrastivereferring expressions. Together, these results provide the firstevidence that beat gesture, like contrastive accenting, isinterpreted as a cue to contrast during online referenceresolution in spoken discourse comprehension

Familiar Strategies Feel Fluent: The Role of Study Strategy Familiarity in the Misinterpreted-Effort Model of Self-Regulated Learning

Why do learners not choose ideal study strategies when learning? Past research suggests that learners frequently misinterpret the effort affiliated with efficient strategies as being indicative of poor learning. Expanding on past findings, we explored the integration of study habits into this model. We conducted two experiments where learners experienced two contrasting strategies—blocked and interleaved schedules—to learn to discriminate between images of bird families. After experiencing each strategy, learners rated each according to its perceived effort, learning, and familiarity. Next, learners were asked to choose which strategy they would use in the future. Mediation analyses revealed, for both experiments, that the more mentally effortful interleaving felt, the less learners felt they learned, and the less likely learners were to use it in future learning. Further, in this study, strategy familiarity predicted strategy choice, also mediated by learners’ perceived learning. Additionally, Study 2 verified that, in contrast to learners’ judgments, the less familiar interleaving schedule resulted in better learning. Consequently, learners are making ineffective learning judgments based on their perceptions of effort and familiarity and, therefore, do not make use of optimal study strategies in self-regulated learning decisions

Pupillometry and Multimodal Processing of Beat Gesture and Pitch Accent:The Eye’s Hole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts

This study investigated how beat gesture and pitch accentaffect the cognitive load of listeners during languagecomprehension. Evidence from pupillometry and dwell timeindicated that more cognitive resources were required toprocess the combination of these cues than their absence, andthey suggest that beat gesture may have required morecognitive resources to process than pitch accent. Additionally,pupil size positively correlated with reaction time anddecreased as the task progressed, demonstrating its usefulnessas a measure of cognitive processing. These results indicatethat viewing gesture in conjunction with speech may increasecognitive load during language processing, and that thisincreased load may result in enriched representations

Mean grammaticality ratings (model-estimated) as a function of item type and speaker type.

Error bars represent the standard error of the model-estimated marginal mean. Please note that because the means are model-estimated, values in the Unprimed condition are nearly, but not quite identical across both analyses (despite the underlying data being the same).</p

S1 Data -

(CSV)</p

Linear mixed-effects regression results for model of correctly retyped items (N = 65, obs = 4854).

Linear mixed-effects regression results for model of correctly retyped items (N = 65, obs = 4854).</p