Toward a principled Bayesian workflow in cognitive science.

Experiments in research on memory, language, and in other areas of cognitive science are increasingly being analyzed using Bayesian methods. This has been facilitated by the development of probabilistic programming languages such as Stan, and easily accessible front-end packages such as brms. The utility of Bayesian methods, however, ultimately depends on the relevance of the Bayesian model, in particular whether or not it accurately captures the structure of the data and the data analyst's domain expertise. Even with powerful software, the analyst is responsible for verifying the utility of their model. To demonstrate this point, we introduce a principled Bayesian workflow (Betancourt, 2018) to cognitive science. Using a concrete working example, we describe basic questions one should ask about the model: prior predictive checks, computational faithfulness, model sensitivity, and posterior predictive checks. The running example for demonstrating the workflow is data on reading times with a linguistic manipulation of object versus subject relative clause sentences. This principled Bayesian workflow also demonstrates how to use domain knowledge to inform prior distributions. It provides guidelines and checks for valid data analysis, avoiding overfitting complex models to noise, and capturing relevant data structure in a probabilistic model. Given the increasing use of Bayesian methods, we aim to discuss how these methods can be properly employed to obtain robust answers to scientific questions. All data and code accompanying this article are available from https://osf.io/b2vx9/. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Medical conspiracy theories: cognitive science and implications for ethics.

Although recent trends in politics and media make it appear that conspiracy theories are on the rise, in fact they have always been present, probably because they are sustained by natural dispositions of the human brain. This is also the case with medical conspiracy theories. This article reviews some of the most notorious health-related conspiracy theories. It then approaches the reasons why people believe these theories, using concepts from cognitive science. On the basis of that knowledge, the article makes normative proposals for public health officials and health workers as a whole, to deal with conspiracy theories, in order to preserve some of the fundamental principles of medical ethics.

Attentional bias for threat: Crisis or opportunity?

Beginning in the 1980s, experimental psychopathologists increasingly adapted the concepts and paradigms of cognitive science to elucidate information-processing abnormalities that may figure in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Assessment and modification of attentional biases for threat has been a major theme in this research program. The field has witnessed the development of progressively more sophisticated approaches for isolating attentional processes from other cognitive processes in the service of accurate assessment and treatment. Yet the field is now in crisis as foundational concerns about the reliability of basic measures of attentional bias for threat (ABT) have emerged. Moreover, recent research points to theoretical revisions deemphasizing ABT as a stable, near-universal feature of anxiety disorders, and stressing deficits in executive control as the primary attentional problem linked to anxiety.

Rewarding Research Transparency.

Cognitive scientists are increasingly enthusiastic about research transparency. However, their enthusiasm could be tempered if the research reward system fails to acknowledge and compensate these efforts. This article suggests ways to reward greater research transparency during academic job searches, academic promotion and tenure evaluations, and society and national award selections.

Participant Nonnaiveté and the reproducibility of cognitive psychology.

Many argue that there is a reproducibility crisis in psychology. We investigated nine well-known effects from the cognitive psychology literature-three each from the domains of perception/action, memory, and language, respectively-and found that they are highly reproducible. Not only can they be reproduced in online environments, but they also can be reproduced with nonnaïve participants with no reduction of effect size. Apparently, some cognitive tasks are so constraining that they encapsulate behavior from external influences, such as testing situation and prior recent experience with the experiment to yield highly robust effects.

The future of safety science is happening now: The modernization of the benefit-risk paradigm.

The future of safety science is happening now and has the potential to improve patient outcomes through an evolving approach to benefit-risk assessment. Three building blocks for the future of safety science, cognitive and behavioral systems, medical assessment, and data science, individually and collaboratively advance and modernize the benefit-risk paradigm. Incorporating the patient perspective and patient experiences will help identify tools that are useful in real-world practice. Medical assessment teams will bring together the study of toxicity and toxicogenomics, biomarkers, and special populations to personalize the benefit-risk profile. Personalized benefit-risk profiles for patients will help improve outcomes. Data science and related quantitative sciences such as safety statistics, database integration, technology, and epidemiology will provide new approaches and tools for analysis of safety data as well as more rapid access to insights that benefit patients.

Marginally Significant Effects as Evidence for Hypotheses: Changing Attitudes Over Four Decades.

Some effects are statistically significant. Other effects do not reach the threshold of statistical significance and are sometimes described as "marginally significant" or as "approaching significance." Although the concept of marginal significance is widely deployed in academic psychology, there has been very little systematic examination of psychologists' attitudes toward these effects. Here, we report an observational study in which we investigated psychologists' attitudes concerning marginal significance by examining their language in over 1,500 articles published in top-tier cognitive, developmental, and social psychology journals. We observed a large change over the course of four decades in psychologists' tendency to describe a p value as marginally significant, and overall rates of use appear to differ across subfields. We discuss possible explanations for these findings, as well as their implications for psychological research.

Retos en la rehabilitación cognitiva de la esclerosis múltiple / Challenges in cognitive rehabilitation for multiple sclerosis

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Optimistic and defensive-pessimist students: differences in their acadeic mmotivation and learning strategies

In addition to cognitive and behavioral strategies, students can also use affective-motivational strategies to facilitate their learning process. In this way, the strategies of defensive-pessimism and generation of positive expectations have been widely related to conceptual models of pessimism-optimism. The aim of this study was to describe the use of these strategies in 1753 secondary school students, and to study the motivational and strategic characteristics which differentiated between the student typologies identified as a result of their use. The results indicated a higher use of the generation of positive expectations strategy (optimism) (M = 3.40, SD = .78) than the use of the defensive pessimism strategy (M = 3.00, SD = .78); a positive and significant correlation between the two strategies (r = .372, p = .001); their relationship with adequate academic motivation and with the use of learning strategies. Furthermore, four student typologies were identified based on the use of both strategies. Lastly, we propose a new approach for future work in this line of research (AU)

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From commonsense to science, and back: the use of cognitive concepts in neuroscience.

Commonsense cognitive concepts (CCCs) are the concepts used in daily life to explain, predict and interpret behaviour. CCCs are also used to convey neuroscientific results, not only to wider audiences but also to the scientific inner circle. We show that translations from CCCs to brain activity, and from brain data to CCCs are made in implicit, loose and unsystematic ways. This results in hard to connect data as well as possibly unwarranted extrapolations. We argue that the cause of these problems is a covert adherence to a position known in philosophy of mind as 'mental realism'. The most fruitful way forward to a clearer and more systematic employment of CCCs in cognitive neuroscience, we argue, is to explicitly adopt interpretivism as an alternative for mental realism. An interpretative stance will help to avoid conceptual confusion in cognitive science and implies caution when it comes to big conclusions about CCCs.

Validity evidence based on response processes / Evidencia de validez basada en los procesos de respuesta

BACKGROUND: Validity evidence based on response processes was first introduced explicitly as a source of validity evidence in the latest edition of Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. In this paper, we present the theory, the relationship with other sources of validity evidence, and the methods available for validation studies aimed at obtaining validity evidence about response processes. METHOD: A comprehensive review of the literature along with theoretical and practical proposals. RESULTS: The articles provides arguments for determining when validity evidence based on response processes is critical for supporting the use of the test for a particular purpose, and examples of how to perform a validation study to obtain such validity evidence. CONCLUSIONS: There are methods for obtaining validity evidence based on response processes. Special attention should be paid to validation studies using the cognitive interview method given its features and possibilities. Future research problems pose how to combine data from different methods -qualitative and quantitative-, to develop complete validity arguments that support the use of the test for a particular purposeien

ANTECEDENTES: la evidencia de validez basadas en los procesos de respuestas fue incluida explícitamente por primera vez como fuente de evidencias de validez en la última edición de los Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. En este artículo, presentamos la teoría, la relación con otras fuentes de evidencias de validez, y los métodos disponibles para realizar estudios de validación cuyo objetivo sea obtener evidencias de validez sobre los procesos de respuesta. MÉTODO: una extensa revisión de la literatura junto con propuestas teóricas y prácticas. RESULTADOS: el artículo aporta argumentos para determinar cuando la evidencia de validez basada en los procesos de respuesta es crítica para apoyar el uso del test para un objetivo particular, y ejemplos de cómo realizar un estudio de validación para obtener tales evidencias de validez. CONCLUSIONES: hay métodos para obtener evidencias de validez basadas en los procesos de respuesta. Debe prestarse especial atención a los estudios de validación mediante el método de entrevista cognitiva por sus características y posibilidades. Futuros problemas de investigación plantean como combinar datos de métodos diferentes -cualitativos y cuantitativos-, para elaborar argumentos de validez que apoyen el uso del test para un objetivo particular

New social tasks for cognitive psychology; or, new cognitive tasks for social psychology.

To elucidate how differing theories of rationality lead to differing practices, their social rules must be analyzed. This is true not merely in science but also in society at large. This analysis of social thinking requires both the identification of innate cognitive social psychological processes and explanations of their relations with differing rules of rational practice. These new tasks can enable social psychologists to contribute to the study of how social situations facilitate or inhibit rational practice and enable cognitive psychologists to improve social psychological theory. In contrast to dominant current research strategies, social and cognitive psychologists can integrate social studies of rational practices and their consequences with studies of underlying cognitive psychological processes. In this article I do not attempt to carry out these tasks but rather point to both their lack of recognition and their importance.