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ELife Oct 2021Within neuroscience, psychology, and neuroimaging, the most frequently used statistical approach is null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) of the population mean....
Within neuroscience, psychology, and neuroimaging, the most frequently used statistical approach is null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) of the population mean. An alternative approach is to perform NHST within individual participants and then infer, from the proportion of participants showing an effect, the prevalence of that effect in the population. We propose a novel Bayesian method to estimate such population prevalence that offers several advantages over population mean NHST. This method provides a population-level inference that is currently missing from study designs with small participant numbers, such as in traditional psychophysics and in precision imaging. Bayesian prevalence delivers a quantitative population estimate with associated uncertainty instead of reducing an experiment to a binary inference. Bayesian prevalence is widely applicable to a broad range of studies in neuroscience, psychology, and neuroimaging. Its emphasis on detecting effects within individual participants can also help address replicability issues in these fields.
Topics: Bayes Theorem; Biostatistics; Data Interpretation, Statistical; Humans; Neurosciences; Psychology; Research Design
PubMed: 34612811
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.62461 -
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 2023
Topics: Humans; Psychology, Clinical; Psychiatry; Psychology
PubMed: 36349788
DOI: 10.1159/000527462 -
Current Biology : CB Mar 2015
Topics: Hippocampus; Humans; Male; Memory; Neurology; Psychology
PubMed: 25996000
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.02.010 -
Journal of Health Psychology Feb 2018
Topics: Female; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Humans; Male; Psychology; Reproductive Health; Sexual Behavior; Sexual Health
PubMed: 29333920
DOI: 10.1177/1359105317750162 -
Animal Cognition Jan 2023The Darwinian idea of mental continuity is about 150 years old. Although nobody has strongly denied this evolutionary link, both conceptually and practically, relative... (Review)
Review
The Darwinian idea of mental continuity is about 150 years old. Although nobody has strongly denied this evolutionary link, both conceptually and practically, relative slow advance has been made by ethology and comparative psychology to quantify mental evolution. Debates on the mechanistic interpretation of cognition often struggle with the same old issues (e.g., associationism vs cognitivism), and in general, experimental methods have made also relative slow progress since the introduction of the puzzle box. In this paper, we illustrate the prevailing issues using examples on 'mental state attribution' and 'perspective taking" and argue that the situation could be improved by the introduction of novel methodological inventions and insights. We suggest that focusing on problem-solving skills and constructing artificial agents that aim to correspond and interact with biological ones, may help to understand the functioning of the mind. We urge the establishment of a novel approach, synthetic ethology, in which researchers take on a practical stance and construct artificial embodied minds relying of specific computational architectures the performance of which can be compared directly to biological agents.
Topics: Animals; Ethology; Cognition; Problem Solving; Psychology, Comparative
PubMed: 36445574
DOI: 10.1007/s10071-022-01719-0 -
Perspectives on Psychological Science :... Jul 2021In the face of unreplicable results, statistical anomalies, and outright fraud, introspection and changes in the psychological sciences have taken root. Vibrant reform...
In the face of unreplicable results, statistical anomalies, and outright fraud, introspection and changes in the psychological sciences have taken root. Vibrant reform and metascience movements have emerged. These are exciting developments and may point toward practical improvements in the future. Yet there is nothing so practical as good theory. This article outlines aspects of reform and metascience in psychology that are ripe for an injection of theory, including a lot of excellent and overlooked theoretical work from different disciplines. I review established frameworks that model the process of scientific discovery, the types of scientific networks that we ought to aspire to, and the processes by which problematic norms and institutions might evolve, focusing especially on modeling from the philosophy of science and cultural evolution. We have unwittingly evolved a toxic scientific ecosystem; existing interdisciplinary theory may help us intelligently design a better one.
Topics: Behavioral Research; Cultural Evolution; Humans; Philosophy; Psychology; Research Design
PubMed: 33513312
DOI: 10.1177/1745691620977471 -
The British Journal of Social Psychology Jan 2023This article introduces the special issue 'Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity' that develops an orienting lens for social psychologists' engagement with the...
This article introduces the special issue 'Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity' that develops an orienting lens for social psychologists' engagement with the concept. As guest editors of the special issue, we provide a thematic overview of how 'precarity' is being conceptualized throughout the social sciences, before distilling the nine contributions to the special issue. In so doing, we trace the ways in which social psychologists are (dis)engaging with the concept of precarity, yet too, explore how precarity constitutes, and is embedded within, the discipline itself. Resisting disciplinary decadence, we collectively explore what a social psychology of precarity could be, and view working with/in precarity as fundamental to addressing broader calls for the social responsiveness of the discipline. The contributing papers, which are methodologically pluralistic and provide rich conceptualisations of precarity, challenge reductionist individualist understandings of suffering and coping and extend social science theorizations on precarity. They also highlight the ways in which social psychology remains complicit in perpetuating different forms of precarity, for both communities and academics. We propose future directions for the social psychological study of precarity through four reflexive questions that we encourage scholars to engage with so that we may both work with/in, and intervene against, 'the precarious'.
Topics: Humans; Psychology, Social; Adaptation, Psychological; Individuality
PubMed: 36637066
DOI: 10.1111/bjso.12618 -
Topics in Cognitive Science Oct 2019Although cognitive science started in the 1970s as a multidisciplinary field with the goal of becoming an interdisciplinary one over time, it is now dominated by...
Although cognitive science started in the 1970s as a multidisciplinary field with the goal of becoming an interdisciplinary one over time, it is now dominated by cognitive psychology. The question becomes whether this matters, and if it does, what should cognitive scientists do about it? I propose that the multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity of cognitive science does matter because it leads to potential generation of new ideas, models, and methods. I offer a few recommendations for reforming cognitive science based, in part, on the recent 41st annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society that sought to reopen cognitive science to minority disciplines comprising cognitive science.
Topics: Cognition; Cognitive Science
PubMed: 31621185
DOI: 10.1111/tops.12469 -
Current Biology : CB Dec 2020Interview with Aniruddh Patel, who studies the cognitive, neural, and evolutionary foundations of music at Tufts University.
Interview with Aniruddh Patel, who studies the cognitive, neural, and evolutionary foundations of music at Tufts University.
Topics: Faculty; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; Humans; Male; Music; Psychology; Universities
PubMed: 33290698
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.09.065 -
International Journal of Environmental... Oct 2021Efficient transfer of concepts and mechanistic insights from the cognitive to the health sciences and back requires a clear, objective description of the problem that...
Efficient transfer of concepts and mechanistic insights from the cognitive to the health sciences and back requires a clear, objective description of the problem that this transfer ought to solve. Unfortunately, however, the actual descriptions are commonly penetrated with, and sometimes even motivated by, cultural norms and preferences, a problem that has colored scientific theorizing about behavioral control-the key concept for many psychological health interventions. We argue that ideologies have clouded our scientific thinking about mental health in two ways: by considering the societal utility of individuals and their behavior a key criterion for distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy people, and by dividing what actually seem to be continuous functions relating psychological and neurocognitive underpinnings to human behavior into binary, discrete categories that are then taken to define clinical phenomena. We suggest letting both traditions go and establish a health psychology that restrains from imposing societal values onto individuals, and then taking the fit between behavior and values to conceptualize unhealthiness. Instead, we promote a health psychology that reconstructs behavior that is considered to be problematic from well-understood mechanistic underpinnings of human behavior.
Topics: Behavioral Medicine; Humans; Psychology
PubMed: 34769644
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph182111126