My Cattle

A while back, Lorne Campbell wrote a blog post  listing the preregistered publications from his lab. This is a great idea. It is easy to talk the talk, but it’s harder to walk the walk.

So under the notion that we don't want to be all hat and no cattle, I rounded up some replications and preregistered original papers that I co-authored.

First the replications.

I find performing replications very insightful. My role in two of the RRRs listed below (verbal overshadowing and facial feedback) was rather minor but the 2016 RRR and the issues surrounding it, on which I've blogged before, felt like an onslaught. The 2012 replication study was used to iron out an inconsistency in the literature. An additional replication study is close to getting accepted and will be added to the list in an update.

These days I use direct replications primarily when I want to build on work by others. As per Richard Feynman, before we move on we first need to attempt a direct replication of the effect we want to build on. We first need to know if we can reproduce it in our own lab.

Zwaan, R.A., Pecher, D. (2012). Revisiting Mental Simulation in Language Comprehension: Six Replication Attempts. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51382.

Alogna, V. K., Attaya, M. K., Aucoin, P., Bahnik, S., Birch, S., Birt, A. R., ... Zwaan, R. A. (2014). Registered replication report: Schooler & Engstler-Schooler (1990). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 556–578.

Eerland, A., Sherrill, A.M., Magliano, J.P., Zwaan, R.A., Arnal, J.D., Aucoin, P., … Prenoveau, J.M. (2016). Registered replication report: Hart & Albarracín (2011). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11, 158-171. 

Wagenmakers, E.-J., Beek, T., Dijkhoff, L., Gronau, Q. F., Acosta, A., Adams, R. B., Jr., . . . Zwaan, R. A. (2016). Registered Replication Report: Strack, Martin, & Stepper (1988). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11, 917–928.

Zwaan, R. A., Pecher, D., Paolacci, G., Bouwmeester, S., Verkoeijen, P., Dijkstra, K., & Zeelenberg, R. (in press). Participant nonnaiveté and the reproducibility of cognitive psychology. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Next the original preregistered studies.

I started preregistering experiments several years ago. All in all, I find it an extremely important practice, quite possibly the most important thing we can do to improve the field. After a while preregistration becomes second nature and it becomes odd not to do it.

I have no experience yet with reviewed preregistrations (other than the three RRRs that I’ve participated in). My co-authors and I submitted one over three months ago but we haven’t gotten the reviews yet.

I should add, that I've co-authored quite a few additional empirical papers during this period that were not preregistered. This is mainly because the experiments in those papers were conducted years ago before preregistration was a thing.

Eerland, A., Sherrill, A.M., Magliano, J.P., Zwaan, R.A. (2017). The Blame Game: An investigation of Grammatical Aspect and Blame Judgments. Collabra: Psychology, 3(1): 29, 1–12.
         Only Experiments 3-5 were preregistered. Experiments 1&2 were conducted in 2012.

Eerland, A., Engelen, J.A.A., Zwaan, R.A. (2013). The influence of direct and indirect speech on mental representations. PloS ONE 8(6):  e65480.

Hoeben-Mannaert, L., Dijkstra, K., & Zwaan, R.A. (2017). Is color an integral part of a rich mental simulation? Memory & Cognition, 45, 974–982.

Pouw, W.J.T.L., van Gog, T., Zwaan, R.A., Agostinho. S., & Paas, F. (in press). Co-thought gestures in children’s mental problem solving: Prevalence and effects on subsequent performance. Applied Cognitive Psychology.

Sherrill A.M., Eerland A., Zwaan R.A., & Magliano J.P. (2015). Understanding how grammatical aspect influences legal judgment. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0141181.


And finally, to show that of course I also wear a stetson, here is a theoretical paper on replication. Yeehaw!

Zwaan, R.A., Etz, A., Lucas, R.E., & Donnellan, M.B. (in press). Making replication mainstream. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.