Replication

Question 1

The Replication Crisis - What is it?

Answer 1

• Refers to concerns about the credibility of findings in psychological science
• Denotes that findings in behavioral science often cannot be replicated

Question 2

Why Studies Might Not Replicate - Inevitable Possibilities? (2)

Answer 2

• e.g., initial study was a false positive
• e.g., some effects are also specific to the time they were reported (would we still see a correlation between years of experience and hippocampal volume in the era of GPS?

Question 3

Why Studies Might Not Replicate - QRPs? (3)

Answer 3

• e.g., the researcher ran the study 20 times but only published the one significant finding and put the rest in a “file drawer”
• e.g., p-hacking
• e.g., fraud

Question 4

Why Studies Might Not Replicate - Other Reasons

Answer 4

• Some studies were underpowered
• Some studies did not employ the correct statistical tests

Question 5

Why should we care about the replication crisis?

Answer 5

“The validity of psychological research is important both for the pursuit of knowledge about human behavior and for the influence of real world interventions in mental health care, medicine, education, business, and politics.” (Psychology Today)

Question 6

Undergraduate students who learned about replication for 1 hour…

Does learning about the replication crisis help?

Answer 6

• Showed high endorsement that media attention was not a accurate indication of study reliability
• Showed high agreement with suggestions about transparency and replication (e.g., publishing null findings, making data open)
• Understood the problems with flexible decision making in statistics
• Showed slightly less trust in psychological findings
• Showed greater appreciation for study design
• Showed no decline in the desire to pursue graduate school

Question 7

When you read papers, how do you know you can trust the findings? (5)

Answer 7

• Develop an understanding of research methods
• Check whether the study had sufficient power
• Check the statistics
• Check for open science (especially for recent papers)
• Check for replications—do not put too much weight on a single study

Question 8

When Evaluating Media Claims…

Answer 8

Look at the original papers

Question 9

What Can You Do? (5)

Answer 9

• Be transparent in your research approaches
• Conduct a power analysis to ensure your study has an adequate sample size
• Examine the distributions of your data –make sure your effects are not driven by an outlier
• Set up an analytical plan a priori (e.g., a pre-registration)
• Share your materials and data

Question 10

– LECTURE 2 –

Question 11

What is Context Dependent Memory?

Answer 11

phenomenon where memory
recall is stronger when the retrieval environment matches the
original environment in which the memory was formed