Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology

Encouraging registered reports at the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology (CJEP): An invited tutorial by Oshiro et al. (2024).
Continuing Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology’s ongoing commitment to Open Science, we invited Oshiro et al. (2024) to submit a peer-reviewed tutorial of the typical format and to offer key pieces of advice when preparing Registered Reports. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Want to try a registered report? Here are our lessons learned.
A Registered Report is a type of research journal article in which the introduction, methods, and analysis plan are proposed and peer-reviewed prior to the execution of the study. The goal is to limit publication bias based on study findings by conducting peer review on the merits of the study before the results are known. First introduced in 2012 (Chambers, 2013; Chambers & Tzavella, 2022), this format of journal article publication has become more commonplace. Here we provide an overview of the format as well as eight core lessons we learned while preparing Registered Reports. We integrate guidelines from the literature with our experience to provide insight into the process of preparing and publishing a Registered Report for those who have not yet tried it. Though Registered Reports require researchers to invest more effort at the earlier stages of idea generation, design, and analysis planning, they will benefit from the feedback of reviewers when it is most beneficial and leave behind the fear of rejection due to unanticipated study limitations or null results. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
From faces to fingers: Examining attentional capture of faces and body parts using colour singleton paradigm.
Faces and body parts play a crucial role in human social communication. Numerous studies emphasize their significance as sociobiological stimuli in daily interactions. Two experiments were conducted to examine the following: (a) whether faces or body parts are processed more quickly than other visual objects when relevant to the task and serving as targets, and (b) the effects of presenting faces or body parts as distractors on task reaction times and error rates. The first experiment focused on either faces or body parts, with five different visual objects. The second experiment examined effector body parts (e.g., hands) and core body parts (e.g., the torso), paired with the same visual objects. Thirty-six participants took part in the study, equally divided between Experiment 1 (N = 18) and Experiment 2 (N = 18). Participants were instructed to find if a target item, indicated by a green placeholder, matched a previously presented word cue, while they were instructed to keep ignoring the singleton object that was surrounded by the red placeholder. The results indicated that participants responded more quickly when finding faces but not body parts in Experiment 1. No such advantage was seen in Experiment 2 for either effector or core body parts compared to other objects. Interestingly, when faces were presented as distractors as a singleton, reaction times increased (Experiment 1), indicating that faces capture attention. This effect was not observed for effector or core body parts (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that faces capture attention more effectively than body parts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Text-based and memory-based metrics of cognitive coupling.
The present study was an investigation of the relation between cognitive coupling, a correlation between text difficulty and reading time, and other measures of mind wandering during reading. To measure cognitive coupling, we manipulated the text difficulty of individual sentences. Because mind wandering may shift attention away from the text, we predicted a cognitive coupling interaction, that is, that the effect of difficulty on processing time should be less when readers are off task. We also manipulated the consistency of a target sentence’s content with a prior information. Analogous to the text-based cognitive coupling, we predicted an interaction of consistency with task focus: The impact of this consistency should be less noticeable when readers are off task. The results demonstrated the predicted text-based cognitive-coupling effect: There was less of an effect of text difficulty when readers reported being off task. However, there was no such interaction between consistency and task focus. We conclude that the consistency effect may depend on the relatively automatic activation of prior information rather than requiring consciously retrieving related information from memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Arousal and valence have dissociable effects on responses to schematic emotional faces.
Studies examining behavioural responses to emotional stimuli usually report one of two patterns of responses to negative stimuli. Some studies find faster responses to negative material. Other studies find slower responses to negative stimuli. While the attentional mechanisms proposed to explain these findings (attentional capture in the former case, delayed disengagement in the latter) are not at odds with one another, the behavioural findings do need to be reconciled. We posit that arousal, being the primary differentiator of threatening and nonthreatening stimuli, needs to be more carefully considered. To this end, two experiments were conducted evaluating the role of stimulus arousal and valence in the processing of schematic emotional faces. In Experiment 1, stimulus arousal was manipulated via the presence or absence of eyebrows in the schematic faces in a faces flanker task. Results showed faster responses to faces with eyebrows but no differences in the faces flanker asymmetry between faces with and without eyebrows. In Experiment 2, participants rated the faces on an evaluative space grid. Results showed the presence of the eyebrows had a greater impact on negative ratings for negative faces than for the other expressions. This suggests that stimulus valence and arousal were manipulated by the eyebrows and the reaction time differences could not be attributed purely to perceptual differences. Together these results suggests that both valence and arousal impact the processing of emotional schematic faces, and that these effects are dissociable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Proactive and reactive cognitive control in the absence of learning and memory confounds: Evidence from a cross-modal trial-unique Stroop task.
Goal-directed behaviour is typically conceptualized as striking a balance between two antagonistic cognitive control states such as proactive and reactive control, as demonstrated by conflict phenomena such as the list-wide proportion congruency and congruency sequence effects. However, control-based explanations for these phenomena have come under criticism due to low-level associative regularities that are frequently confounded with conflict manipulations within these experimental designs. In the present study, a novel Stroop paradigm referred to as the “trial-unique Stroop task” was developed to examine whether these effects could be observed in the absence of low-level associative regularities. On each trial, participants typed a word they heard spoken aloud while ignoring a word visually displayed on the screen. Importantly, each word only appeared in a single trial throughout the experiment, and because stimuli and responses were never repeated, there were no low-level associative regularities across trials. Using this paradigm, we observed both congruency sequence (Experiment 1) and list-wide proportion congruency (Experiment 2) effects, providing the strongest evidence to date for control-based explanations of these phenomena. Split-half analyses revealed much higher reliability than traditional colour–word Stroop tasks for the congruency effect (rSB = .98), the congruency sequence effect (rSB = .42), and the list-wide proportion congruency effect (rSB = .85). Moreover, the methodological advantages of the trial-unique Stroop task allow for the independent manipulation of task features related to control, learning, and memory processes. The promising results of this study support the application of the trial-unique Stroop task in this context and open new avenues for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
It is a “small world”: Relations between performance on five spatial tasks and five mathematical tasks in undergraduate students.
One of the most robust relations in cognition is that between spatial and mathematical reasoning. One important question is whether this relation is domain general or if specific relations exist between performance on different types of spatial tasks and performance on different types of mathematical tasks. In this study, we explore unique relations between performance on five spatial tasks and five mathematical tasks. An exploratory factor analysis conducted on Data Set 1 (N = 391) yielded a two-factor model, one spatial factor and one mathematical factor with significant cross-domain factor loadings. The general two-factor model structure was replicated in a confirmatory factor analysis conducted in a separate data set (N = 364) but the strength of the factor loadings differed by task. Multidimensional scaling and network-based analyses conducted on the combined data sets reveal one spatial cluster, with a central node and one more tightly interconnected mathematical cluster. Both clusters were interconnected via the math task assessing geometry and spatial sense. The unique links identified with the network-based analysis are representative of a “small-world network.” These results have theoretical implications for our understanding of the spatial–mathematical relation and practical implications for our understanding of the limitations of transfer between spatial training paradigms and mathematical tasks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie exp��rimentale - Vol 78, Iss 4