Replication of Negative Valence Widens Generalization of Learning by Schechtman, E., Laufer, O., & Paz, R (2010, Journal of Neuroscience)

Introduction

choice justification: I chose this project to rescue and replicate because it is relevant to my research interests and will allow me to gain skills that I value gaining practice in. My main research interests are in decision making, cognitive control, and how understanding core functions of human cognition can help us better understand potential cognitive differences related to different mental health conditions. Through working on this paper and replicating this experiment, I can gain a better understanding of how generalizing works in the brain and how people make sub-concious decisions about reacting to stimuli and how much to generalize. Additionally, in the past I’ve worked with JSPsych, on neuroimaging, and on computational experiments, but I have never fully designed or run a behavioral experiment on prolific/MTurk completely on my own. Through doing this project, I hope to expand upon my experimental design and implementation skills.

stimuli, procedures, and challenges: For this experiment, I will need to use different frequency noises as stimuli in order to test how valence affects generalization. This will be an online behavioral experiment done on Prolific, and the study includes two stages (acquisition and generalization) that will be interspersed for participants. In the paper, the study also had a second follow up experiment where participants were recalled to do a loss aversion task, in order to understand the loss aversion rate and how it impacts generalization, so I may have to recall the participants to do a second online study as well. I will code/adapt this study in JSPsych and upload it to prolific–this may be a challenge as I’ve never worked with auditory stimuli before. I will then analyze the data in a similar way to the paper, and will replicate Figures 1 and 2. Finally, I will add attention and manipulation checks to the code (if it isn’t already there), and try to identify if there are any errors in the original/replication code that need correcting.

repository link: https://github.com/psych251/schechtman2010_rescue

original paper link: https://github.com/psych251/schechtman2010_rescue/blob/main/original_paper/10460.pdf

Methods

Power Analysis

Original effect size, power analysis for samples to achieve 80%, 90%, 95% power to detect that effect size. Considerations of feasibility for selecting planned sample size.

Planned Sample

Planned sample size and/or termination rule, sampling frame, known demographics if any, preselection rules if any.

Materials

All materials - can quote directly from original article - just put the text in quotations and note that this was followed precisely. Or, quote directly and just point out exceptions to what was described in the original article.

Procedure

Can quote directly from original article - just put the text in quotations and note that this was followed precisely. Or, quote directly and just point out exceptions to what was described in the original article.

Analysis Plan

Can also quote directly, though it is less often spelled out effectively for an analysis strategy section. The key is to report an analysis strategy that is as close to the original - data cleaning rules, data exclusion rules, covariates, etc. - as possible.

Clarify key analysis of interest here You can also pre-specify additional analyses you plan to do.

Differences from Original Study

Explicitly describe known differences in sample, setting, procedure, and analysis plan from original study. The goal, of course, is to minimize those differences, but differences will inevitably occur. Also, note whether such differences are anticipated to make a difference based on claims in the original article or subsequent published research on the conditions for obtaining the effect.

Methods Addendum (Post Data Collection)

You can comment this section out prior to final report with data collection.

Actual Sample

Sample size, demographics, data exclusions based on rules spelled out in analysis plan

Differences from pre-data collection methods plan

Any differences from what was described as the original plan, or “none”.

Results

Data preparation

Data preparation following the analysis plan.

Confirmatory analysis

The analyses as specified in the analysis plan.

Side-by-side graph with original graph is ideal here

Exploratory analyses

Any follow-up analyses desired (not required).

Discussion

Summary of Replication Attempt

Open the discussion section with a paragraph summarizing the primary result from the confirmatory analysis and the assessment of whether it replicated, partially replicated, or failed to replicate the original result.

Commentary

Add open-ended commentary (if any) reflecting (a) insights from follow-up exploratory analysis, (b) assessment of the meaning of the replication (or not) - e.g., for a failure to replicate, are the differences between original and present study ones that definitely, plausibly, or are unlikely to have been moderators of the result, and (c) discussion of any objections or challenges raised by the current and original authors about the replication attempt. None of these need to be long.