Objectives Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are associated with significant physical and mental health concerns. Interventions focused on increasing physical activity (PA) in this population may improve overall physical and mental health associated with AUDs. Given how ubiquitous smartphones have become, PA apps may be a feasible, acceptable, and potentially scalable approach to integrating PA in alcohol recovery. To date, there are no PA apps targeted specifically for this population. Design The current study describes 2 formative phases in the development of Fit&Sober, a theory-informed smartphone app designed to increase PA in patients with alcohol dependence. Methods Phase 1 consisted of questionnaires and focus groups (3 groups with total N = 23) conducted with patients in current AUD treatment regarding their preferences and feedback on the proposed app design and components. Phase 2 consisted of individual usability sessions (N = 10) conducted with a different set of patients with AUD, in which feedback was provided on the look, usability, and functionality of the Fit&Sober app prototype. Results Phase 1 evaluated key components of a physical activity app designed especially for increasing PA in early recovery and refined app features such as the logo, graphical display of data, and specific physical activity-relevant affect words to be used in the app. Phase 2 usability studies provided support for usability, attractiveness, and potential usefulness in the target population. Conclusions Through the iterative 2-phase process, a prototype of the Fit&Sober app was created and readied for pilot testing in patients with AUD.

Prosociality confers benefits to those who engage in the behavior, as well as those who receive it. So, how can prosociality, especially repeated acts of giving, be encouraged? Past research shows that receiving an expression of gratitude can promote prosocial behavior. However, existing work has focused on the benefits of receiving gratitude in comparison to receiving nothing, thereby leaving the content of gratitude expressions unexamined. Drawing upon past research demonstrating the benefits of identity-relevant appeals, we compare how two different gratitude expressions – one that references an individual's kind personality (i.e., prosocial character) and another that references an individual's kind actions (i.e., prosocial action) – impact future prosocial behavior in comparison to each other and to a no-gratitude control condition using two high-powered pre-registered studies. In both studies, participants (603 undergraduate students in Experiment 1; 876 online adult sample in Experiment 2) engaged in a prosocial task and were then randomly assigned to receive one of two gratitude expressions or a no-gratitude control condition. Afterwards, participants had the opportunity to help again. Comparing helping rates across conditions we found no significant differences among helping behavior in Experiment 1. However, in Experiment 2, results indicated that individuals who received an expression of gratitude, regardless of content, donated more than individuals that solely received an acknowledgement of their help. We interpret these findings as mixed support for gratitude's function as a moral reinforcer and consider why gratitude expressions referencing an individual's generous character vs. action may have had little impact.

Memory for episodic associations declines with ageing due to decreased recollection abilities. Unitization—the encoding of multiple items as one integrated entity—has been shown to support familiarity-based retrieval that is independent of recollection and is relatively preserved in healthy ageing. Accordingly, unitization has been proposed as a promising strategy to attenuate age-related associative deficits, but evidence regarding its utility was lacking. The current study aimed to establish unitization as a viable mnemonic strategy. First, to ensure that unitization can attenuate the age-related associative deficit for initially unrelated materials, top-down unitization was used. Namely, participants were given an initially unrelated word pair in the context of either a definition which allows the words to be encoded as a unitized compound or a sentence in which the words are encoded as separate entities. Second, to ensure that unitization can be used as a self-initiated strategy, participants also completed the task by generating their own binding information (definitions/sentences). As expected, a unitization effect had emerged, such that associative memory was enhanced following definition encoding. However, this effect only occurred when binding information was provided. Additionally, a general memory advantage for the self-generation condition had emerged, but this was (generally) similar across unitization conditions and age groups. Taken together, the results show that unitization can be used as a mnemonic strategy under certain conditions, and highlight additional steps that should be taken before it can be effectively used beyond lab settings.

Primary-secondary school transitions are a critical period for children, which pose a heightened risk for the development of poor emotional wellbeing and mental health. Our ability to identify and support children during this critical juncture is limited, however, by the lack of a robust, sensitive, and standardized scale to measure children’s emotional wellbeing in the context of primary-secondary school transitions, comprehensively and longitudinally. The Primary-Secondary School Transitions Emotional Wellbeing Scale (P-S WELLS) has been developed following a multi-informant, mixed-methods model to overcome this gap. It is qualitatively different and novel in its approach (i.e., asking children about their feelings toward the changes they are negotiating in context), and in its longitudinal design and operationalization. This registered report describes how P-S WELLS will be validated through longitudinal psychometric assessment (Study 1) and longitudinal validation (Study 2) on two discrete samples, across two transition periods.

The effect of simultaneously performing two tasks (dual-task effects, DTEs) has been extensively studied, mainly focusing on the combination of cognitive and motor tasks. Given their potentially detrimental impact on real-life activities, the impact of DTEs has been investigated in both healthy individuals and patients. In this Registered Report, we aimed to replicate previous DTEs when a task requiring executive-inhibitory skills is involved while also expanding the evidence on basic facets of decision-making. We recruited 50 healthy young participants who performed a stop-signal task and two gambling tasks (loss-aversion and risk-aversion) while sitting and while walking at three treadmill speeds (normal, slow and fast). We report a significant difference in performance during single-task and dual-task, although with high individual variability. The data show no effect of the walking speed on all the cognitive tasks. Analyses on postural alignments, assessed in the cadence, gait cycle length and stance phase, confirm previous results on cognitive prioritization strategies of healthy individuals. Based on our results, we highlight the need to further investigate prioritization strategies when tasks involving higher cognitive functions are performed along a motor task in healthy individuals and patients with the aim of offering targeted training and rehabilitation protocols.

Trust in scientists is a key predictor of compliance with science-based solutions to societal challenges. Although liberals in the USA generally trust scientists more than conservatives do, it is not clear how these ideological differences vary across different scientific occupations and whether they can be mitigated. Here, in this Registered Report (including 7,800 US participants), we demonstrate that, even though the strength of the relationship between political ideology and trust varies across scientific occupations, liberals (compared with conservatives) show higher trust in most scientists. Moreover, following motivational accounts of scientist distrust, the study tested five theoretically grounded intervention strategies to improve conservatives’ trust in scientists. None of the interventions were successful, suggesting that trust in scientists reflects relatively stable attitudes that require more elaborate and time-intensive interventions.

Self-report data is vital in psychological research, but biases like careless responding and socially desirable responding (SDR) can compromise its validity. While various methods are employed to mitigate these biases, they have limitations. The Bayesian Truth Serum (BTS; Prelec, 2004) offers a survey scoring method to incentivise truthfulness by leveraging correlations between personal and collective opinions and rewarding ‘surprisingly common’ responses. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the BTS in mitigating socially desirable responding to sensitive questions and tested whether an interim payment could enhance its efficacy by increasing trust. In a between-subject experimental survey, 877 participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: BTS, BTS with Interim Payment (BTS+IP) and Regular Incentive (RI). Contrary to the hypotheses, participants in the BTS conditions displayed lower agreement with socially undesirable statements compared to the RI condition. The interim payment did not significantly enhance the BTS’s effectiveness. Instead, response patterns diverged from the mechanism’s intended effects, raising concerns about its robustness. As the second registered report to challenge its efficacy, this study casts serious doubt on the BTS as a reliable tool for mitigating SDR and improving the validity of self-report data in psychological research.

The present work is a registered report1 focused on a replication and extension of the findings in Dimov and Shepherd (2005). Our work tests the hypotheses from the original article in an expanded industry context and with an updated sample. The wider sample includes low- and medium-tech industries, and an expanded time frame as opposed to the original sample based on the high-tech wireless industry in a 5-year span. We used the same estimation technique (OLS regression) from the original article but also expand on it by using multivariate regression and seemingly unrelated regression to model multiple outcomes simultaneously as well as negative binomial analyses to accommodate the count nature of outcome variables—initial public offerings as home runs and bankruptcies as strike outs. We also model more fine-grained outcomes of venture capital (VC) investments (underpricing, 180-day return, market value). Our findings support the inference that general human capital has a significant effect on investment success measures. Furthermore, the findings align with predictions about the relation between general and specific human capital in reducing measures of investment failure. Our replication and extension efforts are crucial in advancing the literature with regard to four key points. First, we find that the types of human capital vary in their influence on VC-related outcomes. Second, by examining alternative measures of VC-related outcomes, we illustrate that the effect of human capital on VC outcomes varies depending on the measure of outcome. Third, our results suggest that the relation between human capital and VC-related outcomes varies by industry type and time to exit. Fourth, our reexamine of the findings from Dimov and Shepherd (2005) seems to illustrate support for hypotheses that were unsupported in the original study.

When trying to make sense of what is going on in the world and their personal lives, people often refer to scientific and religious explanations. Based on pertinent literature, we introduce a novel self-report instrument that captures five types of how people subjectively conceptualize the science–religion relationship. In addition to examining the psychometric properties of the new instrument, we tested whether these five types of conceptualizations are ordered along a single continuum of conflict vs. compatibility. In doing so, we ran and compared two unidimensional item response theory (IRT) models; a generalized partial credit model (GPCM) and a generalized graded unfolding model (GGUM), both in a German (total N = 2,920) and in a U.S. (N = 1,197) sample. We examined model fit statistics to determine the best-fitting model and examined measurement precision at the scale and the item levels. Finally, we tested measurement invariance across countries (i.e. Germany and the United States), as well as the discriminant, convergent, and criterion-related validity of our new instrument. Our results suggest that public perceptions of the relationship between science and religion are best captured by an unfolding response process (i.e. GGUM) and vary systematically across cultural contexts. In addition, U.S. participants perceived higher levels of conflict than their German counterparts. This research contributes to our theoretical understanding of science-religion perceptions and provides a validated measure for future cross-cultural research.

Repeated exposure to misinformation reduces moral condemnation of those falsehoods, as shown by Effron & Raj (2020)1—and moral condemnation may play an important role in stopping the spread of online misinformation. In this registered report, we conceptually replicate previous findings on the effect of repetition and moral condemnation and investigate the generalizability of the findings, using an updated and larger set of false headlines. We also investigate whether asking for accuracy evaluations of the headlines, a type of accuracy prompt that is standard in repeated exposure tasks, alters the effect of repetition on moral condemnation, as inattention to the veracity of headlines may decrease outrage and thus moral condemnation. We find a clear conceptual replication of the negative effect of repetition on moral condemnation, and insufficient evidence for a relationship between accuracy prompts and the effect of repetition.

Potentially traumatic events (PTEs) are prevalent among Indonesian students. Web-based psychoeducation might increase mental health literacy and reduce barriers to healthcare access. We developed Pulihkan Luka (PL), a web-based psychoeducation programme for Indonesian undergraduate students. This pilot randomized controlled trial assessed the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of PL. Students (N = 130) were randomly assigned to (1) four to seven sessions of PL + Enhanced Usual Care (PL+EUC; n = 64) or (2) EUC only (n = 66). EUC included a leaflet with referral options to available (mental) health services. Participants received baseline, post-intervention, three- and six-month follow-up assessments. Twenty participants from the treatment group were invited to participate in a focus group discussion. The feasibility and acceptability of PL were examined as primary outcomes based on module completion, MT4C-in-Care feasibility survey, IIAQ-ID, and SIN-E-Stress user satisfaction survey. Secondary outcomes included mental health literacy (MHL questionnaire), psychological well-being (WHO-5), help-seeking intention (GHSQ), symptoms of PTSD (PCL-5), depression (PHQ-9), anxiety (GAD-7), and insomnia (ISI). The results indicated a high acceptability of PL (90.63% willing to use the intervention and 89.06% satisfied with the intervention). The uptake and adherence to the intervention were high, with 92.18% completing the first module and 75% completing all assigned modules. However, the feasibility was somewhat lower (59.38% reported sufficient energy and time to complete the modules). The PL+EUC group improved significantly more in mental health literacy compared to EUC only from baseline to post-intervention (b = −0.99, t(140) = 3.64, p = .02). The PL+EUC group did not improve more in psychological well-being and help-seeking intentions, PTSD, depression, anxiety, and insomnia compared to EUC only. PL is the first web-based trauma psychoeducation programme in Indonesia, and it was found to be feasible and acceptable for Indonesian undergraduate students, as well as to improve mental health literacy. Trial registration: Thai Clinical Trials Registry identifier: TCTR20230721001. Pulihkan Luka (PL) is the first web-based psychoeducation programme for trauma-related mental health symptoms in Indonesia.PL proved feasible and acceptable for Indonesian undergraduate students.The long-term effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of PL need to be investigated in future studies. Pulihkan Luka (PL) is the first web-based psychoeducation programme for trauma-related mental health symptoms in Indonesia. PL proved feasible and acceptable for Indonesian undergraduate students. The long-term effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of PL need to be investigated in future studies.

During a hurricane, it is vital that individuals receive communications that are easy to process and provide sufficient information to allow informed hurricane preparedness decisions and prevent loss of life. We study how different hurricane warning scales, the traditional Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (SSHWS) versus the newly developed Tropical Cyclone Severity Scale (TCSS), impact intent to evacuate and understanding of hurricane severity. We use a between-subject design where participants are assigned to either the traditional SSHWS or the new TCSS scale. We collected data in a large-scale (~ 4000 participants) online experiment to examine potential differences in comprehension, risk perception, anticipated evacuation, and preparation decisions among residents in U.S. coastal states prone to hurricanes. We find that participants using the TCSS scale are better at identifying the main hazard of a hurricane. For evacuation, the TCSS leads to significantly higher evacuation intent as opposed to SSHWS in cases where the TCSS is at least two categories higher (due to rainfall or storm surge being the main hazard rather than wind). In addition, the TCSS also seems to have a positive effect on taking appropriate precautionary measures, though not always at our stated significance level. Overall, our results demonstrate that people make better informed and more appropriate decisions with the TCSS as opposed to the currently used SSHWS.

Background: Understanding long-term retention rates and complications associated with different materials for fabricating pediatric crowns for primary teeth is crucial for material selection and optimizing clinical outcomes. Objective: This systematic review aims to descriptively analyze the crown-retention rates and complications associated with crown retention, as well as the biological and technical complications of pediatric crowns for primary teeth. The meta-analysis reported herein was performed to estimate long-term (3-year and 5-year) retention rates of these pediatric crowns fabricated using various materials. Methods: Using the PICOS paradigm, a systematic search was conducted between July and August 2023 in the Cochrane, EMBASE, and PubMed databases to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and clinical (prospective and retrospective) studies reporting retention rates, complications of crown retention, and biological and technical complications. After selecting studies with a predefined set of selection criteria, data from included studies were used for a systematic review aimed at a descriptive analysis of factors associated with the failure of crowns for primary teeth. Data from the included RCTs were used for meta-analysis, wherein 3-year and 5-year crown-retention rates were estimated using Poisson regression models. Results: This systematic review included 13 RCTs and 5 clinical studies on dental crowns for primary teeth, involving 454 children (1172 crowns) in RCTs and 810 children (2667 crowns) in clinical studies. The median follow-up durations were 12 months for RCTs and 20.8 months for clinical studies, with a 10.6% dropout rate in RCTs. Retention rates varied: 77.8%-100% for compomer, 80.6%-100% for composite resins, 92.3%-100% for stainless steel, 78%-100% for strip crowns, and 86.4%-100% for zirconia. Poisson regression estimated 3-year and 5-year crown-retention rates, indicating good outcomes across materials. Complications included secondary caries, with up to 21.8% in zirconia, and marginal adaptation issues, with up to 22.2% in compomer. These findings highlight material-specific considerations necessary for optimizing outcomes in pediatric dental crown treatments. Conclusions: While retentive complications such as chipping, material loss, and fractures do occur across materials, crowns fabricated with compomer, composite resin, stainless steel, strip crowns, and zirconia all have clinically acceptable retention rates. However, the differences in biological and technical complications between materials may provide insights for selecting appropriate materials for pediatric crowns based on clinical considerations. Clinical Trial: PROSPERO CRD42023442266; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=442266

There are two competing accounts explaining how increased worry about one issue affects people’s worry about unrelated issues. According to one account, it decreases worries about other issues (e.g., the finite pool of worry hypothesis). In the second account, it increases worry (e.g., generalized affect hypothesis, availability heuristics). We conducted a web-based experiment on representative samples of adults in the Czech Republic and Poland (total N = 7,051). We manipulated worry about one of three societal issues and measured the effect of this manipulation on the degree of worry about 12 unrelated issues. We also examined the underlying mechanism by looking at whether the effect was mediated by affect (a mechanism related to generalized affect) and moderated by issue similarity (a mechanism related to availability heuristics). The study provides strong evidence for a small-sized positive cross-effect of worry. Further, there are strong indications that an effect is mediated by generalized affect, specifically its valence. Our result contributes to a better understanding of how increased worry affects worries about other issues.

Concerns about the relationship between social media use and adolescent mental health are growing, yet few studies focus on adolescents with clinical-level mental health symptoms. This limits our understanding of how social media use varies across mental health profiles. In this Registered Report, we analyse nationally representative UK data (N = 3,340, aged 11–19 years) including diagnostic assessments by clinical raters alongside quantitative and qualitative social media measures. As hypothesized, adolescents with mental health conditions reported spending more time on social media and were less happy about the number of online friends than adolescents without conditions. We also found hypothesized differences in social media use by condition type: adolescents with internalizing conditions reported spending more time on social media, engaging in more social comparison and experiencing greater impact of feedback on mood, alongside lower happiness about the number of online friends and lower honest self-disclosure. In contrast, those with externalizing conditions only reported higher time spent. These findings emphasize the need to consider diverse adolescent mental health profiles in policy and clinical practice.

Classic psychedelics have long been used in religious and healing rituals. A recent wave of scientific research has examined the acute effects of psychedelics, including how experiences with them are often described as spiritual, religious, or mystical. However, research has paid insufficient attention to the role of psychedelic experiences in the context of religious/spiritual development. In two studies, we examine religious and spiritual changes related to psychedelic use. In Study 1, using data from multiple birth cohort studies—the 1958 National Child Development Study and the 1970 British Cohort Study (for both, N > 11,000)—we examined the relationship between lifetime psychedelic use and religious affiliation, including religious changes (i.e., de/conversion or switching) and beliefs. In Study 2, we examined prospective changes in self-identification as religious and spiritual over a 2-month period among people who reported psychedelic use in a representative sample from the United Kingdom and the United States (N = 9,732). In Study 1, religious affiliation in childhood and adulthood were associated with reduced likelihood of psychedelic use. Also, lifetime psychedelic use was associated with greater likelihood of stable nonaffiliation with religion and with religious disaffiliation. lysergic acid diethylamide use predicted switching between religions as well. In Study 2, psychedelic use was not related to changes in religiosity or spirituality. Notably, psychedelics’ associations with religious changes did generally not differ from other illicit substances. We discuss our findings by highlighting the context-dependence of psychedelics and their effects and relating them to secularization-related trends. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Potential employers can easily access job candidates’ photos online and attempt to infer a candidate’s fit or alignment based on their dress style. In this context, for candidates from marginalized groups like Indigenous people, traditional clothing holds cultural significance as it serves as a lively expression of belonging, participation in ceremonies, and resistance.

Previous studies conducted across multiple languages have found processing differences between patient-first and agent-first word orders. However, the results of these studies have been inconsistent as they do not identify a specific event-related potential (ERP) component as a unique correlate of thematic role processing. Furthermore, these studies generally confound word order with frequency, as patient-first structures tend to be infrequent in the languages that have been investigated. There is evidence that frequency of syntactic structure plays an important role in language processing. To address this potential confounding variable, we test Standard Indonesian, a language where passive structures occur with high frequency and are comparable in frequency to active structures. In Standard Indonesian, there is evidence from acquisition, corpus, and clinical data indicating that the use of passive is frequent. In the present study, 60 native speakers of Indonesian read 100 sentences (50 active and 50 passive) while EEG was recorded. Our findings reveal neural correlates of thematic role processing in the passive sentence condition – specifically, a positive shift corresponding to a P600 on the verb, and a more sustained positivity on the second noun phrase. These findings support existing evidence that sentences with a ‘non-default’ word order impose increased cognitive load, as reflected by ERPs, even when they occur with higher frequency in the language.

Autism is clinically defined by social communication deficits, suggesting that autistic people may be less effective at sharing information, particularly with one another. However, recent research indicates that neurotype mismatches, rather than autism itself, degrade information sharing. Here, using the diffusion chain method, we examined information transfer in autistic, non-autistic and mixed-neurotype chains (N = 311), replicating and extending a key study. We hypothesized that information transfer would deteriorate faster and rapport would be lower in mixed-neurotype compared with single-neurotype chains. Additionally, we examined whether informing participants of the diagnostic status of their chain and whether information was fictional or factual impacted performance and rapport. We found no difference in information transfer between single-neurotype and mixed-neurotype chains. Non-autistic chains indicated higher rapport, and disclosing diagnosis improved rapport. This result challenges assumptions about autistic communication deficits but contrasts with prior findings. Enhanced participant heterogeneity and methodological differences may explain these unexpected results. Protocol registration The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 23 August 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://osf.io/us9c7/.

How cross-culturally consistent and general are relationships between song and speech? Ozaki et al. (2024) analysed singing and speaking from 75 individuals speaking 55 languages, concluding that songs are “slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech”. However, the degree to which their findings would generalise to other speakers of their languages remains unclear. We will test the replicability of Ozaki et al.'s (2024) findings using audio recordings of matched singing and conversational speech from 15-30 individuals per language in 26 sites around the world, collected as part of a broader study of global song/speech relationships (Savage et al., 2025 [In Principle Accepted]). For each site, we will replicate Ozaki et al.'s (2024) analyses for their three key features hypothesised to differ between song and speech: 1) pitch height (f0); 2) temporal rate (inter-onset interval of acoustic units [e.g., syllables/moras/notes]); 3) pitch stability (−|Δf0|). This Programmatic Registered Report will allow us to test the replicability and generalizability of Ozaki et al.'s (2024) original findings in a rigorous and equitable manner by enabling each local research team to lead its own separate first-authored Stage 2 Registered Report based on a single shared Stage 1 protocol. This will allow us to test the replicability of Ozaki et al.'s (2024) original findings across diverse languages while also giving each team the flexibility to pursue their own exploratory analyses in directions most relevant to their local context. Regardless of results, our multi-site large-scale replications will enhance our understanding of cross-cultural relationships between music and language and provide a template for equitable global collaboration.

While work on the relationship between social media use and adolescent mental health has allowed for some progress, research in this area is still relatively new and shows mixed evidence. This is partly the consequence of a rapidly changing field, resulting in conceptualisation and measurement issues that hinder progress. Given the need for robust conceptualisation, the present study included five focus groups with 26 adolescents aged 11-15 in Northwest England, to understand their experiences, motivations, and perceptions of social media use, relating to mental health and wellbeing. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the transcripts. We developed five themes and 10 sub-themes. Young people discussed being present and connected on social media (theme A); identity formation and self-presentation (theme B); enjoyment and managing moods (theme C); exposure to risky content and relationships (theme D); and self-control (theme E). Across these themes three direct mental health and wellbeing outcomes were identified: social aspects, anxiety and self-esteem, plus two less clearly defined experiences around coping and self-control. Our findings also demonstrate the heterogeneity and multidimensionality of social media experience, and point to some possibly differences across age and gender. Overall, this study has contributed to our understanding of the salient dimensions and language to inform the development of an adolescent social media experience measure related to mental health.

This dissertation investigates how metascientific approaches can enhancethe quality and reliability of evidence syntheses in educational psychology.Prompted by the replication crisis, widespread questionable researchpractices, and the growing dependence on systematic reviews and metaanalysesin education, this work critically examines current researchstandards and advances innovative solutions rooted in open science. Study I evaluates the methodological validity and reproducibility of theinfluential research synthesis Visible Learning by John Hattie. The studyreveals several methodological flaws that contest the assumptions of thefindings and the failure of being able to reproduce the statistics serves as awarning example of the presence of the replication crisis. Study II evaluates the risk of bias and transparency in systematic reviewsconducted in educational psychology. Alarmingly, most includedsystematic reviews were judged as high risk of bias and across the entiresample, there was a lack of data sharing, preregistered protocols, andreproducible primary research data. Study III is a proof of concept of a registered report in educationalpsychology, the study aims to investigate the evidence of a writingintervention by conducting a systematic review. By adhering to the stateof-the-art conducting standards in systematic reviews, this protocol coversall aspects needed to produce reliable evidence as well as beingreproducible. In Study IV, an innovative open-source Community-Augmented Meta-Analysis combined with a database is developed. The study presentssolutions to several well-known problems in systematic reviews byallowing the research community to update, store, calculate, and shareeducational interventional data in a convenient way. The findings of the included studies highlight significant gaps in researchrigor and transparency, underscoring the necessity of fundamental changeto adhere to current standards and modern research practices. By incorporating methodological tools such as preregistration, openscience, risk of bias assessments and FAIR data principles, this dissertationcalls for a paradigm shift in the synthesis and application of evidence ineducational psychology. Ultimately, it seeks to promote more trustworthy,transparent, and impactful research to better inform educational policy andpractice.

Singing is ubiquitous and highly significant to human experience. Yet, despite the relevance and popularity of singing, scientific inquiry into singing voice preferences remains relatively scarce. This dissertation provides a rigorous empirical investigation of singing voice preferences. These were studied with an interactionist approach, considering aspects of the performances themselves, the listener who makes the evaluations, and the interaction between them. The first study aimed to quantify how much singing voice preferences could be linked to attributes of the singing performances. Modeling of participants’ liking ratings showed that they could be partially predicted by participants’ perceptual ratings of the stimuli, but not by computationally extracted representations of the acoustic signal. Importantly, there were large individual differences both in participants’ preferences and in how participants perceived the voices, as shown by the low interrater agreement in both liking and perceptual ratings. To generalize findings to other styles of singing and integrate them into the relatively abundant literature on speaking voice attractiveness, a new stimulus set of contrasting vocalizations was recorded. In the CoVox dataset, the same musical/text material was performed by 22 highly trained, versatile classical singers in three singing styles (operatic, pop, and lullaby singing) and two speaking styles (infant- and adult-directed speech). The CoVox dataset was carefully validated and described in a second study, and is openly available to the research community. In a third study, the singing performances of the CoVox dataset were examined with a focus on the relationship between singers’ versatility – determined by how well the intended style of singing performances could be recognized – and singers’ formal musical training. Singers’ versatility could not be linked to their musical training, a finding relevant to voice pedagogues concerned with teaching healthy “cross-over abilities” to their singing students. Finally, aesthetic preferences for contrasting vocalizations were examined using a subset of the CoVox dataset. In a registered report, a parallel with the visual domain inspired predictions concerning the amount of shared taste elicited by the five vocalization styles: it was expected that lullabies, as a more “natural” or universal category of singing, would lead to higher shared taste than operatic singing, a more “artificial” category of singing, with pop singing in an intermediate position. Contrary to predictions, lullaby and operatic singing led to equivalent shared taste, higher than what was found for pop. This registered report also tested the “singing and speaking as backup signals” hypothesis, according to which the attractiveness of voices is based on redundant acoustic cues of individual fitness. Results did not support the hypothesis of highly consistent average preferences for the same singers across all vocalization styles, suggesting that, if sexual selection plays a role in singing voice preferences, that role is limited. This dissertation employed an integrative approach to characterize voice preferences. Findings demonstrated that, while listeners' preferences can be consistent over time, interrater agreement is typically very low, which converges with the finding that (objective) acoustic characteristics poorly predict singing voice preferences. The highly idiosyncratic nature of voice preferences makes them a challenging topic to study. Nevertheless, the studies reported here establish important conceptual and methodological foundations for future research.

This study presents the results of a replication effort aimed at reproducing key findings from the 2012 article "Carbon-Dot-Based Dual-Emission Nanohybrid Produces a Ratiometric Flu- orescent Sensor for In Vivo Imaging of Cellular Copper Ions" by Zhu et al. The original study claimed that CQDs functionalized with AE-TPEA (CQDs-TPEA) and their hybrid with CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (CdSe@C-TPEA) exhibited ratiometric fluorescence quenching upon exposure to Cu2+ ions, enabling their application as a dual-emission sensor for intracellular Cu2+ imaging. Despite closely following the described synthesis and characterization protocols, we were unable to reproduce the Cu2+-induced fluorescence quenching, undermining the primary claim of the original study and making it impossible to pursue the investigation in live cells. Furthermore, upon close examination of the original data, concerns regarding spectral anoma- lies and potential inconsistencies were raised, prompting us to abort the replication study.

Individual differences in distress tolerance (DT), willingness to face internal discomfort, predict who is vulnerable to non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). However, it is unclear to what extent within-person differences in DT predict periods of peak NSSI risk. We used short-term variation in DT as a model of acute NSSI risk among people with recurrent NSSI. We sampled momentary DT and NSSI outcomes four times per day across 14 consecutive days in a group of 119 adults who had significant histories of NSSI behavior. Momentary DT ratings had robust within-person correlations with concurrent NSSI thoughts and behaviors (rs = −0.43 and −0.20, respectively). Also, DT was a statistically significant, albeit weak, predictor of NSSI outcomes up to 3 h later, even when adjusting for continuity in NSSI. Negative urgency and experiential avoidance—DT’s conceptual neighbors—added predictive utility in within-person models of NSSI thoughts and behavior (e.g., collectively the 3 predictors accounted for more than a third of within-person variation in concurrent NSSI thoughts). We conclude that time-varying DT levels could be a meaningful model, and potentially intervention target, for NSSI in high-risk populations. Our study’s dataset, analysis code, and materials are available at https://osf.io/nz5q4/.

Associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and personality traits have important implications for theory and application. Progress in understanding these associations depends on valid measurement, unbiased estimation, and careful assessment of generalizability. In this registered report, we used data from AIID, a large online study, to address three basic questions about personality and SES. First, we evaluated the measurement invariance of a common measure of personality, the Big Five Inventory, across indicators of educational attainment, income, and occupational prestige. Fit indices showed some instances of detectable noninvariance, but with little practical impact on substantive results. Second, we estimated associations between SES and personality. Results showed that personality and SES were largely independent (most rs < .1), in contrast to predictions derived from several previous studies. Third, we tested whether age trends in personality were moderated by SES. Results did not support predictions from social investment theory, but they did suggest that age trends were largely generalizable across SES. We discuss the implications of these findings for developing and validating personality measures for use in diverse samples. We also discuss the implications for theories that propose that the Big Five are responsive to, or partially responsible for, people’s economic and social conditions.

Models of gambling disorder, along with other addiction-related conditions, identify impulsive traits as a key component to developing challenging behaviors. This is supported by empirical findings indicating that individuals with gambling disorder exhibit poorer response inhibition, a facet of impulsivity. However, studies on individual differences in inhibition often find weak correlations between different inhibition tasks, suggesting that cognitive processes other than a general inhibitory control ability may contribute to task performance, and by extension, to gambling. The current study applied cognitive modeling to dissociate the cognitive processes involved in response inhibition tasks and examined which cognitive processes are predictive of gambling severity. A total of 422 participants completed the Stroop, Go/No-go and Stop-Signal tasks alongside the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) questionnaire. The drift diffusion model was used to decompose traditional task performance data into parameters which were then grouped into four distinct cognitive processes: inhibitory control, general processing speed, response caution, and perceptual/motor speed. Preregistered regression analyses indicate that lower caution, rather than inhibition, is associated with higher gambling severity. Whereas previous research had focused on inhibitory control as a risk factor for gambling behaviors, as well as a target for potential interventions (e.g. training apps), these findings suggest rather that the strategic processes underlying decision making – caution – are important to consider.

Full and clear reporting of null effects is important for a robust and valid research base. The purpose of this Registered Report is to review the presence and reporting of null findings in the special education research base. Preregistered hypotheses predicted (a) few studies with all or primary null findings and (b) spin in reporting and discussing null findings. We searched all 2020 publications 41 special education journals and identified 121 group-design intervention studies, coding the number of significant and non-significant p-values reported. We identified two (1.7%) articles reporting all null findings and no articles reporting null primary findings; both all-null studies were coded as containing one instance of spin. Exploratory analyses indicated hypotheses or predictions were stated in only 38.8% of studies and both instances of spin were low level. We discuss implications of findings and approaches for disseminating studies with null findings.

This Stage 2 registered report analyzed the rates at which hypotheses were supported in registered reports versus traditional publications within sport and exercise science. A title and abstract search using the term “registered report*” conducted in late 2024 yielded 4,235 records from PubMed and 1,011 from Scopus. After removing duplicates, 4,693 records were screened, and 14 full texts were reviewed independently by two authors. Ten registered reports that included at least one hypothesis were identified, resulting in 41 hypotheses. By matching journal and publication year, 59 traditional articles were selected, yielding 162 hypotheses. When restricted to the first hypothesis, as in prior research, the support rates were 70% for registered reports and 86% for traditional articles, a marginally significant difference (p = .095). When all hypotheses were included, the support rates were 54% and 79% for registered reports and traditional publications, respectively—a statistically significant difference (p < .001). These findings provide initial evidence that, similar to the field of psychology, registered reports in sport and exercise science are less likely to report conclusions supporting the stated hypotheses compared to traditionally published counterparts. Exploratory analyses showed that the difference in positive findings between psychology and sport and exercise for traditional articles was statistically significant (p = .014). However, this finding should be interpreted with caution due to potential confounding factors, including differences in publication periods, study selection strategies, and whether journal matching was applied.

Previous research demonstrates that identity affirmation is associated with greater well-being and increased intentions to engage in collective actions among minority individuals. However, these studies typically involve the affirmation of a single identity. Little is known about whether affirming multiple identities, compared to a single identity, might yield additional benefits. In a Registered Report experiment with a sample of N = 401 LGB-religious individuals, we tested the effect of a dual- vs. single-identity affirmation intervention on well-being and collective action intentions, and whether these effects depend on individuals’ identity integration. Participants completed an identity-integration scale and were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: dual-, single-religious-, single-sexual-identity affirmation, or a control condition. Well-being and collective action intentions were then measured. Identity affirmation interventions (vs. control) increased well-being. Identity integration was also positively associated with all outcomes. However, we found mixed results regarding the interaction between identity affirmation and identity integration. Contrary to expectations, dual-identity affirmation was not especially effective for individuals high in identity integration. Instead, dual-identity affirmation increased collective action intentions primarily among individuals low in identity integration. We discuss how dual-identity affirmation may help reconcile conflicting identities and foster collective action, particularly among individuals experiencing identity conflict.

Novel experiences appear to benefit memory for unrelated information encoded shortly before or after. Other research suggests that memory is impaired by effortful tasks following encoding, compared to simply resting. This registered report explicitly tested the proactive and retroactive effects of novel exploration and wakeful rest. Four groups of participants explored a novel or familiarised virtual environment, either shortly before or shortly after encoding a list of unrelated words. A fifth ‘wakeful rest’ group performed a low-effort attention task before and after encoding. Memory was tested with immediate free recall, delayed (next day) free recall and delayed recognition with confidence judgements (from which recollection and familiarity were estimated). Bayes factors provided evidence against both proactive and retroactive benefits of novelty across all measures of memory, but provided evidence for a retroactive benefit of rest for immediate recall. In exploratory analysis, we also found evidence for a proactive benefit of rest on immediate recall. We argue that the bidirectional benefits of wakeful rest are more easily explained by Temporal Distinctiveness theory than Consolidation theory. Overall, wakeful rest surrounding learning may represent a useful intervention for improving memory, while novel exploration may not.

Srull and Wyer (1979) demonstrated that exposing participants to more hostility-related stimuli caused them subsequently to interpret ambiguous behaviors as more hostile. In their Experiment 1, participants descrambled sets of words to form sentences. In one condition, 80% of the descrambled sentences described hostile behaviors, and in another condition, 20% described hostile behaviors. Following the descrambling task, all participants read a vignette about a man named Donald who behaved in an ambiguously hostile manner and then rated him on a set of personality traits. Next, participants rated the hostility of various ambiguously hostile behaviors (all ratings on scales from 0 to 10). Participants who descrambled mostly hostile sentences rated Donald and the ambiguous behaviors as approximately 3 scale points more hostile than did those who descrambled mostly neutral sentences. This Registered Replication Report describes the results of 26 independent replications (N = 7,373 in the total sample; k = 22 labs and N = 5,610 in the primary analyses) of Srull and Wyer’s Experiment 1, each of which followed a preregistered and vetted protocol. A random-effects meta-analysis showed that the protagonist was seen as 0.08 scale points more hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% confidence interval, CI = [0.004, 0.16]). The ambiguously hostile behaviors were seen as 0.08 points less hostile when participants were primed with 80% hostile sentences than when they were primed with 20% hostile sentences (95% CI = [−0.18, 0.01]). Although the confidence interval for one outcome excluded zero and the observed effect was in the predicted direction, these results suggest that the currently used methods do not produce an assimilative priming effect that is practically and routinely detectable.

The neural mechanisms of consciousness remain elusive. Previous studies on both human and non-human animals, through manipulation of level of conscious arousal, have reported that specific time-series features correlate with level of consciousness, such as spectral power in certain frequency bands. However, such features often lack principled, theoretical justifications as to why they should be related with level of consciousness. This raises two significant issues: firstly, many other types of times-series features which could also reflect conscious level have been ignored due to researcher biases toward specific analyses; and secondly, it is unclear how to interpret identified features to understand the neural activity underlying consciousness, especially when they are identified from recordings which summate activity across large areas such as electroencephalographic recordings. To address the first concern, here we propose a new approach: in the absence of any theoretical priors, we should be maximally agnostic and treat as many known features as feasible as equally promising candidates. To apply this approach, we use highly comparative time-series analysis (hctsa), a toolbox which provides over 7,700 different univariate time-series features originating from different research fields. To address the second issue, we employ hctsa to high-quality neural recordings from a relatively simple brain, the fly brain (Drosophila melanogaster), extracting features from local field potentials during wakefulness, general anesthesia, and sleep. At Stage 1 of this registered report, we constructed a classifier for each feature, for discriminating wakefulness and anesthesia in a discovery group of flies (N = 13). At Stage 2, we assessed their performances on four independent groups of evaluation flies, from which recordings were made during anesthesia and sleep, and which were originally blinded to the data analysis team (N = 49). We found only 47 time-series features, applied to recordings obtained from the center of the fly brain, to also significantly classify wake from anesthesia or sleep in all 4 of these evaluation datasets. Most of these were related to autocorrelation, and they indicated that signals during wakefulness remained correlated to their past for a longer timescale than during anesthesia and sleep. Meanwhile, time-series features related to well-known potential markers of consciousness, such as those related to complexity or spectral power, failed to generalize across all the flies. However, many of these complexity and spectral features have a consistent direction of effect due to anesthesia or sleep across flies, suggesting that even slight variations in experiment setup can reduce generalizability of classifiers. These results caution the current state of frequent discoveries of new potential consciousness markers, which may not generalize across datasets, and point to autocorrelation as a class of dynamical properties which does.

Neuroimaging data reveal that a functional locus ceruleus-noradrenaline (LC-NA) system is critical in maintaining cognitive performance during aging. However, older adults show reduced LC integrity and altered functional connectivity, demonstrating both structural declines and dysfunction. The LC-NA system mediates mechanisms of attention processing and eye tracking studies have shown that older adults are slower and more distractible compared with young adults in visual search tasks. Prior studies have shown that mindfulness meditation modulates LC noradrenergic activity, increases gray matter volume in the brainstem, and improves attentional control. Thus, in a preregistered longitudinal study, we investigated whether 30 d of guided mindfulness meditation using a mobile application improved attentional control measured with eye movements. We hypothesized that older adults would show greater benefits from the mindfulness intervention compared with young adults. In two oculomotor search tasks, we identified that guided mindfulness practice improved saccadic reaction times, but that other longitudinal benefits in goal-directed attentional control or distractibility by task-irrelevant salient stimuli may be from repeated practice. Furthermore, we did not find evidence for age differences in response to the mindfulness intervention between young, middle-aged, and older adults, nor among scores on mindfulness questionnaires. Our findings show that short-term mindfulness practice can modulate cognition, specifically with the speed of overt orienting of attention that may not be observable in self-report measures. This study is the first to show the utility of mindfulness on cognition using a highly reliable measure in eye movements and suggests future longer-term intervention studies may be warranted.

The spatial cueing paradigm has illustrated that location cues result in attentional enhancement of target stimuli. However, evidence is mixed on whether proactive attentional suppression can be cued similarly. In this registered report, we used a hybrid flanker-visual search-spatial cueing paradigm in which participants were presented with informative or non-informative cues regarding the upcoming location of a target feature matching a distractor in the search array. We aimed to replicate and extend a previous study which found evidence that cues support attentional suppression. We repeated the experiment with informative and non-informative cue conditions blocked (Experiment 2) and with possible target and distractor locations separated (Experiment 3). Across all three experiments (total n = 554), we did not observe any evidence of cueing-enhanced attentional suppression. In Experiments 1 and 3, participant responses were slightly slower in the informative cue condition, suggesting that the cue itself captured attention when the cue type was interleaved and thus unpredictable trial-to-trial. Surprisingly, post-experiment assessment of distractor learning suggested participants had not learnt the association between cue and distractor location in any experiment. These findings do not support spatial cue-enhanced attentional suppression.

When faced with self-threat, people often engage in self-protective reactions. Yet not everyone does. The extent to which self-protection occurs, is thought to depend on people’s personality. We put this claim to test by considering multiple personality traits from different content domains. In an experiment, participants (N = 1744) performed a bogus performance test and received negative versus positive feedback. As an indicator of self-protective reactions, we assessed participants’ tendency to question the validity of the test. We found that high self-esteem and high narcissism predicted stronger self-protective reactions, particularly when these traits were assessed in the content domain targeted by the negative feedback. Contrary to our hypotheses, the self-insight motive and mindfulness also predicted stronger (and not weaker) self-protective reactions. These findings provide better understanding of the role that personality plays in motivated reasoning.

Social media has transformed how people engage with the world around them. The positivity bias on social media, in particular, warrants in-depth investigation. This is particularly true as previous research has concentrated on one specific platform, Facebook. Based on a pilot study of 279 university students, this pre-registered experimental research used a mixed design to examine the positivity bias on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X. After recalling a personal event, 312 participants were randomly assigned to imagine telling this event to a group of friends and sharing it on social media (Facebook vs. Instagram vs. Twitter/X). Several characteristics were examined through repeated measures ANCOVAs including the texts’ valence and the usage of emoji. Contrary to the pilot results, we found no significant differences in how events were reported. We, however, found significant differences between platforms. Specifically, messages posted on Twitter/X had a more negative valence than those posted on Instagram and Facebook. The positivity bias, often associated with social media, may therefore not necessarily represent a bias per se, but only a form of positive self-presentation that is consistent across contexts. These findings highlight the importance of focusing on platform characteristics, such as architecture, affordances, and socio-cultural context. This study advances our understanding of the positivity bias across multiple platforms through a pre-registered experimental approach.

Many behavioural scientists do not agree on core constructs and how they should be measured. Different literatures measure related constructs, but the connections are not always obvious to readers and meta-analysts. Many measures in behavioural science are based on agreement with survey items. Because these items are sentences, computerised language models can make connections between disparate measures and constructs and help researchers regain an overview over the rapidly growing, fragmented literature. Our fine-tuned language model, the SurveyBot3000, accurately predicts the correlations between survey items, the reliability of aggregated measurement scales, and intercorrelations between scales from item positions in semantic vector space. In our pilot study, the out-of-sample accuracy for item correlations was .71, .89 for reliabilities, and .89 for scale correlations. In our preregistered validation study using novel items, the out-of-sample accuracy was slightly reduced to .59 for item correlations, .84 for reliabilities, and .84 for scale correlations. The synthetic item correlations showed an average prediction error of .17, with larger errors for middling correlations. Predictions exhibited generalizability beyond the training data and across various domains, with some variability in accuracy. Our work shows language models can reliably predict psychometric relationships between survey items, enabling researchers to evaluate new measures against existing scales, reduce redundancy in measurement, and work towards a more unified behavioural science taxonomy.

Presented by OSF