Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemAn Extended Commentary on Post-Publication Peer Review In Organizational Neuroscience( 2018-10-03)While considerable progress has been made in organizational neuroscience over the past decade, we argue that critical evaluations of published empirical works are not being conducted carefully and consistently. In this extended commentary we take as an example Waldman and colleagues (2017): a major review work that evaluates the state-of-the-art of organizational neuroscience. In what should be an evaluation of the field’s empirical work, the authors uncritically summarize a series of studies that: (1) provide insufficient transparency to be clearly understood, evaluated, or replicated, and/or (2) which misuse inferential tests that lead to misleading conclusions, among other concerns. These concerns have been ignored across multiple major reviews and citing articles. We therefore provide a post-publication review (in two parts) of one-third of all studies evaluated in Waldman and colleague’s major review work. In Part I, we systematically evaluate the field’s two seminal works with respect to their methods, analytic strategy, results, and interpretation of findings. And in Part II, we provide focused reviews of secondary works that each center on a specific concern we suggest should be a point of discussion as the field moves forward. In doing so, we identify a series of practices we recommend will improve the state of the literature. This includes: (1) evaluating the transparency and completeness of an empirical article before accepting its claims, (2) becoming familiar with common misuses or misconceptions of statistical testing, and (3) interpreting results with an explicit reference to effect size magnitude, precision, and accuracy, among other recommendations. We suggest that adopting these practices will motivate the development of a more replicable, reliable, and trustworthy field of organizational neuroscience moving forward. Note: this manuscript has been peer reviewed and is published in Meta-Psychology. Please cite as: Prochilo, G. A., Louis, W. R., Bode, S., Zacher, H., & Molenberghs, P. (2019). An Extended Commentary on Post-publication Peer Review in Organizational Neuroscience. Meta-Psychology, 3. https://doi.org/10.15626/MP.2018.935 |
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCaloric Primary Rewards Systematically Alter Time Perception( 2017-04-26)Human time perception can be influenced by contextual factors, such as the presence of reward. Yet, the exact nature of the relationship between time perception and reward has not been conclusively characterized. We implemented a novel experimental paradigm to measure estimations of time across a range of suprasecond intervals, during the anticipation and after the consumption of fruit juice, a physiologically relevant primary reward. We show that average time estimations were systematically affected by the consumption of reward, but not by the anticipation of reward. Compared with baseline estimations of time, reward consumption was associated with subsequent overproductions of time, and this effect increased for larger magnitudes of reward. Additional experiments demonstrated that the effect of consumption did not extend to a secondary reward (money), a tasteless, noncaloric primary reward (water), or a sweet, noncaloric reward (aspartame). However, a tasteless caloric reward (maltodexrin) did induce overproductions of time, although this effect did not scale with reward magnitude. These results suggest that the consumption of caloric primary rewards can alter time perception, which may be a psychophysiological mechanism by which organisms regulate homeostatic balance.
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ItemTracking dynamic adjustments to decision making and performance monitoring processes in conflict tasks( 2019-12-20)How we exert control over our decision-making has been investigated using conflict tasks, which involve stimuli containing elements that are either congruent or incongruent. In these tasks, participants adapt their decision-making strategies following exposure to incongruent stimuli. According to conflict monitoring accounts, conflicting stimulus features are detected in medial frontal cortex, and the extent of experienced conflict scales with response time (RT) and frontal theta-band activity in the electroencephalogram (EEG). However, the consequent adjustments to decision processes following response conflict are not well-specified. To characterise these adjustments and their neural implementation we recorded EEG during a modified Flanker task. We traced the time-courses of performance monitoring processes (frontal theta) and multiple processes related to perceptual decision-making. In each trial participants judged which of two overlaid gratings forming a plaid stimulus (termed the S1 target) was of higher contrast. The stimulus was divided into two sections, which each contained higher contrast gratings in either congruent or incongruent directions. Shortly after responding to the S1 target, an additional S2 target was presented, which was always congruent. Our EEG results suggest enhanced sensory evidence representations in visual cortex and reduced evidence accumulation rates for S2 targets following incongruent S1 stimuli. Results of a follow-up behavioural experiment indicated that the accumulation of sensory evidence from the incongruent (i.e. distracting) stimulus element was adjusted following response conflict. Frontal theta amplitudes positively correlated with RT following S1 targets (in line with conflict monitoring accounts). Following S2 targets there was no such correlation, and theta amplitude profiles instead resembled decision evidence accumulation trajectories. Our findings provide novel insights into how cognitive control is implemented following exposure to conflicting information, which is critical for extending conflict monitoring accounts.
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ItemGendered Fitness Interests: A Method Partitioning the Effects of Family Composition on Socio-Political Attitudes and Behaviors(Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 2019)Whereas most people are biologically either male or female, their genetic interests are almost never aligned with just their own sex. Drawing on the evolutionary theory of inclusive fitness gained through relatives, we suggest it is possible to partition the effects of kin on fitness into those that derive from female versus male relatives. We argue that the balance of these female- and male-derived effects, which we call ‘Gendered Fitness Interests’ (GFI), might influence human behavior, especially the adoption of socio-political attitudes regarding issues with a gendered dimension. Our proposal builds on previous conjectures within evolution, as well as observations from both within and beyond the evolutionary sciences that parents’ socio-political views covary with the sex of their children, and the numbers of relatives of each sex. Further, it is consistent with the relatively small average differences between women’s and men’s socio-political positions. Using simulated data, we outline a method for partitioning GFI, and derive the testable predictions that the GFI component of women’s and men’s socio-political attitudes will converge with age, and with larger family sizes. Our proposal does not replace or falsify other theories of sex differences and similarities, but it does formalize a previously underappreciated component of variance in traits and attitudes with a gendered dimension. In this respect, it may be generally useful in resolving the complex origins of gendered behavior, and the primacy of an individual’s gender identification (including but not limited to biological sex) as a fixed and distinctive part of their socio-political identity.