Search results for "MetaArXiv|Social and Behavioral Sciences"
showing 10 items of 105 documents
How Will We React to the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life?
2018
How will humanity react to the discovery of extraterrestrial life? Speculation on this topic abounds, but empirical research is practically non-existent. We report the results of three empirical studies assessing psychological reactions to the discovery of extraterrestrial life using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis software. We examined language use in media coverage of past discovery announcements of this nature, with a focus on extraterrestrial microbial life (Pilot Study). A large online sample (N = 501) was asked to write about their own and humanity’s reaction to a hypothetical announcement of such a discovery (Study 1), and an independent, large online sampl…
Interindividual Differences in Treatment Effects based on Structural Equation Models with Latent Variables: An EffectLiteR Tutorial
2019
The investigation of interindividual differences in the effects of a treatment is challenging, because many constructs-of-interest in psychological research such as depression or anxiety are latent variables and modeling heterogeneity in treatment effects requires interactions and potentially nonlinear relationships. In this paper, we present a tutorial of the EffectLiteR approach (Mayer, Dietzfelbinger, Rosseel, & Steyer, 2016) that allows for estimating individual treatment effects based on latent variable models. We describe step by step how to apply the approach using the EffectLiteR software package with data from the multicenter randomized controlled trial of the Social Phobia…
Evaluating the microscopic effect of brushing stone tools as a cleaning procedure
2020
Cleaning stone tool surfaces is a common procedure in lithic studies. The first step widely applied at any archeological site (and/or at field laboratories) is the gross removal of sediment from the surfaces of artifacts. Lithic surface alterations due to mechanical action applied in wet or dry cleaning regimes have never been examined at a microscopic scale. This could have important implications in traceology, as any modern surface modifications inflicted on archeological artifacts might compromise their functional interpretations. The current trend toward quantification of use-wear traces makes the testing even more important, as even slight, apparently invisible surface alterations migh…
Statistically validated networks in bipartite complex systems.
2011
Many complex systems present an intrinsic bipartite nature and are often described and modeled in terms of networks [1-5]. Examples include movies and actors [1, 2, 4], authors and scientific papers [6-9], email accounts and emails [10], plants and animals that pollinate them [11, 12]. Bipartite networks are often very heterogeneous in the number of relationships that the elements of one set establish with the elements of the other set. When one constructs a projected network with nodes from only one set, the system heterogeneity makes it very difficult to identify preferential links between the elements. Here we introduce an unsupervised method to statistically validate each link of the pr…
Subtle Increases in Interletter Spacing Facilitate the Encoding of Words during Normal Reading
2012
BackgroundSeveral recent studies have revealed that words presented with a small increase in interletter spacing are identified faster than words presented with the default interletter spacing (i.e., w a t e r faster than water). Modeling work has shown that this advantage occurs at an early encoding level. Given the implications of this finding for the ease of reading in the new digital era, here we examined whether the beneficial effect of small increases in interletter spacing can be generalized to a normal reading situation.MethodologyWe conducted an experiment in which the participant's eyes were monitored when reading sentences varying in interletter spacing: i) sentences were present…
Unveiling the boost in the sandwich priming technique.
2021
The masked priming technique (which compares #####-house-HOUSE vs. #####-fight-HOUSE) is the gold-standard tool to examine the initial moments of word processing. Lupker and Davis showed that adding a pre-prime identical to the target produced greater priming effects in the sandwich technique (which compares #####-HOUSE-house-HOUSE vs #####-HOUSE-fight-HOUSE). While there is consensus that the sandwich technique magnifies the size of priming effects relative to the standard procedure, the mechanisms underlying this boost are not well understood (i.e., does it reflect quantitative or qualitative changes?). To fully characterise the sandwich technique, we compared the sandwich and standard t…
Multiverse Ethnography: A Qualitative Method for Gaming and Technology Use Research
2021
This article introduces multiverse ethnography as a systematic team-based qualitative method for studying the mechanical, structural and experiential properties of video games and other technological artefacts. Instead of applying the ethnographic method to produce a single in-depth account, multiverse ethnography includes multiple researchers carrying out coordinated synergetic ethnographic work on the same research object, thus producing a multiverse of interpretations and perspectives. To test the method, 41 scholars carried out a multiverse ethnography on two video games, Cyberpunk 2077 and Among Us. Explorative thematic findings regarding both titles are reported and methodological imp…
Open science as a better gatekeeper for science and society: a perspective from neurolaw
2018
Results from cognitive neuroscience have been cited as evidence in courtrooms around the world, and their admissibility has been a challenge for the legal system. Unfortunately, the recent reproducibility crisis in cognitive neuroscience, showing that the published studies in cognitive neuroscience may not be as trustworthy as expected, has made the situation worse. Here we analysed how the irreproducible results in cognitive neuroscience literature could compromise the standards for admissibility of scientific evidence, and pointed out how the open science movement may help to alleviate these problems. We conclude that open science not only benefits the scientific community but also the le…
A quantitative assessment of intraspecific morphological variation in Gahagan bifaces from the southern Caddo area and central Texas
2019
This investigation aggregates intact or reconstructed Gahagan bifaces from the southern Caddo area and central Texas to test the hypothesis that Gahagan biface morphology differs between the regions. The Gahagan bifaces (n = 102) were scanned, then analysed using a novel landmarking protocol and the tools of geometric morphometrics. Results provide a preview of the significant differences in Gahagan biface morphology expressed between the southern Caddo area and central Texas regions. The size discrepancy represents an inversion of current theoretical constructs that posit a decrease in tool size thought to articulate with an increase in distance from the raw material source. It is posited …
Frequency distribution of journalistic attention for scientific studies and scientific sources: An input – output analysis
2020
Based on the decision-theoretical conditions underlying the selection of events for news coverage in science journalism, this article uses a novel input-output analysis to investigate which of the more than eight million scientific study results published between August 2014 and July 2018 have been selected by global journalism to a relevant degree. We are interested in two different structures in the media coverage of scientific results. Firstly, the structure of sources that journalists use, i.e. scientific journals, and secondly, the congruence of the journalistic selection of single results. Previous research suggests that the selection of sources and results follows a certain heavy-tai…