Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Alon Zivony

Liad Mudrik @liadmudrik.bsky.social · 13d

BBS just issued the call for commentaries, and we would LOVE to get yours!! The deadline is October 15th, and the reference number is BBS-D-24-00489R2. Looking forward to hearing what you think about our suggestions for how to study unconscious processes!

Maor Schreiber @maorschreiber.bsky.social · Jul 29

📢Excited to share our paper, "Studying unconscious processing: Contention and consensus", published in BBS.
The paper is the result of a collaborative effort of 32 leading researchers in the field, from 10 different countries🌏

Check out the full ms👇
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Studying unconscious processing: Contention and consensus | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core

Studying unconscious processing: Contention and consensus

www.cambridge.org

11 16

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 15d

I missed academic memes on my feed!

1

Reposted by Alon Zivony

Paul Franke @paulfrahistory.bsky.social · 17d

Academic career symbolized in a picture.
#Ichbinhannah #postdocchatter

Staircase leading into a wall / into nothing.

9 20 140

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

yeah, same. Up until now I just used repeated measures. But recently I've been venturing to individual differences and between group comparisons. I only now realise that things are much murkier than I knew.

1 1

Reposted by Alon Zivony

Brad T. Stilwell @bradtstilwell.bsky.social · 20d

Hot off the press in a special issue at CABN! Here, Brian A. Anderson and I show that suppressing salient distractors is more effortful when the distractors are less salient: It's easier to suppress more salient distractors!

doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Signal suppression makes search less effortful - Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

Physically salient stimuli compete for attention but can be suppressed under certain conditions. Highly salient distractors can be suppressed more efficiently than less salient ones. However, the impl...

doi.org

1 6

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

I just think that we're not trained on thinking what reliability does to our between-group effect sizes. Measurement error, yes. Reliability, no.

1 1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

Exactly. Only that low reliability essentially massively increases within-group variability.

If a measure is unreliable and you happen to find very low within-group variability, the low variability might have happened accidently. So whoever tries to replicate will probably get a different outcome.

1 1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

4. To make matters worse: large effects are often not very reliable. For example, the Stroop effect is easy to find, but the size of the effect changes wildly from one measurement to the next. So any between-group comparison of Stroop requires a large sample size to be replicable.

1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

3. So the same rationale from correlations apply.

If our DV is highly unreliable, then effect sizes are small by default because low reliability=noise. The results of our between-group comparison are just not very replicable.

The only solution is huge sample sizes to allow for smaller effects.

1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

2. Unless we're manipulating the groups, a between-groups test is essentially a correlation. Think about age groups. Instead of correalting a measure with age as a continious measure, we just nuch together people of different ages to a a single group.

1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

Maybe this will help for intution:
1. If we have no reliability (test-retest r = 0), that means that any correlation we're finding is not replicable. After all, if a measure is not correlated with itself, how can it correlate with any other measure?
Weak reliability = less replicable correlation

1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

I have a feeling that most psychologists have no intution why reliablity (both within-session and test-retest) is critical for between-group comparisons.

Which makes sense, I sure didn't think about it until earlier this year!

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

When calculating a correlation we sometimes apply a correction for attenuation due to reliability.
Has anyone ever suggested a similar correction for a between-groups comparison?
After all, reliability of the DV affects those the same way (and they are often just a dichotomised correaltion).

1 1 1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

Can you share what you wrote?

This is what I found from a quick search (I can't find if the second was published):
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
core.ac.uk/download/pdf...

core.ac.uk

1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

okay, I saw some not well-cited papers. But my question is: why not correct for reliability? And why not do it often? We are essentially wasting away power by not tracking how (un)reliable our DVs are and adjusting our error terms for it.

2 1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · 20d

When calculating a correlation we sometimes apply a correction for attenuation due to reliability.
Has anyone ever suggested a similar correction for a between-groups comparison?
After all, reliability of the DV affects those the same way (and they are often just a dichotomised correaltion).

1 2 3

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · Aug 24

Movie theory:
You know how there are androids in the Alien universe?
And you know how humans in the Alien universe always make really bad choices? (sticking their heads in alien eggs)

Hear me out:
Alien describes a future where people became increasly dumber due to a century of exposure to LLMs

4

Reposted by Alon Zivony

TACC @tacc.org.uk · Aug 18

Trans Legal Clinic need your support in funding this case. We all have a duty to do something, even sharing this will help, share it other platforms and to allies.

If you can please donate to help fund this case, this is the most important part of the restoration of the our rights:

7 420 550

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · Aug 19

I always love to help students understand what are the barebones assumptions of psychology as empirical science. That there's an objective reality, even for abstract concepts, and that our goal is to uncover it using methods and statistics. I find it helps with the "is psychology a science" debate.

1 6

Reposted by Alon Zivony

Vanessa Loaiza @vmloaiza1.bsky.social · Aug 1

Me: This project will distinguish between Theories A and B
My data:

Popular meme of guy holding up a sign that says "I just hope both teams lose"

2 33

Reposted by Alon Zivony

W Fred Garvey @wfredgarvey.bsky.social · May 16

I've published a pre-registration with @cvonbastian.bsky.social, @alonzivony.bsky.social, and Alicia Forsberg for my study on the unity and diversity of binding! Check it out! doi.org/10.17605/OSF...

OSF

doi.org

2 2

Reposted by Alon Zivony

Eden Elbaz @edenelbaz.bsky.social · May 10

(1/7) What is the best way to estimate subliminal thresholds in unconscious processing research? In our new preprint, we present STEP, a novel calibration method designed specifically for estimating subliminal thresholds osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

1 2 12

Reposted by Alon Zivony

Martin Hebart @martinhebart.bsky.social · May 7

Ok, vision scientists. Are we doing the international beer exchange again this year at #VSS2025 as pregaming to Club Vision? Who’s in?

2 2 5

Reposted by Alon Zivony

ranimo.bsky.social @ranimo.bsky.social · Apr 24

Still time to apply (until 30/04)!! What are you waiting for?

ranimo.bsky.social @ranimo.bsky.social · Mar 26

⭐️PhD in Cognitive/Computational Psychology⭐️ Use Reinforcement Learning to study how mis/misinformation affects us. For full funding, one has to be eligible for UK home fees. Please Share!!
@queenmarycbb.bsky.social

Deadline: April 20. For more information:
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Characterising Cognitive Biases Elicited by Misinformation Using Reinforcement Learning at Queen Mary University of London on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Characterising Cognitive Biases Elicited by Misinformation Using Reinforcement Learning at Queen Mary University of London, listed on FindAPhD.com

www.findaphd.com

2 1

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · Apr 10

This might seem of no consequence whatsoever, but... if you're trying to use Excel to calibrate timestamps from two different machines to the millisecond, being half a second off can be a big deal!

Excel, who asked you to round up the seconds???

1 2

Alon Zivony @alonzivony.bsky.social · Apr 10

Probably my geekiest ever:
I just compared the now() function in Excel (which provide the time in hh:mm:ss) to Windows's clock. It turns out that, unlike Windows, the Excel second meter rounds up when milliseconds go over over 500! 🤯
So Now() is fully calibrated with Windows only half of the time!

1 2