Robert D. McIntosh

By rewarding speed, volume, and coherent positive narratives, traditional publishing incentivizes questionable scientific practices and analytic flexibility. The latter especially contributes to blurring the distinction between exploration and confirmation, which inflates the apparent strength of confirmatory claims. This systemic issue has gone unchecked for decades, leaving the scientific community with a body of scholarly literature that is unreliable and lacking validity. Registered Reports (RRs) address problematic publishing practices by requiring a priori registration of confirmatory tests, which is peer-reviewed before the research begins (stage 1). The editorial acceptance of a stage 1 plan establishes a commitment to publication regardless of research outcomes. Publication remains, nonetheless, contingent on a second peer review and editorial scrutiny (stage 2) to verify that the approved plan was followed, all deviations were transparently disclosed and justified, confirmatory and exploratory claims are clearly delineated, and the integrity of the design was maintained. Meta-scientific comparisons indicate that RRs reduce outcome-based publication bias and improve methodological rigor without compromising perceived novelty. By making accepted RR protocols and their review history citable research outputs, RRs also strengthen recognition for peer-review work. In this perspective, we argue that RRs should become the primary mode of confirmatory publication moving forward.

Vaccine-scepticism and vaccine hesitancy are sometimes explained using the Dunning–Kruger effect (DKE), which posits that individuals with low knowledge in relevant domains are overconfident in their understanding. However, prior evidence often relies on discrepancy-based measures of self-overestimation that are susceptible to statistical artefacts. It, therefore, remains unclear whether vaccine-scepticism genuinely reflects the defining features of the DKE. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a large UK sample (n = 537) completed a newly developed Covid-scepticism (CS) scale, with a knowledge test assessing biological knowledge and probabilistic reasoning, relevant to a viral pandemic. Item-level confidence ratings for each knowledge judgement were used to derive a measure of metacognitive bias, which indexes a person's overall tendency towards low or high confidence. Higher CS was associated with lower levels of knowledge. The relationship with low knowledge was strongest for sceptical attitudes towards vaccines and endorsement of conspiracy-adjacent beliefs. However, lower knowledge was not associated with overconfidence, as predicted by DKE accounts. Instead, metacognitive bias increased with knowledge, and higher vaccine-scepticism predicted lower overall confidence. These findings provide little support for accounts of vaccine-scepticism based primarily on the popular view of the DKE. The results underscore the importance of using appropriate measures of metacognition and caution against dismissive characterizations of vaccine-sceptic attitudes.

Pseudoneglect, a subtle attentional bias toward the left visual field in neurologically healthy individuals, can be measured with a split-screen method in which a bright stimulus in one hemifield elicits stronger pupil constriction when it appears on the left than on the right (Strauch et al., 2022). Replications of this method have reported mixed results, including a large Registered Report that replicated the effect with a small effect size (d = 0.31). Given strong left-field biases in the emotional chimeric face test, the present study (n = 53) combined this task with split-screen pupillometry to test whether emotional face processing amplifies pupillary pseudoneglect. Pupillary pseudoneglect was observed during control trials with non-faces (d = 0.36) and was stronger for emotional faces (d = 0.76), but this difference was not significant. A strong left-field bias was confirmed for emotional face judgements (d = 0.76), which did not correlate with pupillary bias (ρ = 0.26), and for a line bisection task (d = 0.47), which also did not correlate with pupillary pseudoneglect (ρ = 0.19). These data support the split-screen pupillometric method for measuring pseudoneglect and replicate a previously-noted pattern that leftward biases across tasks show little statistical relation to one another.

Pseudoneglect, a subtle attentional bias toward the left visual field in neurologically healthy individuals, can be measured with a split-screen method in which a bright stimulus in one hemifield elicits stronger pupil constriction when it appears on the left than on the right (Strauch, C., Romein, C., Naber, M., Van der Stigchel, S., & Ten Brink, A. F. (2022). The orienting response drives pseudoneglect-Evidence from an objective pupillometric method. Cortex, 151, 259-271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2022.03.006). Replications of this method have reported mixed results, including a large Registered Report that replicated the effect with a small effect size (d = -0.31). Given strong left-field biases in the emotional chimeric face test, the present study (n = 53) combined this task with split-screen pupillometry to test whether emotional face processing amplifies pupillary pseudoneglect. Pupillary pseudoneglect was observed during control trials with non-faces (d = -0.36) and was stronger for emotional faces (d = -0.76), but this difference was not significant. A strong left-field bias was confirmed for emotional face judgements (d = -0.76), which did not correlate with pupillary bias (ρ = -0.26), and for a line bisection test (d = -0.47), which also did not correlate with pupillary pseudoneglect (ρ = -0.19). These data support the split-screen pupillometric method for measuring pseudoneglect and replicate a previously-noted pattern that leftward biases across tasks show little statistical relation to one another.

Stereopsis, the visual experience of palpable depth and solidity, is traditionally thought to depend on the congruence or conflict amongst depth cues. But a more speculative theory is that it depends critically on being able to estimate the absolute depths of objects, and their real-world distances from us. We tested this idea in a perception class, using a picture of some plants, a cardboard box with a monocular viewing hole, and a pair of pinhole glasses. Fourteen of 16 students reported stronger stereopsis with pinhole viewing, contrary to the predictions of the absolute depth theory, but consistent with a traditional account. This classroom exercise offers an empirical challenge for the absolute depth theory, and a vivid teaching tool for the paradoxes of pictorial depth perception.

Strauch et al. (2022) introduced a novel approach to assess biases of visual attention, by measuring pupillary constriction in response to split-field stimuli, in which a bright patch ispresented to one visual field and a dark patch to the other. Their study suggested that pupillary constriction is more pronounced in response to bright stimuli in the left visual fieldcompared to the right, consistent with a neurotypical attentional bias towards the left side (pseudoneglect). This pupillometric bias was also found to correlate with performance on the greyscales task, an established behavioural measure of pseudoneglect. The present studysought to replicate these findings, and investigated the influence of the eye of recording on the pupillary constriction bias measured by this split-field method. There was a major influence of the eye of recording, whereby each pupil constricted more to light in the ipsilateral than the contralateral visual field (d = 1.67). Averaging across the eyes, we confirmed stronger pupillary constriction to bright stimuli in the left compared to the right visual field (pseudoneglect), but with a small effect size (d = -0.31). While the split-field paradigm does detect pseudoneglect, it does not seem to be especially sensitive, and large sample sizes may be required to detect this subtle bias. However, the method may hold promise for studying stronger attentional biases, such as those seen in spatial neglect.

Preregistration is the act of formally documenting a research plan before collecting (or at least before analysing) the data. It allows those reading a final research report to know which aspects of a study were decided before sight of the data, and which were added later. This enables informed evaluation of the severity with which scientific claims have been tested. We, as the British Neuropsychological Society Open Research Group, conducted a survey to explore awareness and adoption of open research practices within our field. Neuropsychology involves the study of relatively rare or hard-to-access participants, creating practical challenges that, according to our survey, are perceived as barriers to preregistration. We survey the available routes to preregistration, and suggest that the barriers are all surmountable in one way or another. However, there is a tension, in that higher levels of bias control require greater restriction over the flexibility of preregistered studies, but such flexibility is often essential for neuropsychological research. Researchers must therefore consider which route provides the right balance of rigour and pragmatic flexibility to render a preregistered project viable for them. By mapping out the issues and potential solutions, and by signposting relevant resources and publication routes, we hope to facilitate well-reasoned decision-making and empower neuropsychologists to enhance the transparency and rigour of their research. Although we focus neuropsychology, our guidance is applicable to any field that studies hard-to-access human samples, or involves arduous or expensive means of data collection.