Improving the generalizability of infant psychological research: The ManyBabies model

Visser, Ingmar; Bergmann, Christina; Byers‐Heinlein, Krista; Ben, Rodrigo Dal; Duch, Włodzisław; Forbes, Samuel H.; Franchin, Laura; Frank, Michael C.; Geraci, Alessandra; Hamlin, J. Kiley; Káldy, Zsuzsa; Kulke, Louisa; Laverty, Catherine; Lew‐Williams, Casey; Mateu, Victoria; Mayor, Julien; Moreau, David; Nomikou, Iris; Schuwerk, Tobias; Simpson, Elizabeth A.; Singh, Leher; Söderström, Mélanie; Sullivan, Jessica; Heuvel, Marion I. van den; Westermann, Gert; Yamada, Yuki; Zaadnoordijk, Lorijn; Zettersten, Martin

doi:10.31234/osf.io/8vwbf

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Our findings contribute to the first steps toward the development of online eye-tracking paradigms that could be applied widely with infant and child samples. Online eye-tracking and behavioral studies with infants can help to reduce data collection time and costs for researchers and participants ( Tran et al, 2017 ; Semmelmann and Weigelt, 2018 ) and enhance replicability, reproducibility, and generalizability in developmental science ( Rhodes et al, 2020 ; Visser et al, 2021 ). Our work will also inform future initiatives that aim to replicate in-lab studies with infants online and establish collaborations for large-scale, global online experiments ( Frank et al, 2017 ; Byers-Heinlein et al, 2020 ; Sheskin et al, 2020 ; The ManyBabies Consortium, 2020 ; Zaadnoordijk et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Online Webcam- and Laboratory-Based Eye-Tracking for the Assessment of Infants’ Audio-Visual Synchrony Perception

et al. 2022

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Online data collection with infants raises special opportunities and challenges for developmental research. One of the most prevalent methods in infancy research is eye-tracking, which has been widely applied in laboratory settings to assess cognitive development. Technological advances now allow conducting eye-tracking online with various populations, including infants. However, the accuracy and reliability of online infant eye-tracking remain to be comprehensively evaluated. No research to date has directly compared webcam-based and in-lab eye-tracking data from infants, similarly to data from adults. The present study provides a direct comparison of in-lab and webcam-based eye-tracking data from infants who completed an identical looking time paradigm in two different settings (in the laboratory or online at home). We assessed 4-6-month-old infants (n = 38) in an eye-tracking task that measured the detection of audio-visual asynchrony. Webcam-based and in-lab eye-tracking data were compared on eye-tracking and video data quality, infants’ viewing behavior, and experimental effects. Results revealed no differences between the in-lab and online setting in the frequency of technical issues and participant attrition rates. Video data quality was comparable between settings in terms of completeness and brightness, despite lower frame rate and resolution online. Eye-tracking data quality was higher in the laboratory than online, except in case of relative sample loss. Gaze data quantity recorded by eye-tracking was significantly lower than by video in both settings. In valid trials, eye-tracking and video data captured infants’ viewing behavior uniformly, irrespective of setting. Despite the common challenges of infant eye-tracking across experimental settings, our results point toward the necessity to further improve the precision of online eye-tracking with infants. Taken together, online eye-tracking is a promising tool to assess infants’ gaze behavior but requires careful data quality control. The demographic composition of both samples differed from the generic population on caregiver education: our samples comprised caregivers with higher-than-average education levels, challenging the notion that online studies will per se reach more diverse populations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Online Webcam- and Laboratory-Based Eye-Tracking for the Assessment of Infants’ Audio-Visual Synchrony Perception

et al. 2022

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“…Instead, we need to go back to the drawing board and reconsider the conceptual basis of our research questions. In developmental research, first steps in this direction have already been taken: The Many Babies Consortium has established itself as a multi-lab collaboration that uses its resources to not simply scale up replication attempts of existing research, but to first establish consensus on conceptual definitions and experimental operationalisations (Visser et al, 2021). With some luck, the impetus of this important project and similar initiatives may lead us to a point where we can legitimately state that most psychological research findings are actually wrong -or, perhaps, slightly fewer than most (one can dream).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why most psychological research findings are not even wrong

Scheel¹

2021

Preprint

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Psychology’s replication crisis is typically conceptualised as the insight that the published literature contains a worrying amount of unreplicable, false-positive findings. At the same time, meta-scientific attempts to assess the crisis in more detail have reported substantial difficulties to identify unambiguous definitions of the scientific claims in published articles and to determine how they are connected to the presented evidence. I argue that most claims in the literature are so critically underspecified that attempts to empirically evaluate them are doomed to failure — they are not even wrong. Meta-scientists should beware of the flawed assumption that the psychological literature is a collection of well-defined claims. To move beyond the crisis, psychologists must reconsider and rebuild the conceptual basis of their hypotheses before trying to test them.

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“…Instead, we need to go back to the drawing board and reconsider the conceptual basis of our research questions. In developmental research, first steps in this direction have already been taken: The Many Babies Consortium has established itself as a multi-lab collaboration that uses its resources to not simply scale up replication attempts of existing research, but to first establish consensus on conceptual definitions and experimental operationalizations (Visser et al, 2021). With some luck, the impetus of this important project and similar initiatives may lead us to a point where we can legitimately state that most psychological research findings are actually wrong-or, perhaps, slightly fewer than most (one can dream).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why most psychological research findings are not even wrong

Scheel

2022

Infant and Child Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Psychology's replication crisis is typically conceptualized as the insight that the published literature contains a worrying amount of unreplicable, false-positive findings. At the same time, meta-scientific attempts to assess the crisis in more detail have reported substantial difficulties in identifying unambiguous definitions of the scientific claims in published articles and determining how they are connected to the presented evidence. I argue that most claims in the literature are so critically underspecified that attempts to empirically evaluate them are doomed to failure-they are not even wrong. Meta-scientists should beware of the flawed assumption that the psychological literature is a collection of well-defined claims. To move beyond the crisis, psychologists must reconsider and rebuild the conceptual basis of their hypotheses before trying to test them.

show abstract

Improving the generalizability of infant psychological research: The ManyBabies model

Cited by 5 publications

References 13 publications

Comparing Online Webcam- and Laboratory-Based Eye-Tracking for the Assessment of Infants’ Audio-Visual Synchrony Perception

Comparing Online Webcam- and Laboratory-Based Eye-Tracking for the Assessment of Infants’ Audio-Visual Synchrony Perception

Why most psychological research findings are not even wrong

Why most psychological research findings are not even wrong

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