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Motivating a preregistration (especially in experimental linguistics)

The best argument to motivate a preregistration may be that it doesn’t take any extra time. It just requires frontloading an important portion of the work. As a reward, the paper will receive greater trust from the reviewers and the readers at large. Preregistration is not perfect, but is a lesser evil that reduces the misuse of statistical analysis in science.

Do you speak a Scandinavian language(s) and English, but no other languages? Delta i et EEG-eksperiment

Ved å delta i vårt eksperiment og gjøre noen enkle oppgaver på en datamaskin, kan du bidra til forskning og tjene 250 kr i timen (gavekort). EEG er helt smertefritt. Eksperimentet foregår i Tromsø, ved UiT Norges Arktiske Universitet. Vi ser etter deltakere med følgende egenskaper: ☑ Alder 18–45 år; ☑ Snakker norsk som førstespråk og engelsk flytende. Utenom disse språkene, kan deltakerne også snakke svensk og dansk, men ikke andre språk (utover noen få ord);

Learning how to use Zotero

Is it worth learning how to use a reference management system such as Zotero? Maybe. The hours you invest in learning how to use Zotero (approx. 10 hours) are likely to pay off, as they will save you a lot of time that you would otherwise spend formatting, revising and correcting references. In addition, this skill would become part of your skill set. A great guide Free, online webinars in which you could participate and ask questions

FAQs on mixed-effects models

I am dealing with nested data, and I remember from an article by Clark (1973) that nested should be analysed using special models. I’ve looked into mixed-effects models, and I’ve reached a structure with random intercepts by subjects and by items. Is this fine? In early days, researchers would aggregate the data across these repeated measures to prevent the violation of the assumption of independence of observations, which is one of the most important assumptions in statistics.

FAIR standards for the creation of research materials, with examples

In the fast-paced world of scientific research, establishing minimum standards for the creation of research materials is essential. Whether it's stimuli, custom software for data collection, or scripts for statistical analysis, the quality and transparency of these materials significantly impact the reproducibility and credibility of research. This blog post explores the importance of adhering to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles, and offers practical examples for researchers, with a focus on the cognitive sciences.

Two-second delay after logger in OpenSesame

The result shows a varying delay of around 2 seconds on average. It would be very helpful for us if we could cut down this delay, as it adds up. To try to achieve this, I reduced the number of variables logged, from the default 363 to 34 important variables. Unfortunately, this change did not result in a reduction of the delay.

Preprocessing the Norwegian Web as Corpus (NoWaC) in R

The present script can be used to preprocess data from a frequency list of the Norwegian as Web Corpus (NoWaC; Guevara, 2010). Before using the script, the frequency list should be downloaded from this URL. The list is described as ‘frequency list sorted primary alphabetic and secondary by frequency within each character’, and this is the direct URL. The download requires signing in to an institutional network. Last, the downloaded file should be unzipped.

A Python inline script for OpenSesame to send EEG triggers via serial port

The OpenSesame user base is skyrocketing but—of course—remains small in comparison to many other user bases that we are used to. Therefore, when developing an experiment in OpenSesame, there are still many opportunities to break the mould. When you need to do something beyond the standard operating procedure, it may take longer to find suitable resources than it takes when a more widespread tool is used. So, why would you still want to use OpenSesame?

How to correctly encode triggers in Python and send them to BrainVision through serial port (useful for OpenSesame and PsychoPy)

I'm sending the triggers in a binary format because Python requires this. For instance, to send the trigger 1, I run the code serialport.write(b'1'). I have succeeded in sending triggers in this way. However, I encounter two problems. First, the triggers are converted in a way I cannot entirely decipher. For instance, when I run the code serialport.write(b'1'), the trigger displayed in BrainVision Recorder is S 49, not S 1 as I would hope (please see Appendix below). Second, I cannot send two triggers with the same code one after the other. For instance, if I run serialport.write(b'1'), a trigger appears in BrainVision Recorder, but if I run the same afterwards (no matter how many times), no trigger appears. I tried to solve these problems by opening the parallel port in addition to the serial port, but the problems persist.

ggplotting power curves from the simr package

The R package ‘simr’ has greatly facilitated power analysis for mixed-effects models using Monte Carlo simulation (which involves running hundreds or thousands of tests under slight variations of the data). The powerCurve function is used to estimate the statistical power for various sample sizes in one go. Since the tests are run serially, they can take a VERY long time; approximately, the time it takes to run the model supplied once (say, a few hours) times the number of simulations (nsim, which should be higher than 200), and times the number of different sample sizes examined.