This study investigated for the first time the effects of individual and combined application of 3 learning techniques (verbal suggestions, classical conditioning, and observational learning) on... Show moreThis study investigated for the first time the effects of individual and combined application of 3 learning techniques (verbal suggestions, classical conditioning, and observational learning) on placebo analgesia and extinction.Healthy participants (N = 206) were assigned to 8 different groups in which they were taught through either a verbal suggestion, a conditioning paradigm, a video observing someone, or any combination thereof that a placebo device (inactive transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation [TENS]) was capable of alleviating heat pain, whereas one group did not (control). Placebo analgesia was quantified as the within-group difference in experienced pain when the placebo device was (sham) 'activated' or 'inactivated' during equal pain stimuli, and compared between groups.Placebo analgesia was induced in groups with 2 or 3 learning techniques. Significantly stronger placebo analgesia was induced in the combination of all 3 learning techniques as compared to the individual learning techniques or control condition, underlining the additional contribution of 3 combined techniques. Extinction did not differ between groups. Furthermore, pain expectancies, but not state anxiety or trust, mediated placebo analgesia.Our findings emphasize the added value of combining 3 learning techniques to optimally shape expectancies that lead to placebo analgesia, which can be used in experimental and clinical settings. Perspective: This unique experimental study compared the individual versus combined effects of 3 important ways of learning (verbal suggestions, classical conditioning, and observational learning) on expectation-based pain relief. The findings indicate that placebo effects occurring in clinical practice could be optimally strengthened if healthcare providers apply these techniques in combination.(R) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Show less
Heyman, T.; Boere, R.; Jong, S. de; Hoogeterp, L.; Kraaijenbrink, J.; Kuipers, C.; ... ; Wijk, T. van 2022
Science is often perceived to be a self-correcting enterprise. In principle, the assessment of scientific claims is supposed to proceed in a cumulative fashion, with the reigning theories of the... Show moreScience is often perceived to be a self-correcting enterprise. In principle, the assessment of scientific claims is supposed to proceed in a cumulative fashion, with the reigning theories of the day progressively approximating truth more accurately over time. In practice, however, cumulative self-correction tends to proceed less efficiently than one might naively suppose. Far from evaluating new evidence dispassionately and infallibly, individual scientists often cling stubbornly to prior findings. Here we explore the dynamics of scientific self-correction at an individual rather than collective level. In 13 written statements, researchers from diverse branches of psychology share why and how they have lost confidence in one of their own published findings. We qualitatively characterize these disclosures and explore their implications. A cross-disciplinary survey suggests that such loss-of-confidence sentiments are surprisingly common among members of the broader scientific population yet rarely become part of the public record. We argue that removing barriers to self-correction at the individual level is imperative if the scientific community as a whole is to achieve the ideal of efficient self-correction. Show less
We examine schoolchildren’s reasoning with spatial relations, such as ‘is to the left of’. Our aims are to obtain a more precise account of the effect of working memory on reasoning, a more... Show moreWe examine schoolchildren’s reasoning with spatial relations, such as ‘is to the left of’. Our aims are to obtain a more precise account of the effect of working memory on reasoning, a more detailed understanding of the internal representation of mental models and a developmental perspective. We discuss two experiments in which 348 children, between eight and twelve years old, needed to verify conclusions for 24 reasoning problems describing the spatial relations between pieces of clothing. In both experiments, children in the experimental condition were allowed to take notes by means of paper and pencil. We find that the participants spontaneously draw iconic representations of the items’ spatial ordering, have a strong preference for only considering one possible state of affairs even when more are relevant, and that an explanation in terms of working memory capacity alone cannot fully explain the data. Show less
Science is self-correcting, or so the adage goes, but to what extent is that indeed the case? Answering this question requires careful consideration of the various approaches to achieve the... Show moreScience is self-correcting, or so the adage goes, but to what extent is that indeed the case? Answering this question requires careful consideration of the various approaches to achieve the collective goal of self-correction. One of the most straightforward mechanisms is individual self-correction: researchers rectifying their own mistakes by publishing a correction notice. Although it offers an efficient route to correcting the scientific record, it has received little to no attention from a metascientific point of view. We aim to fill this void by analysing the content of correction notices published from 2010 until 2018 in the three psychology journals featuring the highest number of corrections over that timespan based on the Scopus database (i.e. Psychological Science with N = 58, Frontiers in Psychology with N = 99 and Journal of Affective Disorders with N = 57). More concretely, we examined which aspects of the original papers were affected (e.g. hypotheses, data-analyses, metadata such as author order, affiliations, funding information etc.) as well as the perceived implications for the papers’ main findings. Our exploratory analyses showed that many corrections involved inconsequential errors. Furthermore, authors rarely revised their conclusions, even though several corrections concerned changes to the results. We conclude with a discussion of current policies, and suggest ways to improve upon the present situation by (i) preventing mistakes, and (ii) transparently rectifying those mistakes that do find their way into the literature. Show less
Dishonesty is an intriguing phenomenon, studied extensively across various disciplines due to its impact on people's lives as well as society in general. To examine dishonesty in a controlled... Show moreDishonesty is an intriguing phenomenon, studied extensively across various disciplines due to its impact on people's lives as well as society in general. To examine dishonesty in a controlled setting, researchers have developed a number of experimental paradigms. One of the most popular approaches in this regard, is the matrix task, in which participants receive matrices wherein they have to find two numbers that sum to 10 (e.g., 4.81 and 5.19), under time pressure. In a next phase, participants need to report how many matrices they had solved correctly, allowing them the opportunity to cheat by exaggerating their performance in order to get a larger reward. Here, we argue, both on theoretical and empirical grounds, that the matrix task is ill-suited to study dishonest behavior, primarily because it conflates cheating with honest mistakes. We therefore recommend researchers to use different paradigms to examine dishonesty, and treat (previous) findings based on the matrix task with due caution. Show less
