flynn002

The tl;dr version A neuroimaging measure is potentially useful for individual differences research if variation between people is substantially greater than variation within the same person tested on different occasions. This means that we need to know about the reliability of our measures, before launching into studies of individual differences. High reliability is not sufficient to ensure a good measure, but it is necessary . Individual differences research Psychologists have used behavioural measures to study individual differences - in cognition and personality - for many years. The goal is complementary to psychological research that looks for universal principles that guide human behaviour: e.g. factors affecting learning or emotional reactions. Individual differences research also often focuses on underlying causes, looking for associations with genetic, experiential and/or neurobiological differences that could lead to individual differences. Some basic psychometrics Suppose...

This post was prompted by an interesting exchange on Twitter with Brent Roberts (@BrentWRoberts) yesterday. Brent had recently posted a piece about the difficulty of bringing about change to improve reproducibility in psychology, and this had led to some discussion about what could be done to move things forward. Matt Motyl (@mattmotyl) tweeted: I had one colleague tell me that sharing data/scripts is "too high a bar" and that I am wrong for insisting all students who work w me do it And Brent agreed: We were recently told that teaching our students to pre-register, do power analysis, and replicate was "undermining" careers. Now, as a co-author of a manifesto for reproducible science , this kind of thing makes me pretty cross, and so I weighed in, demanding to know who was issuing such rubbish advice. Brent patiently explained that most of his colleagues take this view and are skeptics, agnostics or just naïve about the need to tackle reproducibility. I said that w...