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The attentional Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (att-SNARC) effect (Fischer et al., 2003; Nature Neuroscience)—the finding that participants are quicker to detect left-side targets when the targets are preceded by small numbers and quicker to detect right-side targets when they are preceded by large numbers—has been used as evidence for embodied number representations and to allow for strong claims about the link between number and space (e.g., a mental number line). We 41 attempted to replicate Study 2 of Fischer et al. (2003) by collecting data from 1105 participants across seventeen labs. Across all 1105 participants and four ISI conditions, the proportion of times the direction of the observed effect was consistent with the original effect was 0.50. Further, the effects we observed both within and across labs were minuscule and incompatible with those observed in Fischer et al. (2003). Given this, we conclude that we have failed to replicate the effect reported by Fischer et al. (2003). In addition, our analysis of several participant-level moderators (finger counting preferences, reading/writing direction experience, handedness, and mathematics fluency and mathematics anxiety) revealed no substantial moderating effects. Our results demonstrate that the att-SNARC effect cannot be used as evidence to support the strong claims about the link between number and space discussed above.

We determined the relative importance of the so-called approximate number system (ANS), symbolic number comparison (SNC) and verbal and spatial short-term and working memory (WM) capacity for mathematics achievement in 1,254 Grade 2, 4 and 6 children. The large sample size assured high power and low false report probability and allowed us to determine effect sizes precisely. We used reading decoding as a control outcome measure to test whether findings were specific to mathematics. Bayesian analysis allowed us to provide support for both null and alternative hypotheses. We found very weak zero-order correlations between ANS measures and math achievement. These correlations were not specific to mathematics, became non-significant once intelligence was considered and ANS measures were not selected as predictors of math by regression models. In contrast, overall SNC accuracy and spatial WM measures were reliable and mostly specific predictors of math achievement. Verbal short-term and WM and SNC reaction time were predictors of both reading and math achievement. We conclude that ANS tasks are not suitable as measures of math development in school-age populations. In contrast, all other cognitive functions we studied are promising markers of mathematics development.

Supplemental material, CollingOpenPracticesDisclosure for Registered Replication Report on Fischer, Castel, Dodd, and Pratt (2003) by Lincoln J. Colling, Dénes Szűcs, Damiano De Marco, Krzysztof Cipora, Rolf Ulrich, Hans-Christoph Nuerk, Mojtaba Soltanlou, Donna Bryce, Sau-Chin Chen, Philipp Alexander Schroeder, Dion T. Henare, Christine K. Chrystall, Paul M. Corballis, Daniel Ansari, Celia Goffin, H. Moriah Sokolowski, Peter J. B. Hancock, Ailsa E. Millen, Stephen R. H. Langton, Kevin J. Holmes, Mark S. Saviano, Tia A. Tummino, Oliver Lindemann, Rolf A. Zwaan, Jiří Lukavský, Adéla Becková, Marek A. Vranka, Simone Cutini, Irene Cristina Mammarella, Claudio Mulatti, Raoul Bell, Axel Buchner, Laura Mieth, Jan Philipp Röer, Elise Klein, Stefan Huber, Korbinian Moeller, Brenda Ocampo, Juan Lupiáñez, Javier Ortiz-Tudela, Juanma de la Fuente, Julio Santiago, Marc Ouellet, Edward M. Hubbard, Elizabeth Y. Toomarian, Remo Job, Barbara Treccani and Blakeley B. McShane in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

Supplemental material, CollingSupplementalMaterial for Registered Replication Report on Fischer, Castel, Dodd, and Pratt (2003) by Lincoln J. Colling, Dénes Szűcs, Damiano De Marco, Krzysztof Cipora, Rolf Ulrich, Hans-Christoph Nuerk, Mojtaba Soltanlou, Donna Bryce, Sau-Chin Chen, Philipp Alexander Schroeder, Dion T. Henare, Christine K. Chrystall, Paul M. Corballis, Daniel Ansari, Celia Goffin, H. Moriah Sokolowski, Peter J. B. Hancock, Ailsa E. Millen, Stephen R. H. Langton, Kevin J. Holmes, Mark S. Saviano, Tia A. Tummino, Oliver Lindemann, Rolf A. Zwaan, Jiří Lukavský, Adéla Becková, Marek A. Vranka, Simone Cutini, Irene Cristina Mammarella, Claudio Mulatti, Raoul Bell, Axel Buchner, Laura Mieth, Jan Philipp Röer, Elise Klein, Stefan Huber, Korbinian Moeller, Brenda Ocampo, Juan Lupiáñez, Javier Ortiz-Tudela, Juanma de la Fuente, Julio Santiago, Marc Ouellet, Edward M. Hubbard, Elizabeth Y. Toomarian, Remo Job, Barbara Treccani and Blakeley B. McShane in Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

Highlights • We measure encoding quality of low-frequency speech envelopes by children using EEG. • Encoding accuracy is significantly above chance for all groups. • Accuracy is poorer in dyslexic children than younger RL-matched children. • Individual differences in encoding accuracy are related to prosodic awareness., Developmental dyslexia is consistently associated with difficulties in processing phonology (linguistic sound structure) across languages. One view is that dyslexia is characterised by a cognitive impairment in the “phonological representation” of word forms, which arises long before the child presents with a reading problem. Here we investigate a possible neural basis for developmental phonological impairments. We assess the neural quality of speech encoding in children with dyslexia by measuring the accuracy of low-frequency speech envelope encoding using EEG. We tested children with dyslexia and chronological age-matched (CA) and reading-level matched (RL) younger children. Participants listened to semantically-unpredictable sentences in a word report task. The sentences were noise-vocoded to increase reliance on envelope cues. Envelope reconstruction for envelopes between 0 and 10 Hz showed that the children with dyslexia had significantly poorer speech encoding in the 0–2 Hz band compared to both CA and RL controls. These data suggest that impaired neural encoding of low frequency speech envelopes, related to speech prosody, may underpin the phonological deficit that causes dyslexia across languages.

The replication crisis has prompted many to call for statistical reform within the psychological sciences. Here we examine issues within Frequentist statistics that may have led to the replication crisis, and we examine the alternative---Bayesian statistics---that many have suggested as a replacement. The Frequentist approach and the Bayesian approach offer radically different perspectives on evidence and inference with the Frequentist approach prioritising error control and the Bayesian approach offering a formal method for quantifying the relative strength of evidence for hypotheses. We suggest that rather than mere statistical reform, what is needed is a better understanding of the different modes of statistical inference and a better understanding of how statistical inference relates to scientific inference., 17 Pages, 3 Figures