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Additional co-authors: Ivan Ropovik, Balazs Aczel, Lena F. Aeschbach, Luca Andrighetto, Jack D. Arnal, Holly Arrow, Peter Babincak, Bence E. Bakos, Gabriel Banik, Ernest Baskin, Radomir Belopavlovic, Michael H. Bernstein, Michal Bialek, Nicholas G. Bloxsom, Bojana Bodroža, Diane B. V. Bonfiglio, Leanne Boucher, Florian Bruhlmann, Claudia C. Brumbaugh, Erica Casini, Yiling Chen, Carlo Chiorri, William J. Chopik, Oliver Christ, Antonia M. Ciunci, Heather M. Claypool, Sean Coary, Marija V. Cˇolic, W. Matthew Collins, Paul G. Curran, Chris R. Day, Anna Dreber, John E. Edlund, Filipe Falcao, Anna Fedor, Lily Feinberg, Ian R. Ferguson, Maire Ford, Michael C. Frank, Emily Fryberger, Alexander Garinther, Katarzyna Gawryluk, Kayla Ashbaugh, Mauro Giacomantonio, Steffen R. Giessner, Jon E. Grahe, Rosanna E. Guadagno, Ewa Halasa, Rias A. Hilliard, Joachim Huffmeier, Sean Hughes, Katarzyna Idzikowska, Michael Inzlicht, Alan Jern, William Jimenez-Leal, Magnus Johannesson, Jennifer A. Joy-Gaba, Mathias Kauff, Danielle J. Kellier, Grecia Kessinger, Mallory C. Kidwell, Amanda M. Kimbrough, Josiah P. J. King, Vanessa S. Kolb, Sabina Kolodziej, Marton Kovacs, Karolina Krasuska, Sue Kraus, Lacy E. Krueger, Katarzyna Kuchno, Caio Ambrosio Lage, Eleanor V. Langford, Carmel A. Levitan, Tiago Jesse Souza de Lima, Hause Lin, Samuel Lins, Jia E. Loy, Dylan Manfredi, Łukasz Markiewicz, Madhavi Menon, Brett Mercier, Mitchell Metzger, Venus Meyet, Jeremy K. Miller, Andres Montealegre, Don A. Moore, Rafal Muda, Gideon Nave, Austin Lee Nichols, Sarah A. Novak, Christian Nunnally, Ana Orlic, Anna Palinkas, Angelo Panno, Kimberly P. Parks, Ivana Pedovic, Emilian Pekala, Matthew R. Penner, Sebastiaan Pessers, Boban Petrovic, Thomas Pfeiffer, Damian Pienkosz, Emanuele Preti, Danka Puric, Tiago Ramos, Jonathan Ravid, Timothy S. Razza, Katrin Rentzsch, Juliette Richetin, Sean C. Rife, Anna Dalla Rosa, Kaylis Hase Rudy, Janos Salamon, Blair Saunders, Przemyslaw Sawicki, Kathleen Schmidt, Kurt Schuepfer, Thomas Schultze, Stefan Schulz-Hardt, Astrid Schutz, Ani N. Shabazian, Rachel L. Shubella, Adam Siegel, Ruben Silva, Barbara Sioma, Lauren Skorb, Luana Elayne Cunha de Souza, Sara Steegen, L. A. R. Stein, R. Weylin Sternglanz, Darko Stojilovic, Daniel Storage, Gavin Brent Sullivan, Barnabas Szaszi, Peter Szecsi, Orsolya Szoke, Attila Szuts, Manuela Thomae, Natasha D. Tidwell, Carly Tocco, Ann-Kathrin Torka, Francis Tuerlinckx, Wolf Vanpaemel, Leigh Ann Vaughn, Michelangelo Vianello, Domenico Viganola, Maria Vlachou, Ryan J. Walker, Sophia C. Weissgerber, Aaron L. Wichman, Bradford J. Wiggins, Daniel Wolf, Michael J. Wood, David Zealley, Iris Žeželj, Mark Zrubka, and Brian A. Nosek

Crosby, Monin, and Richardson (2008) found that hearing an offensive remark caused subjects ( N = 25) to look longer at a potentially offended person, but only if that person could hear the remark. On the basis of this result, they argued that people use social referencing to assess the offensiveness. However, in a direct replication in the Reproducibility Project: Psychology, the result for Crosby et al.’s key effect was not significant. In the current project, we tested whether the size of the social-referencing effect might be increased by a peer-reviewed and preregistered protocol manipulation in which some participants were given context to understand why the remark was potentially offensive. Three labs in Europe and the United States ( N = 283) took part. The protocol manipulation did not affect the size of the social-referencing effect. However, we did replicate the original effect reported by Crosby et al., albeit with a much smaller effect size. We discuss these results in the context of ongoing debates about how replication attempts should treat statistical power and contextual sensitivity.

International audience; The attentional spatial-numerical association of response codes (Att-SNARC) effect (Fischer, Castel, Dodd, & Pratt, 2003)-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 support strong claims about the link between number and space (e.g., a mental number line). We attempted to replicate Experiment 2 of Fischer et al. by collecting data from 1,105 participants at 17 labs. Across all 1,105 participants and four interstimulus-interval conditions, the proportion of times the effect we observed was positive (i.e., directionally consistent with the original effect) was .50. Further, the effects we observed both within and across labs were minuscule and incompatible with those observed by Fischer et al. Given this, we conclude that we failed to replicate the effect reported by Fischer et al. In addition, our analysis of several participantlevel moderators (finger-counting habits, reading and writing direction, handedness, and mathematics fluency and mathematics anxiety) revealed no substantial moderating effects. Our results indicate that the Att-SNARC effect cannot be used as evidence to support strong claims about the link between number and space.

Replications in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If replications use methods that are unfaithful to the original study or ineffective in eliciting the phenomenon of interest, then a failure to replicate may be a failure of the protocol rather than a challenge to the original finding. Formal pre-data collection peer review by experts may address shortcomings and increase replicability rates. We selected 10 replications from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P; Open Science Collaboration, 2015) in which the original authors had expressed concerns about the replication designs before data collection and only one of which was “statistically significant” (p < .05). Commenters suggested that lack of adherence to expert review and low-powered tests were the reasons that most of these RP:P studies failed to replicate (Gilbert et al., 2016). We revised the replication protocols and received formal peer review prior to conducting new replications. We administered the RP:P and Revised protocols in multiple laboratories (Median number of laboratories per original study = 6.5; Range 3 to 9; Median total sample = 1279.5; Range 276 to 3512) for high-powered tests of each original finding with both protocols. Overall, Revised protocols produced similar effect sizes as RP:P protocols following the preregistered analysis plan (Δr = .002 or .014, depending on analytic approach). The median effect size for Revised protocols (r = .05) was similar to RP:P protocols (r = .04) and the original RP:P replications (r = .11), and smaller than the original studies (r = .37). The cumulative evidence of original study and three replication attempts suggests that effect sizes for all 10 (median r = .07; range .00 to .15) are 78% smaller on average than original findings (median r = .37; range .19 to .50), with very precisely estimated effects.

Background Criminal associates such as terrorist members are likely to deny knowing members of their network when questioned by police. Eye tracking research suggests that lies about familiar faces can be detected by distinct markers of recognition (e.g. fewer fixations and longer fixation durations) across multiple eye fixation parameters. However, the effect of explicit eye movement strategies to concealed recognition on such markers has not been examined. Our aim was to assess the impact of fixed-sequence eye movement strategies (across the forehead, ears, eyes, nose, mouth and chin) on markers of familiar face recognition. Participants were assigned to one of two groups: a standard guilty group who were simply instructed to conceal knowledge but with no specific instructions on how to do so; and a countermeasures group who were instructed to look at every familiar and unfamiliar face in the same way by executing a consistent sequence of fixations. Results In the standard guilty group, lies about recognition of familiar faces showed longer average fixation durations, a lower proportion of fixations to the inner face regions, and proportionately more viewing of the eyes than honest responses to genuinely unknown faces. In the countermeasures condition, familiar face recognition was detected by longer fixations durations, fewer fixations to the inner regions of the face, and fewer interest areas of the face viewed. Longer fixation durations were a consistent marker of recognition across both conditions for most participants; differences were detectable from the first fixation. Conclusion The results suggest that individuals can exert a degree of executive control over fixation patterns but that: the eyes are particularly attention-grabbing for familiar faces; the more viewers look around the face, the more they give themselves away; and attempts to deploy the same fixation patterns to familiar and unfamiliar faces were unsuccessful. The results suggest that the best strategy for concealing recognition might be to keep the eyes fixated in the centre of the screen but, even then, recognition is apparent in longer fixation durations. We discuss potential optimal conditions for detecting concealed knowledge of faces. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41235-019-0169-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

In forensic investigations, suspects sometimes conceal recognition of a familiar person to protect co-conspirators or hide knowledge of a victim. The current experiment sought to determine whether eye fixations could be used to identify memory of known persons when lying about recognition of faces. Participants’ eye movements were monitored whilst they lied and told the truth about recognition of faces that varied in familiarity (newly learned, famous celebrities, personally known). Memory detection by eye movements during recognition of personally familiar and famous celebrity faces was negligibly affected by lying, thereby demonstrating that detection of memory during lies is influenced by the prior learning of the face. By contrast, eye movements did not reveal lies robustly for newly learned faces. These findings support the use of eye movements as markers of memory during concealed recognition but also suggest caution when familiarity is only a consequence of one brief exposure.

Traditionally, experiments on social learning (in both humans and nonhumans) involve dyads, with an experimenter or experimenter-trained conspecific serving as the demonstrator and the participant as the observer. But social learning in nature often involves multiple potential models, and the models themselves were once learners. We discuss our studies of social learning by adult humans in interactive group settings in the absence of formal demonstrations by experimenters, which tracked transmission over multiple learner generations. In these experiments, we found evidence for cumulative learning over generations. This has allowed us to manipulate learning conditions in order to test hypotheses regarding the necessary conditions for cumulative culture. We also report results from a further experiment using similar methods, which compared conditions of varying cohort size. Participants were given the task to build a paper airplane to fly as far as possible. Contrary to expectations, there was no advantage for larger cohort sizes, in terms of the cumulative effects observed.

The rapid appearance (over evolutionary time) of the cognitive skills and complex inventions of modern humans has been attributed to “cumulative cultural evolution” (CCE), the accumulation of knowledge and skills over generations. To date, researchers have only been able to speculate about the reasons for the apparent absence of this phenomenon in nonhumans, and it has not been possible to test hypotheses regarding the mechanisms underlying it. Here, we show that it is possible to demonstrate CCE under laboratory conditions by simulating generational succession through the repeated removal and replacement of human participants within experimental groups. We created “microsocieties” in which participants were instructed to complete simple tasks using everyday materials. In one of our procedures, participants were instructed to build a paper aeroplane which flew as far as possible, and in the other, they were instructed to construct a tower of spaghetti which was as tall as possible. We show that, in both cases, information accumulates within the groups such that later generations produce designs which are more successful than earlier ones. These methods offer researchers a window to understanding CCE, allowing for experimental manipulation and hypothesis testing.

This study aimed to clarify whether infants and preschool children show susceptibility to contagious yawning, a well-known effect that has been demonstrated experimentally in older children and adults by exposing them to video sequences showing yawns. In a first study, parents kept a log of their child's yawns for a one week period. None of the log entries reported any contagious yawns by the children. Although less frequent than in older children and adults, spontaneous yawning by infants and preschoolers showed the typical morning, post-wakening peak, and an increase before bedtime in the evening. In an experimental study, infants and preschoolers watched a presentation that included many images of yawning and a repeated video clip of their own mother yawning, but there was no evidence of contagious yawning. The results suggest that, even when witnessing yawns by someone with whom they have a strong and positive emotional relationship, very young children do not show contagious yawning.

Theoretical work predicts that individuals should strategically increase their reliance on social learning when individual learning would be costly or risky, or when the payoffs for individually-learned behaviors are uncertain. Using a method known to elicit cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory, we investigated the degree of within-group similarity, and between-group variation, in design choices made by participants under conditions of varying uncertainty about the likely effectiveness of those designs. Participants were required to build a tower from spaghetti and modeling clay, their goal being to build the tower as high as possible. In one condition, towers were measured immediately on completion, and therefore participants were able to judge the success of their design during building. In the other condition, participants’ towers were measured five minutes after completion, following a deliberate attempt to test the tower’s stability, making it harder for participants to judge whether an innovative solution was liable to result in a good score on the final measurement. Cultural peculiarity (i.e. the extent to which a design could be identified as belonging to a particular chain) was stronger in the delayed measure condition, indicating that participants were placing greater reliance on social learning. Furthermore in this condition there was only very weak evidence of successive improvement in performance over learner generations, whereas in the immediate measure condition there was a clear effect of steadily increasing scores on the goal measurement. Increasing the risk associated with learning for oneself may favor the development of arbitrary traditions.

Cumulative cultural evolution is the term given to a particular kind of social learning, which allows for the accumulation of modifications over time, involving a ratchet-like effect where successful modifications are maintained until they can be improved upon. There has been great interest in the topic of cumulative cultural evolution from researchers from a wide variety of disciplines, but until recently there were no experimental studies of this phenomenon. Here, we describe our motivations for developing experimental methods for studying cumulative cultural evolution and review the results we have obtained using these techniques. The results that we describe have provided insights into understanding the outcomes of cultural processes at the population level. Our experiments show that cumulative cultural evolution can result in adaptive complexity in behaviour and can also produce convergence in behaviour. These findings lend support to ideas that some behaviours commonly attributed to natural selection and innate tendencies could in fact be shaped by cultural processes.

Eyewitnesses to a filmed event were interviewed twice using a Cognitive Interview to examine the effects of variations in delay between the repeated interviews (immediately & 2 days; immediately & 7 days; 7 & 9 days) and the identity of the interviewers (same or different across the two repeated interviews). Hypermnesia (an increase in total amount of information recalled in the repeated interview) occurred without any decrease in the overall accuracy. Reminiscence (the recall of new information in the repeated interview) was also found in all conditions but was least apparent in the longest delay condition, and came with little cost to the overall accuracy of information gathered. The number of errors, increased across the interviews, but the relative accuracy of participants’ responses was unaffected. However, when accuracy was calculated based on all unique details provided across both interviews and compared to the accuracy of recall in just the first interview it was found to be slightly lower. The identity of the interviewer (whether the same or different across interviews) had no effects on the number of correct details. There was an increase in recall of new details with little cost to the overall accuracy of information gathered. Importantly, these results suggest that witnesses are unlikely to report everything they remember during a single Cognitive Interview, however exhaustive, and a second opportunity to recall information about the events in question may provide investigators with additional information.