TY - JOUR A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Nicenboim, Bruno A1 - Bürkner, Paul-Christian A1 - Betancourt, Michael A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Workflow techniques for the robust use of bayes factors JF - Psychological methods N2 - Inferences about hypotheses are ubiquitous in the cognitive sciences. Bayes factors provide one general way to compare different hypotheses by their compatibility with the observed data. Those quantifications can then also be used to choose between hypotheses. While Bayes factors provide an immediate approach to hypothesis testing, they are highly sensitive to details of the data/model assumptions and it's unclear whether the details of the computational implementation (such as bridge sampling) are unbiased for complex analyses. Hem, we study how Bayes factors misbehave under different conditions. This includes a study of errors in the estimation of Bayes factors; the first-ever use of simulation-based calibration to test the accuracy and bias of Bayes factor estimates using bridge sampling; a study of the stability of Bayes factors against different MCMC draws and sampling variation in the data; and a look at the variability of decisions based on Bayes factors using a utility function. We outline a Bayes factor workflow that researchers can use to study whether Bayes factors are robust for their individual analysis. Reproducible code is available from haps://osf.io/y354c/.
Translational Abstract
In psychology and related areas, scientific hypotheses are commonly tested by asking questions like "is [some] effect present or absent." Such hypothesis testing is most often carried out using frequentist null hypothesis significance testing (NIIST). The NHST procedure is very simple: It usually returns a p-value, which is then used to make binary decisions like "the effect is present/abscnt." For example, it is common to see studies in the media that draw simplistic conclusions like "coffee causes cancer," or "coffee reduces the chances of geuing cancer." However, a powerful and more nuanced alternative approach exists: Bayes factors. Bayes factors have many advantages over NHST. However, for the complex statistical models that arc commonly used for data analysis today, computing Bayes factors is not at all a simple matter. In this article, we discuss the main complexities associated with computing Bayes factors. This is the first article to provide a detailed workflow for understanding and computing Bayes factors in complex statistical models. The article provides a statistically more nuanced way to think about hypothesis testing than the overly simplistic tendency to declare effects as being "present" or "absent". KW - Bayes factors KW - Bayesian model comparison KW - prior KW - posterior KW - simulation-based calibration Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000472 SN - 1082-989X SN - 1939-1463 VL - 28 IS - 6 SP - 1404 EP - 1426 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stone, Kate A1 - Lago, Sol A1 - Schad, Daniel T1 - Divergence point analyses of visual world data BT - applications to bilingual research JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - Much work has shown that differences in the timecourse of language processing are central to comparing native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers. However, estimating the onset of experimental effects in timecourse data presents several statistical problems including multiple comparisons and autocorrelation. We compare several approaches to tackling these problems and illustrate them using an L1-L2 visual world eye-tracking dataset. We then present a bootstrapping procedure that allows not only estimation of an effect onset, but also of a temporal confidence interval around this divergence point. We describe how divergence points can be used to demonstrate timecourse differences between speaker groups or between experimental manipulations, two important issues in evaluating L2 processing accounts. We discuss possible extensions of the bootstrapping procedure, including determining divergence points for individual speakers and correlating them with individual factors like L2 exposure and proficiency. Data and an analysis tutorial are available at https://osf.io/exbmk/. KW - divergence point analyses KW - non-parametric approaches KW - bootstrapping KW - visual world eye-tracking KW - bilingualism Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000607 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 24 IS - 5 SP - 833 EP - 841 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rabovsky, Milena A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Abdel Rahman, Rasha T1 - Semantic richness and density effects on language production BT - Electrophysiological and behavioral evidence JF - Journal of experimental psychology : Learning, memory, and cognition N2 - Language production ultimately aims to convey meaning. Yet words differ widely in the richness and density of their semantic representations, and these differences impact conceptual and lexical processes during speech planning. Here, we replicated the recent finding that semantic richness, measured as the number of associated semantic features according to semantic feature production norms, facilitates object naming. In contrast, intercorrelational semantic feature density, measured as the degree of intercorrelation of a concept's features, presumably resulting in the coactivation of closely related concepts, has an inhibitory influence. We replicated the behavioral effects and investigated their relative time course and electrophysiological correlates. Both the facilitatory effect of high semantic richness and the inhibitory influence of high feature density were reflected in an increased posterior positivity starting at about 250 ms, in line with previous reports of posterior positivities in paradigms employing contextual manipulations to induce semantic interference during language production. Furthermore, amplitudes at the same posterior electrode sites were positively correlated with object naming times between about 230 and 380 ms. The observed effects follow naturally from the assumption of conceptual facilitation and simultaneous lexical competition and are difficult to explain by language production theories dismissing lexical competition. KW - picture naming KW - ERPs KW - semantic richness KW - semantic features KW - lexical KW - competition Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000940 SN - 0278-7393 SN - 1939-1285 VL - 47 IS - 3 SP - 508 EP - 517 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Betancourt, Michael A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - Toward a principled Bayesian workflow in cognitive science JF - Psychological methods N2 - Experiments in research on memory, language, and in other areas of cognitive science are increasingly being analyzed using Bayesian methods. This has been facilitated by the development of probabilistic programming languages such as Stan, and easily accessible front-end packages such as brms. The utility of Bayesian methods, however, ultimately depends on the relevance of the Bayesian model, in particular whether or not it accurately captures the structure of the data and the data analyst's domain expertise. Even with powerful software, the analyst is responsible for verifying the utility of their model. To demonstrate this point, we introduce a principled Bayesian workflow (Betancourt, 2018) to cognitive science. Using a concrete working example, we describe basic questions one should ask about the model: prior predictive checks, computational faithfulness, model sensitivity, and posterior predictive checks. The running example for demonstrating the workflow is data on reading times with a linguistic manipulation of object versus subject relative clause sentences. This principled Bayesian workflow also demonstrates how to use domain knowledge to inform prior distributions. It provides guidelines and checks for valid data analysis, avoiding overfitting complex models to noise, and capturing relevant data structure in a probabilistic model. Given the increasing use of Bayesian methods, we aim to discuss how these methods can be properly employed to obtain robust answers to scientific questions. KW - workflow KW - prior predictive checks KW - posterior predictive checks KW - model KW - building KW - Bayesian data analysis Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000275 SN - 1082-989X SN - 1939-1463 VL - 26 IS - 1 SP - 103 EP - 126 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Vasishth, Shravan T1 - The posterior probability of a null hypothesis given a statistically significant result JF - The quantitative methods for psychology N2 - When researchers carry out a null hypothesis significance test, it is tempting to assume that a statistically significant result lowers Prob(H0), the probability of the null hypothesis being true. Technically, such a statement is meaningless for various reasons: e.g., the null hypothesis does not have a probability associated with it. However, it is possible to relax certain assumptions to compute the posterior probability Prob(H0) under repeated sampling. We show in a step-by-step guide that the intuitively appealing belief, that Prob(H0) is low when significant results have been obtained under repeated sampling, is in general incorrect and depends greatly on: (a) the prior probability of the null being true; (b) type-I error rate, (c) type-II error rate, and (d) replication of a result. Through step-by-step simulations using open-source code in the R System of Statistical Computing, we show that uncertainty about the null hypothesis being true often remains high despite a significant result. To help the reader develop intuitions about this common misconception, we provide a Shiny app (https://danielschad.shinyapps.io/probnull/). We expect that this tutorial will help researchers better understand and judge results from null hypothesis significance tests. KW - Null hypothesis significance testing KW - Bayesian inference KW - statistical KW - power Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.20982/tqmp.18.2.p011 SN - 1913-4126 SN - 2292-1354 VL - 18 IS - 2 SP - 130 EP - 141 PB - University of Montreal, Department of Psychology CY - Montreal ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Chen, Hao A1 - Nebe, Stephan A1 - Mojtahedzadeh, Negin A1 - Kuitunen-Paul, Soren A1 - Garbusow, Maria A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Rapp, Michael A. A1 - Huys, Quentin J. M. A1 - Heinz, Andreas A1 - Smolka, Michael N. T1 - Susceptibility to interference between Pavlovian and instrumental control is associated with early hazardous alcohol use JF - Addiction biology N2 - Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) tasks examine the influence of Pavlovian stimuli on ongoing instrumental behaviour. Previous studies reported associations between a strong PIT effect, high-risk drinking and alcohol use disorder. This study investigated whether susceptibility to interference between Pavlovian and instrumental control is linked to risky alcohol use in a community sample of 18-year-old male adults. Participants (N = 191) were instructed to 'collect good shells' and 'leave bad shells' during the presentation of appetitive (monetary reward), aversive (monetary loss) or neutral Pavlovian stimuli. We compared instrumental error rates (ER) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain responses between the congruent and incongruent conditions, as well as among high-risk and low-risk drinking groups. On average, individuals showed a substantial PIT effect, that is, increased ER when Pavlovian cues and instrumental stimuli were in conflict compared with congruent trials. Neural PIT correlates were found in the ventral striatum and the dorsomedial and lateral prefrontal cortices (lPFC). Importantly, high-risk drinking was associated with a stronger behavioural PIT effect, a decreased lPFC response and an increased neural response in the ventral striatum on the trend level. Moreover, high-risk drinkers showed weaker connectivity from the ventral striatum to the lPFC during incongruent trials. Our study links interference during PIT to drinking behaviour in healthy, young adults. High-risk drinkers showed higher susceptibility to Pavlovian cues, especially when they conflicted with instrumental behaviour, indicating lower interference control abilities. Increased activity in the ventral striatum (bottom-up), decreased lPFC response (top-down), and their altered interplay may contribute to poor interference control in the high-risk drinkers. KW - high‐risk drinking KW - interference control KW - Pavlovian‐to‐instrumental transfer Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/adb.12983 SN - 1355-6215 SN - 1369-1600 VL - 26 IS - 4 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Vasishth, Shravan A1 - Hohenstein, Sven A1 - Kliegl, Reinhold T1 - How to capitalize on a priori contrasts in linear (mixed) models BT - a tutorial JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - Factorial experiments in research on memory, language, and in other areas are often analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). However, for effects with more than one numerator degrees of freedom, e.g., for experimental factors with more than two levels, the ANOVA omnibus F-test is not informative about the source of a main effect or interaction. Because researchers typically have specific hypotheses about which condition means differ from each other, a priori contrasts (i.e., comparisons planned before the sample means are known) between specific conditions or combinations of conditions are the appropriate way to represent such hypotheses in the statistical model. Many researchers have pointed out that contrasts should be "tested instead of, rather than as a supplement to, the ordinary 'omnibus' F test" (Hays, 1973, p. 601). In this tutorial, we explain the mathematics underlying different kinds of contrasts (i.e., treatment, sum, repeated, polynomial, custom, nested, interaction contrasts), discuss their properties, and demonstrate how they are applied in the R System for Statistical Computing (R Core Team, 2018). In this context, we explain the generalized inverse which is needed to compute the coefficients for contrasts that test hypotheses that are not covered by the default set of contrasts. A detailed understanding of contrast coding is crucial for successful and correct specification in linear models (including linear mixed models). Contrasts defined a priori yield far more useful confirmatory tests of experimental hypotheses than standard omnibus F-tests. Reproducible code is available from https://osf.io/7ukf6/. KW - contrasts KW - null hypothesis significance testing KW - linear models KW - a priori KW - hypotheses Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104038 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 110 PB - Elsevier CY - San Diego ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nebe, Stephan A1 - Kroemer, Nils B. A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Bernhardt, Nadine A1 - Sebold, Miriam A1 - Mueller, Dirk K. A1 - Scholl, Lucie A1 - Kuitunen-Paul, Sören A1 - Heinz, Andreas A1 - Rapp, Michael A. A1 - Huys, Quentin J. M. A1 - Smolka, Michael N. T1 - No association of goal-directed and habitual control with alcohol consumption in young adults JF - Addiction biology N2 - Alcohol dependence is a mental disorder that has been associated with an imbalance in behavioral control favoring model-free habitual over model-based goal-directed strategies. It is as yet unknown, however, whether such an imbalance reflects a predisposing vulnerability or results as a consequence of repeated and/or excessive alcohol exposure. We, therefore, examined the association of alcohol consumption with model-based goal-directed and model-free habitual control in 188 18-year-old social drinkers in a two-step sequential decision-making task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging before prolonged alcohol misuse could have led to severe neurobiological adaptations. Behaviorally, participants showed a mixture of model-free and model-based decision-making as observed previously. Measures of impulsivity were positively related to alcohol consumption. In contrast, neither model-free nor model-based decision weights nor the trade-off between them were associated with alcohol consumption. There were also no significant associations between alcohol consumption and neural correlates of model-free or model-based decision quantities in either ventral striatum or ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Exploratory whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging analyses with a lenient threshold revealed early onset of drinking to be associated with an enhanced representation of model-free reward prediction errors in the posterior putamen. These results suggest that an imbalance between model-based goal-directed and model-free habitual control might rather not be a trait marker of alcohol intake per se. KW - alcohol KW - goal-directed KW - reinforcement learning Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/adb.12490 SN - 1355-6215 SN - 1369-1600 VL - 23 IS - 1 SP - 379 EP - 393 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Obst, Elisabeth A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Huys, Quentin J. M. A1 - Sebold, Miriam A1 - Nebe, Stephan A1 - Sommer, Christian A1 - Smolka, Michael N. A1 - Zimmermann, Ulrich S. T1 - Drunk decisions BT - Alcohol shifts choice from habitual towards goal-directed control in adolescent intermediate-risk drinkers JF - Journal of Psychopharmacology N2 - Background: Studies in humans and animals suggest a shift from goal-directed to habitual decision-making in addiction. We therefore tested whether acute alcohol administration reduces goal-directed and promotes habitual decision-making, and whether these effects are moderated by self-reported drinking problems. Methods: Fifty-three socially drinking males completed the two-step task in a randomised crossover design while receiving an intravenous infusion of ethanol (blood alcohol level=80 mg%), or placebo. To minimise potential bias by long-standing heavy drinking and subsequent neuropsychological impairment, we tested 18- to 19-year-old adolescents. Results: Alcohol administration consistently reduced habitual, model-free decisions, while its effects on goal-directed, model-based behaviour varied as a function of drinking problems measured with the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. While adolescents with low risk for drinking problems (scoring <8) exhibited an alcohol-induced numerical reduction in goal-directed choices, intermediate-risk drinkers showed a shift away from habitual towards goal-directed decision-making, such that alcohol possibly even improved their performance. Conclusions: We assume that alcohol disrupted basic cognitive functions underlying habitual and goal-directed decisions in low-risk drinkers, thereby enhancing hasty choices. Further, we speculate that intermediate-risk drinkers benefited from alcohol as a negative reinforcer that reduced unpleasant emotional states, possibly displaying a novel risk factor for drinking in adolescence. KW - Computer-assisted Alcohol Infusion System KW - habitual learning KW - model-free and model-based decision-making KW - two-stage Markov decision task KW - subjective response to ethanol KW - drinking problems KW - real-life drinking behaviour Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881118772454 SN - 0269-8811 SN - 1461-7285 VL - 32 IS - 8 SP - 855 EP - 866 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schad, Daniel A1 - Garbusow, Maria A1 - Friedel, Eva A1 - Sommer, Christian A1 - Sebold, Miriam A1 - Hägele, Claudia A1 - Bernhardt, Nadine A1 - Nebe, Stephan A1 - Kuitunen-Paul, Sören A1 - Liu, Shuyan A1 - Eichmann, Uta A1 - Beck, Anne A1 - Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich A1 - Walter, Henrik A1 - Sterzer, Philipp A1 - Zimmermann, Ulrich S. A1 - Smolka, Michael N. A1 - Schlagenhauf, Florian A1 - Huys, Quentin J. M. A1 - Heinz, Andreas A1 - Rapp, Michael A. T1 - Neural correlates of instrumental responding in the context of alcohol-related cues index disorder severity and relapse risk JF - European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience : official organ of the German Society for Biological Psychiatry N2 - The influence of Pavlovian conditioned stimuli on ongoing behavior may contribute to explaining how alcohol cues stimulate drug seeking and intake. Using a Pavlovian-instrumental transfer task, we investigated the effects of alcohol-related cues on approach behavior (i.e., instrumental response behavior) and its neural correlates, and related both to the relapse after detoxification in alcohol-dependent patients. Thirty-one recently detoxified alcohol-dependent patients and 24 healthy controls underwent instrumental training, where approach or non-approach towards initially neutral stimuli was reinforced by monetary incentives. Approach behavior was tested during extinction with either alcohol-related or neutral stimuli (as Pavlovian cues) presented in the background during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Patients were subsequently followed up for 6 months. We observed that alcohol-related background stimuli inhibited the approach behavior in detoxified alcohol-dependent patients (t = -3.86, p < .001), but not in healthy controls (t = -0.92, p = .36). This behavioral inhibition was associated with neural activation in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) (t((30)) = 2.06, p < .05). Interestingly, both the effects were only present in subsequent abstainers, but not relapsers and in those with mild but not severe dependence. Our data show that alcohol-related cues can acquire inhibitory behavioral features typical of aversive stimuli despite being accompanied by a stronger NAcc activation, suggesting salience attribution. The fact that these findings are restricted to abstinence and milder illness suggests that they may be potential resilience factors. KW - Alcohol dependence KW - Human neuroimaging KW - Nucleus accumbens KW - Pavlovian-instrumental transfer KW - Relapse Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-017-0860-4 SN - 0940-1334 SN - 1433-8491 VL - 269 IS - 3 SP - 295 EP - 308 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER -