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Replication studies in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If these studies 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 replication studies from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology (RP:P; Open Science Collaboration, 2015) for which the original authors had expressed concerns about the replication designs before data collection; only one of these studies had yielded a statistically significant effect (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 the original effects. We revised the replication protocols and received formal peer review prior to conducting new replication studies. We administered the RP:P and revised protocols in multiple laboratories (median number of laboratories per original study = 6.5, range = 3–9; median total sample = 1,279.5, range = 276–3,512) for high-powered tests of each original finding with both protocols. Overall, following the preregistered analysis plan, we found that the revised protocols produced effect sizes similar to those of the RP:P protocols (Δr= .002 or .014, depending on analytic approach). The median effect size for the revised protocols (r= .05) was similar to that of the RP:P protocols (r= .04) and the original RP:P replications (r= .11), and smaller than that of the original studies (r= .37). Analysis of the cumulative evidence across the original studies and the corresponding three replication attempts provided very precise estimates of the 10 tested effects and indicated that their effect sizes (median r= .07, range = .00–.15) were 78% smaller, on average, than the original effect sizes (median r= .37, range = .19–.50).

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.

Shape-adaptation studies show that surround textures can inhibit the processing of contours. Using event-related potentials (ERP), we examined the time-course of neural processes involved in contour-shape and texture-shape processing following adaptation to contours and textures. Contours were made of Gabor strings whose orientations were either tangential or orthogonal to the contour path, while textures were made of a series of contours arranged in parallel. We focused on two ERP components –P1, related to low-level visual processes and N1, broadly indicative of mid-level vision– and, on ERP difference waves(no-adaptor minus with-adaptor) to isolate the effects of adaptation, which are fundamentally distinct from individual processes driving P1 and N1 components. We found that in the absence of adaptation, the N1 component for contour-tests peaked later and increased in amplitude compared to the N1 for texture-tests. Following adaptation, the ERP difference wavefor contour-testsrevealed an early and a late component that were differentially affected by the presence of surround texture, but critically not by its orientation. For texture-tests, the early component was of opposite polarity for contours compared to texture adaptors. From the temporal sequence of ERP modulations, we conclude that texture processing begins before contour processing and encompasses the stages of perceptual processing reflected in both the low-level P1 and the mid-level N1 vision-related components. Our study provides novel evidence on the nature of separable and temporally distinct texture and contour processing mechanisms, shown in two difference wave components, that highlights the multi-faceted nature of dynamic adaptation to shape when presented in isolation and in context.

The N170 is a peak of event-related brain potentials commonly acknowledged to be larger in amplitude for face stimuli compared with any other visual object. Recently, the face selectivity of the N170 has been challenged based on the observation of similar N170 amplitude to faces and cars presented full front. Here, we measured the N170 elicited by the same stimulus categories using a one-back memory and categorization tasks. We found that N170 mean amplitude was significantly larger for cars than faces at electrode sites considered ‘optimal’ for measuring N170 face selectivity in the absence of task effects. Furthermore, we found evidence for category selectivity and task dependence in the P1 range. These results support the idea that N170 face selectivity is formally questionable.