ArticleInfancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies
Sample size, statistical power, and false conclusions in infant looking-time research.
Article in Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Shared and distinct brain fMRI response during performance of working memory tasks in adult patients with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder.Human brain mapping · 2021Pooled it
- Promoting Replicability in Developmental Research Through Meta-analyses: Insights From Language Acquisition Research.Child development · 2018Pooled it
- Automated Infant Eye Tracking: A Systematic Historical Review.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant StudiesPooled it
- Explaining success in Bayesian reasoning with the adaptive toolbox and expertise.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Integrating omics and artificial intelligence in pediatric environmental health: tools, challenges, and cohort-based insights.Pediatric research · 2026Review
- Can Infants Perceive and Learn New Information from Extended Reality?Developmental science · 2026Article
- Linking social attention to reproductive state and future reproduction in female monkeys.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2026Article
- Variations in face experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic affect infants' preference for their mother's face.PloS one · 2026Article
- Article
- Latent Cognitive Profiles Predict 1-Year Mental Health, Insomnia, Falls, Daily Functioning, and Pain in US Older Adults: A National Longitudinal Study.Journal of the American Medical Directors Association · 2025Article
- Neural bases of sustained attention during naturalistic parent-infant interactions.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- NIH Baby Toolbox® methodology and norms development.Infant behavior & development · 2025Article
- Development of the Visual Analysis of Form and Contour.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Infant Social Attention Associated with Elevated Likelihood for Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Multi-Method Comparison.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Tolerant and despotic macaques show divergent temperament but similar theory of mind.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Digital twins, synthetic patient data, and in-silico trials: can they empower paediatric clinical trials?The Lancet. Digital health · 2025Review
- Efficacy of Allograft Versus Bioactive Glass-Ceramic Cage in Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion: A Randomized Controlled Study.Global spine journal · 2025Article
- Attrition in a large-scale habituation task administered at home.The British journal of developmental psychology · 2025Article
- A symmetry-based mechanism for perceptual grouping in preverbal infants.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Individual differences in sociocognitive traits in semi-free-ranging rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).American journal of primatology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Infant research is hard. It is difficult, expensive, and time consuming to identify, recruit and test infants. As a result, ours is a field of small sample sizes. Many studies using infant looking time as a measure have samples of 8 to 12 infants per cell, and studies with more than 24 infants per cell are uncommon. This paper examines the effect of such sample sizes on statistical power and the conclusions drawn from infant looking time research. An examination of the state of the current literature suggests that most published looking time studies have low power, which leads in the long run to an increase in both false positive and false negative results. Three data sets with large samples (>30 infants) were used to simulate experiments with smaller sample sizes; 1000 random subsamples of 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24 infants from the overall samples were selected, making it possible to examine the systematic effect of sample size on the results. This approach revealed that despite clear results with the original large samples, the results with smaller subsamples were highly variable, yielding both false positive and false negative outcomes. Finally, a number of emerging possible solutions are discussed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.