Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36604378›Full record

ArticleBehavior research methods2024

The complexity of measuring reliability in learning tasks: An illustration using the Alternating Serial Reaction Time Task.

Bence C Farkas, Attila Krajcsi, Karolina Janacsek, Dezso Nemeth

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Article in Behavior research methods, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 19 papers.

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19citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

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Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

19 citing papers in PubMed.

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  14. Identifying Transfer Learning in the Reshaping of Inductive Biases.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2024
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Bence C FarkasUniversité Paris-Saclay, UVSQ, Inserm, CESP, 94807, Villejuif, France.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1815-5054
Attila KrajcsiDepartment of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Izabella utca 46, Budapest, H-1064, Hungary.
Karolina JanacsekCentre for Thinking and Learning, Institute for Lifecourse Development, School of Human Sciences, Faculty of Education, Health and Human Sciences, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, 150 Dreadnought, London, SE10 9LS, UK. k.janacsek@greenwich.ac.uk.
Dezso NemethInstitute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Izabella utca 46, Budapest, H-1064, Hungary. dezso.nemeth@univ-lyon1.fr.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Despite the fact that reliability estimation is crucial for robust inference, it is underutilized in neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Appreciating reliability can help researchers increase statistical power, effect sizes, and reproducibility, decrease the impact of measurement error, and inform methodological choices. However, accurately calculating reliability for many experimental learning tasks is challenging. In this study, we highlight a number of these issues, and estimate multiple metrics of internal consistency and split-half reliability of a widely used learning task on a large sample of 180 subjects. We show how pre-processing choices, task length, and sample size can affect reliability and its estimation. Our results show that the Alternating Serial Reaction Time Task has respectable reliability, especially when learning scores are calculated based on reaction times and two-stage averaging. We also show that a task length of 25 blocks can be sufficient to meet the usual thresholds for minimally acceptable reliability. We further illustrate how relying on a single point estimate of reliability can be misleading, and the calculation of multiple metrics, along with their uncertainties, can lead to a more complete characterization of the psychometric properties of tasks.

Indexed as

LearningHumansPsychometricsReaction TimeReproducibility of ResultsAlternating Serial Reaction Time TaskCronbach's alphaProcedural memoryReliabilitySequence learningStatistical learning

Identifiers

PMID36604378
PMCPMC10794483

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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.