48 posts · 35,456 views

I am a psychologist by training. I am a blogger in my spare time. | I am young, my CV is short: 09/2010 – present The University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Master of Brain and Cognitive Sciences | 09/2006 – 06/2010 The University of Glasgow, United Kingdom Master of Arts (Honours) in Psychology, First class

Brain's Idea
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August 3, 2016
06:02 PM
56 views

How to excel at academic conferences in 5 steps

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Academic conferences have been the biggest joy of my PhD and so I want to share with others how to excel at this academic tradition. The author (second from right, with can) at his first music cognition conference (SMPC 2013 in Toronto) which - despite appearances - he attended by himself. 1) Socialising A conference […]... Read more »

Kunert R, & Slevc LR. (2015) A Commentary on: "Neural overlap in processing music and speech". Frontiers in human neuroscience, 330. PMID: 26089792

Kunert R, Willems RM, & Hagoort P. (2016) Language influences music harmony perception: effects of shared syntactic integration resources beyond attention. Royal Society open science, 3(2), 150685. PMID: 26998339

July 15, 2016
05:56 AM
191 views

How to test for music skills

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

In a new article I evaluate a recently developed test for music listening skills. To my great surprise the test behaves very well. This could open the path to better understand the psychology underlying music listening. Why am I surprised? I got my first taste of how difficult it is to replicate published scientific results […]... Read more »

Kunert R, & Scheepers C. (2014) Speed and accuracy of dyslexic versus typical word recognition: an eye-movement investigation. Frontiers in psychology, 1129. PMID: 25346708

Kunert R, Willems RM, & Hagoort P. (2016) Language influences music harmony perception: effects of shared syntactic integration resources beyond attention. Royal Society open science, 3(2), 150685. PMID: 26998339

Kunert R, Willems RM, & Hagoort P. (2016) An Independent Psychometric Evaluation of the PROMS Measure of Music Perception Skills. PloS one, 11(7). PMID: 27398805

Law LN, & Zentner M. (2012) Assessing musical abilities objectively: construction and validation of the profile of music perception skills. PloS one, 7(12). PMID: 23285071

Nichols SA, McLeod JS, Holder RL, & McLeod HS. (2009) Screening for dyslexia, dyspraxia and Meares-Irlen syndrome in higher education. Dyslexia, 15(1), 42-60. PMID: 19089876

Singleton, C., Horne, J., & Simmons, F. (2009) Computerised screening for dyslexia in adults. Journal of Research in Reading, 32(1), 137-152. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9817.2008.01386.x

May 24, 2016
11:59 AM
275 views

A critical comment on “Contextual sensitivity in scientific reproducibility”

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Psychological science is surprisingly difficult to replicate (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). Researchers are desperate to find out why. A new study in the prestigious journal PNAS (Van Bavel et al., 2016) claims unknown contextual factors of psychological phenomena (“hidden moderators”) are to blame. The more an effect is sensitive to unknown contextual factors, the less […]... Read more »

Dreber, A., Pfeiffer, T., Almenberg, J., Isaksson, S., Wilson, B., Chen, Y., Nosek, B., & Johannesson, M. (2015) Using prediction markets to estimate the reproducibility of scientific research. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(50), 15343-15347. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1516179112

Kunert, R. (2016) Internal conceptual replications do not increase independent replication success. Psychonomic Bulletin . DOI: 10.3758/s13423-016-1030-9

Open Science Collaboration. (2015) Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251). DOI: 10.1126/science.aac4716

Van Bavel, J.J., Mende-Siedlecki, P., Brady, W.J., & Reinero, D.A. (2016) Contextual sensitivity in scientific reproducibility. PNAS. info:/

April 25, 2016
06:39 AM
403 views

Yet more evidence for questionable research practices in original studies of Reproducibility Project: Psychology

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

The replicability of psychological research is surprisingly low. Why? In this blog post I present new evidence showing that questionable research practices are at the heart of failures to replicate psychological effects. Quick recap. A recent publication in Science claims that only around 40% of psychological findings are replicable, based on 100 replication attempts in […]... Read more »

Asendorpf, J., Conner, M., De Fruyt, F., De Houwer, J., Denissen, J., Fiedler, K., Fiedler, S., Funder, D., Kliegl, R., Nosek, B.... (2013) Recommendations for Increasing Replicability in Psychology. European Journal of Personality, 27(2), 108-119. DOI: 10.1002/per.1919

Gerber, A., & Malhotra, N. (2008) Publication Bias in Empirical Sociological Research: Do Arbitrary Significance Levels Distort Published Results?. Sociological Methods , 37(1), 3-30. DOI: 10.1177/0049124108318973

Gerber, A., Malhotra, N., Dowling, C., & Doherty, D. (2010) Publication Bias in Two Political Behavior Literatures. American Politics Research, 38(4), 591-613. DOI: 10.1177/1532673X09350979

Gilbert, D., King, G., Pettigrew, S., & Wilson, T. (2016) Comment on "Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science". Science, 351(6277), 1037-1037. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad7243

Head ML, Holman L, Lanfear R, Kahn AT, & Jennions MD. (2015) The extent and consequences of p-hacking in science. PLoS biology, 13(3). PMID: 25768323

Ioannidis JP, Munafò MR, Fusar-Poli P, Nosek BA, & David SP. (2014) Publication and other reporting biases in cognitive sciences: detection, prevalence, and prevention. Trends in cognitive sciences, 18(5), 235-41. PMID: 24656991

Kühberger A, Fritz A, & Scherndl T. (2014) Publication bias in psychology: a diagnosis based on the correlation between effect size and sample size. PloS one, 9(9). PMID: 25192357

Kunert R. (2016) Internal conceptual replications do not increase independent replication success. Psychonomic bulletin . PMID: 27068542

Open Science Collaboration. (2015) Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251). DOI: 10.1126/science.aac4716

April 14, 2016
07:52 AM
388 views

10 things I learned while working for the Dutch science funding council (NWO)

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

The way science is currently funded is very controversial. During the last 6 months I was on a break from my PhD and worked for the organisation funding science in the Netherlands (NWO). These are 10 insights I gained. 1) Belangenverstrengeling This is the first word I learned when arriving in The Hague. There is […]... Read more »

Etz, A., & Vandekerckhove, J. (2016) A Bayesian Perspective on the Reproducibility Project: Psychology. PLOS ONE, 11(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0149794

Kunert R. (2016) Internal conceptual replications do not increase independent replication success. Psychonomic bulletin . PMID: 27068542

Open Science Collaboration. (2015) Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251). DOI: 10.1126/science.aac4716

March 19, 2016
07:56 AM
347 views

Is Replicability in Economics better than in Psychology?

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Colin Camerer and colleagues recently published a Science article on the replicability of behavioural economics. ‘It appears that there is some difference in replication success’ between psychology and economics, they write, given their reproducibility rate of 61% and psychology’s of 36%. I took a closer look at the data to find out whether there really […]... Read more »

Camerer, C., Dreber, A., Forsell, E., Ho, T., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., Kirchler, M., Almenberg, J., Altmejd, A., Chan, T.... (2016) Evaluating replicability of laboratory experiments in economics. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf0918

Open Science Collaboration. (2015) Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251). DOI: 10.1126/science.aac4716

March 15, 2016
12:47 PM
319 views

Psychological researchers need to change their practices: here’s why

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Why is a surprising amount of psychological research unreplicable? Psychology calls itself a science but often falls short on the replication test of scientific merit. I took a closer look at the data to find out why. The journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review will publish the findings very soon, but the accepted pre-print is already […]... Read more »

Gilbert, D., King, G., Pettigrew, S., & Wilson, T. (2016) Comment on "Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science". Science, 351(6277), 1037-1037. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad7243

Open Science Collaboration. (2015) Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science, 349(6251). DOI: 10.1126/science.aac4716

February 9, 2016
12:51 PM
459 views

How language changes the way you hear music

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

In a new paper I, together with Roel Willems and Peter Hagoort, show that music and language are tightly coupled in the brain. Get the gist in a 180 second youtube clip and then try out what my participants did. The task my participants had to do might sound very abstract to you, so let […]... Read more »

Kunert R, & Slevc LR. (2015) A Commentary on: "Neural overlap in processing music and speech". Frontiers in human neuroscience, 330. PMID: 26089792

Kunert, R., Willems, R., & Hagoort, P. (2016) Language influences music harmony perception: effects of shared syntactic integration resources beyond attention. Royal Society Open Science, 3(2), 150685. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.150685

November 22, 2015
09:14 AM
551 views

Are pre-registrations the solution to the replication crisis in Psychology? Not really.

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Most psychology findings are not replicable. What can be done? In his Psychological Science editorial, Stephen Lindsay advertises pre-registration as the solution, writing that “Personally, I aim never again to submit for publication a report of a study that was not preregistered”. I took a look at whether pre-registrations are effective and feasible [TL;DR: no […]... Read more »

Chan AW, Krleza-Jerić K, Schmid I, & Altman DG. (2004) Outcome reporting bias in randomized trials funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal , 171(7), 735-40. PMID: 15451835

Chan, A., Hróbjartsson, A., Haahr, M., Gøtzsche, P., & Altman, D. (2004) Empirical Evidence for Selective Reporting of Outcomes in Randomized Trials. JAMA, 291(20), 2457. DOI: 10.1001/jama.291.20.2457

Franco, A., Malhotra, N., & Simonovits, G. (2015) Underreporting in Psychology Experiments: Evidence From a Study Registry. Social Psychological and Personality Science. DOI: 10.1177/1948550615598377

Lindsay, D. (2015) Replication in Psychological Science. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797615616374

Mathieu, S., Boutron, I., Moher, D., Altman, D.G., & Ravaud, P. (2009) Comparison of Registered and Published Primary Outcomes in Randomized Controlled Trials. JAMA, 302(9), 977. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2009.1242

Mathieu, S., Chan, A., & Ravaud, P. (2013) Use of Trial Register Information during the Peer Review Process. PLoS ONE, 8(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0059910

Nosek, B., & Bar-Anan, Y. (2012) Scientific Utopia: I. Opening Scientific Communication. Psychological Inquiry, 23(3), 217-243. DOI: 10.1080/1047840X.2012.692215

Open Science Collaboration. (2015) PSYCHOLOGY. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science (New York, N.Y.), 349(6251). PMID: 26315443

November 6, 2015
06:47 AM
703 views

Broca’s area processes both music and language at the same time

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

When you read a book and listen to music, the brain doesn’t keep these two tasks nicely separated. In a new article just out, I show that there is a brain area which is busy with both tasks at the same time (Kunert et al., 2015). This brain area might tell us a lot about […]... Read more »

Hagoort P. (2013) MUC (Memory, Unification, Control) and beyond. Frontiers in psychology, 416. PMID: 23874313

Kunert R, & Slevc LR. (2015) A Commentary on: "Neural overlap in processing music and speech". Frontiers in human neuroscience, 330. PMID: 26089792

Kunert R, Willems RM, Casasanto D, Patel AD, & Hagoort P. (2015) Music and Language Syntax Interact in Broca's Area: An fMRI Study. PloS one, 10(11). PMID: 26536026

September 5, 2015
06:21 AM
705 views

Are internal replications the solution to the replication crisis in Psychology? No.

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Most Psychology findings are not replicable. What can be done? Stanford psychologist Michael Frank has an idea : Cumulative study sets with internal replication. ‘If I had to advocate for a single change to practice, this would be it.’ I took a look whether this makes any difference. A recent paper in the journal Science […]... Read more »

Bem DJ. (2011) Feeling the future: experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of personality and social psychology, 100(3), 407-25. PMID: 21280961

Galak, J., LeBoeuf, R., Nelson, L., & Simmons, J. (2012) Correcting the past: Failures to replicate psi. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(6), 933-948. DOI: 10.1037/a0029709

Open Science Collaboration. (2015) PSYCHOLOGY. Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science (New York, N.Y.), 349(6251). PMID: 26315443

Ritchie SJ, Wiseman R, & French CC. (2012) Failing the future: three unsuccessful attempts to replicate Bem's 'retroactive facilitation of recall' effect. PloS one, 7(3). PMID: 22432019

Schimmack U. (2012) The ironic effect of significant results on the credibility of multiple-study articles. Psychological methods, 17(4), 551-66. PMID: 22924598

September 3, 2015
06:23 AM
627 views

Why are Psychological findings mostly unreplicable?

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Take 97 psychological effects from top journals which are claimed to be robust. How many will replicate? Brian Nosek and his huge team tried it out and the results were sobering, to say the least. How did we get here? The data give some clues. Sometimes the title of a paper just sounds incredible. Estimating […]... Read more »

John LK, Loewenstein G, & Prelec D. (2012) Measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth telling. Psychological science, 23(5), 524-32. PMID: 22508865

Lakens, D. (2014) Performing high-powered studies efficiently with sequential analyses. European Journal of Social Psychology, 44(7), 701-710. DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2023

Open Science Collaboration. (2015) Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science (New York, N.Y.), 349(6251). PMID: 26315443

Simmons, J., Nelson, L., & Simonsohn, U. (2011) False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant. Psychological Science, 22(11), 1359-1366. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417632

June 3, 2015
04:31 AM
721 views

Do music and language share brain resources?

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

When you listen to some music and when you read a book, does your brain use the same resources? This question goes to the heart of how the brain is organised - does it make a difference between cognitive domains like music and language? In a new commentary I highlight a successfull approach which helps […]... Read more »

Kunert, R., & Slevc, L.R. (2015) A commentary on “Neural overlap in processing music and speech” (Peretz et al., 2015) . Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. info:/doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00330

Peretz I, Vuvan D, Lagrois MÉ, & Armony JL. (2015) Neural overlap in processing music and speech. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 370(1664), 20140090. PMID: 25646513

Slevc LR, Rosenberg JC, & Patel AD. (2009) Making psycholinguistics musical: self-paced reading time evidence for shared processing of linguistic and musical syntax. Psychonomic bulletin , 16(2), 374-81. PMID: 19293110

May 28, 2015
05:01 PM
726 views

Why does humanity get smarter and smarter?

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Intelligence tests have to be adjusted all the time because people score higher and higher. If the average human of today went 105 years back in time, s/he would score 130, be considered as gifted, and join clubs for highly intelligent people. How can that be? The IQ growth The picture above shows the development […]... Read more »

Pietschnig J, & Voracek M. (2015) One Century of Global IQ Gains: A Formal Meta-Analysis of the Flynn Effect (1909-2013). Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 10(3), 282-306. PMID: 25987509

December 16, 2014
07:14 AM
683 views

The scientific community’s Galileo affair (you’re the Pope)

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Science is in crisis. Everyone in the scientific community knows about it but few want to talk about it. The crisis is one of honesty. A junior scientist (like me) asks himself a similar question to Galileo in 1633: how much honesty is desirable in science? Science Wonderland According to nearly all empirical scientific publications […]... Read more »

John, L., Loewenstein, G., & Prelec, D. (2012) Measuring the Prevalence of Questionable Research Practices with Incentives for Truth-Telling. SSRN Electronic Journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.1996631

Simmons, J., Nelson, L., & Simonsohn, U. (2011) False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant. Psychological Science, 22(11), 1359-1366. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417632

November 19, 2014
03:10 PM
1,333 views

The real reason why new pop music is so incredibly bad

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

You have probably heard that Pink Floyd recently published their new album Endless River. Will this bring back the wonderful world of good music after the endless awfulness of the popular music scene in the last 20 years or so? Is good music, as we know it from the 60s and 70s, back for good? […]... Read more »

Bornstein, R. (1989) Exposure and affect: Overview and meta-analysis of research, 1968-1987. Psychological Bulletin, 106(2), 265-289. DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.106.2.265

Johnson MK, Kim JK, & Risse G. (1985) Do alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome patients acquire affective reactions?. Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 11(1), 22-36. PMID: 3156951

November 6, 2014
04:25 AM
881 views

Memory training boosts IQ

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Is the IQ set in stone once we hit adulthood? ‘Yes it is’ used to be the received wisdom. A new meta-analysis challenges this view and gives hope to all of us who feel that mother nature should have endowed us with more IQ points. But is the training worth it? Intelligence increases in adults […]... Read more »

Au, J., Sheehan, E., Tsai, N., Duncan, G., Buschkuehl, M., & Jaeggi, S. (2014) Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory: a meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin . DOI: 10.3758/s13423-014-0699-x

October 9, 2014
09:43 AM
753 views

Dyslexia: trouble reading ‘four’

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Dyslexia affects about every tenth reader. It shows up when trying to read, especially when reading fast. But it is still not fully clear what words dyslexic readers find particularly hard. So, I did some research to find out, and I published the article today. Imagine seeing a new word ‘bour’. How would you pronounce […]... Read more »

Kunert, R., & Scheepers, C. (2014) Speed and accuracy of dyslexic versus typical word recognition: an eye-movement investigation. Frontiers in Psychology. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01129

October 6, 2014
03:33 AM
1,093 views

Old people are immune against the cocktail party effect

by Richard Kunert in Brain's Idea

Imagine standing at a cocktail party and somewhere your name gets mentioned. Your attention is immediately grabbed by the sound of your name. It is a classic psychological effect with a new twist: old people are immune. The so-called cocktail party effect has fascinated researchers for a long time. Even though you do not consciously […]... Read more »

Naveh-Benjamin M, Kilb A, Maddox GB, Thomas J, Fine HC, Chen T, & Cowan N. (2014) Older adults do not notice their names: A new twist to a classic attention task. Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition. PMID: 24820668

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