Update to methods in manuscript “The effect of multisensory distraction on working memory: A role for task relevance?”
Creators: name: Vergauwe, Evie
name: Turoman, Nora
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Cognitive Psychology

description: In this registration, we describe the necessary modifications to the Bayesian sequential hypothesis testing procedure described in the Stage 1 manuscript XLM-2022-2364R2 entitled “The effect of multisensory distraction on working memory: A role for task relevance?”, accepted by the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (on January 14th, 2023), before additional data collection started on February 24th, 2023 (15h CET). Specifically, to accommodate a later decision on the Stage 1 manuscript than we had hoped, and given limited resource availability (participant credits, staff contracts, and research assistant availability), we had to make two changes to the data collection procedure for Experiment 1, and one change to the subsequent experiments, which we detail below. First, for the initial batch of data in Experiment 1, we recruited and tested 32 participants before the date of acceptance of the Stage 1 report (data collection from November 11 to December 9, 2022, for the aforementioned reasons related to resource availability). To minimize the deviation from the registered report, we did not look into these data or perform any statistical analyses until after acceptance (starting with January 26th, 2023). Further, for subsequent batches of participants per experiment, we will collect data in batches of 10 instead of 5 as previously defined. Thus, after the initial batch 1 of Experiment 1, we will increase the number of participants by steps of 10, rather than by steps of 5, and we plan to do the same in any of the potential subsequent experiments that we may need to run based on the decision tree of the manuscript. To minimize the deviation from our original sampling plan, we will only add batches of 5 participants into our analysis, one participant at a time, thereby making changes only in how many additional data sets are collected per additional batch (+10) but not in how many additional data sets are analyzed per additional batch (+5). We will ensure that the authors only have access to the data of 5 participants at a time, as we would in the original case before the current changes (only a research assistant collecting the data will have access to all 10 datasets). This deviation was decided before the collection of any data other than for batch 1 of Experiment 1, which is evidenced by the timestamp of the current registration. Below are the original and updated methods related to the Bayesian sequential hypothesis testing procedure for Experiment 1, and for potential subsequent experiments (Experiment 2a-d and Experiment 3). In the case of Experiment 1, we first present the original section as in the accepted manuscript, and an updated section as it will be written in the stage 2 manuscript. For potential Experiment 2a-d and Experiment 3, we describe the original intended procedure (not yet in the manuscript) and updated procedure, as they will be written in the stage 2 manuscript (with changes in tense). The stage 2 manuscript will report these deviations transparently.