
Denis CousineauUniversity of Ottawa · School of Psychology
Denis Cousineau
Ph. D.
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179
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Introduction
I am a cognitive psychologist afflicted by the Frankenstein syndrome, that is, to recreate intelligent minds from inert materials.
In my search for a cure, I explore decision making in simple tasks, automatic behaviors and models of human decision making such as race networks.
To see more clearly the path, I have worked a little bit on confidence intervals.
In my spare time, I am Editor of the Quantitative Methods for Psychology (but you already knew it, right?).
Additional affiliations
November 2000 - July 2011
July 1998 - June 2000
July 2011 - July 2025
Publications
Publications (179)
Previous research has found that striving towards perfection was negatively associated with the generation of original ideas, as measured with Divergent Thinking (DT) tasks. In contrast, striving towards excellence has been positively associated with DT abilities. This effect has been replicated; however explanatory variables have not yet been test...
This study aimed to understand the factors predicting creative activities and creative achievements among university students. Based on a recently proposed framework of 10 creative spaces, we hypothesized that exploring those creative spaces, alongside the personality trait openness to experience and divergent thinking abilities would predict creat...
Time series and electroencephalographic data are often noisy sources of data. In addition, the samples are often small or medium so that confidence intervals for a given time point taken in isolation may be large. Decorrelation techniques were shown to be adequate and exact for repeated-measure designs where correlation is assumed constant across p...
Over the past decades, many researchers have identified ways of reasoning in the domain of statistics and probabilities that do not match statistics and probabilities results. Some of these inadequate conceptualizations are reviewed herein. They include, among others, the gambler’s fallacy, the law of small numbers, the misunderstanding of randomne...
Despite significant transformations in most domains of activities, there might still be some constancies in the creativespaces explored throughout history. This paper introduces theCreative Space Theory(CST), a conceptual frameworkdelineating 10 distinct creative spaces, analogous to creative landscapes. These creative spaces are proposed as navi-g...
This effect sizes and confidence intervals collaborative guide aims to provide students and early-career researchers with hands-on, step-by-step instructions for calculating effect sizes and confidence intervals for common statistical tests used in psychology, social sciences and behavioral sciences, particularly when original data are not availabl...
Le vendredi 9 juin 2023 s’est tenu le 12e colloque annuel Méthodes quantitatives en sciences humaines à l’Université TÉLUQ, Montréal. Sept conférenciers ont présenté leurs résultats de recherche. Sébastien Béland a évalué l'efficacité de différents coefficients populaires sur des items unidimensionnels à réponse dichotomique. Félix Laliberté a prés...
In 1998/1999, three participants trained for up to 74-h-long sessions to find a target present on half the trials in visual displays of 1, 2, or 4 initially novel objects. There were four targets and four foils that never changed. Displays occurred simultaneously, or the objects occurred successively, or the four features of each object occurred su...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.191375.][This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.2500.].
Despite the key role that motivation plays in the creative process-with respect to engaging with content, exploring, and learning-, surprisingly few studies have investigated the relationship between academic motivation and indicators of creativity. The objective of the current study was to clarify this relationship. More specifically, we examined...
The Same-Different task presents two stimuli in close succession and participants must indicate whether they are completely identical or if there are any attributes that differ. While the task is simple, its results have proven difficult to explain. Notably, response times are characterized by a fast-same effect whereby Same responses are faster th...
This study investigates the correlates of statistics anxiety. Considering that statistics anxiety and spatial anxiety have been separately correlated with related constructs (e.g., mathematics anxiety, academic performance, etc.), the possibility that spatial anxiety plays a role in statistics anxiety is explored. When facing statistics or mathemat...
The low reproducibility rate in social sciences has produced hesitation among researchers in accepting published findings at their face value. Despite the advent of initiatives to increase transparency in research reporting, the field is still lacking tools to verify the credibility of research reports. In the present paper, we describe methodologi...
Introduction
Exact tests on proportions exist for single-group and two-group designs, but no general test on proportions exists that is appropriate for any experimental design involving more than two groups, repeated measures, and/or factorial designs.
Method
Herein, we extend the analysis of proportions using arcsine transform to any sort of desi...
Emojis are included in more than half of all text-based messages shared on digital platforms. Evidence is emerging to suggest that many emojis are ambiguous, which can lead to miscommunication and put a strain on social relations. We hypothesized that emojis that incorporate visual cues that distinguish facial expressions of emotions, known as faci...
The standardized mean difference, often called the Cohen's d_p , is commonly used to described difference between means of two measurements. In independent samples, the sampling distribution is known. Herein, we derive the sampling distribution of this measure in paired samples, also called repeated measures. The distribution is a generalized nonce...
The same-different task is a classic paradigm that requires participants to judge whether two successively presented stimuli are the same or different. While this task is simple, with results that have been replicated many times, response times (RTs) and accuracy for both same and different decisions remain difficult to model. The biggest obstacle...
The goal of the current study was to measure the processing demands on the stages of information processing with internal and external foci of attention. Participants completed simple and two-choice reaction time tasks with internal and external foci of attention. Donders' subtraction method was used to isolate the cumulative duration of stages uni...
A vast majority of social sciences students experience statistics anxiety in their statistics class, a course often perceived as the most difficult one of their academic paths. The present study examines the role of attitudes towards statistics, cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and satisfaction of psychological needs in the prediction of st...
Students may differ on their standards of performance, reasons for attending school, beliefs about their academic and creative abilities, and the importance they place on school and creativity. The current study employed Latent Profile Analyses to identify sub-populations of university students based on the following seven indicators: standards of...
GRD is a popular tool to genenrate random data on the fly. It is most useful in statistic classes where the students can generate with a single short syntax, or using a graphical interface, random data that differs on every run but yet can implement effect sizes, outliers, etc. With the new versions of SPSS (version 27 and above) which is now using...
Here, we present two case studies of extremely long-term retention. In the first, Richard C. Atkinson (RCA) had learned word sequences during experiments for his dissertation. Sixty-seven years later, RCA relearned the same words either in the original order or in a scrambled order. RCA reported no conscious awareness that the words were those used...
The standards that a person pursue in life can be set in a rigid or flexible way. The recent literature has emphasized a distinction between high and realistic standards of excellence, from high and unrealistic standards of perfection. In two studies, we investigated the role of striving toward excellence (i.e., excellencism) and striving toward pe...
The standards that a person pursue in life can be set in a rigid or flexible way. The recent literature has emphasized a distinction between high and realistic standards of excellence, from high and unrealistic standards of perfection. In two studies, we investigated the role of striving towards excellence (i.e., excellencism) and striving towards...
Born-Open Data is a framework whereby experiments are conceived from the start as making the data openly accessible. This framework was first described in Rouder, 2016, and an actual implementation for E-Prime 2.10 was provided by Cousineau, 2020. Herein, we provide an implementation for jsPsych. It consist in a plugin for jsPsych which can be inse...
To determine whether people’s perception of time is distorted by a task, researchers typically compare duration estimates with objective clock time. However, a person might still feel as though time has passed slowly yet provide an accurate estimate (self-correcting for bias in their responses; Droit-Volet, 2018). We thus measured the subjective fe...
Plotting the data of an experiment allows researchers to illustrate the main results of a study, show effect sizes, compare conditions, and guide interpretations. To achieve all this, it is necessary to show point estimates of the results and their precision using error bars. Often, and potentially unbeknownst to them, researchers use a type of err...
Holistic processing, which includes the integration of facial features and analysis of their relations to one another, is a hallmark of what makes faces ‘special’. Various experimental paradigms purport to measure holistic processing but these have often produced inconsistent results. This has led researchers to question the nature and structure of...
Statistics are increasingly important in today's society. However few people understand its signification and implication. For decades researchers have looked at statistics education, but many questions remain unanswered. The present text provide an overview of those questions and some potential line of research.
Eight initially novel objects with four features were learned by three participants over about 70 sessions in a variety of present-absent search tasks. This article analyzes and models trials with a single object presented for test. The features of the object were presented simultaneously, or successively at rates fast enough that the objects appea...
There exist many variants of confidence intervals for Cohen's d_p in within-subject designs. Herein, we review three past proposals (Morris, 2000; Algina & Keselman, 2003, Goulet-Pelletier & Cousineau, 2018) and examine five new ones, four of which are based on the recently discovered distribution of d_p in such design. We examine each method accor...
When asked to compare two stimuli, participants are on average faster to respond Same than Different, an effect coined the fast-same. The dual-process theory argues that information about similarity is processed in priority over any other type of information, causing the fast-same effect. We tested this serial architecture of cognitive processes us...
Born-Open Data experiments are encouraged for better open science practices. To be adopted, Born-Open data practices must be easy to implement. Herein, I introduce a package for E-Prime such that the data files are automatically saved on a GitHub repository. The BornOpenData package for E-Prime works seamlessly and performs the upload as soon as th...
Reporting descriptive statistics requires rounding the results. Experienced researchers typically round the numbers to one or two decimals, following the APA manual. However, this general recommendation ignores the sample size and the instrument’s precision. Herein, expressions are derived that indicate how many decimals are reliable and so at what...
Two themes have puzzled the research on developmental and learning disorders for decades. First, some of the risk and protective factors behind developmental challenges are suggested to be shared and some are suggested to be specific for a given condition. Second, language-based learning difficulties like dyslexia are suggested to result from or co...
Getting confidence interval expressions for some effect size statistics can be a difficult endeavor. There exist multiple approaches to compute a confidence interval, not all being exact. Herein, we review five general classes of techniques that have been used to get confidence interval expression. Some are exact approaches, such as the predicting...
Participants are faster to decide that two stimuli are identical than to decide that they are different. Opposing theories suggested that this fast-same effect is either due (a) to a response bias toward similarity or (b) to facilitation caused by the repetition of the stimuli attributes. Although both theories predict the fast-same effect in a con...
In this document, I demonstrate an approximate distribution of Cohen's d_p in within-subject designs. The distribution follows a noncentral t distribution with degrees of freedom depending on the correlation between the measures. The result generalizes the distribution of Cohen's d_p to both between-subject and single-group designs, yielding a flex...
The results of the method for estimating confidence intervals according to Steiger and Fouladi (1997) were not displayed correctly in our published paper (Figure 7 in Appendix C). We correct the figure here. The new figure changes our interpretation of the method to a more favorable appreciation.
The diffusion model is useful for analyzing data from decision making experiments as it gives information about a dataset that regular statistical tests cannot, including: the rate of processing, the encoding and motor response times, and decision thresholds. The EZ diffusion model is a restricted version of the diffusion model with some parameter...
This editorial introduces the special issue dedicated to sampling models.
This vignette presents an in-class demonstration to introduce the notion of standard error. The students must be able to compute means using SPSS. They must also be able to eye-ball standard deviation from a list of numbers. In doing the activity, they will be exposed to sampling. The demonstration uses a random number generator so that each studen...
Participants tend to match identical pairs of stimuli faster than different pairs. Despite many endeavours to explain this fast-same effect, there is still no theoretical consensus. A potential reason for the lack of consensus is that the cognitive architecture and capacity underlying such phenomenon is assumed and not formally tested. For example,...
In within-subject designs, the multiple scores of a given participant are correlated. This correlation implies that the observed variance can be partitioned into between-subject variance and between-measure variance. The basic confidence interval about the mean does not separate these two sources and is therefore of little use in within-subject des...
The fast-same effect is the observation that “same” responses are much faster than “different” responses in the same-different task. Moreover, identical stimuli are responded to faster than stimuli that are the same in name only (e.g., B and b). We examine Bamber's (1969) identity reporter model (a two-stage model predicting load effects), Proctor'...
There have been many empirical endeavors to explain the fact that participants correctly identify same stimuli faster than different stimuli. Despite a large body of literature, a conclusive and unanimous consensus to explain this effect is lacking. The present study offers a new perspective on the same-different task using best-fitting parametric...
When asked to compare two stimuli participants are in average faster to respond “Same” than “Different”, an effect coined the fast-same. The dual-process theory argues that information about similarity is processed in priority over any other type of information, causing the fast-same effect. We tested this serial architecture of cognitive processes...
The low reproducibility rate in social sciences lead researchers to hesitate to accept published findings at their face value. It became apparent that the field is lacking the tools necessary both to demonstrate and to verify credibility of research reports. In the present paper, we describe tools and methodologies that let researchers craft highly...
This proceeding for the CogSci conference 2019 got accepted for a poster.
Abstract:
Semantic organization of knowledge has a long history in theories of creativity. Flexibility of thinking and distant connections are indispensable elements of a creative network. At the same time, convergence of thoughts and evaluation of ideas are essential at man...
When running statistical tests, researchers can commit a Type II error, that is, fail to reject the null hypothesis when it is false. To diminish the probability of committing a Type II error (β), statistical power must be augmented. Typically, this is done by increasing sample size, as more participants provide more power. When the estimated effec...
Participants are faster to detect that two simuli are identical than to detect they are different. Opposing theories suggested that this fast-same effect is due to a) an inherent bias of participants for similarity or b) facilitation caused by the repetition of the stimuli attributes. Although both theories predict the fast-same effect in a convent...
The purpose of this study was to test three pathways from achievement goals to academic performance in statistics classes. Participants were 247 undergraduate students in psychology taking an introductory course on statistics. They completed questionnaires shortly after the mid-term, and their final grades were provided by their professors at the e...
Two errors have been found in the published article that are corrected here. All the simulations reported were error-free.
Effect sizes and confidence intervals are important statistics to assess the magnitude and the precision of an effect. The various standardized effect sizes can be grouped in three categories depending on the experimental design: measures of the difference between two means (the $d$ family), measures of strength of association (e.$g$., $r$, $R^2$,...
De nombreux chercheurs en psychométrie soutiennent que le coefficient alpha de Cronbach (1951) n’est pas une mesure adéquate de la fidélité ( reliability) d’un test. C’est dans l’optique d’améliorer les pratiques d’analyse de données que ce court article va présenter les fondements théoriques de la fidélité, synthétiser les principales limites de l...
Smith, Redford, Gent, and Washburn (2005) have proposed a new categorization paradigm called the visual-search categorization task to study how display size affects categorization performance. Their results show that, in a wide range of conditions, category knowledge collapses as soon as multiple stimuli are simultaneously displayed in a scene. Thi...
Canadian Normative Data for Minimal Assessment of Cognitive Function in Multiple Sclerosis – CORRIGENDUM - Lisa A.S. Walker, David Marino, Jason A. Berard, Anthony Feinstein, Sarah A. Morrow, Denis Cousineau
We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = .05 to .005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense with significance tes...
We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = .05 to .005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense with significance tes...
A common finding in Same-Different studies is that participants respond significantly faster for ‘Same’ trials compared to ‘Different’ trials. This phenomenon might be due to variations in (1) information processing rates (2) inherent biases and/or (3) encoding/motor base time. Two models, the Linear Ballistic Accumulator (LBA) and the Ratcliff Dif...
We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = 0.05 to p = 0.005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense with significan...
We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = 0.05 to p = 0.005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense with significan...
We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = 0.05 to p = 0.005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science.
Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense
with significan...
We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = 0.05 to p = 0.005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense
with significance...
We argue that making accept/reject decisions on scientific hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level from p = .05 to .005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable alpha levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense with significance tes...
Récemment, l'Open Science Collaboration (2015) a identifié que la majorité des effets obtenus lors de reproductions sont plus petits et moins robustes que ceux rapportés dans les articles originaux. En réaction à ces trouvailles, certains proposent de reproduire systématiquement les résultats de nos propres études avant de les publier, afin d'évite...
Since its inception, Systems Factorial Technology (SFT; Townsend & Nozawa, 1995) has been used alongside many research paradigms to detect the characteristics underlying a cognitive process. Here, we show how thresholds variability in a coactive architecture can result in an ambiguous diagnosis even when all SFT assumptions are met. We implemented...
Les statistiques sont une matière notoirement difficile à enseigner aux étudiants des sciences humaines. L’anxiété statistique, une forme d’anxiété bien documentée chez ces étudiants, est présente dès le début du cours et explique donc une partie des difficultés rencontrées par ces étudiants. Cependant, nous croyons que l’anxiété statistique est la...
We argue that depending on p-values to reject null hypotheses, including a recent call for changing the canonical alpha level for statistical significance from .05 to .005, is deleterious for the finding of new discoveries and the progress of science. Given that blanket and variable criterion levels both are problematic, it is sensible to dispense...
Objective:
The Minimal Assessment of Cognitive Function in Multiple Sclerosis (MACFIMS) is a consensus-based collection of neuropsychological tests that evaluate cognitive functioning in individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS). The tests are typically scored using each respective published test manual, leaving the examiner to make interpretations...
Error bars are useful to understand data and their interrelations. Here, it is shown that confidence intervals of the mean (CI
M
s) can be adjusted based on whether the objective is to highlight differences between measures or not and based on the experimental design (within- or between-group designs). Confidence intervals (CIs) can also be adjust...
Lorsque les chercheurs effectuent des tests d’hypothèse nulle, l’objectif est de déterminer si la variabilité observée dans les données est le résultat du hasard ou de l’effet de la variable indépendante (VI). Cette décision est prise à l’aide d’un seuil choisi a priori afin de minimiser la probabilité de rejeter l’hypothèse nulle alors que cellec...
Statistics anxiety represents a situational anxiety that can impede the acquisition and integration of knowledge and school performance in statistics. Since training in this field is generally required in undergraduate studies in the humanities and health disciplines, and this type of course is usually considered to be a challenge for most students...
Des chercheurs discutaient récemment de l’importance de rester à jour au sujet des plus récentes avancées en méthodes quantitatives. À ce titre, de nombreux auteurs ont exposé leur souhait de voir les chercheurs abandonner le populaire coefficient alpha de Cronbach. C’est dans une optique de diffusion et de vulgarisation que ce court article a comm...
Many discussions, sometimes heated, sometimes critical, were held on the use of statistics since the beginning of the new millennium. The aim of this opinion piece is to tap these criticisms in order to highlight ten ways to analyze a data set. We thus offer our own version of the Ten Commandments. We ultimately hope this will encourage the scienti...
Statistical analyses have grown immensely since the inception of
computational methods. However, many quantitative methods classes teach sampling and sub-sampling at a very abstract level despite the fact that, with the faster computers of today, these notions could be demonstrated live to the students. For this reason, we have created a simple ex...
Assessing global interrater agreement is difficult as most published indices are affected by the presence of mixtures of agreements and disagreements. A previously proposed method was shown to be specifically sensitive to global agreement, excluding mixtures, but also negatively biased. Here, we propose two alternatives in an attempt to find what m...
Researchers often use strings of scrambled letters to measure discriminability. Letters are familiar stimuli for participants and easy to manipulate. Many models have been proposed to explain the results obtain in such studies. For example, the linear ballistic accumulator (Brown & Heathcote, 2008) suggests that response times and errors are the re...