Assessing the Replicability of Cognitive Psychology During Remote Experiential Learning via Mobile Phone Technology

Abstract

A recent global health crisis demanded the wholesale configuration of both teaching and research from in-person to on-line formats. This allowed for an environmental sweep regarding the replicability of some classic and contemporary findings in Cognitive Psychology in the context of an undergraduate course, in which eight portable experimental packages were written for mobile phone. Running across three semesters (average n per study = 585), data consistently produced evidence either for (Faces, Search, Object, RPS, Rotate) or against (Doodle, Trivia) the original findings, with the exception of one study (House) that produced ambiguous findings. The scheme not only allows students exposure to and discussion of the replication crisis within empirical science, but also provides a framework for the future implementation of experiential learning during remote and asynchronous teaching. With continued evaluation made possible via Open Science Framework, a central question is whether on-line data collection violates an essential auxiliary assumption for the replication of in-person data.