{"pk":49973,"title":"A \"p < .05\" Boundary Effect in the Encoding and Retrieval of p-values from Scientific Texts","subtitle":null,"abstract":"‘Statistical significance' is more than just a label. Cognitive psychological theories suggest it may represent a mental concept of a category of p-values due to the pervasive practice of dichotomous interpretation of p-values. This paper builds on previous research identifying categorical boundary effects in the initial information processing of p-values by examining the encoding and retrieval of p-values embedded in the context of scientific abstracts. A sample of 30 U.S. graduate students in the psychological sciences read blocks of abstracts, then were prompted to recall certain details, including p-values. Results show that memory for p-values was skewed away from the .05 boundary, suggesting that training in dichotomous ‘p < .05' thinking may lead to categorical biases in memory for p-values. These results set up experiments to test mechanistic hypotheses of boundary effects on statistical cognition as well as the efficacy of teaching interventions to address and ameliorate these categorical biases.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Concepts and categories; Memory; Situated cognition; Statistics"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/08x7m34h","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"V. N. Vimal","middle_name":"","last_name":"Rao","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of Illinois","department":""},{"first_name":"Jeffrey","middle_name":"K.","last_name":"Bye","name_suffix":"","institution":"California State University, Dominguez Hills","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2025-01-01T19:00:00+01:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49973/galley/37935/download/"}]}