My background and possible connections with the Learning and Instruction Lab

rich-ramsey.github.io/talks/li-lab-25/

Richard Ramsey
www.rich-ramsey.com

Today

  • Brief biography
  • Past research interests
  • Motivating context
  • Data science
  • Opportunities with the Learning and Instruction Lab

Brief biography

Position Degree/Research Theme Year Place
BSc. Sport & Exercise Science 2001-2004 Birmingham, UK
PhD Sport Psychology & Cognitive Neuroscience 2004-2008 Birmingham, UK
Postdoc Social & Cognitive Neuroscience 2007-2011 Nottingham, UK
Postdoc Social & Cognitive Neuroscience 2011 UCL, Belgium
Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader Social & Cognitive Neuroscience 2011-2019 Bangor University, UK
Associate Professor Social & Cognitive Neuroscience 2020-2023 Macquarie University, Australia
Senior Scientist Social & Cognitive Neuroscience 2023- ETH Zurich

Relevant experience

  • Balanced academic roles
    • research, teaching and leadership
  • 10 PhD students to completion as PI
  • 5 postdocs
  • Grant funding
  • Teaching (20+ years in higher education)
    • sport psychology, cognitive neuroscience, methods & meta-science
  • Leadership
    • PhD committee chair

Past research interests

Person perception


Imitation

Loneliness

Observational learning

Neuroaesthetics

Behaviour

fMRI

Metascience

Theoretical work

Computational modelling

Motivating context

Wheel of death

(Munafò et al. 2017)

Towards a cumulative science?

(Munafò et al. 2017; Ramsey 2020, 2021)

Show of hands

Who does the following?

✋ = sometimes | ✋✋ = routinely

  • Shares data
  • Shares code
  • Performs code review
  • Shares materials
  • Pre-registers experiments
  • Uses version control (e.g., git)
  • Consults a statistician
  • Pre-prints papers
  • Replicates their own work
  • Uses formal theory

Data science

Data science

R for Data science


  • R for Data Science
  • A free, online book: https://r4ds.hadley.nz/
  • Or buy the hard copy
  • This should be your data science bible

Reproducible data science


  • No Excel sheets !
  • Instead:
  • A raw data file (i.e., trial level data with no exclusions).
  • An analysis script (or set of scripts)

Openness


Open Science Framework

GitHub

PsyArXiv

Rstats

Reproducible scientific workflows



https://quarto.org/


A tutorial from my lab: https://github.com/rich-ramsey/reproducible_workflow_quarto

Opportunities with the Learning and Instruction Lab

Data science and Rstats

  • Infrastructure and openness (mainly in R).
  • Data wrangling and visualisation
  • Bayesian multi-level regression models
  • Planning studies via data simulation
  • Git and version control
  • Reproducible workflows via Quarto

Learning

  • Get me out of the lab and into the “real world” …
  • How does plasticity in cognitive and brain mechanisms support learning?
  • How do visuo-motor “training” interventions compare to learning interventions?
  • Can questions and measures be motivated by cognitive neuroscience (e.g., group bias, observational learning etc.)?
  • Can we kick-start a conversation about new projects?

Acknowledgements

  • Inez Greven
  • Emily Butler
  • Andrew Wildman
  • Ionela Bara
  • Chris Byrne
  • Kohinoor Darda
  • Dace Apšvalka
  • Kohinoor Darda
  • Raphaël Fournier
  • Paul Downing
  • Emily Cross
  • Rudi Coetzer
  • Eliane Deschrijver
  • Rob Ward
  • Richard Binney
  • Dave Kaplan
  • Sam Parker
  • Sven Panis

And here’s my stuff


References

Kruschke, John. 2014. Doing Bayesian Data Analysis: A Tutorial with R, JAGS, and Stan. Academic Press. https://books.google.com?id=FzvLAwAAQBAJ.
McElreath, Richard. 2020. Statistical Rethinking: A Bayesian Course with Examples in R and Stan. CRC press.
Munafò, Marcus R., Brian A. Nosek, Dorothy V. M. Bishop, Katherine S. Button, Christopher D. Chambers, Nathalie Percie du Sert, Uri Simonsohn, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Jennifer J. Ware, and John P. A. Ioannidis. 2017. “A Manifesto for Reproducible Science.” Nature Human Behaviour 1: 0021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0021.
Ramsey, Richard. 2020. “Advocating for the Credibility Revolution.” Cognitive Psychology Bulletin 5. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpscog.2020.1.5.70.
———. 2021. “A Call for Greater Modesty in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience.” Collabra: Psychology 7 (1): 24091. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.24091.
Winter, Bodo. 2019. Statistics for Linguists: An Introduction Using R. Routledge. https://books.google.com?id=8cbADwAAQBAJ.

Resources