Attentional Control Data Collection

In response to the replication crisis in psychology, the practice of openly sharing data has significantly increased, supported by mandates from universities, research funding bodies, and academic journals. This cultural shift is based both on the need for transparency to detect errors and fraud and on increased efficiency through data reuse. However, current efforts by open data initiatives primarily focus on transparency: Data is often provided in a way that can reproduce findings but does not allow for new research questions. A solution to improve data reuse is the collection of open datasets in a structured SQL database. The Attentional Control Data Collection (ACDC) aims to facilitate this by collecting data from attentional control tasks, enabling easy access and allowing researchers to explore new questions without requiring additional participants. Researchers can submit their data to ACDC, explore the collection via a Shiny app, and access it for their analyses. This structured collection supports meta-analysis and methodological innovations and is particularly beneficial for research areas with expensive data acquisition. We hope that ACDC will advance research in attentional control by providing easier access to valuable data.

Data Collection: The database has been filled with data from attentional control studies that were publicly available or accessible to the research lab through previous projects. The collection process involved searching data repositories for relevant files, verifying key figures against published study reports, and resolving discrepancies with the authors. Raw data were reshaped in R into a systematic structure and integrated into the database.

Contribution: Researchers are invited to contribute to the ACDC database. Eligible contributions must come from studies on attentional control tasks where attentional control was experimentally manipulated (e.g., congruence of relevant and irrelevant information). The data should be anonymized and unaggregated, including participant IDs, reaction times, accuracy, and congruency variables. Contributions can be submitted via an online form, providing meta-information and either direct uploads or repository links.