Emerging Researcher

Beth is a fourth-year PhD student in the Cognitive Sciences department at UC Irvine.  Her research focuses on the development of new computational tools for analyzing behavioral (and sometimes neural) data in a Bayesian framework.

She has developed novel cognitive models to address a variety of topics, including the comparative merit of various prominent theories of attention; the reliability of “muscle testing,” a controversial diagnostic technique in alternative medicine; and methods for conducting planned meta-analyses.  She also participated in a Bayesian re-analysis of data from the Reproducibility Project: Psychology.  For her dissertation work, she is applying hierarchical Bayesian modeling methods to the joint analysis of spike train and behavioral data.

Although the topics and content of her work have varied greatly, the goal of developing novel computational approaches ties together all of the above listed works.

Ms. Baribault was awarded this prize in the Emerging Researchers category for her outstanding dedication to transparent and reproducible practices in her research at UC Irvine. She has consistently pre-registered her studies, coordinated a “many labs”-type replication across seven labs, and improved upon previous replication designs to make effect directions and sizes more generalizable. Her advisor Dr. Joachim Vandekerckhove has said he “sincerely believe(s) this project will significantly transform the replication movement in the next few months.”

2016 Annual Meeting Leamer-Rosenthal Prize Winner Interview