The present study concerns a preregistered replication of the study conducted by Johnson et al . (Johnson et al. 2013 Psychol. Sci. 24 , 1104–1112 ( doi:10.1177/0956797612466414 )), in which they showed an inhibition-of-return-like effect in working memory. Inhibition of return is a well-known phenomenon observed in the field of perception and refers to the observation that it takes longer to look back at a location which has recently been explored than to look at an unexplored location. Working memory is a central concept in the field of cognitive psychology and refers to the capacity to process and maintain information simultaneously over short periods of time. Johnson's study applied the inhibition of return paradigm to the concept of working memory. Their results showed that it is harder to access a working memory representation that had just been thought of, i.e. refreshed, in comparison to an unrefreshed working memory representation. Contrary to this study of Johnson et al ., who observed refreshing to result in inhibitory processes, most studies on refreshing have described its effect as increasing/prolonging the level of activation of the memory representations. In an attempt to integrate these opposite patterns produced by ‘refreshing’, we started by replicating one of the studies on the inhibition of return in working memory reported by Johnson et al .

Attention can be defined as a mechanism for the selection and prioritization of elements among many. When attention is directed to a specific piece of information, this information is assumed to be in the focus of attention. On a day-to-day basis, we need to rely on efficient switching between information we are holding in working memory (internal modality) and information presented in the world around us (external modality). A recent set of studies investigated between-modality attentional switches and found that there is an asymmetrical switch cost for switching between the internal and external focus of attention (Verschooren et al., 2020, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 46[9], 912–925; Verschooren, Liefooghe, et al., 2019a, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45[10], 1399–1414). In particular, participants switched on a trial-by-trial basis between an internal task using stimuli retrieved from memory and an external task using on-screen presented stimuli. A larger cost was found when switching from the external modality towards the internal modality than the other way around. The authors found that this cost asymmetry could be best explained in terms of associative interference (i.e., differences in shielding efficiency against the memory traces from the competing task set). The present study aimed to replicate the asymmetrical switch cost (Experiment 1) and investigate whether an alternative explanation in terms of stimulus strength can account for the asymmetrical switch cost (Experiment 2). Overall, the results confirm the presence of a subtle, asymmetrical switch cost, but we observed little to no contribution of stimulus strength.

The current paper presents an overview of the workflow of the Working Memory, Cognition and Development lab (WomCogDev) lab at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, as an example of how Open Science principles can be applied in a developmental psychology lab. We describe the importance and challenges of applying Open Science practices in developmental research and detail each step of our workflow from research design to dissemination. We provide examples and give emphasis to steps that typically receive little attention but that may hold promise for application in other labs (namely, project design, data collection, and data analysis). Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of our workflow, and summarize the main takeaways for other labs. By ‘opening up’ our lab’s workflow, we want to encourage other labs to incorporate the aspects that they like into their own workflows and to share their own processes for the continued benefit of others.

The current paper presents an overview of the workflow of the Working Memory, Cognition and Development (WomCogDev) lab at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, as an example of how Open Science principles can be applied in a developmental psychology lab. We describe the importance and challenges of applying Open Science practices in developmental research and detail each step of our workflow from research design to dissemination. We provide examples and give emphasis to steps that typically receive little attention but that may hold promise for application in other labs (namely, project design, data collection and data analysis). Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of our workflow and summarize the main takeaways for other labs. By 'opening up' our lab's workflow, we want to encourage other labs to incorporate the aspects that they like into their own workflows and to share their own processes for the continued benefit of others.

Attention can be defined as a mechanism for the selection and prioritization of elements among many. When attention is directed to a specific piece of information, this information is assumed to be in the focus of attention. On a day-to-day basis, we need to rely on efficient switching between information we are holding in working memory (internal modality) and information presented in the world around us (external modality). A recent set of studies investigated between-modality attentional switches and found that there is an asymmetrical switch cost for switching between the internal and external focus of attention (Verschooren et al., 2020; Verschooren, Liefooghe, et al., 2019). In particular, participants switched on a trial-by-trial basis between an internal task using stimuli retrieved from memory and an external task using on-screen presented stimuli. A larger cost was found when switching from the external modality towards the internal modality than the other way around. The authors adjudicated between different theoretical accounts that can explain this cost asymmetry and found that it could be best explained in terms of associative interference coming from the competing attentional state. The present study aimed to replicate the asymmetrical switch cost (Experiment 1) and to investigate whether an alternative explanation in terms of stimulus strength can account for the asymmetrical switch cost (Experiment 2). Overall, the results confirm the presence of a subtle, asymmetrical switch cost, but little to no impact of stimulus strength.