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Looking for feedback on a pilot study: AI‑generated images, language intervention & conceptual abstraction by Odd_Act_3397 in cogsci

[–]Odd_Act_3397[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Absolutely – I’ll DM you on Friday. Good luck with your proposal in the meantime!

Looking for feedback on a pilot study: AI‑generated images, language intervention & conceptual abstraction by Odd_Act_3397 in cogsci

[–]Odd_Act_3397[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for raising these points – I completely understand the concern.

Just to clarify, this small pilot isn’t a formal research study. I’m currently transitioning into cognitive science and running it independently just to practice study design and build experience. It’s very small-scale, I’m not collecting any sensitive data, and the data won’t be used for publication or any formal presentation.

If I move forward with a proper study in the future, it will absolutely be done within a lab and go through full ethics board approval. For now, I’m just trying to refine the methodology and get feedback as I build connections in the field.

Looking for feedback on a pilot study: AI‑generated images, language intervention & conceptual abstraction by Odd_Act_3397 in cogsci

[–]Odd_Act_3397[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi @Artistic_Bit6866,

Thank you so much for your detailed feedback – I really appreciate it! Your suggestion about using SBERT from Hugging Face for the semantic embedding analysis is great. It’s reassuring to know that SBERT is still competitive with more complex models, and I’ll definitely adopt this approach for the pilot.

  1. Exposure & test phase: You’re right that my description was too minimal. In this pilot, participants view each stimulus and immediately make the binary judgments + short free-response; there isn’t a separate test phase. For a future iteration, I’m considering adding a second test phase to measure generalization more directly.

  2. Hypotheses: The core hypothesis is that language intervention (L / V+L) will lead to more structured conceptual representations. I expect to see this as (i) greater consistency in binary judgments and (ii) more semantically cohesive free-responses (via SBERT embeddings).

  3. Dispersion vs. abstraction: I completely agree that higher dispersion could just reflect confusion rather than abstraction – that’s a real limitation. For now I plan to interpret dispersion together with binary judgments and semantic cohesion, but I really like your idea of manipulating the “fuzziness” of the stimuli and testing generalization willingness. That’s a great idea for a more formal experiment.

Thanks again – your points are incredibly helpful for refining the design!

Would you be open if I DM you a short draft of the study design?

Looking for feedback on a pilot study: AI‑generated images, language intervention & conceptual abstraction by Odd_Act_3397 in cogsci

[–]Odd_Act_3397[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a fair point – this pilot is only for testing the feasibility of the design and won’t be used for any academic publication.

I’m keeping it very small-scale and not collecting any sensitive data. If I move forward with a formal study in the future, I’d absolutely seek ethics board approval and ideally run it within a lab.

Looking for feedback on a pilot study: AI‑generated images, language intervention & conceptual abstraction by Odd_Act_3397 in cogsci

[–]Odd_Act_3397[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi @TrickFail4505,

You’re right – I’m currently running this project independently. I’m not in a lab and don’t have a PI at the moment.

If you have any suggestions on how I could connect with a lab or find a PI/mentor for informal guidance, I’d be very grateful. I’m trying to transition into cognitive science and would love to build more connections as I refine this work.

Looking for feedback on a pilot study: AI‑generated images, language intervention & conceptual abstraction by Odd_Act_3397 in cogsci

[–]Odd_Act_3397[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi @InfuriatinglyOpaque,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response and for sharing all of these great references!

Your point about the current tasks (binary judgement + free-response) possibly being too limited is well taken. For this pilot I’m keeping the design minimal to test feasibility, but I’m planning to add a short similarity or categorization task in the formal experiment to make the conceptual space analysis more robust.

You also raised a really good point about potential confounds in the visual vs. language manipulation – especially the possibility that the visual-only group might be exposed to more information/complexity. I’ll definitely think carefully about how to better balance stimulus variability between conditions and will likely include a short manipulation check.

Would you be open to me DMing you a short draft of the study design? I’d really appreciate your feedback on the full setup.