Melody Wiseheart, PhD

Wiseheart is currently a professor of psychology at York University in Canada.

Tell us a bit about your background: What is your area of research? What is your most recent journal-editing experience?

My core training is in cognitive development across the lifespan. I am best known for my educational psychology research on the spacing effect and for my executive function research. I conduct theory-based applied research; for example, I, working with Sandi Wiseheart, developed and validated a socioeconomic status scale that includes expanded measures of education, occupation, and wealth, as well as measures of relationship quality, environmental influences, health, and spirituality (Wiseheart & Wiseheart, 2021). One of my most cited articles demonstrated that using a laptop in the classroom harms both the user’s learning and their peers’ learning (Sana et al., 2013).

In my lab, I encourage my students to design studies that combine developmental theory and key questions from their own areas of expertise. My students and I have examined a wide range of topics, including yoga, music training, nostalgia, politics, health, well-being, bilingualism, and biculturalism.

I became an associate editor of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General in 2011. Since then, I have served as associate editor for Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Archives of Scientific Psychology, and Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. I became incoming editor at Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied (JEP: Applied) in January 2023.

Briefly, what are your main priorities? For example, how will you grow readership, what type of scholarship would you like to see in the journal, and what kind of content are you hoping to attract?

My aim for JEP: Applied is to improve its transparency and openness. I have adopted Level 2 requirements for all aspects prioritized by the American Psychological Association (APA): open data, open materials, and open analysis code; acknowledgment of whether the study design and analyses were preregistered; and mandatory compliance with APA’s Journal Article Reporting Standards. I added registered reports as an article type, which will be particularly useful for researchers conducting large-scale studies using difficult-to-access populations.

I have adopted most of APA’s equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) reporting standards. This signals to authors that I, as editor, take seriously the journal’s mission to publish research using diverse samples. I also hope that these EDI requirements will sur researchers to consider the impact that their sampling has on generalizability to a diverse range of populations. I have brought on associate editors from around the world, including from developing countries, which should increase the number of submissions from outside North America.

I instituted a major change in policy around what types of manuscripts fall under “experimental psychology.” In line with other JEP journals, JEP: Applied will now consider manuscripts that use correlational (e.g., structural equation modeling, mediation modeling) and quasi-experimental designs. This should increase the impact of the journal. Although randomly assigned experimental designs continue to hold a strong place in the literature, these other forms of research also advance psychological science.

Why is this journal important for the field? What is its relevance to society/public health? What are the hot issues in your area right now?

Because JEP: Applied is devoted to applied concerns, it is essential that the research published in the journal be understandable to the public and other stakeholders (e.g., via public significance statements). Editorial policy choices represent an opportunity to affect population sampling so that studies move beyond White, U.S.-centric, industrialized, rich populations to include populations from other countries, from other cultures, and from other ways of knowing and passing on knowledge. As applied researchers, we can assist with theory advancement in a way that laboratory research often does not.

What challenges, if any, lie ahead for the field?

As a Canadian American, I have found living in Canada after growing up in the United States to be eye-opening. If we as applied researchers can embrace our status as citizens of the world (and not only citizens of our own countries) and study experiences not our own, we will be more able to contribute to a better world society and improve our own societies in the process.

Over my years as an associate editor, I have noticed that finding reviewers has become increasingly challenging. This is partly due to a tenure and promotion model that rewards researchers for publishing their own research but not for reviewing that of their colleagues, but the result is that it can take weeks to find reviewers. Further, reviewers essentially work for free when they review. In some cases, new reviewers need to be found for revisions, which ideally would be rereviewed by the original reviewers. Alternate reviewing models that ensure quality, timely peer review need to be considered.

Do you have plans for a special issue or changes to the editorial process? Have you introduced or are you planning to introduce any changes?

I have introduced registered reports to the journal, and correlational and quasi-experimental studies will now be considered for publication. As I have already outlined, I have introduced a requirement for Level 2 transparency and openness, as well as EDI reporting standards. I realize that these changes mean more work for authors, but they also will help researchers better reach the applied audiences that are the target of their research.

To reduce reviewer burden, I will make extensive use of pre-external review revisions to catch concerns that are likely to be brought up by reviewers. This includes a policy that either nonsignificant null hypothesis significance testing analyses be clearly labeled as indeterminate (rather than incorrectly stating support for the null hypothesis) or Bayesian analyses be used to support a null result. Among a range of items, I also will be checking that adequate sample size justification and demographic information have been provided.

Sana, F., Weston, T., & Cepeda, N. J. (2013). Laptop multitasking hinders classroom learning for both users and nearby peers. Computers and Education, 62, 24–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.10.003

Wiseheart, M., & Wiseheart, S. (2021, November). Validation of the Wiseheart Socioeconomic Status Scale. Paper presented at the Psychonomic Society annual meeting, New Orleans, LA, United States.

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