Department of Psychology "Renzo Canestrari", University of Bologna, Cesena, Italy.
PLoS One. 2022 Jul 20;17(7):e0271668. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271668. eCollection 2022.
How to correctly interpret interaction effects has been largely discussed in scientific literature. Nevertheless, misinterpretations are still frequently observed, and neuroscience is not exempt from this trend. We reviewed 645 papers published from 2019 to 2020 and found that, in the 93.2% of studies reporting a statistically significant interaction effect (N = 221), post-hoc pairwise comparisons were the designated method adopted to interpret its results. Given the widespread use of this approach, we aim to: (1) highlight its limitations and how it can lead to misinterpretations of the interaction effect; (2) discuss more effective and powerful ways to correctly interpret interaction effects, including both explorative and model selection procedures. The paper provides practical examples and freely accessible online materials to reproduce all analyses.
如何正确解读交互作用在科学文献中已经有大量讨论。然而，错误解读仍然频繁出现，神经科学也未能幸免。我们回顾了 2019 年至 2020 年发表的 645 篇论文，发现报告具有统计学显著交互作用的研究中（N=221），93.2%采用事后两两比较作为解释其结果的指定方法。鉴于这种方法的广泛应用，我们旨在：(1) 强调其局限性，以及它如何导致对交互作用的错误解读；(2) 讨论更有效和强大的方法来正确解释交互作用，包括探索性和模型选择程序。本文提供了实际示例和可在线获取的免费材料，以重现所有分析。
