Traditional statistics instruction emphasizes a .05 significance level for hypothesis tests. Here, we investigate the consequences of this training for researchers’ mental representations of probabilities — whether .05 becomes a boundary, that is, a discontinuity of the mental number line, and alters their reasoning about p-values. Graduate students with statistical training (n = 25) viewed pairs of p-values and judged whether they were “similar” or “different.” After controlling for several covariates, participants were more likely and faster to judge p-values as “different” when they crossed the .05 boundary (e.g., .046 vs. .052) compared to when they did not (e.g., .026 vs. .032). This result suggests a categorical perception-like effect for the processing of p-values. It may be a consequence of traditional statistical instruction creating a psychologically real divide between so-called statistical “significance” and “nonsignificance.” Such a distortion is undesirable given modern approaches to statistical reasoning that de-emphasize dichotomizing the p-value continuum.

中文翻译：

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p 值的分类感知

传统的统计教学强调假设检验的显着性水平为 0.05。在这里，我们调查了这种训练对研究人员对概率的心理表征的影响——0.05 是否成为边界，即心理数线的不连续性，并改变他们对p值的推理。接受过统计培训的研究生 ( n = 25) 查看了成对的p值并判断它们是“相似”还是“不同”。在控制了几个协变量后，参与者更有可能更快地判断p- 当它们越过 0.05 边界时（例如，0.046 与 0.052）与未越过时（例如，0.026 与 0.032）相比，值“不同”。该结果表明处理p值的分类感知效果。这可能是传统统计教学在所谓的统计“显着性”和“非显着性”之间造成心理上真正的鸿沟的结果。鉴于现代统计推理方法不再强调对p值连续统一体的二分法，这种失真是不可取的。