Journal of Experimental Psychology-Applied最新文献

Many researchers and educators have strongly advocated for utilizing retrieval practice to improve student learning and grades. Yet, the mnemonic consequences of retrieval practice have almost exclusively been compared to rereading, which is a passive, ineffective study strategy. Across two experiments that each included 69 college student participants conducted in the 2022-2023 academic year, we tested how practice retrieving chemistry concepts impacts memory and transfer compared to generating mnemonics (and rereading). Learning was assessed either after 5 min or 2 days. Practicing retrieval and generating mnemonics both bolstered memory and transfer compared to restudying but did not yield different test performance from each other. Practicing retrieval took about half as much time as generating mnemonics, revealing its efficiency for learning complex concepts. However, participants rated generating mnemonics as more effective than practicing retrieval. We discuss the implications of these results for learners' study and for theories of retrieval practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Theories of transfer argue that people are more likely to transfer knowledge to a new scenario the more similar the scenario is to what they have previously learned. However, prior research predominantly relies on expert- or researcher-based judgments of how similar two scenarios are, rather than learner-based similarity metrics. Two studies (N total = 483) with undergraduate students in the United States examined how learner-based similarity judgments relate to transfer. These studies also show how using learner-based metrics can help researchers explore how features of lessons (i.e., the richness of diagrams) influence transfer. Participants sorted the stimuli in the posttest based on their similarity either at the beginning (Study 1) or the end of the study (Study 2). Participants learned about metamorphosis using either perceptually rich or bland life cycle diagrams. After the lesson, they completed a posttest after the lesson and after a month. Both studies showed that participants' similarity judgments predict transfer. Using this metric also showed that participants were more likely to extend their knowledge to animals similar to the ladybug when they learned with the rich diagram, but to dissimilar animals when they learned with the bland diagram. This was consistent after the 1-month delay. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

An abundance of research has demonstrated that both posttesting (also referred to as retrieval practice) and pretesting (asking a learner for an answer to a cue before a study trial has been provided) can enhance the long-term retention of material. While the benefits of retrieval practice have been widely applied in various real-world applications, such as computerized tools that promote the memorization of factual materials, pretesting has seen limited real-world application. In this study, we examine whether and under which realistic digital learning conditions combining pretesting and posttesting can promote learning. In four experiments (total N = 210), we contrast learning conditions in which repeated retrieval practice is preceded by passive study to learning conditions in which retrieval practice is preceded by a test. In the first two experiments, we confirm and extend previous findings by demonstrating that pretesting boosts retrieval accuracy and reduces response times on subsequent retrieval repetitions, regardless of the accuracy of the pretest. We find these effects both when a fixed item repetition schedule is used and with performance-based, adaptive item scheduling that resembles popular digital learning tools. However, after three repetitions of an item, the initial advantage of pretesting disappears, calling into question its usefulness in applied settings that involve spaced repetition. In the final two experiments, we explore a more targeted use of pretesting, leveraging it to assess prior knowledge. Dropping items that were answered correctly during the pretest enhanced overall learning efficiency, especially for learners with moderate to high prior knowledge, without disadvantaging those with low prior knowledge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Response distortion (faking) on personality tests in high-stakes selection contexts, and the use of warnings to mitigate it, remain critical issues in industrial-organizational psychology. Research on these issues, however, has often been limited by practical and methodological constraints, leaving notable gaps in our understanding of the processes involved. To address these gaps, we conducted a study where 1,123 participants in a military selection setting were randomly assigned to three experimental groups: low-stakes control, high-stakes selection, and high-stakes warning. Performance indicators included admission to officer training, future officer rank, and job performance. The results showed that group-level trait means changed in the expected directions under high-stakes conditions, while the factorial invariance and predictive validity of the personality measure were preserved. The incremental validity of personality traits over general mental ability remained consistent across groups, supporting the robustness of personality assessments. While warnings reduced the mean score inflation, they failed to enhance predictive validity and negatively impacted convergent validity with an unaffected premeasure of personality. Warnings also resulted in other distortions, particularly among high-ability candidates. Overall, these findings indicate that personality assessments retain practical utility in high-stakes settings when excluding warnings, as such interventions may introduce unintended biases without improving selection outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Experimental evidence shows that spaced study (in which restudy is distributed across time) supports long-term retention of studied materials compared to less spaced or more massed study (i.e., the spacing effect). However, in surveys of students' study behavior in uncontrolled settings, self-reported spaced study rarely correlates with real-world outcomes, such as grades. In this article, we question whether previous self-reports have truly assessed spacing, since they do not address whether students revisit the same concepts. Immediately following each exam in a college course, two samples of students in different semesters (N = 185, Spring 2016; N = 194, Spring 2017) reported their spacing behavior via two survey items modeled after prior research and one novel item. The items addressed (a) whether students had spread their study across sessions, (b) whether they had crammed, and (c) whether they had restudied the same concepts (the novel item). In both samples, only the novel item predicted scores on all exams, even when controlling for total study time. The item also predicted indicators of self-regulation, likely a factor in whether students space their study. We emphasize that restudy is a defining feature of spacing that should not be overlooked when investigating self-reported spaced study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

It is not fully understood why people pay to reduce modest risks, such as breakdowns of consumer goods. They may do so because they calculate expected valuations, or because they are predisposed to reduce risks. We use a computational model of decision making, the drift diffusion model, to study whether risk-reduction choices are valuational or dispositional. Across two studies (one preregistered, total N = 205, arranged in 2022 and 2023), we find that an explicit insurance framing is associated with more consistent choices and higher responsiveness to changes in insurance contract parameters than an implicit lottery framing. Computational modeling suggests that subjects accumulate evidence toward the reduced-risk option faster under time pressure. However, the prevaluation bias in the evidence accumulation process does not significantly differ between framings, pointing toward the absence of an insurance-related predisposition. Additional analysis using response dynamics supports our findings, showing that option evaluation tends to be more biased toward risk reduction under explicit insurance framing and time pressure. Although the effect sizes are modest, our results provide suggestive evidence of how presenting risk-reducing choices as insurance and making these choices under time-pressure biases the comparison and evaluation of options toward risk reduction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

To enable a broad societal impact of science, people need to update their beliefs based on the best available evidence. Here, we investigate the influences of external and internal factors on lay audiences' belief updating based on scientific evidence with a diverse sample of U.S. residents from which data was collected in May 2023. Participants were presented a series of fictitious hypotheses. For each hypothesis, we assessed their initial beliefs and subjective expertise, presented them fictitious study outcomes, and then assessed their beliefs again. Importantly, the outcomes' presentation format and ordering were manipulated. Participants exhibited more belief updating when study outcomes were presented simultaneously (all on one page) instead of sequentially (split up across different pages). While chronologically ordering outcomes given sequential presentation did not affect belief updating, participants weighted more recently presented outcomes more strongly. We further found that belief updating was less pronounced with increasing subjective expertise, and more pronounced with increasing trust in science and scientific literacy. These results provide practical implications for science communication and the consumption of scientific evidence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Surges in infectious diseases often bring illness and conspiratorial beliefs. Such beliefs can hinder the adoption of public health advice, including vaccination. Because conspiratorial beliefs are difficult to reduce once entrenched, it is essential to explore strategies that mitigate their impact on vaccine acceptance. We present perspective-taking as a novel intervention, testing whether the negative association between conspiratorial beliefs and vaccine acceptance is weaker when participants take the perspective of someone holding positive vaccine attitudes. In Studies 1A-1C, participants read excerpts from interviews with COVID-19-vaccinated individuals. Study 2 examined live conversations with individuals holding positive vaccine attitudes and tested the durability of the effects by measuring vaccine acceptance 2 weeks later, assessing whether the moderating effect of perspective-taking arose from enhanced psychological closeness. Studies 3A-3B extended the hypotheses to a fictitious disease to examine generalizability beyond COVID-19. Study 3A used a similar paradigm to Studies 1A-1C and tested the same hypotheses as Study 2. Study 3B assessed the moderating effect of perspective-taking through a public service announcement-style video designed to enhance ecological validity. We found general support for our hypotheses. This research is significant because it can lead to the development of strategies to combat vaccine hesitancy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Quality control is often carried out by humans. They are more accurate than machines at detecting the many possible defects in complex objects. This task is often multisensorial because defects may be found using touch or vision, or both. A recent multisensory processing theory suggests that different sensory modalities have their own independent resources but rely on a central attentional system if these resources are exceeded. Conversely, different sensory modalities may be combined to exploit redundancies and complementarities to improve sensitivity, but information from the different modalities should be identical to produce such an improvement. The present study was conducted in 2020 and was designed to investigate visuohaptic sensitivity with the aim of improving methods for detecting defects. The main result of these experiments is that when participants benefited from both visual and haptic information, they were more accurate at detecting defects than when using only visual or haptic information. This improvement only occurred if the same defect was examined with both modalities. These results should be replicated in expert operators. Our results highlight the strength of multisensoriality because congruency yielded better performances than unimodal conditions and incongruency decreased accuracy but may allow two products to be checked at once. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Establishing power relations is often a democratic process in which people decide whom to grant social power (i.e., control over valued resources). But on which basis do people make this decision? When do they trust in a person's responsible use of power-and how does the target's behavior play into this decision? Here, we draw attention to the potential interplay between two behavioral ingredients-benevolence and integrity-borrowed from approaches on interpersonal trust. We argue that people more willingly grant power to others who (a) show benevolence (i.e., intentions to support shared, not selfish, interests) and can thus be trusted to use power responsibly, and particularly so (b) when others also show integrity (i.e., alignment between intentions and actions, or "practicing what one preaches"). Four studies (N = 1,151; Western samples; 2018-2021) supported this interplay of benevolence and integrity, highlighting when and why people willingly hand over power to someone. These findings extend prior approaches to leader emergence through a novel focus on the interplay between two central ingredients to power granting, which reveals that benevolence and integrity by themselves are not sufficient. Rather, the road to power is paved with benevolent intentions carried out with integrity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).