Applied Cognitive Psychology最新文献

The paper presents the memory conformity effect phenomenon, which involves the inclusion in memory accounts concerning a particular event (original information) of incorrect information (misinformation) that a witness has obtained as a result of another witness's account of the same event. The research had two goals: (1) to verify the existence of individuals who yield to misinformation yet are aware of discrepancy between the original information and the misinformation; (2) to determine why these individuals choose misinformation despite the correctness of their own memories. In addition, we examined the relationship between susceptibility to social influence, compliance, suggestibility and memory conformity in interaction with awareness of discrepancy. In order to examine the memory conformity effect, we used the MORI technique, which ensures high ecological validity. In this technique, the two members of each pair of participants sit next to each other and each are not aware that the other is watching a different version of the same event. Then, the participants answer related questions and discuss the contradictory details. Subsequently, the subjects complete an individual memory test. Importantly, after the main part of the study (i.e., the MORI procedure), participants were explicitly informed about the different versions of the event, and they were asked to complete awareness of discrepancy questionnaires. It was shown that awareness of the discrepancy between the original information and the misinformation reduced succumbing to misinformation. However, it was demonstrated that, despite being aware of discrepancies, 21.4% participants still succumbed to the misinformation. It was also shown that the main reason for participants being misinformed despite being aware of the discrepancy was distrust of their own memory.

Students' monitoring of their text comprehension must be accurate for self-regulated learning to be effective. Completing causal diagrams after reading (i.e., diagramming) already improves students' monitoring accuracy to some extent. We investigated whether providing secondary school students with a standard (i.e., correctly completed) diagram and self-scoring instructions would further improve their monitoring accuracy and text comprehension in a delayed (Experiment 1; n = 98) or immediate (Experiment 2; n = 177) diagramming design. Self-scoring instructions did not improve monitoring accuracy or text comprehension compared to the control condition(s) in either experiment. Presumably, students self-scored their diagrams even without instructions to do so. In contrast to findings from prior diagramming research without standards, an explorative analysis suggests that delayed and immediate diagramming did not produce differences in monitoring accuracy. Immediate diagramming, however, led to better text comprehension than delayed diagramming and may therefore be preferable over delayed diagramming under certain conditions.

We examined whether racial stereotypes and guilt bias could affect perceptions of suspects and decisions in investigations. In three studies, participants read about a case, provided guilt judgments, and suggested questions they would ask a suspect. In all studies we manipulated race-based stereotypes and guilt bias using different methods and operationalizations to provide a robust test of our hypotheses. In Experiment 1, we found that participants asked more guilt-presumptive questions to the subject they decided was guilty. In Experiment 2, we found that when presented with more incriminating evidence, participants perceived suspects as more guilty and chose/generated more guilt-presumptive questions. In Experiment 3, we found that those with less incriminating evidence reported lower levels of guilt and chose more coercive techniques. Our findings highlight the complexity of racial stereotypes and confirmation bias within investigation decision-making.

Facial appearance changes over time as people age. This poses a challenge for individuals working in forensic settings whose role requires them to match the identity of face images. The present research aimed to determine how well an international sample of forensic facial examiners could match faces with a substantial age gap. We tested a sample of 60 facial examiners, 23 professional teams, and 81 untrained control participants. Participants matched pairs of photographs with a 10–30-year age gap between the images. Participants also estimated the ages of the faces. On the matching task, individual professionals, and teams outperformed controls and made fewer high confidence errors. On the age estimation task, there was no advantage for professionals relative to controls. Our results suggest that forensic facial examiners can tolerate substantial age differences between adult faces when performing comparisons, but this advantage does not extend to accurate age estimation.

We investigated how learners' motivation impacts the testing effect for complex study materials. High mastery goal orientation was expected to weaken the effect, while external rewards for successful retrieval practice were expected to strengthen it. Two experiments (N = 191) compared restudy, retrieval practice, and retrieval practice with external reward in a between-subject design. We assessed delayed retention after 1 week. Both experiments revealed a testing effect. Learners' mastery goal orientation moderated the effect in both experiments. It was strong in students with low mastery goal orientation and absent in those with high mastery goal orientation. The external reward failed to enhance the testing effect in Experiment 1, but boosted it in Experiment 2 with more specific criteria for “successful retrieval practice.” In Experiment 2, the reward increased students' retrieval practice effort, improving delayed retention. These results suggest that students' motivation to practice retrieval and to restudy are important boundary conditions for the testing effect.

Rapport building is a widely recommended investigative technique that sometimes improves eyewitness recall. However, a clear understanding of how rapport impacts witness recall is lacking. We explored benevolence as a mediator between rapport and eyewitness recall while fixing the pre-interview interaction to 3 min. Further, we explored whether rapport would lead to benevolence transferring to a subsequent unrelated task. A total of 109 participants viewed a mock crime and were interviewed about the crime either with or without rapport. Afterward, participants were asked to volunteer for a future research opportunity. Results indicated that rapport participants reported higher benevolence than control participants. Additionally, rapport participants volunteered to help the investigator more often than control participants. Exploratory factor analysis extracted two “benevolence” factors: (1) Effortful informativeness and (2) positive and rewarding. Our findings have implications for real-world investigators who may appeal to witnesses' desire to be helpful and their resultant sense of satisfaction.

Some courts have ruled that identification evidence provided by a police officer is more likely to be accurate than comparable evidence provided by a civilian. Identifications made by a police officer are therefore given greater weight and, for these identifications, otherwise-required procedures and safeguards might be deemed superfluous. We describe the available evidence that examines these notions and argue that police officers actually have no advantage at all over civilians when making identifications. In a recent publication, however, Tupper et al. (2023, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 37, 845–860) offer data that they suggest challenge this claim. We argue that their data, when appropriately analyzed, once again show no police advantage. Their findings therefore converge with the results of 12 prior studies, comparing the identification accuracy for police officers and civilians. We conclude that the best summary of the available data is that the suggestion of a police officer identification advantage is a myth.

When children are questioned, it is crucial they request clarification to resolve potential misunderstandings. The current research tested a method for increasing children's appropriate clarification requests during an interview, and examined the impact of age and question characteristics. Children (n = 81), ages 6- to 11-years-old, responded to scripted questions, some of which were designed to be “tricky” and required clarification. Half of the children received “I don't understand” (IDU) rule reminders during the interview. Older children and children who received IDU rule reminders requested clarification to a significantly greater proportion of tricky questions than younger children and children who did not receive reminders. Results indicate that children can recognize when they need clarification, and reminding them of the IDU rule increases the frequency with which they request clarification. Children's ability to request clarification provides insight into children's metacognitive abilities and has implications for those who question children across contexts (e.g., forensic, research).

Photographs are frequently taken to preserve memories of events from the personal past, but they can also bias how we remember. For example, photographs often capture events from a novel visual perspective (e.g., seeing ourselves in the image). Here, we examined how the presence of the self in photographs influences autobiographical memories. Participants provided subjective ratings for specific autobiographical memories, and then, following the retrieval phase, they were asked to indicate whether they had photographs for these memories and the nature of these images. Across three studies (N = 378), we found that autobiographical memories that participants reported the presence of photographs containing the self were more likely to be remembered from an observer-like perspective than memories with photographs in which the self was not visible. These findings have important implications for understanding how the growing number of photographs taken in everyday life biases the perspective of our memories.

The influence of parental reminiscing style – how parents discuss past events with their child – on preschoolers' independent memory skills (outside of parent–child conversations) and the processes involved in this effect (memory consolidation vs. development of strategies) is far from clear. To test this, 50 parent–child dyads (M_ChildAge = 52.12) were recruited. Parents' level of elaboration during reminiscing was measured while children completed tasks assessing their memories about two standardized events, one they had discussed with their parent and one they had not discussed, and an episodic task requiring the memorization of new information. Children of high-elaborative parents performed better than children of low-elaborative parents on the recognition test for the non-discussed event and for the episodic memory task. This suggests that parental elaboration is related to preschoolers' independent memory skills and that its effect might exceed memory consolidation and depend on processes like the acquisition of strategies.