Applied Cognitive Psychology最新文献

Exposures to inaccurate information can result in reproductions of the falsehoods to answer questions and influence decisions. Reducing these effects is important for supporting accurate understandings and relevant to concerns about polluted social media environments. Refutation experiences have proven beneficial when offered as extended texts and short-form fact checks. We assessed the utility of refutations instead conveyed as post-reply sequences which can naturally occur in online discussions. In three experiments, participants read Tweets conveying potentially false information, also potentially followed by corrective replies. Participants were overall more likely to reproduce inaccuracies to answer questions after reading false Tweets than to spontaneously provide inaccurate responses after reading true Tweets. However, participants were less likely to reproduce inaccuracies and more likely to provide correct responses when false Tweets were followed by corrective replies embodying a refutation structure. Mechanisms underlying these benefits and applications for remediating inaccurate exposures online are discussed.

Drawing is beneficial for learning verbal materials, potentially because it allows for a secondary representation (visual). When learning visual materials, describing would create a secondary representation (verbal). This project investigated the relative benefits of drawing and describing when learning visual materials for a recognition memory test. In Experiment 1, participants learned images through drawing, describing, or viewing followed by an old/new recognition test. Drawing and describing both led to considerably better recognition accuracy compared with simply viewing. In Experiment 2, participants learned images through drawing, describing, tracing, or viewing and then had a three-alternative forced-choice task to test detailed aspects of their object memory. Drawing, describing, and tracing led to considerably better recognition accuracy than viewing, with drawing and describing leading to superior performance compared with tracing. Overall, both drawing and describing are excellent strategies for subsequent object recognition.

Prequestioning, or attempting to answer questions before learning, can enhance memory relative to non-testing methods, in part by encouraging deeper processing of subsequent material. This study examined whether the benefits of prequestions depend on whether answers are typed (overt prequestioning) or mentally generated (covert prequestioning). Undergraduates read expository texts preceded by either overt or covert prequestions and were later tested with multiple-choice questions. Both formats improved performance relative to reading alone, with no reliable difference between covert and overt prequestioning. The similar efficacy of overt and covert prequestioning was replicated in a second experiment, which also found that prequestioning was just as effective as reviewing statements about what was to come before reading a passage. These findings suggest that prequestioning facilitates learning even without requiring overt responses, supporting theories that emphasize attentional focus. Thus, covert prequestioning offers a time-efficient, scalable strategy for improving comprehension and retention of textual information.

This study explores the differences between the phenomenology of memories from early adulthood and those from the last year and whether memories from these two periods predict the general sense of remembering as a function of age. In this study, 291 healthy participants aged from 31 to 80 years assessed the phenomenology of their autobiographical memories through seven factors (vividness, coherence, reliving, rehearsal, scene, visual imagery, and life story relevance) in an online questionnaire, first in a general way and then for the two periods of interest (i.e., from 18 to 30 years and the last year). Global linear models revealed that the phenomenology of recent memories is higher than the phenomenology of memories from 18 to 30 years of age. However, individuals preferentially refer to these remote memories rather than recent ones to determine the overall phenomenology of their autobiographical memories.

This study examined whether paragraph jigsaw puzzle (PJP) test can be used to measure structure building ability, the ability to construct cohesive mental representations. We developed a constructed-response version of the PJP test and scored it with a string-similarity algorithm that allows for partial credit. The present study explored whether this constructed-response PJP test could serve as a valid and reliable tool for assessing structure building ability. Studies 1 and 2 examined validity, and Studies 3 and 4 examined reliability. Study 1 showed an acceptable correlation (r = 0.65) between the scores from constructed-response PJP and the scores from multi-media comprehension battery. Study 2 used think-aloud protocols and revealed that participants employed more structure-focused strategies with the constructed-response than with the multiple-choice format. Study 3 demonstrated higher alternative-form reliability for the constructed-response format, and Study 4 replicated this finding. Taken together, our results suggest that the constructed-response PJP test could serve as a new tool for measuring structure building ability.

This study examines demographic, ideology, and work personality correlates of the endorsement of Conspiracy Theories (CTs). In all, 253 English-speaking adults from various countries completed a shortened version of Bruder et al.'s Conspiracy Theory measure including beliefs about Cover-Ups, which was found to be an internally valid and reliable measure of conspiracy mentality. Participant sex, age, religious beliefs, and a sense of Injustice in the World correlated significantly with the CT score along with three traits (Adjustment, Tolerance of Ambiguity, and Competitiveness). A regression indicated that 3 of the 14 variables examined were significant and accounted for a fifth of the variance. More religious participants, who believed the world was unjust and had lower Tolerance of Ambiguity scores, tended to have higher CT scores. Implications and limitations of the study are acknowledged.

As online learning continues to become prevalent in universities, interest grows in how it may impact learning. Emotional prosody (EP), the utilization of acoustic cues embedded in utterances that convey emotion, may be important for online learning. Focusing on the role of EP for online learning, this study examined how EP impacted the learning performance of 80 undergraduates. Participants watched a 5-min-long video lecture on a novel topic wherein the teacher used positive or neutral EP, delivered using video and audio of the teacher, or audio only. Later quiz performance showed that the utilization of positive EP resulted in significantly better learning performance than neutral EP. Additionally, the best learning performance occurred when the lecture video utilized positive EP in combination with an audio-only delivery. These findings suggest that online educators should be mindful of the impact the presence or absence of EP may have on learner performance.

Ontological confusion refers to a cognitive error involving the misclassification of entities across distinct ontological domains—physical, biological, mental, and moral. While previous research links it to paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs, existing measures—most notably the Core Knowledge Confusions (CKC) scale—suffer from conceptual ambiguity and cultural limitations. This paper introduces the Ontological Confusion Scale (OCS), designed to address these issues by evaluating seven types of ontological misclassification. Across two studies (N = 354 and N = 550), OCS demonstrates a robust unidimensional structure, high internal consistency, and strong convergent and discriminant validity. The scale predicts a range of unfounded beliefs, while outperforming CKC and belief in a just world in explaining unique variance. These findings support a broader view of ontological confusion as a general cognitive tendency underlying intuitive but erroneous reasoning across domains. OCS provides a reliable, culturally adaptable tool for research on belief formation and epistemic vulnerability.