Applied Cognitive Psychology最新文献

Accurately determining whether two images show the same person is a surprisingly difficult task, which becomes even harder if one or both faces are wearing medical face masks. Attempts to improve unfamiliar face matching accuracy have generally had limited success. Although one brief training program improved masked face matching accuracy by 4.9%, this increase would not overcome the entire performance deficit caused by masks. Here, we investigate whether combining independent identification decisions from different individuals can improve masked face matching performance through the wisdom of the crowd effect. Accuracy gains emerged reliably after combining the decisions of three individuals, culminating in significant improvements of 11%–26% among the largest crowds. Despite creating crowds of up to 80 people, half of the eventual improvement had generally already occurred in crowds of 6 individuals. The wisdom of the crowd effect is a highly effective approach to improving accuracy when identifying masked faces.

Children are well-documented to exhibit poor confidence–accuracy calibration on lineup identification tasks. Children tend to report overconfidence in their (often inaccurate) lineup identification decisions. This research explored the extent to which school-aged children's (N = 142; 6- to 8-year-old) confidence reports are implicitly driven by perceived social pressure to provide a specific confidence rating. Children were randomly assigned to two different confidence instruction conditions: the neutral (n = 69) or the reframed conditions (n = 73). The reframed instructions encouraged honesty and instructed children to ignore perceived pressure when reporting confidence. Results revealed that the reframed instructions resulted in more conservative confidence judgments; however, this shift did not translate into those confidence ratings better reflecting children's identification accuracy. Overall, these findings provide evidence that, while external or social factors play a contributing role, other aspects of development are likely contributing more to the poor confidence–accuracy calibration observed with child eyewitnesses.

Winning and losing voters tend to experience positive and negative emotions toward elections, respectively. The emotions of autobiographical event memories fade over time with unpleasant emotions fading faster than pleasant emotions; this phenomenon is referred to as the fading affect bias (FAB). Although the FAB differs across several event types (e.g., social media and nonsocial media), the FAB and its relations to political, healthy (e.g., grit), and unhealthy variables (e.g., depression) did not differ significantly across political and nonpolitical events in the context of the 2016 US presidential election. To further explore these relations across political and nonpolitical events, the current study used two online samples (college students and MTurk) in the 2020 US presidential election context. The FAB was expected and found to be robust, it was positively predicted by rehearsal ratings, and its relations to political variables were stronger for political events than nonpolitical events.

Age-related differences in identification performance between younger (18–35 years) and older adults (62–68 years), alongside the cross-age effect (CAE), where people recognise own-age faces better than other-age faces, were investigated. Self-reported levels of other-age contact and attitudes, participants' memory for the unbiased lineup instructions, and the confidence-accuracy (C-A) relationship were also examined. Participants (N = 154) viewed two filmed events: one with a young adult target and one with an older adult target. Older adults were less likely than younger adults to identify the perpetrator. Interestingly, the CAE, contact, attitudes, and choosing behaviours did not impact identification performance. Older adults experienced more difficulty remembering the pre-lineup instructions than younger adults, but only after the first lineup. Confidence was predictive of accuracy for both age groups, but this relationship was differently influenced by the CAE. The findings provide further insights into the factors that may impact younger and older adults' identification performance.

Most studies in the literature propose that new words should be presented in unrelated sets due to interfering effect of learning vocabulary in semantic sets. Semantically-related words are suggested to be taught in different sessions to avoid this negative effect. However, that is implausible for most second language (L2) teachers owing to the restrictions from curricula or coursebooks, most of which serve new words in semantic fields. The literature does not shed light on how to tackle that problem. Accordingly, this study involves three sets of classroom research conducted with 58 young EFL learners to investigate the effects of mnemonics on minimizing the interference of semantic clustering of new vocabulary. Within 15-week course, one intact class was taught target words through mnemonics while the control group received similar instruction with sentence-context method. The study results demonstrated that mnemonically-instructed L2 learners outperformed on both immediate and delayed recognition of target words.

Little research has examined how prior learning experiences influence adult learning attitudes and lifelong learning engagement. We adopted a person-centric approach to examine past work-related learning experiences and assessed the effects of recalled challenges on current learning attitudes, intentions, and behavior in the same domain. Surveying alumni from an online master's degree program, we found that recollected challenges from past learning entail multifaceted challenge foci (e.g., curriculum-related vs. social obstacles). Learners reporting more challenges in curriculum and social dimensions reported less positive attitudes toward lifelong learning, supporting the notion that negative learning experiences may hinder the development of self-identity as a lifelong learner. Limited support was obtained for predictions about relationships between past challenges and post-graduation learning intentions and behavior. The person-centric approach also permits the analysis of past learning experiences that are not well captured by standard assessments of “successful” adult learning.

The culture in which individuals are socialised can play a role in shaping their eyewitness memory reports. Drawing on self-construal theory, we examined cultural differences in the misinformation effect. In a mock witness paradigm, participants sampled from collectivistic (Ghana; n = 65) and individualistic (United Kingdom; n = 62) cultures were exposed to misleading post-event information (PEI). Participants provided a free-recall account and then completed a recognition task that included misinformation items. Cultural differences in misinformation endorsement were not observed in free recall. However, participants from the collectivistic culture endorsed more misleading items in the recognition task than those from the individualistic culture. We also found that in the respective cultures, individual-level cultural orientation was related to the misinformation effect. These findings provide preliminary insights into the role of culture in susceptibility to misleading PEI and further highlight the importance of eliminating leading or suggestive questioning from investigative interviewing practices.

Measuring cognitive load and its different types is a significant challenge that is closely related to the development of cognitive load theory (CLT). Previous research has shown that students have difficulty assessing cognitive load after learning or problem-solving. Accordingly, they may not reliably differentiate between the different types of cognitive load. Moreover, students may not consider the entire problem-solving process in their overall cognitive load assessment. The purpose of this work was to examine two training interventions designed to assist students in making informed cognitive load assessments. Study 1 (N = 99) included pre-training with a theoretical introduction to CLT to improve differentiation between cognitive load types. Study 2 (N = 80) implemented post-training by instructing students to consider all impressions during problem-solving for the overall load assessment. As both interventions were unsuccessful, further research is needed to assist students in assessing cognitive load in an informed manner.