Applied Cognitive Psychology最新文献

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the spread of conspiracy theories. Previous research has found that individuals who struggle with emotion regulation are more prone to believing in conspiracy theories. Emotional granularity, or the ability to differentiate between nuanced emotional states, is a key component of effective emotion regulation, yet its relationship with conspiracy beliefs has not been explored thoroughly. Thus, we conducted an experience-sampling study (165 participants, mean age = 26.32 years) including measures of emotion regulation and differentiation. The findings revealed that individuals who endorse conspiracy theories engage in repetitive thinking about the causes and consequences of events and exhibit a reduced ability to distinguish between negative emotions. This effect, however, was observed only in the performance-based measure of emotion differentiation, not in the self-report measures. This suggests that enhancing emotional granularity may help individuals in regulating their emotions more effectively, thereby reducing their vulnerability to adopt conspiracy beliefs.

The relationship between confidence and accuracy and the reliability of eyewitness identifications has attracted a lot of attention. In contrast, relatively little is known about the relationship between eyewitness confidence and the accuracy of recall memory in interview contexts. Here, we manipulated questioning approaches to investigate the impact of Free-Recall and Cued-Recall questions, whereby the latter were witness-compatible (questions concerning details reported in the preceding Free-Recall) or witness-incompatible questions. We also manipulated the order these questions were asked. A sample of 124 mock witness participants watched a crime-video and subsequently recalled the event to understand the impact of question type and order on confidence-accuracy calibration. Our results show that a Free-Recall invitation and compatible (compared to incompatible) questions promoted more stable confidence. Compatible questions yielded fewer errors, more accurate details, and promoted more reliable confidence-accuracy calibration and discrimination, especially when they preceded the incompatible questions. Implications are discussed.

In recent years, the use of calibration analysis and confidence-accuracy characteristic analysis has revealed the confidence-accuracy relationship for positive identification (ID) made from a lineup is often strong. At the same time, the confidence-accuracy relationship for lineup rejections is typically much weaker. Why the relationship is often weak for lineup rejections remains unclear. Here, we report two experiments testing a prediction that follows from signal detection theory. Specifically, this theory predicts that one determinant of the strength of the confidence-accuracy relationship for both positive IDs and lineup rejections is response bias. Theoretically, inducing a more conservative response bias should weaken the confidence-accuracy relationship for positive IDs while strengthening it for lineup rejections. The two experiments reported here support this prediction.

We analyze how curiosity drives news consumption. We test predictions of the information-gap theory of curiosity using over 100,000 WeChat news articles, applying NLP methods to construct measures of salience, importance, and surprisingness associated with news headlines, experimentally validating these measures, and using them to predict clicks. Our findings confirm that people tend to consume news when: the headline sparks a salient question; the content appears more important (e.g., emphasized by the headline's position on the webpage or an exclamation mark); the headline refers to more surprising topics (measured as the KL-divergence from a baseline topic distribution); and the headline has lower valence. Information-gap theory helps predict aggregate news consumption. Yet our data also reveal a small negative correlation between the number of clicks and the ratio of likes to clicks, suggesting that while inducing curiosity can drive short-term news consumption, it doesn't necessarily enhance long-term reader engagement.

Campus sexual assault constitutes a frequent crime witnessed by many. Among co-witnesses such assault is oftentimes denied. We examined how false denials during an informal co-witness conversation impacted memory for the conversation and witnessed assault. Ninety participants watched a trauma-analogue video with a co-witness. The next day, honest control dyads engaged in an honest, informal discussion about the film. In lying dyads one participant falsely denied (internal false denial group) details during this informal discussion with their co-witness (external denial group). One week later, participants' recognition memory for the video and conversation was tested. We did not replicate denial-induced forgetting in that participants who falsely denied did not forget details of the previous conversation, relative to honest participants. Moreover, memory for the film was not statistically significantly affected by our manipulation. Thus, informal false denials might not negatively affect memory, despite previous research showing such effects in formal settings.

360° videos raised the attention of educators, as they can mediate complex environments in educational settings. However, learning irrelevant cognitive strains might be imposed because it is necessary to navigate through spherical material. These downsides could be compensated by using signalling techniques. In a two (macro-level vs. no signalling) × two (micro-level vs. no signalling) factorial between-subjects design plus control group, 203 students watched a video about visual and behavioural characteristics of animals. Learning outcomes, cognitive load, disorientation, and presence were investigated. Results revealed that macro-level signalling enhanced learning outcomes. Descriptively, the control group outperformed all experimental groups except the condition with macro-level signalling regarding retention performance. According to an exploratory path model, extraneous load moderated the effects of signalling on learning outcomes. Results are discussed considering cognitive load and spatial presence induced by using 360° videos as learning material.

We conduct a survey on a large representative sample of Slovak population to examine the role of analytic thinking, scientific reasoning, conspiracy mentality, and conspiracy beliefs in trust in COVID-19 fake news and willingness to share it. We find that the ability to distinguish between fake and real news about COVID-19 is significantly negatively correlated with conspiracy mentality and with beliefs in pandemic-related conspiracy theories. Analytic thinking is not a significant predictor. Although fake news is generally less likely to be trusted and shared than real news, when fake news is consistent with preexisting opinions, people are more willing to share it compared with belief-consistent real news. We also find that people are mostly overconfident in their ability to distinguish between fake and real news, and we identify a subpopulation of people that refuse to get vaccinated who trust fake COVID-19 news significantly more than real news. Thus, consistency with one's beliefs is the best indicator of trust in fake news and willingness to share such news.

In this study, we examined children's memory for a staged repeated event after a two-year delay to gain insights about how they represented the events in long-term memory. Children aged 4–8 experienced six events and were interviewed about the last occurrence shortly after the event and 2 years later (N = 29). Various characteristics of their memory reports at the delayed interview were analyzed (e.g., accuracy, specificity). Though the event was brief and embedded within their school day, the patterns in recall suggest that children represented the events as distinct from what usually happens at school. For example, all children were able to recall accurate information, and incorrect details were most often details they experienced during another occurrence of the events. The results of this preliminary investigation are considered in relation to prominent theories of event memory, and generate interesting directions for future repeated-event research.

Mental context reinstatement (MCR) is a key part of the cognitive interview. However, police face challenges delivering MCR in real-life situations. Over the years, modifications have been made to make MCR more user-friendly for officers and ensure witness engagement. The current study evaluates the impact of vocalizing MCR generations aloud on mock-witness's immediate and delayed recollections. Participants watched a staged multiple-car collision and were interviewed about it the next day. Half verbalized mental images aloud (aMCR), while the other half kept them silent in their minds (cMCR). After a week, participants took part in a delayed recall attempt. No significant differences in immediate recall performance were found. During the delayed recall, participants who engaged in aMCR previously recalled significantly more and more correct details than those who received cMCR. aMCR might lead to more coherent representations in working memory, resulting in improved consolidation and better future recall.

Typically, an eyewitness' verbal confidence is used to judge the reliability of their lineup identification. Across three experiments (N = 3976), we examined eyewitnesses' own words confidence in their lineup decision. For identification decisions (n = 1099), we identified 781 quantitatively unique responses representing 132 qualitatively unique statements that could be categorized into low, medium, and high confidence. For rejectors (n = 781), we identified 599 quantitatively unique responses representing 143 qualitatively unique responses that could be categorized into low, medium, and high confidence. Most participants provided a verbal phrase (e.g., pretty sure) but a significant proportion—34.19% of identifiers and 29.05% of rejectors—provided numbers (e.g., 80%). The present data highlight the variability in how confidence is expressed. The criminal justice system would benefit from guidance for interpreting verbal confidence. We provide a picture of eyewitnesses' verbal confidence as a first step.