bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Dissociating Morpheme Form and Meaning: Evidence for Morphological Decomposition of Compound Words during Reading
Authors: Brooks Teon L , Gordon Peter C.
Published: July 2018

Compound words have two free morphemes whose individual meanings can have a transparent (e.g., roadside) or opaque (e.g., butterfly) relationship to the overall meaning. It is unclear when meaning is accessed during lexical processing of compounds (and other morphologically complex words), with conflicting results from priming in lexical-decision studies and from reading-time studies that examine how the characteristics of a compound affect its processing. The present studies examined eye-movement measures on target words in a sentence as a function of their relation in form and meaning to a prime word that occurred earlier in the sentence. In Experiment 1 the primes were transparent or opaque compounds and the targets were the first constituent of the compound (e.g., doll preceded by dollhouse vs. container; and brief preceded by briefcase vs. portfolio). First-pass measures showed that target-word recognition was facilitated by prior processing of the compound but that the amount of facilitation was not affected by semantic transparency, a pattern that suggests that there is a stage of processing where compounds are decomposed into their constituent morphemes regardless of their composite meaning. Experiment 2 used first constituents as primes and compounds as targets. First-pass measures showed priming on recognition of both transparent and opaque compounds. Priming facilitation persisted on later measures of lexical processing for transparent compounds but became inhibitory for opaque compounds. These results show that compounds are initially decomposed into their constituent words independently of meaning, but that later in processing activation of the meaning of a constituent word facilitates comprehension of semantically consistent compounds but competes with comprehension of semantically inconsistent compounds.
The profile of abstract rule learning in infancy: Meta-analytic and experimental evidence
Authors: Rabagliati Hugh , Ferguson Brock , Lew-Williams Casey
Published: July 2018

Everyone agrees that infants possess general mechanisms for learning about the world, but the existence and operation of more specialized mechanisms is controversial. One mechanism – rule learning – has been proposed as potentially specific to speech, based on findings that 7-month-olds can learn abstract repetition rules from spoken syllables (e.g., ABB patterns: wo-fe-fe, ga-tu-tu...) but not from closely matched stimuli, such as tones. Subsequent work has shown that learning of abstract patterns is not simply specific to speech. However, we still lack a parsimonious explanation to tie together the diverse, messy, and occasionally contradictory findings in that literature. We took two routes to creating a new profile of rule learning: meta-analysis of 20 prior reports on infants’ learning of abstract repetition rules (including 1,318 infants in 63 experiments total), and an experiment on learning of such rules from a natural, non-speech communicative signal. These complementary approaches revealed that infants were most likely to learn abstract patterns from meaningful stimuli. We argue that the ability to detect and generalize simple patterns supports learning across domains in infancy but chiefly when the signal is meaningfully relevant to infants’ experience with sounds, objects, language, and people.
Harvesting implicit group attitudes and beliefs from a demonstration website
Authors: Nosek Brian A. , Banaji Mahzarin R. , Greenwald Anthony G.
Published: July 2018

Respondents at an Internet website completed over 600,000 Implicit Association Tests (IATs) between October 1998 and April 2000 to measure attitudes toward and stereotypes of social groups (www.yale.edu/implicit). Their responses demonstrated, on average, implicit preference for white over black and young over old, and stereotypic associations linking male with science and career, and female with liberal arts and family. The main purpose was to provide a demonstration site at which respondents could experience their implicit attitudes and stereotypes toward social groups. Nevertheless, the data collected are rich in information regarding the operation of attitudes and stereotypes, most notably the strength of implicit attitudes, the association and dissociation between implicit and explicit attitudes, and the effects of group membership on attitudes and stereotypes.
Consciousness and integrated energy differences in the brain
Authors: Pepperell Robert C
Published: July 2018

To understand consciousness within the framework of natural science we must acknowledge the role of energy in the brain. Many contemporary neuroscientists regard the brain as an information processor. However, evidence from brain imaging experiments demonstrates that the brain is actually a voracious consumer of energy, and that functionality is intimately tied to metabolism. Maintaining a critical level of energy in the brain is required to sustain consciousness, and the organisation of this energy distinguishes conscious from unconscious states. Meanwhile, contemporary physicists often regard energy as an abstract mathematical property. But this view neglects energy's causal efficacy and actuality, as identified by Aristotle and later appreciated by many important biologists, psychologists and physicists. By reconsidering the nature of energy and recasting its role in neural activity, we arrive at a theory of consciousness that is consistent with the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. The argument draws on the integrated information theory (IIT) developed by Tononi et al. but reinterprets their findings from the perspective of energy exchange. In IIT, the conscious state in a system, such as a brain, is defined by the quantity of integrated differences, or information, it contains. According to the approach outlined here, it is in the nature of energy to manifest differences of motion and tension. The level of complexity of the energy differences in a system determines its conscious state. Consciousness occurs because, in Nagel's terminology, there is 'something it is like' to be a sufficiently complex state of energy differences.Consciousness, metabolism, energy, brain, information theory
Diamond Plots: a tutorial to introduce a visualisation tool that facilitates interpretation and comparison of multiple sample estimates while respecting their inaccuracy
Authors: Peters Gjalt - Jorn Ygram
Published: July 2018

Although a shift from a focus on null hypothesis significance testing to reporting effect sizes and confidence intervals has been advocated for decades, researchers have been slow to implement this shift. One of the reasons may be that working with confidence intervals is interpreted as inconvenient. Diamond plots are a visualisation technique to ameliorate this disadvantage. The current paper introduces an implementation of diamond plots in the free and open source software R. This implementation is flexible and designed to also be accessible to researchers that are not used to working with R. The current paper also includes a tutorial to enable researchers to start producing diamond plots themselves with minimal effort. Combining a shift from reporting point estimates and confidence intervals in tables to using diamond plots with full disclosure enables presenting reports in a readable manner without loss of detail.
Psychometric analysis of the Children's Eating Attitudes Test in youth with overweight/obesity
Authors: Girard Jeffrey M. , Lim Crystal S. , Gowey Marissa A. , Janicke David M.
Published: July 2018

Objective: Disordered eating attitudes and behaviors play a critical role in pediatric overweight and obesity and are important to measure in research and practice with this population. Disordered eating attitudes and behaviors in youth are commonly measured using the Children's Eating Attitudes Test (ChEAT), which has not been psychometrically evaluated for use with youth with overweight and obesity. As such, it currently unknown whether the ChEAT provides a reliable measurement of a single underlying construct when applied in this population. Methods: Data from 400 treatment-seeking youth (aged 8 to 18) with overweight and obesity were drawn from two sites in the southern United States (54% female, 57% White). Psychometric properties of the ChEAT were evaluated in this combined sample using confirmatory bifactor modeling. Results: A confirmatory bifactor model with five group factors provided the best fit to the data and was used to generate numerous psychometric coefficients. The explained common variance (.36), omega hierarchical (.58), factor determinacy (.86), and construct replicability (.70) coefficients were all lower than recommended cutoff criteria. Both multidimensionality and excessive residual variance contributed to the ChEAT's poor psychometric performance in this sample. Conclusions: The ChEAT displayed marked psychometric problems in a large and diverse sample of youth with overweight and obesity. Its common variance was not unidimensional, its unit-weighted total score was not a reliable indicator of a broad central construct, and its optimally weighted total score was not likely to replicate across studies. We recommend using alternatives to the ChEAT when conducting research and practice with youth with overweight and obesity.
Can we infer inter-individual differences in risk-taking from behavioural tasks?
Authors: Palminteri Stefano , Chevallier Coralie
Published: July 2018

Investigating the bases of inter-individual differences in risk-taking is necessary to refine our cognitive and neural models of decision-making and to ultimately counter risky behaviours in real-life policy settings. However, recent evidence suggests that behavioural tasks fare poorly compared to standard questionnaires to measure individual differences in risk-taking. Crucially, the results were not improved using model-based measures of risk taking. Here we propose two possible - not mutually exclusive - explanations for these results. Finally, we suggest future avenues of research to improve the assessment of inter-individual differences in risk-taking that combine repeated online testing and the development of mechanistic computational models.
Replication Initiatives in Psychology
Authors: Bastart Jennifer , Klein Richard Anthony , IJzerman Hans
Published: July 2018

Replication is one key component towards a robust cumulative knowledge base. It plays a critical function in assessing the stability of the scientific literature. Replication involves closely repeating the procedure of a study and determining if the results are similar to the original. For decades, behavioral scientists were reluctant to publish replications. Reasons were epistemic and pragmatic. First of all, original studies were viewed as conclusive in most cases, and failures to replicate were often attributed to mistakes by the replicating researcher. In addition, failures to replicate may be caused by numerous factors. This inherent ambiguity made replications less desirable to journals. On the other hand, replication successes were expected and considered to contribute little beyond what was already known. Finally, editorial policies did not encourage the publication of replications, leaving the robustness of scientific findings largely unreported. A series of events ultimately led the research community to reconsider replication and research practices at large: the discovery of several cases of large-scale scientific misconduct (i.e., fraud), the invention and/or application of new statistical tools to assess strength of evidence, high-profile publications suggesting that some common practices may be less robust than previously assumed, failure to replicate some major findings of the field, and the creation of new, online tools aimed to promote transparency in the field. To deal with what is often regarded as the crisis of confidence, initiatives have been developed to increase the transparency of research practices, including (but not limited to) pre-registration of studies, effect size predictions and sample size/power estimation, and, of course, replications. Replication projects themselves evolved in quality: From replications that were originally as small in sample as problematically small original studies to large-scale “Many Labs” collaborative projects. Ultimately, the development of higher quality replication projects and open science tools has led (and will continue to lead) to a clearer understanding of human behavior and cognition and have contributed to a clearer distinction between exploratory and confirmatory behavioral science. The current bibliography gives an overview of the history of replications, of the development of tools and guidelines, and of review papers discussing theoretical implications of replications.
State anxiety and emotional face recognition in healthy volunteers
Authors: Attwood Angela Suzanne , Easey Kayleigh , Dalili Michael Nader , Skinner Andy , Woods Andy , Crick Lana , Ilett Elizabeth , Penton-Voak Ian , Munafo Marcus Robert
Published: July 2018

High trait anxiety has been associated with detriments in emotional face processing. In contrast, relatively little is known about the effects of state anxiety on emotional face processing. We investigated the effects of state anxiety on recognition of emotional expressions (anger, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear, happiness) experimentally, using the 7.5% carbon dioxide (CO2) model to induce state anxiety, and observationally, in a large online study. The experimental studies indicated reduced global (rather than emotion-specific) emotion recognition accuracy and increased interpretation bias (a tendency to perceive anger) when state anxiety was heightened. The online study confirmed that higher state anxiety is observationally associated with poorer emotion recognition, and indicated that negative effects of trait anxiety are negated when controlling for state anxiety, suggesting a mediating effect of state anxiety.
Sentence processing of taboo words: Evidence from eyetracking
Authors: Nye James , Ferreira Fernanda
Published: July 2018

The reported studies investigate online processing of taboo words (e.g. shit) and their censored equivalents (e.g. s**t), relative to semantically matched non-taboo words (e.g. junk). Participants’ eyes were tracked as they read sentences which contained one of the critical words. In Experiment 1, participants also encountered censored-neutral words, known as masked (e.g. j**k), but in Experiment 2, participants only encountered the taboo, censored, and neutral conditions, thus manipulating the perceptual certainty of censored words. Taboo and neutral words required similar processing time across all reading measures; liberal post-hoc analyses replicated the null effect. With regards to the censored words, Experiment 1 revealed that early word-recognition requirements were similar between censored, taboo, and neutral words, with censored words requiring additional processing time in later sentence integration measures. However, the results from Experiment 2 revealed no differences in reading time between conditions, suggesting that the masked words in Experiment 1 motivated participants to double-check the censored words due to their orthographic similarity. After reading all of the sentences in Experiment 2, participants’ memory of the sentences was tested. Participants were able to differentiate between whether they encountered a neutral or profane word (i.e. either taboo or censor), but participants were unable to identify the specific profane word that they encountered in the reading task. We argue that the results relating to the taboo words further clarifies language’s role within the functional architecture of cognition while the results relating to censorship informs how statistical regularities of language are used to process lexical-semantic information.
Do self-reports and informant-ratings measure the same personality constructs?
Authors: Mõttus René , Allik Jüri , Realo Anu
Published: July 2018

Personality researchers often supplement or substitute self-reports with ratings from knowledgeable informants, at least implicitly assuming that the same constructs are measured regardless of the source of ratings. However, measurement invariance (MI) of personality constructs across these rating types has rarely been empirically tested. Here, this was done for the Five-Factor Model domains and their 30 facets (N = 3,253). Four domains and 26 facets showed the level of invariance (metric MI) required for comparing the relative standings of individuals across self-reports and informant-ratings, which is what researchers mostly do. However, 28 of the 35 scales failed to achieve the level of invariance (scalar MI) recommended when comparing mean scores. Self-informant pairs who contributed to higher MI also tended to display higher cross-rater agreement. In conclusion, self-reports and informant-ratings appear to measure reasonably similar constructs for most research purposes, but poor MI may contribute to imperfect cross-rater agreement.
Age and the Egocentric Constraint on Coordination Stability: An Exploratory Report
Authors: Wilson Andrew D , Huang Shaochen , Zhu Qin , Bingham Geoffrey P
Published: July 2018

The stability of coordinated rhythmic movements is primarily affected by the target relative phase. Relative phase can be identified in each of two frames of reference (an external, allocentric frame and a body-centred, egocentric frame) and both constrain stability. In the allocentric frame, coordinations that involve isodirectional movement (0° mean relative phase) are more stable than those that do not. In the egocentric frame, coordinations that involve simultaneous use of homologous muscles (in-phase) are more stable than those that do not. The origin of the allocentric constraint is the visual perception of relative phase. The origin of this egocentric frame of reference is still unclear, although it is typically discussed in terms of neural crosstalk. Pickavance, Azmoodeh & Wilson (2018) proposed that the egocentric constraint is also perceptual, based in the haptic perception of relative phase. As an initial step in pursuing this hypothesis, this exploratory report examines some data from two recent studies on the effect of ageing on performing and learning coordinated rhythmic movements. We show that participants in their 20s show a strong egocentric effect in their coordination production, while this disappears in participants in their 60s. Participants in their 50s show an intermediate effect. We propose that a perceptual hypothesis is the best explanation of this age-related change, and lay out how to pursue hypothesis-driven tests in the future.
The Second Language Interferes with Picture Naming in the First Language: Evidence for L2 Activation during L1 Production
Authors: Klaus Jana , Lemhöfer Kristin , Schriefers Herbert
Published: July 2018

Previous research has shown that when speakers produce words in their second language (L2), they also activate the phonological form of the translation of the word in their first language (L1). Here we investigated whether this holds in the opposite direction, i.e., when participants speak in exclusively in their L1. In a picture-word interference task, speakers named pictures in their L1 Dutch (“mes” [knife]) while ignoring L2 English auditory distractors phonologically related to the English translation of the target (“knight”) or unrelated (“plane”). Naming latencies were longer in the related compared to the unrelated condition, suggesting that the L2 translations were activated up to the phonological level. However, this pattern was only obtained when speakers were addressed in the target language (Dutch) throughout the experiment. Moreover, the size of this effect did not depend on individual L2 proficiency. We conclude that co-activation of two languages is not restricted to the dominant language.
An Exploratory Study of the Relations Between Women Miners’ Gender-Based Workplace Issues and their Mental Health and Job Satisfaction
Authors: Rubin Mark
Published: July 2018

The current study investigated the extent to which gender-based workplace issues were associated with women miners’ mental health and job satisfaction. Participants were 263 women miners from Australian and other international mines sites owned by an Australian-based mining company. They completed an online survey that contained measures of gender-based workplace issues, mental health, and job satisfaction. An exploratory factor analysis identified three higher-order factors: organizational sexism, interpersonal sexism, and sense of belonging. Both organizational and interpersonal sexism were positive independent predictors of mental health and job satisfaction. In addition, sense of belonging mediated the associations between organizational sexism and (a) mental health and (b) job satisfaction. Potential strategies for reducing organizational and interpersonal sexism and increasing women’s sense of belonging are considered.
A Quantitative Synthesis of Early Language Acquisition Using Meta-Analysis
Authors: Lewis Molly , Braginsky Mika , Tsuji Sho , Bergmann Christina , Piccinini Page Elizabeth , Cristia Alejandrina , Frank Michael C.
Published: July 2018

To acquire a language, children must learn a range of skills, from the sounds of their language to the meanings of words. These skills are typically studied in isolation in separate research programs, but there is a growing body of evidence that these skills may depend on each other in acquisition (e.g., Feldman, Myers, White, Griffiths, & Morgan, 2013; Johnson, Demuth, Jones, & Black, 2010; Shukla, White, & Aslin, 2011). We suggest that the meta-analytic method can support the process of building theories that take a systems-level perspective, as well as provide a tool for detecting bias in a literature. Here we present meta-analyses of 12 phenomena in language acquisition, with over 800 effect sizes. We find that the language acquisition literature overall has a high degree of evidential value. We then present a quantitative synthesis of language acquisition phenomena that suggests interactivity across the system.
Men’s and Women’s Youngest and Oldest Considered and Actual Sex Partners
Authors: Antfolk Jan
Published: July 2018

Whereas women prefer slightly older sexual partners, men—regardless of their age—have a preference for women in their twenties. Earlier research has suggested that this difference between the sexes’ age preferences is resolved according to women’s preferences. Earlier research has not, however, sufficiently considered that the age-range of considered partners might change over the life span. Here, we investigated the age limits (youngest and oldest) of considered and actual sex partners in a population-based sample of 2,655 adults (aged 18-50 years). Over the investigated age span, women reported a narrower age-range than men and women tended to prefer slightly older men. We also show that men’s age-range widens as they get older: While they continue to consider sex with young women, men also consider sex with women their own age or older. Contrary to earlier suggestions, men’s sexual activity thus reflects also their own age-range, although their potential interest in younger women is not likely converted into sexual activity. Compared to homosexual men, bisexual and heterosexual men were more unlikely to convert young preferences into actual behavior, supporting female-choice theory.
Global Increases in Individualism
Authors: Santos Henri C. , Varnum Michael E. W. , Grossmann Igor
Published: July 2018

Individualism appears to have increased over the past several decades, yet most research documenting this shift has been limited to the study of a handful of highly-developed countries. Is the world becoming more individualistic as a whole? If so, why? To address these questions, here we examine 51 years of data on individualistic practices and values across 77 countries. Our findings suggest that individualism is indeed rising in most of societies we tested. Despite dramatic shifts towards greater individualism around the world, cultural differences remain sizeable. Moreover, cultural differences are primarily linked to changes in socioeconomic development, and to a lesser extent to shifts in pathogen prevalence, disaster frequency, and climatic stress.
Reward sensitivity following boredom and cognitive effort: A high-powered neurophysiological investigation
Authors: Milyavskaya Marina , Inzlicht Michael , Johnson Travis , Larson Michael J.
Published: July 2018

What do people feel like doing after they have exerted cognitive effort or are bored? Here, we empirically test whether people are drawn to rewards (at the neural level) following cognitive effort and boredom. This elucidates the experiences and consequences of engaging in cognitive effort, and compares it to the consequences of experiencing boredom, an affective state with predicted similar motivational consequences. Event-related potentials were recorded after participants (N=243) were randomized into one of three conditions – boredom (passively observing strings of numbers), cognitive effort (adding 3 to each digit of a four-digit number), or control. In the subsequent task, we focused on the feedback negativity (FN) to assess the brain’s immediate response to the presence or absence of reward. Phenomenologically, participants in the boredom condition reported more fatigue than those in the cognitive effort condition, despite reporting exerting less effort. Results suggest participants in the boredom condition exhibited larger FN amplitude than participants in the control condition, while the cognitive effort condition was neither different from boredom nor control. The neural and methodological implications for ego depletion research, including issues of replicability, are discussed.
Why do you ask? The informational dynamics of questions and answers
Authors: Hawkins Robert , Goodman Noah D.
Published: July 2018

Asking questions is one of our most efficient and reliable means of learning about the world. Yet we do not often pose these questions to an impartial oracle; we ask cooperative social partners, in dialogue. In this paper, we aim to reconcile formal models of optimal question asking and answering with classic effects of social context. We begin from the observation that question-answer dialogue is motivated by a two-sided asymmetry in beliefs: questioners have a private goal but lack goal-relevant information about the world, and answerers have private information but lack knowledge about the questioner's goal. We formalize this problem in a computational framework and derive pragmatic questioner and answerer behavior from recursive social reasoning. Critically, we predict that pragmatic answerers go beyond the literal meaning of the question to be informative with respect to inferred goals, and that pragmatic questioners may therefore select questions to more unambiguously signal their goals. We evaluate our pragmatic models against asocial models in two ways. First, we present computational simulations accounting for three classic answerer effects in psycholinguistics. We then introduce the Hidden Goal paradigm for experimentally eliciting questioner and answerer behavior in scenarios where there is uncertainty about the questioner's goal. We report data from three experiments in this paradigm and show how our core computational framework can be composed with more sophisticated question semantics, hierarchical goal spaces, and a persistent state over which extended dialogue can unfold. We find that social inference is needed to account for critical aspects of the data.
The evil of banality: When choosing between the mundane feels like choosing between the worst
Authors: Shenhav Amitai , Wolf Carolyn K. Dean , Karmarkar Uma R.
Published: July 2018

Our most important decisions often provoke the greatest anxiety, whether we seek the better of two prizes or the lesser of two evils. Yet many of our choices are more mundane, such as selecting from a slate of mediocre but acceptable restaurants. Previous research suggests that choices of decreasing value should provoke decreasing anxiety. Here we show that this is not the case. Across three behavioral studies and one fMRI study, we find that anxiety and its neural correlates demonstrate a U-shaped function of choice set value, greatest when choosing between both the highest value and lowest value sets. We show that these counterintuitive findings can be accounted for by decision-makers perceiving low-value items as aversive rather than simply unrewarding. Decision-makers thus experience anxiety from competing avoidance motivations when forced to select among such options, comparable to the competing approach motivations they experience when choosing between high-value items.
The effects of psychological distance on abstraction: Two meta-analyses
Authors: Soderberg Courtney K. , Callahan Shannon Peterson , Kochersberger Annie , Amit Elinor , Ledgerwood Alison
Published: July 2018

Psychological distance and abstraction both represent key variables of considerable interest to researchers across cognitive, social, and developmental psychology. Moreover, largely inspired by construal level theory, numerous experiments across multiple fields have now connected these 2 constructs, examining how psychological distance affects the level of abstraction at which people mentally represent the world around them. The time is clearly ripe for a quantitative synthesis to shed light on the relation between these constructs and investigate potential moderators. To this end, we conducted 2 meta-analyses of research examining the effects of psychological distance on abstraction and its downstream consequences. Across 106 papers containing a total of 267 experiments, our results showed a reliable and medium-sized effect of psychological distance on both level of abstraction in mental representation and the downstream consequences of abstraction. Importantly, these effects replicate across time, researchers, and settings. Our analyses also identified several key moderators, including the size of the difference in distance between 2 levels of a temporal distance manipulation and the dependent variable's capacity to tap processing of both abstract and concrete features (rather than only one or the other). We discuss theoretical and methodological implications, and highlight promising avenues for future research.
Think Indifferent: On the Perils Of Scientific Deliberation, Without Attention For Critical Evaluation
Authors: Hasselman Fred , Crielaard S.V. , Bosman A.M.T.
Published: July 2018

Replication attempts of empirical psychological phenomena lack guidance by a larger effort to evaluate thepsychological theory that predicted the phenomena. In this paper we present a template for theory evaluationsuited for the class of theories produced by psychological science: Theories of construction. As a case study,we perform a rigorous post-publication peer-review of the theoretical core of Unconscious Thought Theory(UTT). We present several uncomplicated indices that quantify the quality of evaluation of the results andconclusions by experts who reviewed the article and the amount of interpretation bias on behalf of theauthors. The results reveal a failure of expert peer-review to detect empirical reports of sub-standard quality.The analyses reveal there is in fact hardly any empirical evidence for the predictions of UTT in importantpapers that claim its support. Our advice is to evaluate before you replicate.NOTE: This manuscript is presented here for reference only see e.g.Nieuwenstein, M. R., Wierenga, T., Morey, R. D., Wicherts, J. M., Blom, T. N., Wagenmakers, E. J., & van Rijn, H. (2015). On making the right choice: a meta-analysis and large-scale replication attempt of the unconscious thought advantage. Judgment and Decision Making, 10(1), 1. http://journal.sjdm.org/14/14321/jdm14321.html. It will not be submitted for publication in its present form.
Statistical learning, implicit learning and first language acquisition: a critical evaluation of age-invariance and the link to language learning outcomes
Authors: Arnon Inbal
Published: July 2018

The role of distributional information in language learning, and learning moregenerally, has been studied extensively in both the statistical learning and the implicit learningliteratures. Despite the similarity in research questions, the two literatures have remainedlargely separate. Here, we provide a critical evaluation of two developmental issues pertainingto these literatures: the question of age-invariance – does learning improve during developmentor is it fully developed in infancy - and the ability of statistical learning measures to predictvariation in language learning outcomes. In the first part, we draw on combined findings fromthe statistical learning and implicit learning literatures to suggest that both improve duringchildhood, contra the age-invariance prediction. In the second part, we review existing findingson the link between statistical learning and language outcomes in development and evaluatethe suitability of current SL measures for capturing individual differences across the life-span.We present data indicating that while SL measures show moderate reliability in adults, they donot capture stable individual differences in children, undermining their utility for assessing thelink to language outcomes in developmental samples. We end with a broader discussion of theway methods impact our theoretical understanding of statistical and implicit learning.
Why Betas Should Not Rule Metas
Authors: Rudolph Cort , Jundt Dustin
Published: July 2018

The inclusion of partial regression coefficients in the Ferguson (2015a) meta-analysis published in Perspectives on Psychological Science caught our eye. While some anecdotal support was given in this paper to justify this practice, no empirical rationale was offered. This is odd, because a great deal of methodological literature cautions against this practice. To better address this concern, we present evidence through both computational examples and Monte Carlo simulations to suggest that the inclusion of partial relationships in meta-analytic models represents a statistical misspecification that obfuscates the ability to estimate the true population effect size. Additionally, we discuss three means of remediating this issue that specifically address the possibility of statistical control in meta-analysis.
The role of the structural connectome in literacy and numeracy development in children
Authors: Bathelt Joe , Gathercole Susan Elizabeth , butterfield sally , Astle Duncan
Published: July 2018

Literacy and numeracy are fundamental skills acquired in childhood, a time that coincides with considerable shifts in large-scale brain organisation. However, most studies emphasize focal brain contributions to literacy and numeracy development by employing case-control designs and voxel-by-voxel statistical comparisons. This approach has been valuable, but does not capture the potential importance of broader differences in brain organisation. The current study aims to address this by including children with varying levels of reading and maths ability, and by using a whole-brain structural connectome approach based on diffusion-weighted MRI data. Our results indicate an association between literacy and numeracy development and a distributed network of white matter connections that extends well beyond regions implicated in voxel-wise studies. Graph theory measures of network organisation were predictive of reading and maths scores. Simulated disruption of highly-connected hubs indicated that these regions are particularly important for optimal network organisation. These findings show that changes in large-scale brain organisation contribute to improvements in literacy and numeracy as children grow up.
Empathy is hard work: People choose to avoid empathy because of its cognitive costs
Authors: Cameron Daryl , Hutcherson Cendri , Ferguson Amanda M , Scheffer Julian Andrew , Hadjiandreou Eliana , Inzlicht Michael
Published: July 2018

Empathy is considered a virtue, yet fails in many situations, leading to a basic question: when given a choice, do people avoid empathy? And if so, why? Whereas past work has focused on material and emotional costs of empathy, here we examined whether people experience empathy as cognitively taxing and costly, leading them to avoid it. We developed the Empathy Selection Task, which uses free choices to assess desire to empathize. Participants make a series of binary choices, selecting situations that lead them to engage in empathy or an alternative course of action. In each of 11 studies (N=1,204) and a meta-analysis, we found a robust preference to avoid empathy, which was associated with perceptions of empathy as effortful, aversive, and inefficacious. Experimentally increasing empathy efficacy eliminated empathy avoidance, suggesting cognitive costs directly cause empathy choice. When given the choice to share others’ feelings, people act as if it’s not worth the effort.
Psychopathy and risk taking: Self-report and behavioral correlates
Authors: Benning Stephen D
Published: July 2018

Psychopathy is a distinctive personality style that is associated with a tendency to act recklessly, impulsively, and engage in sensation seeking behaviors. These associations suggest that psychopathy may be related to risk taking; however, the relationship between these variables has yet to be fully explored. To investigate this relationship, we utilized the dual-process model of psychopathy’s fearless dominance (FD) and impulsive antisociality (IA) factors and the Triarchic model’s boldness, meanness, and disinhibition domains. A sample of 508 undergraduate students completed a series of self-report questionnaires and underwent the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). Analyses revealed that individuals high on all psychopathy factors displayed a tendency to view risky situations as less risky and self-reported engaging in a number of risky behaviors. The tendency of individuals high in psychopathic traits to view situations as less risky indirectly affected their likelihood to self-report engaging in risky behaviors. Notably, only FD was significantly associated with behavioral risk taking on the BART. Further correlational analyses revealed that IA, meanness, and disinhibition were all associated with greater self-reported externalizing behaviors, sensation seeking, and impulsivity. On the other hand, FD and boldness were only associated with self-reported adult antisocial behavior, alcohol use, sensation seeking, and low levels of impulsivity. Our pattern of results showed nearly identical relationships for FD and boldness, suggesting that these two factors may be capturing the same aspects of psychopathy.
Eye-tracking causality
Authors: Gerstenberg Tobias , Peterson Matthew F. , Goodman Noah D. , Lagnado David , Tenenbaum Joshua
Published: July 2018

How do people make causal judgments? What role, if any, does counterfactual simulation play? Counterfactual theories of causal judgments predict that people compare what actually happened with what would have happened if the candidate cause had been absent. Process theories predict that people focus only on what actually happened, to assess the mechanism linking candidate cause and outcome. We tracked participants' eye movements while they judged whether one billiard ball caused another one to go through a gate or prevented it from going through. Both participants' looking patterns and their judgments demonstrated that counterfactual simulation played a critical role. Participants simulated where the target ball would have gone if the candidate cause had been removed from the scene. The more certain participants were that the outcome would have been different, the stronger their causal judgments. These results provide the first direct evidence for spontaneous counterfactual simulation in an important domain of high-level cognition.
From Cronbach to Brunswik: A Conceptual Framework for Personality and Individual Differences Research
Authors: Nowland Trisha
Published: July 2018

Recent personality literature has proposed that Cronbach’s generalisability theory offers a substantive ground for the integration of inter-individual differences and intra¬personal process approaches to personality trait research. Generalisability theory has the advantage of maximising psychometric dependability of behavioural measurements, but does not demand reconciliation to the environment that is relevant to the life circumstances of the participant. A conceptual analysis contrasting generalisability theory with Egon Brunswik’s conceptual framework for psychology is presented. Recommendations regarding the connection between theory and methodological practice follow, in light of an evolutionary approach to personality and individual differences. An example that highlights the contrast between Cronbachian and Brunswikian approaches is presented, resulting in a recommendation to revisit the concept of ecological validity and representational research design, to better account for what is reflected in study outcomes for personality constructs.
Accessing the unsaid: The role of scalar alternatives in children’s pragmatic inference
Authors: Barner David , Brooks Neon Blue , Bale Alan
Published: July 2018

When faced with a sentence like, “Some of the toys are on the table”,adults, but not preschoolers, compute a scalar implicature, taking thesentence to imply that not all the toys are on the table. This paperexplores the hypothesis that children fail to compute scalar implicaturesbecause they lack knowledge of relevant scalar alternatives to words like“some”. Four-year-olds were shown pictures in which three out of threeobjects fit a description (e.g., three animals reading), and were asked toevaluate statements that relied on context-independent alternatives (e.g.,knowing that all is an alternative to some for the utterance “Some of theanimals are reading”) or contextual alternatives (e.g., knowing that theset of all three visible animals is an alternative to a set of two for theutterance “Only the cat and the dog are reading”). Children failed toreject the false statements containing context-independent scales even whenthe word only was used (e.g., only some), but correctly rejected equivalentstatements containing contextual alternatives (e.g., only the cat and dog).These results support the hypothesis that children’s difficulties withscalar implicature are due to a failure to generate relevant alternativesfor specific scales. Consequences for number word learning are alsodiscussed.
Preprint: Submitted 4/21/2018
Authors: McMurray Bob , Klein-Packard Jamie , Tomblin Bruce
Published: July 2018

Eight to 11% of children have a clinical disorder in oral language (Developmental Language Disorder, DLD), with pervasive deficits in all levels of language that persist through adulthood. Word-level processing may be critical as words link phonology, orthography, syntax and semantics. Thus, a lexical deficit could cascade throughout language. Cognitively, word recognition is a competition process: as the input (e.g., lizard) unfolds, multiple candidates (liver, wizard) compete for recognition. Children with DLD do not fully resolve this competition, but it is unclear what cognitive mechanisms underlie this. We examined lexical inhibition, the ability of more active words to suppress competitors in 79 adolescents with and without DLD. Participants heard words (e.g. net) in which the onset was manipulated to briefly favor a competitor (neck). This was predicted to inhibit the target, slowing recognition. Word recognition was measured using a task in which participants heard the stimulus, and clicked on a picture of the item from an array of competitors, while eye-movement were monitored as a measure of how strongly the participant was committed to that interpretation over time. TD listeners showed evidence of inhibition with greater interference for stimuli that briefly activated a competitor word. DLD listeners did not. This suggests deficits in DLD may stem from a failure to engage lexical inhibition. This in turn could have ripple effects throughout the language system. This supports theoretical approaches to DLD that emphasize lexical-level deficits; and deficits in real-time processing.
Reducing Sugar Use in Coffee While Maintaining Enjoyment: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Authors: Lenne Richie L , Mann Traci
Published: July 2018

Consuming coffee without (or with less) sugar may help people lower their daily calorie intake without restrictive dieting. We tested two theory-based interventions to help people do so. One involved gradually reducing sugar over time, and the other was based on mindfulness theory. These interventions were compared to a repeated exposure (to sugar-free coffee) group. Participants in all conditions had significant increases in consumption of sugar-free coffee that lasted six months. The mindfulness group had a larger increase than the others. Unexpectedly, the gradual reduction intervention led to a decrease in liking for sugar-free coffee, and was the least effective.
Maximizing the Reproducibility of Your Research
Authors: Bosco Frank Anthony , Carp Joshua , Field James G. , IJzerman Hans , Lewis Melissa , Munafo Marcus Robert , Nosek Brian A. , Prenoveau Jason M. , Spies Jeffrey Robert , Giner-Sorolla Roger
Published: July 2018

Open Science Collaboration (in press). Maximizing the reproducibility of your research. In S. O. Lilienfeld & I. D. Waldman (Eds.), Psychological Science Under Scrutiny: Recent Challenges and Proposed Solutions. New York, NY: Wiley.
When Unfair Treatment Helps Performance
Authors: Axt Jordan , Oishi Shige
Published: July 2018

Human beings are responsive to fairness violations. People reject unfairoffers and go out of their way to punish those who behave unfairly.However, little is known regarding when unfair treatment can either help orharm performance. We found that basketball players were more likely to makefree throws after being awarded a foul specific to unfair treatment (Study1). Similarly, hockey players were more likely to score during a penaltyshot compared to a shootout (Study 2). A laboratory experiment showed thatparticipants were more accurate at golf putting after a previous attempthad been unfairly nullified (Study 3). However, a final experimentrevealed that when the task was more demanding, unfair treatment resultedin worse performance (Study 4). Moreover, this effect was mediated byfeelings of anger and frustration. These results suggest that performanceis sensitive to perceptions of fairness and justice.Link to final version of article: [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-015-9539-1][1] [1]: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-015-9539-1
Estimating Across-Trial Variability Parameters of the Diffusion Decision Model: Expert Advice and Recommendations
Authors: Boehm Udo , Annis Jeff , Frank Michael , Hawkins Guy , Heathcote Andrew , Kellen David , Krypotos Angelos-Miltiadis , Lerche Veronika , Logan Gordon D. , Palmeri Thomas , van Ravenzwaaij Don , Servant Mathieu , Singmann Henrik , Starns Jeffrey Joseph , voss andreas , wiecki thomas , Matzke Dora , Wagenmakers Eric-Jan
Published: July 2018

For many years the Diffusion Decision Model (DDM) has successfully accounted for behavioral data from a wide range of domains. Important contributors to the DDM’s success are the across-trial variability parameters, which allow the model to account for the various shapes of response time distributions encountered in practice. However, several researchers have pointed out that estimating the variability parameters can be a challenging task. Moreover, the numerous fitting methods for the DDM each come with their own associated problems and solutions. This often leaves users in a difficult position. In this collaborative project we invited researchers from the DDM community to apply their various fitting methods to simulated data and provide advice and expert guidance on estimating the DDM’s between-trial variability parameters using these methods. Our study establishes a comprehensive reference resource and describes methods that can help to overcome the challenges associated with estimating the DDM’s across-trial variability parameters.