bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The multiplex structure of the mental lexicon influences picture naming in people with aphasia
Authors: Castro Nichol , Stella Massimo
Published: July 2018

An emerging area of research in cognitive science is the utilization of networks to model the structure and processes of the mental lexicon in healthy and clinical populations, like aphasia. Previous research has focused on only one type of word similarity at a time (e.g., semantic relationships), even though words are multi-faceted. Here, we investigate lexical retrieval in a picture naming task from people with Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia and healthy controls by utilizing a multiplex network structure that accounts for the interplay between multiple semantic and phonological relationships among words in the mental lexicon. Extending upon previous work, we focused on the global network measure of closeness centrality which is known to capture spreading activation, an important process supporting lexical retrieval. We conducted a series of logistic regression models predicting the probability of correct picture naming. We tested whether multiplex closeness centrality was a better predictor of picture naming performance than single-layer closeness centralities, other network measures assessing local and meso-scale structure, psycholinguistic variables, and group differences. We also examined production gaps, or the difference between the likelihood of producing a word with the lowest and highest closeness centralities. Our results indicated that multiplex closeness centrality was a significant predictor of picture naming performance, where words with high closeness centrality were more likely to be produced than words with low closeness centrality. Additionally, multiplex closeness centrality outperformed single-layer closeness centralities and other multiplex network measures, and remained a significant predictor after controlling for psycholinguistic variables and group differences. Furthermore, we found that the facilitative effect of closeness centrality was similar for both types of aphasia. Our results underline the importance of integrating multiple measures of word similarities in cognitive language networks for better understanding lexical retrieval in aphasia, with an eye toward future clinical applications.
Semantic Measures: Using Natural Language Processing to Measure, Differentiate and Describe Psychological Constructs
Authors: Kjell Oscar Nils Erik , Kjell Katarina , Garcia Danilo , Sikström Sverker
Published: July 2018

Psychological constructs, such as emotions, thoughts and attitudes are often measured by asking individuals to reply to questions using closed-ended numerical rating scales. However, when asking people about their state of mind in a natural context (“How are you?”), we receive open-ended answers using words (“fine and happy!”) and not closed-ended answers using numbers (“7”) or categories (“A lot”). Nevertheless, to date it has been difficult to objectively quantify responses to open-ended questions. We develop an approach using open-ended questions in which the responses are analyzed using natural language processing (Latent Semantic Analyses). This approach of using open-ended, semantic questions is compared with traditional rating scales in nine studies (N=92-854), including two different study paradigms. The first paradigm requires participants to describe psychological aspects of external stimuli (facial expressions) and the second paradigm involves asking participants to report their subjective well-being and mental health problems. The results demonstrate that the approach using semantic questions yields good statistical properties with competitive, or higher, validity and reliability compared with corresponding numerical rating scales. As these semantic measures are based on natural language and measure, differentiate and describe psychological constructs, they have the potential of complementing and extending traditional rating scales.
Addiction, Identity, Morality
Authors: Earp Brian D. , Skorburg Joshua August , Everett Jim Albert Charlton , Savulescu Julian
Published: July 2018

Background: Recent literature on addiction and judgments about the characteristics of agents has focused on the implications of adopting a ‘brain disease’ versus ‘moral weakness’ model of addiction. Typically, such judgments have to do with what capacities an agent has (e.g., the ability to abstain from substance use). Much less work, however, has been conducted on the relationship between addiction and judgments about an agent’s identity, including whether or to what extent an individual is seen as the same person after becoming addicted. Methods: We conducted a series of vignette-based experiments (total N = 3,620) to assess lay attitudes concerning addiction and identity persistence, systematically manipulating key characteristics of agents and their drug of addiction. Conclusions: In Study 1, we found that US participants judged an agent who became addicted to drugs as being closer to ‘a completely different person’ than ‘completely the same person’ as the agent who existed prior to the addiction. In Studies 2-6, we investigated the intuitive basis for this result, finding that lay judgments of altered identity as a consequence of drug use and addiction are driven primarily by perceived negative changes in the moral character of drug users, who are seen as having deviated from their good true selves.
Spatial Working Memory Capacity Predicts Bias in Estimates of Location
Authors: Landy David , Crawford L. Elizabeth , Salthouse Timothy A.
Published: July 2018

Spatial memory research has attributed systematic bias in location estimates to a combination of a noisy memory trace with a prior structure that people impose on the space. Little is known about intra-individual stability and inter-individual variation in these patterns of bias. In the current work we align recent empirical and theoretical work on working memory capacity limits and spatial memory bias to generate the prediction that those with lower working memory capacity will show greater bias in memory of the location of a single item. Reanalyzing data from a large study of cognitive aging, we find support for this prediction. Fitting separate models to individuals’ data revealed a surprising variety of strategies. Some were consistent with Bayesian models of spatial category use, however roughly half of participants biased estimates outward in a way not predicted by current models and others seemed to combine these strategies. These analyses highlight the importance of studying individuals when developing general models of cognition.
Distinctiveness benefits novelty (and not familiarity), but only up to a limit: the prior knowledge perspective
Authors: Reggev Niv , Sharoni Reut , Maril Anat
Published: July 2018

Accepted for publication in Cognitive Science; this is currently the pre-peer reviewed manuscript.Novelty is a pivotal player in cognition, and its contribution to superior memory performance is a widely accepted convention. On the other hand, mnemonic advantages for familiar information are also well documented. Here we examine the role of experimental distinctiveness as a potential explanation for these apparently conflicting findings. Across two experiments we demonstrate that conceptual novelty, an unfamiliar combination of familiar constituents, is sensitive to its experimental proportions: improved memory for novelty was observed when novel stimuli were relatively rare. Notably, no mnemonic advantage for conceptual novelty over familiarity was observed even when novel stimuli were extremely rare. Finally, memory levels for familiar items were similar across all experimental proportions, suggesting that encoding of familiar items is insensitive to distinctiveness manipulations. Together, these results imply that novelty does not always result in a mnemonic advantage. Instead, the effects of different aspects of novelty and familiarity should be explored orthogonally.
Brightness Differences Influence the Evaluation of Affective Pictures
Authors: Lakens Daniel
Published: July 2018

We explored the possibility of a general brightness bias: brighter pictures are evaluated more positively, while darker pictures are evaluated more negatively. In Study 1 we found that positive pictures are brighter than negative pictures in two affective picture databases (the IAPS and the GAPED). Study 2 revealed that because researchers select affective pictures on the extremity of their affective rating without controlling for brightness differences, pictures used in positive conditions of experiments were on average brighter than those used in negative conditions. Going beyond correlational support for our hypothesis, Studies 3 and 4 showed that brighter versions of neutral pictures were evaluated more positively than darker versions of the same picture. Study 5 revealed that people categorized positive words more quickly than negative words after a bright prime picture, and vice versa for negative pictures. Together, these studies provide strong support for the hypotheses that picture brightness influences evaluations.
Hearing words changes color perception: Facilitation of color discrimination by verbal and visual cues
Authors: Forder Lewis , Lupyan Gary
Published: July 2018

As part of learning some languages, people learn to name colors using categorical labels such as “red”, “yellow”, and “green”. Such labeling clearly facilitates communicating about colors, but does it also impact color perception? We demonstrate that simply hearing color words enhances categorical color perception, improving people’s accuracy in discriminating between simultaneously presented colors in an untimed task. Immediately after hearing a color word participants were better able to distinguish between colors from the named category and colors from nearby categories. Discrimination was also enhanced between typical and atypical category members. Verbal cues slightly decreased discrimination accuracy between two typical shades of the named color. In contrast to verbal cues, a preview of the target color, an arguably more informative cue, failed to yield any changes to discrimination accuracy. The finding that color words strongly affect color discrimination accuracy suggests that categorical color perception may be due to color representations being augmented in-the-moment by language.
I know that I know nothing: Can puncturing the illusion of explanatory depth overcome the relationship between attitudinal dissimilarity and prejudice?
Authors: Voelkel Jan G. , Brandt Mark John , Colombo Matteo
Published: July 2018

People are prejudiced towards groups they perceive as having a worldview dissimilar from their own. This link between perceived attitudinal dissimilarity and prejudice is so stable that it has been described as a psychological law (Byrne, 1969). The current research tests whether reducing people’s (over-)confidence in their own understanding of policies by puncturing their illusion of explanatory depth in the political domain will reduce the link between perceived attitudinal dissimilarity and prejudice. In an initial pre-registered experiment (N = 296), we did not find support for our hypothesis, but exploratory analyses indicated that thehypothesized effect occurred for political moderates (but not for people who identified as strong liberals/conservatives). However, despite successfully manipulating people’s understanding of policies, in the main study (N = 492) we did not replicate the result of the initial experiment. We suggest potential explanations for our results and discuss future directions for research on breaking the link between attitudinal dissimilarity and prejudice.
Individual-specific mortality is associated with how individuals evaluate future discounting decisions
Authors: Lee Anthony J , DeBruine Lisa Marie , Jones Benedict C
Published: July 2018

How organisms discount the value of future rewards is associated with many important outcomes, and may be a central component of theories of life-history. According to life-history theories, prioritising immediacy is indicative of an accelerated strategy (i.e., reaching reproductive maturity quickly and producing many offspring at the cost of long-term investment). Previous work extrapolating life-history theories to facultative calibration of life-history traits within individuals has theorised that cues to mortality can trigger an accelerated strategy; however, compelling evidence for this hypothesis in modern humans is lacking. We assessed whether country-level life expectancy predicts individual future discounting behaviour across multiple intertemporal choice items in a sample of 13,429 participants from 54 countries. Individuals in countries with lower life expectancy were more likely to prefer an immediate reward to one that is delayed. Individuals from countries with greater life expectancy were especially more willing to wait for a future reward when the relative gain in choosing the future reward was large and/or the delay period was short. These results suggest that cues to mortality can influence the way individuals evaluate intertemporal decisions, which in turn can inform life-history trade-offs. We also found that older (but not very old) participants were more willing to wait for a future reward when there is a greater relative gain and/or shorter delay period, consistent with theoretical models that suggest individuals are more future-orientated at middle age.
Reporting standards for literature searches and report inclusion criteria: Making research syntheses more transparent and easy to replicate
Authors: Moshontz Hannah
Published: July 2018

A complete description of the literature search, including the criteria used for the inclusion of reports after they have been located, used in a research synthesis or meta-analysis is critical if subsequent researchers are to accurately evaluate and reproduce a synthesis' methods and results. Based on previous guidelines and new suggestions, we present a set of focused and detailed standards for reporting the methods used in a literature search. The guidelines cover five search strategies: reference database searches, journal and bibliography searches, searches of the reference lists of reports, citation searches, and direct contact searches. First, we bring together all the unique recommendations made in existing guidelines for research synthesis. Second, we identify gaps in reporting standards for search strategies. Third, we address these gaps by providing new reporting recommendations. Our hope is to facilitate successful evaluation and replication of research synthesis results.
Not everything looks like a nail: Learning to select appropriate decision strategies in multiple environments
Authors: Stojic Hrvoje , Olsson Henrik , Speekenbrink Maarten
Published: July 2018

How do people choose which decision strategy to use? When facing singletasks, research shows that people can learn to select appropriatestrategies. However, what happens when, as is typical outside thepsychological laboratory, they face multiple tasks? Participants werepresented with two interleaved decision tasks, one from a nonlinearenvironment, the other from a linear environment. The environments wereinitially unknown and participants had to learn their properties. Throughcognitive modeling, we examined the types of strategies adopted in bothtasks. Based on out of sample predictions, most participants adopted acue-based strategy in the linear environment and an exemplar-based strategyin the nonlinear environment. A context-sensitive reinforcement learningmodel accounts for this process. Thus, people associated differentstrategies to different types of environments through a trial-and-errortype of process, and learned to flexibly switch between the strategies asneeded. This evidence further supports the strategy selection approach todecision making which assumes that people pick and apply strategiesavailable to them according to task demands.
Do two and three year old children use an incremental first-NP-as-agent bias to process active transitive and passive sentences?: A permutation analysis.
Authors: Abbot-Smith Kirsten , Rowland Caroline F , Chang Franklin , Pine Julian , Ferguson Heather Jane
Published: July 2018

We used eye-tracking to investigate if and when children show an incremental bias to assume that the first noun phrase in a sentence is the agent (first-NP-as-agent bias) while processing the meaning of English active and passive transitive sentences. We also investigated whether children can override this bias to successfully distinguish active from passive sentences, after processing the remainder of the sentence frame. For this second question we used eye-tracking (Study 1) and forced-choice pointing (Study 2). For both studies, we used a paradigm in which participants simultaneously saw two novel actions with reversed agent-patient relations while listening to active and passive sentences. We compared English-speaking 25-month-olds and 41-month-olds in between-subjects sentence structure conditions (Active Transitive Condition vs. Passive Condition). A permutation analysis found that both age groups showed a bias to incrementally map the first noun in a sentence onto an agent role. Regarding the second question, 25-month-olds showed some evidence of distinguishing the two structures in the eye-tracking study. However, this only reached significance very briefly and nearly 4800 ms after the onset of the second noun phrase. Moreover, 25-month-olds did not distinguish active from passive sentences in the forced choice pointing task. In contrast, the 41-month-old children clearly reanalysed their initial first-NP-as-agent bias to the extent that they distinguished between active and passive sentences both in the eye-tracking data and in the pointing task. The results are discussed in relation to the development of syntactic (re)parsing.
El papel modulador de las instrucciones sobre el efecto de cambio de contexto después de la adquisición simple en aprendizaje predictivo humano.
Authors: Cubillas Carmelo P.
Published: July 2018

El presente trabajo trata de analizar uno de los factores propuestos desde la Teoría Atencional del Procesamiento Contextual, acerca de qué manipulaciones hacen que la información se codifique como dependiente del contexto. Concretamente se estudia el efecto que tienen las instrucciones atencionales en una tarea de aprendizaje predictivo humano después de una adquisición simple con un entrenamiento largo o corto. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que las instrucciones pueden anular el efecto de cambio de contexto existente en la adquisición con entrenamiento corto y facilitar su aparición en la de entrenamiento largo.
Breaking the prejudice habit: Automaticity and control in the context of a long-term goal
Authors: Forscher Patrick S. , Devine Patricia G.
Published: July 2018

This chapter reviews research on the prejudice habit model (Devine, 1989), which conceptualizes unintentional bias as an unwanted habit that can be broken through motivation, awareness, and effort. We review research from the past two decades on the various components of the habit model and identify areas of ambiguity for future research. We conclude with two recommendations: First, researchers should avoid the mistake of confusing specific measures of unintentional bias for the construct of unintentional bias. Second, researchers should investigate unintentional bias longitudinally.
Avoiding Social Risk in Adolescence
Authors: Blakemore Sarah-Jayne
Published: July 2018

Adolescence is a period of life often characterised by behaviours that, prima facie, are irrational, such as seemingly excessive risk-taking and impulsivity. However, these behaviours can be interpreted as adaptive and rational if one considers that a key developmental goal of this period of life is to mature into an independent adult in the context of a social world that is unstable and changing. It is proposed that, for adolescents, the ‘social risk’ of being rejected by peers outweighs other potential negative outcomes of decisions, such as threats to one’s health or the prospect of getting caught. Furthermore, peer influence in adolescence can lead to prosocial as well as antisocial behaviours.Neurocognitive mechanisms of peer influence include social reward of being accepted by one’s peer group, arousal and increased mentalising, which is associated with development of the social brain network. The findings from cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology studies fit with recent public health evidence that the opinions of peers are particularly important to adolescents in areas such as school anti-bullying and anti-smoking campaigns.
Tamminen et al (2017) Car Ride Home
Authors: Tamminen Katherine , Poucher Zoë A. , Povilaitis Victoria
Published: July 2018

Purpose: Conversations occurring within the car ride home may shed light on parental socialization among adolescent athletes, as conversations are viewed as sites to socialize participants as members of the group or family. Parent-athlete communication also occurs within a broader social context of youth sport, where narratives regarding performance and parenting may shape the ways in which parents and athletes communicate and make sense of their experiences. The purpose of this study was to explore conversations between adolescent athletes and parents during the car ride home following sport practices and competitions.Methods: Twenty-seven athletes and one of their parents participated in individual semi-structured interviews. Thematic, structural, and performative narrative analyses (Reissman, 2008) were used to examine parent and athlete accounts of conversations during the car ride home. Results: Results pertained to participants’ experiences of enjoying versus enduring the car ride home, privacy, and narratives of performance in youth sport. Participants’ stories about the car ride home normalized parental feedback as useful and necessary for performance improvement, and conversations were often reported to differ depending on who was present in the car. We identified strategies that athletes used to navigate difficult conversations, and participants provided suggestions about strategies to improve the conversation during the car ride home. The findings are discussed in relation to narratives of performance and good parenting in youth sport, and in terms of parent behaviours in public versus private settings.
Intuitive Archeology: Detecting social transmission in the design of artifacts
Authors: Schachner Adena , Brady Timothy F. , Oro Kiani , Lee Michelle
Published: July 2018

Human-made objects (artifacts) often provide rich social information about the people who created them. We explore how people reason about others from the objects they create, characterizing inferences about when social transmission of ideas (copying) has occurred. We test whether judgments are driven by perceptual heuristics, or structured explanation- based reasoning. We develop a Bayesian model of explanation-based inference from artifacts and a simpler model of perceptual heuristics, and ask which better predicts people’s judgments. Our artifact-building task involved two characters who built toy train tracks. Participants viewed pairs of tracks, and judged whether copying had occurred. Our explanation-based model accurately predicted on a trial-by- trial basis when participants inferred copying; the perceptual heuristics model was significantly less accurate. Efficient design ‘explained away’ similarity, making similarity weaker evidence of copying for efficient tracks. Overall, data show that like intuitive archeologists, people make rich explanation-based inferences about others from the objects they create.
Characterizing Belief Bias in Syllogistic Reasoning: A Hierarchical-Bayesian Meta-Analysis of ROC Data
Authors: Trippas Dries , Kellen David , Singmann Henrik , Pennycook Gordon , Koehler Derek J. , Fugelsang Jonathan Albert , Dubé Chad
Published: July 2018

The belief-bias effect is one of the most-studied biases in reasoning. A recent study of the phenomenon using the signal detection theory (SDT) model called into question all theoretical accounts of belief-bias by demonstrating that belief-based differences in the ability to discriminate between valid and invalid syllogisms may be an artifact stemming from the use of inappropriate linear measurement models such as analysis of variance (Dube, Rotello, & Heit, 2010). The discrepancy between Dube et al.'s (2010) results and the previous three decades of work, together with former's methodological criticisms suggests the need to revisit earlier results, this time collecting confidence-rating responses. Using a hierarchical-Bayesian meta-analysis, we reanalyzed a corpus of twenty-two confidence-rating studies (N = 993). The results indicated that extensive replications using confidence-rating data are unnecessary as the observed Receiver Operating Characteristic functions are not systematically asymmetric. These results were subsequently corroborated with a novel experimental design based on SDT's generalized area theorem. Although the meta-analysis confirms that believability does not influence discriminability unconditionally, it also confirmed previous results that factors such as individual differences mediate the effect. The main point is that data from previous and future studies can be safely analyzed using appropriate hierarchical methods which do not require confidence-ratings. More generally, our results set a new standard for analyzing data and evaluating theories in reasoning. Important methodological and theoretical considerations for future work on belief bias and related domains are discussed.
The Influence of Psychopathic Traits and Strategic Harshness on Point Gain and Cooperation Rate in the Prisoner’s Dilemma
Authors: Baggio Mary C. , Benning Stephen D
Published: July 2018

In a sample of 158 undergraduates, we investigated social cooperation in the fearless dominance (FD) and impulsive antisociality (IA) factors of psychopathy using iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma games with eight computer opponents that employed strategies varying in harshness/leniency. We analyzed rates of cooperation during each game, participants’ total points gained, and the difference in points earned between participant and opponent (competitive point gain) both in the experiment overall and in subsequent trials after cooperation or defection choices as well as after participant or computer choices. IA correlated with reduced competitive point gain, whereas FD correlated with greater competitive point gains in the very lenient condition but reduced total point gains in the harsh conditions. In subsequent trial analyses, FD correlated with greater competitive point gain in response to participants’ own choices. In contrast, after any cooperation on the previous trial, IA correlated positively with cooperation but negatively with competitive point gain.
Moore and Healy, 2008
Authors: Moore Don A
Published: July 2018

Moore, D. A., & Healy, P. J. (2008). The trouble with overconfidence. Psychological Review, 115(2), 502-517.
Reducing stigma toward individuals with mental illnesses: A brief, online manipulation
Authors: Menatti Andrew , Smyth Frederick L. , Teachman Bethany , Nosek Brian A.
Published: July 2018

Published in Stigma Research and Action
The structural dynamics of social class
Authors: Kraus Michael W. , Park Jun Won
Published: July 2018

Individual agency accounts of social class persist in society and even in psychological science despite clear evidence for the role of social structures. This article argues that social class is defined by the structural dynamics of society. Specifically, access to powerful networks, groups, and institutions, and inequalities in wealth and other economic resources shape proximal social environments that influence how individuals express their internal states and motivations. An account of social class that highlights the means by which structures shape and are shaped by individuals guides our understanding of how people move up or down in the social class hierarchy, and provides a framework for interpreting neuroscience studies, experimental paradigms, and approaches that attempt to intervene on social class disparities.
Personality and Social Relationships: As Thick as Thieves
Authors: Mund Marcus , Jeronimus Bertus F. , Neyer Franz F.
Published: July 2018

This chapter shows that personality traits and social relationships are deeply entwined in a bidirectional way: Individuals select relationships partly based on their personality traits but at the same time develop across the lifespan partly in response to changes in their social environment. Life transitions are an important catalyst of changes in personality-relationship transactions. We argue that personality traits and social relationships are so closely tied that, in our view, the link between personality and health can only be understood against the backdrop of individuals’ relationships.
Minimizing Mistakes In Psychological Science
Authors: Rouder Jeffrey N. , Haaf Julia M. , Snyder Hope K.
Published: July 2018

Developing and implementing best practices in organizing a lab is challenging, especially in the face of new cultural norms such as the open-science movement. Part of this challenge in today's landscape is using new technologies such as cloud storage and computer automation. Here we discuss a few practices designed to increase the reliability of scientific labs by focusing on what technologies and elements minimize common, ordinary mistakes. We borrow principles from the Theory of High-Reliability Organizations which has been used to characterize operational practices in high-risk environments such as aviation and healthcare. From these principles, we focus on five elements: 1. implementing a lab culture focused on learning from mistakes; 2. using computer automation in data and meta-data collection wherever possible; 3. standardizing organization strategies; 4. using coded rather than menu-driven analyses; 5. developing expanded documents that record how analyses were performed.
ExperienceSampler: An Open-Source Scaffold for Building Experience Sampling Smartphone Apps
Authors: Thai Sabrina , Page-Gould Elizabeth
Published: July 2018

Experience sampling methods allow researchers to examine phenomena in daily life and provide various advantages that complement traditional laboratory methods. However, existing experience sampling methods may be costly, require constant Internet connectivity, may not be designed specifically for experience sampling studies, or require a custom solution from a computer programming consultant. In this paper, we present ExperienceSampler, an open-source scaffold for creating experience-sampling smartphone apps designed for Android and iOS devices. We designed ExperienceSampler to address the common barriers to using experience sampling methods. First, there is no cost to the user. Second, ExperienceSampler apps make use of local notifications to let participants know when to complete surveys and store the data locally until Internet connection is available. Third, our app scaffold was designed with experience sampling methodological issues in mind. We also demonstrate how researchers can easily customize ExperienceSampler even if they have no programming skills. Furthermore, we evaluate the utility of ExperienceSampler apps with results from one social psychological study conducted using ExperienceSampler (N = 168). Mean response rates averaged 84%, and the median response latency was 10 minutes. Taken together, ExperienceSampler creates cost-effective smartphone apps that can be easily customized by researchers to examine experiences in daily life.
Does Distance from the Equator Predict Self-Control? Lessons from the Human Penguin Project
Authors: IJzerman Hans , Lindenberg Siegwart , Hennecke Marie , Schütz Astrid , Ratner Kyle G. , Hong Youngki , Zickfeld Janis , Schubert Thomas W. , Weissgerber Sophia Christin , Parzuchowski Michal , Chuan-Peng Hu , Lazarevic Ljiljana B. , Stojilović Darko , Čolić Marija V. , Lazarevic Dusanka A.
Published: July 2018

We comment on the proposition “that lower temperatures and especially greater seasonal variation in temperature calls for individuals and societies to adopt...a greater degree of self- control”, for which we cannot find empirical support in a large dataset with data-driven analyses. After providing more nuance in our theoretical review, we suggest revisiting their model with an eye to the social determinants of self-control.This paper was published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences:IJzerman, H., Čolić, M. V., Hennecke, M., Hong, Y., Hu, C. P., Joy-Gaba, J., ... & Schubert, T. (2017). Does distance from the equator predict self-control? Lessons from the Human Penguin Project. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40.Further discussion available at PubPeer:https://pubpeer.com/publications/B57B2B41EE6D2C68850A951C3F49A0
Indirect effects of threat on the contact-prejudice relationship: A meta analysis
Authors: Aberson Chris
Published: July 2018

This meta analysis examines propositions derived from IntergroupThreat Theory (ITT; Stephan et al., 2009) regarding the role ofsymbolic and realistic threats on the relationship between contact andprejudice. Specifically, analyses examined whether threat has anindirect effect on the contact-prejudice relationship (a.k.a.mediation). Thirty-one papers comprising 43 samples and over 14,000participants provided 307 effects for analysis. Supporting ITTpredictions, results clearly demonstrated the presence of an indirecteffect. Tests of several moderators, including type of contactmeasure, type of threat, dimension of prejudice, and target of biassuggest that indirect effects are consistent across each domain ofcomparison. Findings are consistent with ITT’s propositions thatcontact influences threat and feelings of threat lead to prejudice.
The many faces of self-control: Tacit assumptions and recommendations to deal with them.
Authors: Milyavskaya Marina , Berkman Elliot , De Ridder Denise
Published: July 2018

The term self-control is broadly used by both researchers and lay people. However, both the term itself and the research on self-control is full of assumptions that are often unexamined and unchallenged. In this paper, we question many assertions and assumptions about self-control that foster confusion and controversy, including the multitude of processes encompassed by the varied uses of the term “self-control.” We describe how these assumptions have caused gaps in the empirical literature, impeded the development of an interdisciplinary knowledge base about self-control, and ultimately slowed scientific progress in this area. Critically, we also present a set of recommendations for conducting research on self-control that would be relevant across theories, areas of inquiry, and disciplines. By bringing these assumptions to light, future research can better focus on issues that are important and foundational but have been relatively neglected by the literature because of their implicit nature. This paper thus raises new avenues for research by highlighting what the field generally assumes but does not test directly.
‘The rules of engagement’: What motivates students to improve the quality of their learning experience ?
Authors: Senior Rowena , Bartholomew Paul , Soor Avita , Shepperd Dan , Bartholomew Nicola , Senior Carl
Published: July 2018

Studying at university continues to grow in popularity and the modern-day university has expanded considerably to meet this need. Invariably as such expansion occurs pressures arise on a range of quality enhancement processes. This may have serious implications for the continued delivery of high quality learning experiences that meets the expectations of incoming students and is appropriate to their postgraduation aspirations. Ensuring students become active partners in their learning will encourage them to engage with a range of quality enhancement processes. The aim of the current work was, to examine the various factors that motivate students to engage in such a fashion. To examine such factors three focus groups were carried out to triangulate an effective set of recommendations for subsequent practice. The participants consisted of engaged, and non-engaged students as well as student-facing staff who were asked to comment on their experiences as to why students would want to engage as a course representative. Nominal group technique was applied in each case that ensured participants in each group democratically ranked these factors in levels of importance. Three themes emerged that overlapped across all focus groups i.e., a need for individual representation that makes a change, a desire to develop a professional skill set as well as a desire to gain a better understanding of their course of study. A university that aligns its student experience along these themes is likely to facilitate student representation. As is standard practice recommendations for future work are described alongside a discussion of the limitations.
On the Importance of Avoiding Shortcuts in Applying Cognitive Models to Hierarchical Data
Authors: Boehm Udo , Marsman Maarten , Matzke Dora , Wagenmakers Eric-Jan
Published: July 2018

Psychological experiments often yield data that are hierarchically structured. A number of popular shortcut strategies in cognitive modeling do not properly accommodate this structure and can result in biased conclusions. To gauge the severity of these biases we conducted a simulation study for a two-group experiment. We first considered a modeling strategy that ignores the hierarchical data structure. In line with theoretical results, our simulations showed that Bayesian and frequentist methods that rely on this strategy are biased towards the null hypothesis. Secondly, we considered a modeling strategy that takes a two-step approach by first obtaining participant-level estimates from a hierarchical cognitive model and subsequently using these estimates in a follow-up statistical test. Methods that rely on this strategy are biased towards the alternative hypothesis. Only hierarchical models of the multilevel data lead to correct conclusions. Our results are particularly relevant for the use of hierarchical Bayesian parameter estimates in cognitive modeling.
No Nouns, No Verbs: Psycholinguistic Arguments in Favor of Lexical Underspecification
Authors: Barner David , Bale Alan C.
Published: July 2018

It is often assumed that the primitive units of grammar are words that aremarked for grammatical category (e.g., DiSciullo, A.M., Williams, E., 1987.On the Definition of Word: MIT Press, Cambridge, MA). Based on a review ofresearch in linguistics, neurolinguistics, and developmental psychology, weargue that dividing the lexicon into categories such as noun and verb offersno descriptive edge, and adds unnecessary complexity to both the theory ofgrammar and language acquisition. Specifically, we argue that a theorywithout lexical categories provides a better account of creative languageuse and category-specific neurological deficits, while also offering anatural solution to the bootstrapping problem in language acquisition(Pinker, S., 1982. A theory of the acquisition of lexico-interpretivegrammars. In: Bresnan, J. (Ed.), The Mental Representation of GrammaticalRelations. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 655– 726).
Confidence in constant progress: or how pragmatic nihilism encourages optimism through modesty
Authors: Peters Gjalt - Jorn Ygram , Crutzen Rik
Published: July 2018

This is the rejoinder to a number of commentaries on a paper on the (non-)existence of psychological constructs (as applied to behavior change science, a subfield of health psychology).
The Reliability Paradox of the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Corporal Punishment Subscale
Authors: Lorber Michael F , Slep Amy M. Smith
Published: July 2018

Prepublication manuscript.In the present investigation we consider and explain an apparent paradox in the measurement of corporal punishment with the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS-PC): How can it have poor internal consistency and still be reliable? The CTS-PC was administered to a community sample of 453 opposite sex couples who were parents of 3- to 7-year-old children. Internal consistency was marginal, yet item response theory analyses revealed that reliability rose sharply with increasing corporal punishment, exceeding .80 in the upper ranges of the construct. The results suggest that the CTS-PC Corporal Punishment subscale reliably discriminates among parents who report average to high corporal punishment (64% of mothers and 56% of fathers in the present sample), despite low overall internal consistency. These results have straightforward implications for the use and reporting of the scale.
Statcheck does not work: All the numbers. Reply to Nuijten et al. (2017)
Authors: Schmidt Thomas
Published: July 2018

Statcheck is an R algorithm designed to scan papers automatically for inconsistencies between test statistics and their associated p values (Nuijten et al., 2016). Due to concerns about its reliability and validity, Nuijten et al. (2017) check the output of the program against the sample of 49 papers manually checked by Wicherts et al. (2011), but they do not take into account that the program does only recognize 61 % of all statistical tests. Reconstructing the full table of hits, false alarms, misses, and correct rejections with respect to inconsistently reported tests, I show that Statcheck has poor sensitivity (.52) and poor validity (phi = .54): In 1,120 tests, the program scored 29 hits, committed 19 false alarms, and missed an estimated 27 truly inconsistent tests, while 435 tests went unrecognized. If Statcheck flags a test, it is correct in only 60.4 % of all tests. If a test is truly inconsistent, Statcheck flags it in only 51.8 % of cases. Overall, only an estimated 5.00 % of all tests were actually inconsistent, and the program was clearly biased against flagging them.
The effect of reading a short passage of literary fiction on Theory of Mind: A replication of Kidd and Castano (2013)
Authors: van Kuijk Iris , Verkoeijen Peter , Dijkstra Katinka , Zwaan Rolf Antonius
Published: July 2018

The results reported by Kidd and Castano (2013) indicated that reading a short passage of literary fiction improves theory of mind (ToM) relative to reading popular fiction. However, when we entered Kidd and Castano’s results in a p-curve analysis, it turned out that the evidential value of their findings is low. It is good practice to back up a p-curve analysis of a single paper with an adequately powered direct replication of at least one of the studies in the p-curve analysis. Therefore, we conducted a direct replication of the literary fiction condition and the popular fiction condition from Kidd and Castano’s Experiment 5 to scrutinize the effect of reading literary fiction on ToM. The results of this replication were largely consistent with Kidd and Castano’s original findings. Furthermore, we conducted a small-scale meta-analysis on the findings of the present study, those of Kidd and Castano and those reported in other published direct replications. The meta-analytic effect of reading literary fiction on ToM was small and non-significant but there was considerable heterogeneity between the included studies. The results of the present study and of the small-scale meta-analysis are discussed in the light of reading-times exclusion criteria as well as reliability and validity of ToM measured.
Perceptual blurring and recognition memory: A desirable difficulty effect revealed
Authors: Rosner Tamara M , Davis Hanae , Milliken Bruce
Published: July 2018

Recent research in the area of desirable difficulty—defined as processing difficulty at either encoding or retrieval that improves long-term retention—has demonstrated that perceptually blurring an item makes processing less fluent, but does not improve remembering (Yue et al., 2013). This result led us to examine more closely perceptual blurring as a potential desirable difficulty. In Experiment 1, better recognition of blurry than clear words was observed, a result that contrasts with those reported by Yue et al. This result was replicated in Experiment 2, in which both mixed-list and pure-list designs were used. The following experiments were conducted to determine when blurring does and does not result in enhanced remembering. The desirable difficulty effect observed in Experiments 1 and 2 was replicated in Experiments 3A, 3B, and 3C, despite varying encoding intent during study, context reinstatement at the time of test, study list length, and the nature of the distractor task between study and test phases. It was only in Experiments 4A and 4B that a null effect of perceptual blurring on remembering was found. These experiments demonstrated that (1) the level of blurring used is critical, with a lower blurring level producing results similar to Yue et al. (2013), and (2) the introduction of judgments of learning at the time of study eliminated the benefit of blurring on remembering. These results extend the desirable difficulty principle to encoding manipulations involving perceptual blurring, and identify judgments of learning at encoding as a powerful moderator of this particular desirable difficulty effect.
The emergence of systematicity: how environmental and communicative factors shape a novel communication system
Authors: Nölle Jonas , Staib Marlene , Fusaroli Riccardo , Tylén Kristian
Published: July 2018

Where does linguistic structure come from? We suggest that systematicity in language evolves adaptively in response to environmental and contextual affordances associated with the practice of communication itself. In two experiments, we used a silent gesture referential game paradigm to investigate environmental and social factors promoting the propagation of systematicity in a novel communication system. We found that structure in the emerging communication systems evolve contingent on structural properties of the environment. More specifically, interlocutors spontaneously relied on structural features of the referent stimuli they communicated about to motivate systematic aspects of the evolving communication system even when idiosyncratic iconic strategies were equally afforded. Furthermore, we found systematicity to be promoted by the nature of the referent environment. When the referent environment was open and unstable, analytic systematic strategies were more likely to emerge compared to stimulus environments with a closed set of referents. Lastly, we found that displacement of communication promoted systematicity. That is, when interlocutors had to communicate about items not immediately present in the moment of communication, they were more likely to evolve systematic solutions, supposedly due to working memory advantages. Together, our findings provide experimental evidence for the idea that linguistic structure evolves adaptively from contextually situated language use.
The Effectiveness of Transdiagnostic Group therapy on Anxiety, Depression and Perfectionism for Mothers of Children with Cerebral palsy
Authors: Mousavi Seyedeh Sara , Mohammadi Abolfazl , Soleimani Mehdi
Published: July 2018

AbstractObjective: This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of group therapy protocol transdiagnostic on Anxiety, Depression and Perfectionism were mothers of children with cerebral palsy. Methods: Using purposive sampling, 30 mothers of children with cerebral palsy who meet the criteria for entering the sample were selected and randomly divided into two groups of 15 experimental and control. Quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest control group. To collect data and Anxiety Depression Scale (DASS-42; Lvvyband and Lvvyband, 1995) and Ahvaz Perfectionism (APS; Najarian, protecting and Smith, 1378) was used. Experimental group received eight 90-minute sessions once a week, under therapy were transdiagnostic. Results: The results of covariance analysis and independent t-test showed that the therapy resulted in a reduction of symptoms of anxiety, depression and perfectionism are mothers of children with cerebral palsy. Conclusions: The effectiveness of group therapy transdiagnostic on anxiety, depression and perfectionism mothers of children with cerebral palsy was approved. Given the importance of the mother's mental health and its impact on children can help create the conditions can be achieved.