bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Examining memory for ritualized gesture in complex causal sequences.
Authors: Kapitány Rohan , Kavanagh Christopher Michael , Whitehouse Harvey , Nielsen Mark
Published: July 2018

Humans have created and maintained an exponentially large and sophisticated behavioral corpus over evolutionary time. In no small part this was achieved due to our tendency to imitate behaviours rather than to emulate outcomes. This tendency, however, can lead to inefficiency and redundancy in our behavioral repertoires. Drawing on evidence from multiple fields of psychology, we propose two novel competing hypotheses. The ‘catalyst hypothesis’ suggests that low (but not high) proportions of ritualized gesture in instrumental action sequences will improve subsequent recall of the entire action sequence (without itself enhancing the instrumental utility of the sequence). Conversely, the ‘cost hypothesis’ suggests that increasing proportions of ritualized gesture will impair recall, due to the introduction of cognitive load. The null hypothesis is that ritualized gestures are neither beneficial nor costly. In a pre-registered experiment we presented participants with multiple versions of two complicated 2-minute action sequences in which the proportion of ritualized gesture was varied. We then quantified the influence ritualized gesture had on recall for individuals gestures, overall outcomes, and described detail. We found clear evidence that high proportions of ritualized gestures impair recall for individual gestures and overall success, and weak evidence that low proportions increase overall success. At present, we may reject the null, but cannot rule out either of our competing hypotheses. We discuss potential implications for cultural evolution, and generate competing predictions that allow for adjudication between Ritual Modes theory (Whitehouse, 2004) and the ‘Cognitive Resource Depletion’ account of Religious Interaction (Schjoedt et al., 2013). All files (including data and syntax) are freely available at https://osf.io/spz68/.
Why the A/AN prediction effect may be hard to replicate: A rebuttal to DeLong, Urbach & Kutas (2017)
Authors: Ito Aine , Martin Andrea E. , Nieuwland Mante S.
Published: July 2018

In our recent publication “How robust are prediction effects in language comprehension? Failure to replicate article-elicited N400 effects” (Ito, Martin, & Nieuwland, 2016a), we report two experiments which failed to replicate existing ERP evidence for prediction as reported in C. D. Martin et al. (2013), whose study resembled DeLong, Urbach, and Kutas (2005; from hereon DUK05). DeLong, Urbach, and Kutas (2017; from hereon, DUK17) recently published a commentary which depicts our publication as a case of poor scholarship that makes “no substantive contribution to the literature on what factors may matter for prediction and when.” DUK17 warn that the readers of our work “will be led into serious error.” In this rebuttal, we first present evidence that is inconsistent with the arguments of DUK17 regarding our own experiments, and then we briefly discuss other indications why it might be hard to observe and thus replicate the a/an prediction effect.
The effects of exposure to appetitive cues on inhibitory control: A meta-analytic investigation
Authors: Jones Andrew , Robinson Eric , Duckworth Jay , Kersbergen Inge , Clarke Natasha , Field Matt
Published: July 2018

Inhibitory control refers to the ability to stop, change or delay a response, and is often used in order to protect higher order goals. Theoretical models suggest that deficits in inhibitory control may be exacerbated during exposure to appetitive-cues (such as pictures of alcoholic drinks or food), and that these effects of cues may be related to individual differences (e.g. in body mass index, or alcohol consumption). In order to investigate these claims we conducted a random effects meta-analysis of 66 effect sizes from 37 articles that tested the effect of exposure to appetitive (alcohol / food) cues on indices of inhibitory control. The overall effect of cue exposure was small, but robust (SMD = -0.12 [95% CI -0.23, -0.02]; Z = 2.34, p = .02, I2 = 84%). Exposure to alcohol-related cues significantly impaired inhibitory control (SMD = -0.21 [95% CI = -0.32, -0.11]; Z = 4.17, p < .001), however exposure to food-related cues did not lead to impairments (SMD = -0.03 [95% CI = -0.21, 0.15]; Z = 0.36, p = .720). There was no evidence that drinking or weight status significantly moderated the effects of cues on inhibitory control. Similarly, cue modality (words, pictures, or smells) did not significantly moderate the effects. Trim and Fill analysis suggested bias in the literature, which when corrected, made the overall effect of cues non-significant. Overall, these findings provide some tentative support for theoretical claims that inhibitory control is a malleable construct that fluctuates with individuals, and that exposure to appetitive cues prompts transient impairments in inhibitory control. Further research is required to determine the clinical significance of these observations. However, care should be taken when drawing conclusions from a potentially biased evidence base.
Temporal Dynamics of Partisan Identity Fusion and Prosociality  during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
Authors: Misch Antonia , Fergusson Grant , Dunham Yarrow
Published: July 2018

We investigated the dynamics of identity fusion and prosocial behavior within political groups in the four weeks preceding and following the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The primary questions were whether a negative event (losing) would lead to a more pronounced increase in identity fusion, and whether identity fusion would predict prosocial giving. We found that while fusion gradually increased in the run-up to the election, there was no significant increase after the event for supporters of either party. We also found that identity fusion robustly predicted prosocial ingroup giving, especially before the election, and even when accounting for self-reported identification and previous political commitment behaviors. Implications for theories of identity fusion are discussed.
Maternal Emotion Dysregulation and the Functional Organization of Preschoolers’ Emotional Expressions and Regulatory Behaviors
Authors: Binion Grace Elizabeth , Zalewski Maureen
Published: July 2018

While psychopathology in mothers is known to be a significant risk factor for child outcomes, less is known about how emotion dysregulation, a transdiagnostic feature that cuts across many diagnoses, shapes emotion-related parenting practices and the development of emotion regulation in offspring. Building upon previous research that examined the functional relations between emotions and regulatory actions in children, we sought to examine the association of maternal emotion dysregulation and emotion socialization with these functional links in an at risk community sample of mother-preschooler (children ages 36-60 months) dyads which over-sampled for mothers with elevated symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (n = 68). We found that maternal emotion dysregulation was associated with children displaying more sadness and engaging in less problem solving during the Locked Box Task, which is designed to elicit anger. Maternal emotion dysregulation was also associated with children being more distracted and talking less in the context of sadness. Maternal non-supportive emotion socialization responses were associated with children engaging in more defiant behaviors throughout the task and using less problem solving in the context of happiness, while maternal supportive emotion socialization responses were associated with more play throughout the task and less talking in the context of sadness, above and beyond the effect of maternal emotion dysregulation. These findings indicate that maternal emotion dysregulation and non-supportive emotion socialization practices are both meaningfully associated with the development of aberrant patterns of emotional and behavioral responding during the preschool years.
The perception of self- and other-received social support: Associations with academic and emotional outcomes
Authors: Armstrong-Carter Emma , Buzinski Steven G. , Shablack Holly , Cohen Matthew , Buck Benjamin
Published: July 2018

Students' perception of social support is largely developed in the absence of explicit norms or standards. In such situations, social comparisons can serve as a source of information, with the form of those comparisons (i.e., upward or downward) differentially influencing the self. Thus, it is possible that the self-other support difference will be an important predictor of student outcomes. In three studies, we found that students perceived the self to have greater social support than does a general peer group (Study 1) or the “average” college student (Studies 2, 3), and that the difference between self- and other-social support was associated with GPA (Studies 1, 2, 3), self-esteem, perceived fit, and satisfaction with the university (Study 3).
Semantic consistency of actions influences young children’s word learning
Authors: Eiteljoerge Sarah F V , Adam Maurits , Elsner Birgit , Mani Nivedita
Published: July 2018

Communication with young children is often multimodal in nature, involving, for example, language and actions. This multimodal input supports language learning when it highlights the connection of word and object. But multimodal input can also guide the child’s attention away from the language input, and thus, exacerbate learning. In the current study, we therefore examined the influence of semantic consistency of actions on early word learning. Children (18 months, 30 months, 36 - 48 months) and adults were presented with two novel objects and their novel labels while different actions were performed on these objects, such that the pairing of actions and objects was either consistent (Consistent group) or varied across trials (Inconsistent group). At test, participants saw both objects and heard one of the labels to examine participants’ target looking upon hearing its label. Only 3- to 4-year-olds and adults learned word-object associations with the children benefiting from consistent and adults from the inconsistent action presentations. Thus, consistency in the multimodal input facilitated word learning in early childhood. In terms of a dynamic systems account of word learning, our study shows how multimodal learning settings interact with the child’s perceptual abilities, and how the interaction can therefore shape the learning experience.
Response Retrieval and Negative Priming: Encoding and Retrieval Specific Effects
Authors: Mittner Matthias , Behrendt Jörg , Schrobsdorff Hecke , Herrmann J. Michael , Hasselhorn Marcus
Published: July 2018

In a recent debate concerning the origin of the negative priming (NP) effect, evidence for the involvement of retrieval processes during the prime episode has accumulated. Rothermund, Wentura and De Houwer (2005) explain the effect as a product of a conflict between retrieved and current response. Since specific properties of the involved encoding and retrieval mechanisms were not investigated so far, we extend the response-retrieval framework by asking if encoding during prime processing and retrieval-specific processes during probe processing have a modulating influence on the priming effects. In an overlapping-picture task experiment with an explicit variation of the role of the objects in prime and probe, we reproduce the response-retrieval specific response repetition × priming interaction but find a modulation caused by the role of the repeated object in the probe trial. This modulation manifests in a vanishing interaction when the repeated object is a distractor in the probe. We interpret these findings in support of the response retrieval theory of NP and conclude that the retrieval mechanism is more flexible than previously believed since it is sensitive to relevance of the repeated object regarding the experimental task.
Excusing and justifying rape cognitions in judgements of sexually-coercive dating scenarios
Authors: Harper Craig A. , Franco Vanda , Wills Madison
Published: July 2018

According to recent analyses, Bumby’s RAPE scale of cognitive distortions about women and sexual assault is comprised of two factors. Excusing rape serves to reduce abusers’ culpability for their offending, and ascribe blame to victims, while justifying rape is associated with a sense of sexual entitlement. The distinct effects of these factors on rape judgements have not yet been investigated. We examined whether these distortion clusters differentially predicted judgements of perpetrator innocence after priming cues related to each of them. We used a cross-sectional design (N = 217) to test our hypotheses. As predicted, we found that excusing rape distortions predicted exaggerated innocence judgements when the victim paid the bill on a first date (potentially indicative of romantic or sexual interest). However, contrary to expectations there was no evidence that participants justified rape when the perpetrator paid the bill. Implications for conceptualising the functions of cognitive distortions are discussed.
Partial Truths: Adults choose to mention agents and patients in proportion to informativity, even if it doesn’t fully disambiguate the message (Kline, Schulz & Gibson)
Authors: Kline Struhl Melissa , Schulz Laura , Gibson Edward
Published: July 2018

How do we decide what to say to ensure our meanings will be understood? The Rational Speech Act model (RSA, Frank & Goodman, 2012) asserts that speakers plan what to say by comparing the informativity of words in a particular context. We present the first example of an RSA model of sentence level (who-did-what-to-whom) meanings. In these contexts, the set of possible messages must be abstracted from entities in common ground (people and objects) to possible events (Jane eats the apple, Marco peels the banana), with each word contributing unique semantic content. How do speakers accomplish the transformation from context to compositional, informative messages? In a communication game, participants described transitive events (e.g. Jane pets the dog), with only two words, in contexts where two words either were or were not enough to uniquely identify an event. Adults chose utterances matching the predictions of the RSA even when there was no possible fully 'successful' utterance. Thus we show that adults’ communicative behavior can be described by a model that accommodates informativity in context, beyond the set of possible entities in common ground. This study provides the first evidence that adults' language production is affected, at the level of argument structure, by the graded informativity of possible utterances in context, and suggests that full- blown natural speech may result from speakers who model and adapt to the listener’s needs.
Replication of Schuler & Wanke (2016)
Authors: Crawford Jarret , Fournier Allison , Ruscio John
Published: July 2018

Findings that money priming increases support for status quo and system-supporting beliefs have proven difficult to replicate. Schuler and Wänke (2016) found that Subjective SES moderates money priming effects on system justification and belief in a just world. We conducted three preregistered replication of this research, with sample sizes three times those of the original studies. Replication 1 combined elements from the original two studies, and Replications 2 and 3 were close replications of Schuler and Wänke’s (2016) Studies 1 and 2, respectively. Across eight tests of the original effect, one was significant and consistent with the original effect, one was significant and opposite the original effect, and six were not significant. We conclude that the original findings may have been the result of sampling error, and the findings of “small telescopes” analyses are consistent with this conclusion. We discuss implications for money priming effects, and replication attempts in general.
Strategies for Promoting Strong Inferences in Political Psychology Research
Authors: Washburn Anthony N. , Skitka Linda
Published: July 2018

The goals of this chapter are to first describe two common pitfalls of social psychological approaches to the study of ideological differences, specifically, a pre-occupation with explaining conservatives to the neglect of liberals and an over-reliance on positive test strategies. As guards against these potential pit falls, we recommend that researchers shift their orientation toward negative test strategies, something that can be facilitated by using a “grid” approach to hypothesis generation. The grid approach to hypothesis generation forces researchers to consider a set of competing explanations for liberal and conservative thoughts, feelings, and behavior, that vary in possible normative spin, which helps protect against possible researcher bias.
Children hold owners responsible when property causes harm
Authors: Bowman-Smith Celina K. , Goulding Brandon W. , Friedman Ori
Published: July 2018

Since ancient times, legal systems have held owners responsible for harm caused by their property. Across 4 experiments, we show that children aged 3-7 (N=572) also hold owners responsible for such harm. Older children judge that owners should repair harm caused by property (Experiments 1A and 1B), and younger children may do this as well (Experiment 4).Younger and older children judge that owners should apologize for harm (Experiments 2A and 3), even when children do not believe the owners allowed the harm to occur (Experiment 2B). Children are also as likely to hold owners responsible for harm caused by property as for harm caused by the owners themselves (Experiment 3). The present findings contribute to psychological accounts of ownership by showing that ownership not only confers rights to control property, but also responsibility for harm caused by property. The findings also contribute to our understanding of the attribution of responsibility, and challenge accounts claiming that directly causing harm, or allowing it to happen, is a prerequisite for responsibility. The findings provide support for an account claiming that property is an extension of its owner, and likewise reveal that responsibility for harm caused by property is an early developing aspect of the psychology of ownership.
Unconscious Psychological Treatments for Physiological Survival Circuits
Authors: Taschereau-Dumouchel Vincent , Liu Kayuet , Lau Hakwan
Published: July 2018

The idea of targeting unconscious or implicit processes in psychological treatments is not new, but until recently it has not been easy to manipulate these processes without also engaging consciousness. Here we review how this is possible, using various modern cognitive neuroscience methods including a technique known as Decoded Neural-Reinforcement. We discuss the general advantages of this approach, such as how it can facilitate double-blind placebo-controlled studies, and minimize premature patient dropouts in the treatment of fear. We also speculate how this may generalize to other similar physiological survival processes.
eResearch: Ethics, Security, Design, and Control in Psychological Research on the Internet
Authors: Nosek Brian A. , Banaji Mahzarin R. , Greenwald Anthony G.
Published: July 2018

Differences between traditional laboratory research and Internet-based research require review of basic issues of research methodology. These differences have implications for research ethics (e.g., absence of researcher, potential exposure of confidential data and/or identity to a third-party, guaranteed debriefing) and security (e.g., confidentiality and anonymity, security of data transmission, security of data storage, and tracking subjects over time). We also review basic design issues a researcher should consider before implementing an Internet study, including the problem of subject self-selection and loss of experimental control on the Internet laboratory. An additional challenge for Internet-based research is the increased opportunity for subject misbehavior, intentional or otherwise. We discuss methods to detect and minimize these threats to the validity of Internet-based research.
A Demonstration of the Collaborative Replication and Education Project: Replication Attempts of the Red-Romance Effect
Authors: Wagge Jordan Rose , Baciu Cristina , Banas Kasia , Nadler Joel T. , Schwarz Sascha , Weisberg Yanna J , IJzerman Hans , Legate Nicole , Grahe Jon E.
Published: July 2018

The present article reports the results of a meta-analysis of nine student replication projects of Elliot et al.’s (2010) findings from Experiment 3, that women were more attracted to photographs of men with red borders (total n = 640). The eight student projects were part of the Collaborative Replication and Education Project (CREP; https://osf.io/wfc6u/), a research crowdsourcing project for undergraduate students. All replications were reviewed by experts to ensure high quality data, and were pre-registered prior to data collection. Results of this meta-analysis showed no effect of red on attractiveness ratings for either perceived attractiveness (mean ratings difference = -0.07, 95% CI [-0.31, 0.16]) or sexual attractiveness (mean ratings difference = -0.06, 95% CI [-0.36, 0.24]); this null result held with and without Elliot et al.’s (2010) data included in analyses. Exploratory analyses examining whether being in a relationship moderated the effect of color on attractiveness ratings also produced null results.
Quantifying insightful problem solving: A modified compound remote associates paradigm using lexical priming to parametrically modulate different sources of task difficulty
Authors: Becker Maxi , Wiedemann Gregor , Kuehn Simone
Published: July 2018

Insight problem solving has been conceptualized as a dynamic search through a constrained search space where a non-obvious solution needs to be found. Multiple sources of task difficulty have been defined that can keep the problem solver from finding the right solution such as an overly large search space or knowledge constraints requiring a change of the problem representation. Up to now, there are very few accounts that focus on different aspects of difficulty within an insight problem-solving context and how they affect task performance as well as the probability of finding a solution that is accompanied by an Aha! experience. In addition, we are not aware of any approaches investigating how knowledge constraints parametrically modulate task performance and the Aha! experience in compound remote associates (CRA) when controlling for other sources of task difficulty. Therefore, we first developed, tested and externally validated a modified CRA paradigm in combination with lexical priming that is more likely to elicit representational change than the classical CRA tasks. Second, we parametrically estimated the effect of the knowledge constraint together with other sources of difficulty (size of the problem and search space, word length and frequency) using General Linear Mixed Models. The knowledge constraint (and the size of the search space) was operationalized as lexical distance (measured as cosine distances) between different word pairs within this task. Our results indicate that the experimentally induced knowledge constraint still affects task performance and is negatively related to the Aha! experience when controlling for various other types of task difficulties. Finally, we will present the complete stimulus set in German language together with their statistical (i.e. item difficulty and mean solution time) and lexical properties.
Psychophysical deconstruction of the Dunning-Kruger effect
Authors: McIntosh Robert D , Fowler Elizabeth , Lyu Tianjiao , Della Sala Sergio
Published: July 2018

The Dunning-Kruger effect (DKE) is the finding that, across a wide range of tasks, poor performers greatly overestimate their ability, while top performers make more accurate self-assessments. The original account of the DKE involves the idea that metacognitive insight requires the same skills as task performance, so that unskilled people perform poorly and lack insight. However, typical global measures of self-assessment are prone to statistical and other biases that could explain the same pattern. We used psychophysical methods to examine metacognitive insight in simple movement and spatial memory tasks: pointing at a dot, or recalling its position after a short delay. We measured task skill in an initial block, and self-assessment in a second block, in which participants judged after every trial whether they had hit the target or not. Metacognitive calibration and sensitivity were indeed related to task skill, and partially mediated the DKE. In a second study, we again measured task skill in an initial block, but titrated task difficulty in the second block so that all participants performed the task with equivalent levels of success. Metacognitive measures were again related to skill, but the DKE pattern itself was eliminated. In a third study, we used statistical modelling to illuminate these findings, showing that differences in metacognitive calibration and sensitivity can contribute to the DKE, but are neither necessary nor sufficient for it. This general analysis explains and quantifies how metacognitive insight and other factors interact to determine this famous effect.
A Series of Meta-Analytic Tests of the Efficacy of Long-Term Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Authors: Woll Christian Franz Josef , Schönbrodt Felix D.
Published: July 2018

Recent meta-analyses come to conflicting conclusions about the efficacy of long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy (LTPP). Our first goal was to reproduce the most recent meta-analysis by Leichsenring, Abbass, Luyten, Hilsenroth, and Rabung (2013) who found evidence for the efficacy of LTPP in the treatment of complex mental disorders. Our replicated effect sizes were in general slightly smaller. Second, we conducted an updated meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials comparing LTPP (lasting for at least one year and 40 sessions) to other forms of psychotherapy in the treatment of complex mental disorders. We focused on a transparent research process according to open science standards and applied a series of elaborated meta-analytic procedures to test and control for publication bias. Our updated meta-analysis comprising 191 effect sizes from 14 eligible studies revealed small, statistically significant effect sizes at post-treatment for the outcome domains psychiatric symptoms, target problems, social functioning, and overall effectiveness (Hedges’ g ranging between 0.24 and 0.35). The effect size for the domain personality functioning (0.24) was not significant (p = .08). No signs for publication bias could be detected. In light of a heterogeneous study set and some methodological shortcomings in the primary studies, these results should be interpreted cautiously. In conclusion, LTPP might be superior to other forms of psychotherapy in the treatment of complex mental disorders. Notably, our effect sizes represent the additional gain of LTPP vs. other forms of primarily long-term psychotherapy. In this case, large differences in effect sizes are not to be expected.
The Effect of Sex and Perpetrator-Victim Relationship on Perceptions of Domestic Homicide
Authors: Karlsson Linda C. , Malén Tuulia , Kaakinen Johanna K. , Antfolk Jan
Published: July 2018

Previous research on how stereotypes affect perceptions of intimate partner violence and domestic homicide has found that violence committed by men is perceived as more severe and judged more harshly than violence committed by women. The present mock jury study investigated how perpetrator sex (male or female), crime type (familicide or filicide), and relatedness between perpetrator and child victims (biological or step) affect laypeople’s perceptions of the appropriate consequence of the crime, the reason for the offence, responsibility of the perpetrator, the likelihood of certain background factors being present, and the risk of future violence. One hundred sixty-seven university students read eight fictive descriptions of cases of multiple-victim domestic homicides, in which the sex of the perpetrator, the crime type, and the relatedness between the perpetrator and the child victims were manipulated. We found that participants recommended equally severe punishments to and placed the same amount of responsibility on male and female offenders. Female offenders were, however, regarded as mentally ill to a larger extent and perceived more likely to have been victims of domestic violence compared to male offenders. Male offenders, on the other hand, were seen as more likely to have committed domestic violence in the past, having been unemployed, have substance abuse, hold aggressive attitudes, and commit violent acts in the future. Participants also perceived offenders killing biological children as more mentally ill than offenders killing stepchildren. The present study extends the literature on the possible effect of stereotypes on decision making in psychiatric and judicial contexts.
Increasing propensity of mind wandering using tDCS? A Registered Report
Authors: Boayue Nya Mehnwolo , Csifcsák Gábor , Aslaksen Per , Turi Zsolt , Antal Andrea , Groot Josephine Maria , Hawkins Guy , Forstmann Birte , Thielscher Axel , Opitz Alexander , Mittner Matthias
Published: July 2018

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been proposed to be able to modulate different cognitive functions. However, recent meta- analyses conclude that its efficacy is still in question. Recently, an increase in subjects’ propensity to mind-wander has been reported as a consequence of anodal stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Axelrod et al., 2015). In addition, an independent group found a decrease in mind wandering after cathodal stimulation of the same region. These findings seem to indicate that high-level cognitive processes such as mind wandering can reliably be influenced by non-invasive brain stimulation. However, these previous stud- ies used low sample sizes and are as such subject to concerns regarding the replicability of their findings. In this registered report, we implement a high- powered replication of Axelrod et al. (2015)’s finding that mind-wandering propensity can be increased by anodal tDCS. We used Bayesian statistics and a pre-registered sequential-sampling design resulting in a total sample size ofN=192 participants collected across three different labs. Our findings show support against a stimulation effect on self-reported mind-wandering scores. The effect was small, in the opposite direction as predicted and not reliably different from zero. Using a Bayes Factor specifically designed to test for replication success, we found strong evidence against a successful replication of the original study. Finally, even when combining data from both the origi- nal and replication studies, we could not find evidence for an effect of anodal stimulation. Our results underline the importance of designing studies with sufficient power to detect evidence for or against behavioral effects of non- invasive brain stimulation techniques, preferentially using robust Bayesian statistics in pre-registered reports.
Against Eminence
Authors: Vazire Simine
Published: July 2018

The drive for eminence is inherently at odds with scientific values, and insufficient attention to this problem is partly responsible for the recent crisis of confidence in psychology and other sciences. The replicability crisis has shown that a system without transparency doesn’t work. The lack of transparency in science is a direct consequence of the corrupting influence of eminence-seeking. If journals and societies are primarily motivated by boosting their impact, their most effective strategy will be to publish the sexiest findings by the most famous authors. Humans will always care about eminence. Scientific institutions and gatekeepers should be a bulwark against the corrupting influence of the drive for eminence, and help researchers maintain integrity and uphold scientific values in the face of internal and external pressures to compromise. One implication for evaluating scientific merit is that gatekeepers should attempt to reward all scientists whose work reaches a more objective threshold of scientific rigor or soundness, rather than attempting to select the cream of the crop (i.e., identify the most “eminent”).
Domain-general idiosyncratic anchoring of metacognition
Authors: Foda Hebah , Barger Kristina , Navajas Joaquin , Bahrami Bahador
Published: July 2018

Recent studies in the field of metacognition and decision-making have found that confidence judgments are influenced by numerous post-decisional factors. Anchoring is a post-decisional factor whose effects on decisions have been widely documented but little is known about its possible impact on decision confidence. In two experiments, participants made categorical decisions about the mean of a sequence of visual (oriented gratings) or numerical stimuli and rated their confidence on a Likert scale. By randomizing the initial location of the indicator across trials, we demonstrated the effects of anchoring in metacognitive confidence judgments. The effect was (a) consistent across two domains of visual perception and mathematical cognition and (b) independent of informational uncertainty and task difficulty. Our findings provide new evidence for the post-decisional accounts of confidence that recognize the role of idiosyncratic, domain-general, trait-like factors (e.g. susceptibility to an anchor). Our data are inconsistent with the normative accounts that confine confidence to reflecting statistical variance (in the external state of the environment) or probability of correct choice (subjective to the agent).
Confiding Secrets and Well-Being
Authors: Slepian Michael , Moulton-Tetlock Edythe
Published: July 2018

How does confiding secrets relate to well-being? The current work presents the first empirical examination of mechanisms by which confiding diverse real-world secrets to known others predicts well-being. We examined over 800 participants with more than 10,000 secrets in total, finding that confiding a secret does not predict reduced instances of concealment. Rather, confiding a secret predicts higher well-being through perceived coping efficacy. Correlational and experimental studies find that through confiding a secret, people feel they obtain social support and are more capable in coping with the secret. Additionally, through perceived coping efficacy, confiding a secret predicts less frequent mind wandering to the secret. Confiding predicts higher well-being through changing the way and how often people think about their secret.
Soothing Sadness: When Sharing Emotions Helps
Authors: IJzerman Hans , Ropovik Ivan , Gallucci Marcello , Häfner Michael , Lindenberg Siegwart
Published: July 2018

The psychological literature has shown that sharing one’s emotions with loved ones does not alleviate distress. We challenge this notion. In four studies (N=2581), participants were asked to recall an emotional episode (Studies 1a-2: sadness, fear, affection, joy, anger) and write about this episode. Not replicating prior work, participants shared emotions less frequently than in previous work and not all emotions were shared equally. In Study 3 (N=894), participants also answered relationship-relevant variables (communal strength and liking) and individual difference variables (comfort with touch); we found that people who are comfortable with touch by loved ones and who are in a high-quality relationship with their interaction partner reflect more and ruminate less about the episode and are less stressed. Findings about self-reported health were inconclusive. Our work shows that sharing one’s sad episodes can help, if one can “outsource” the emotion to a loved one.
A Meta-Analysis of Procedures to Change Implicit Measures
Authors: Forscher Patrick S. , Lai Calvin K. , Axt Jordan , Ebersole Charles R. , Herman Michelle , Devine Patricia G. , Nosek Brian A.
Published: July 2018

Using a novel technique known as network meta-analysis, we synthesized evidence from 492 studies (87,418 participants) to investigate the effectiveness of procedures in changing implicit measures, which we define as response biases on implicit tasks. We also evaluated these procedures’ effects on explicit and behavioral measures. We found that implicit measures can be changed, but effects are often relatively weak (|ds| < .30). Most studies focused on producing short-term changes with brief, single-session manipulations. Procedures that associate sets of concepts, invoke goals or motivations, or tax mental resources changed implicit measures the most, whereas procedures that induced threat, affirmation, or specific moods/emotions changed implicit measures the least. Bias tests suggested that implicit effects could be inflated relative to their true population values. Procedures changed explicit measures less consistently and to a smaller degree than implicit measures and generally produced trivial changes in behavior. Finally, changes in implicit measures did not mediate changes in explicit measures or behavior. Our findings suggest that changes in implicit measures are possible, but those changes do not necessarily translate into changes in explicit measures or behavior.
To infinity and beyond: Children generalize the successor function to all possible numbers years after learning to count
Authors: Cheung Pierina , Rubenson Miriam , Barner David
Published: July 2018

Recent accounts of number word learning posit that when children learn toaccurately count sets (i.e., become "cardinal principle" or "CP" knowers),they have a conceptual insight about how the count list implements thesuccessor function - i.e., that every natural number *n *has a successordefined as *n+1* (Carey, 2004, 2009; Sarnecka & Carey, 2008). However,recent studies suggest that knowledge of the successor function emergessometime after children learn to accurately count, though it remainsunknown when this occurs, and what causes this developmental transition. Wetested knowledge of the successor function in 100 children aged 4 through 7and asked how age and counting ability are related to: (1) children'sability to infer the successors of all numbers in their count list, and (2)knowledge that *all *numbers have a successor. We found that children donot acquire these two facets of the successor function until they are about5.5 or 6 years of age - roughly 2 years after they learn to accuratelycount sets and become CP-knowers. These findings show that acquisition ofthe successor function is highly protracted, providing the strongestevidence yet that it cannot drive the cardinal principle induction. Wesuggest that counting experience, as well as knowledge of recursivecounting structures, may instead drive the learning of the successorfunction.
Self-Esteem Change in the Transition from College to Work
Authors: Reitz Anne K.
Published: July 2018

Objective: The current study examined whether the transition from university to work, a major developmental milestone in young adulthood, was related to stability and change in self-esteem. Method: Self-esteem was assessed in the last year of their master’s program (T1) of 163 27-year old students and 14 months later, when they had graduated and half of them had started a full- time job (T2). Daily diaries were used to assess the occurrence of achievement- and affiliation- related experiences on 14 consecutive days at T1 and T2. We compared mean-level change, rank-order stability and correlated change of self-esteem and daily experiences of full-time job beginners and a comparison group without a full-time job. Results: First, job beginners increased in self-esteem, but the difference to the mean-level change of the comparison group was only small. Second, self-esteem was less stable among job beginners than among the comparison group. Third, the changes in achievement-related daily experiences and self-esteem correlated positively in the job-beginner group but not in the comparison group. Conclusions: The findings underline the role of daily experiences during life transitions for individual differences in self- esteem change. The discussion calls for accounting for unique transition experiences to advance theory and research on self-esteem development.
Scene categorization in the presence of a distractor
Authors: Lukavsky Jiri
Published: July 2018

Humans display a very good understanding of the content in briefly presented photographs. To achieve this understanding, humans rely on information from both high-acuity central vision and peripheral vision. Previous studies have investigated the relative contribution of central/peripheral vision. However, the role of attention in this task remains unclear. In this study, we presented composite images with a scene in the center and another scene in the periphery. The two channels conveyed different information, and the participants were asked to focus on one channel while ignoring the other. In two experiments, we showed that (1) people are better at recognizing the central part, (2) the conflicting signal in the ignored part hinders performance, and (3) this effect is true for both parts (focusing on the central or peripheral part). We conclude that scene recognition is based on both central and peripheral information, even when participants are instructed to focus only on one part of the image and ignore the other. In contrast to the zoom-out hypothesis, we propose that the gist recognition process should be interpreted in terms of the evidence accumulation model in which information from the to-be-ignored parts is also included.
Learning distributions as they come: Particle filter models for online distributional learning of phonetic categories
Authors: Kleinschmidt Dave F
Published: July 2018

Human infants have the remarkable ability to learn any human language. One proposed mechanism for this ability is distributional learning, where learners infer the underlying cluster structure from unlabeled input. Computational models of distributional learning have historically been principled but psychologically-implausible computational-level models, or ad hoc but psychologically plausible algorithmic-level models. Approximate rational models like particle filters can potentially bridge this divide, and allow principled, but psychologically plausible models of distributional learning to be specified and evaluated. As a proof of concept, I evaluate one such particle filter model, applied to learning English voicing categories from distributions of voice-onset times (VOTs). I find that this model learns well, but behaves somewhat differently from the standard, unconstrained Gibbs sampler implementation of the underlying rational model.
The dimensionality of proposed DSM-5 PTSD symptoms in trauma-exposed young children
Authors: McKinnon Anna , Scheeringa Michael , Meiser-Stedman Richard , Watson Peter , De Young Alexandra , Dalgleish Tim
Published: July 2018

Objective. A subtype of the posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis for children 6 years and younger (PTSD-6Y) was introduced in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition (DSM-5). However, the latent structure of PTSD symptoms in this age group has not been previously investigated. The present study therefore utilized confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) techniques to evaluate the proposed DSM-5 PTSD-6Y factor structure and criterion and convergent validity against competing models. Method. Data for N=284 (3-6 years) trauma-exposed young children recruited following a variety of traumas in New Orleans were examined. We compared the DSM-5 PTSD-6Y model to DSM-IV, and alternate 1- 2- and 4-factor models. Convergent validity was established aganst the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL). Criterion related validity was established by comparing each model to a categorical rating of impairment. Results. In terms of symptom structure, the Dysphoria and PTSD-6Y models offered the better accounts, although neither satisfied minimum requirements for a good fitting model. These two models also only showed small levels of convergence with CBCL dimensions. With respect to patterns of criterion validity, the 1-factor model offered the most compelling balance of sensitivity and specificity, with the 2-factor model and the Dysphoria model following closely behind. Conclusions. There is little support for the symptom cluster instantiated in DSM-5 PTSD-6Y. Although a 4-factor Dysphoria model offers a better overall account of clustering patterns, alongside acceptable sensitivity and specificity for detecting clinical impairment, it also falls short of being an adequate model in this younger age group.
Contents of hopes and duties: A linguistic inquiry
Authors: Vaughn Leigh Ann
Published: July 2018

People in a prevention focus tend to view their goals as duties and obligations, whereas people in a promotion focus tend to view their goals as hopes and aspirations. The current research suggests that people’s attention goes to somewhat different experiences when they describe their hopes versus duties. Two studies randomly assigned participants (N = 953) to describe a hope versus duty. Specifically, Study 1 asked participants to describe a personal experience of pursuing a hope versus duty, and Study 2 asked participants to describe a current hope versus duty they had. I analyzed these descriptions with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015. Consistent with earlier research on regulatory focus, participants wrote more about positive outcomes when describing hopes and social relationships when describing duties. The current research suggests that the effectiveness of common regulatory focus and regulatory fit manipulations could depend on participants’ freedom to choose the experiences they bring to mind when they describe their hopes and duties.
Effects of amnesia on processing in the hippocampus and default mode network during a naturalistic memory task: a case study
Authors: Oedekoven Christiane , Keidel James L. , Anderson Stuart , Nisbet Angus , Bird Chris
Published: July 2018

Despite their severely impaired episodic memory, individuals with amnesia are able to comprehend ongoing events. Online representations of a current event are thought to be supported by a network of regions centred on the posterior midline cortex (PMC). By contrast, episodic memory is widely believed to be supported by interactions between the hippocampus and these cortical regions. In this MRI study, we investigated the encoding and retrieval of lifelike events (video clips) in a patient with severe amnesia likely resulting from a stroke to the right thalamus, and a group of 20 age-matched controls. Structural MRI revealed grey matter reductions in left hippocampus and left thalamus in comparison to controls. We first characterised the regions activated in the controls while they watched and retrieved the videos. There were no differences in activation between the patient and controls in any of the regions. We then identified a widespread network of brain regions, including the hippocampus, that were functionally connected with the PMC in controls. However, in the patient there was a specific reduction in functional connectivity between the PMC and a region of left hippocampus when both watching and attempting to retrieve the videos. A follow up analysis revealed that in controls the functional connectivity between these regions when watching the videos was correlated with memory performance. Taken together, these findings support the view that the interactions between the PMC and the hippocampus enable the encoding and retrieval of multimodal representations of the contents of an event.