Fluctuating confidence: the dynamic consequences of true/false affirmatives and denials on how a listener appraises their personal past

The present study examined the mnemonic consequences of true/false denials and affirmatives on how a listener appraises their personal past. To this end, participants (listeners) rated the extent to which they were confident certain events occurred during their childhood. They rated these events both before and after a confederate (speaker) denied or affirmed the occurrence of four different childhood events each, for a total of eight “rehearsed” events. For each set (denials and affirmatives) of events, half were true and half were false. In turn, this created four types of events (two each): true denials, true affirmatives, false denials, and false affirmatives. Additionally, half of the participants were told that the speaker was provided independent information about the veracity of the event’s occurrence (“expert” condition). Overall, listeners were less confident in the occurrence of false denial events, but more so when they believed the speaker to be more knowledgeable of the listeners memories, more confident in false affirmative events and, counter intuitively, more confident in the occurrence of true denial events. These results underscore the importance of a nuanced approach to the mnemonic consequences of true and false denials and affirmations in the course of social interactions.     

The process of verifying affirmative and negative sentences against pictures

Experiments 1 and 2 investigated sentence context effects on picture encoding in a sentence-picture verification and a picture naming task, respectively. The results showed that a picture following a sentence was encoded faster when the two were congruent than when they were incongruent. Experiment 3 compared two conditions: Under one condition, true affirmatives, false affirmatives, true negatives, and false negatives were mixed in each block of presentation. Under the other condition, different sentence types were presented in different blocks. The results showed (l) that errors committed in verification were largely negation errors, but seldom falsification errors, and (2) that there was a decrease of falsification time, but a resistance to change in negation time from the mixed to the blocked presentation. These results were interpreted to mean that falsification time results from a longer time to encode the picture and to confirm or disconfirm the truth index value by the polarity of the sentence in false affirmatives and true negatives than in true affirmatives and false negatives, whereas negation time and negation errors result from a response-suppression operation.     

Completion of binary statements by children at three academic levels

This study was designed to examine the strategy employed by school-aged subjects when completing binary statements. Thirty-two incomplete binary statements representing four statement conditions (true affirmative, true negative, false affirmative, and false negative) were administered to 120 children randomly selected from three academic levels. A response-index change model is postulated as representing the strategy employed by these school-aged subjects when completing binary statements. According to this model, the factor that causes response time to differ across the four statement conditions is the number of times the child is required to change the set of his response index. The child begins the task of completing a binary statement by reading and encoding the incomplete statement. He then selects the numeral that corresponds to the adjective “odd” or “even” contained in the predicate of the incomplete statement. The child’s response index is now set to respond with this numeral. What the child does at this point will depend upon the type of statement condition with which he is working. If the child is completing a TA statement, no response-index change is required. He simply gives as his answer the numeral to which his response index is set. If the child is completing an FA statement or a TN statement, one response-index change is required. If the child is completing an FN statement, two response-index changes are required.     

The Answering System to Yes–No Truth-Functional Questions in Korean–English Bilingual Children

This study presents an experiment that explores the patterns of answers to yes–no truth-functional questions in English and Korean. The answering patterns are examined from 12 Korean–English bilingual children and 10 Korean-monolingual children. Four types of sentences in relation to given situations (Wason in Br J Psychol 52:133–142, 1961) were provided as questions such as true affirmative (TA), true negative (TN), false affirmative (FA), and false negative (FN). The bilingual children’s answers were observed in separate language settings, English and Korean. The results by the bilingual in the Korean setting were compared with those by the monolinguals. The results show that bilingual children can process two systems rather successfully by providing correct responses to the given questions. But difficulty patterns, measured from error rates in each setting, are found different in two languages. The bilinguals’ difficulty patterns in English and Korean, however, show deviation from monolinguals’ difficulty patterns suggested in previous studies (Wason in Br J Psychol 52:133–142, 1961, Akiyama in Dev Psychol 20:219–228, 1984, Kim in Dev Psychol 21(3):462–472, 1985, Choi in Dev Psychol 29(3):407–420, 1991). The present work also shows that negatives are not uniformly reported with more errors than affirmatives when the truth condition and the answering system are further involved. All in all, the current study suggests that bilingual children have two separate processing systems for yes–no truth-functional questions. However, the two systems cannot be understood as a simple coexistence of two monolingual systems. Interaction of the two competing linguistic systems is discussed further.     

Children's representation of knowledge in verification

Thirty-two children aged 8–9 and 10–11 were asked to perform two statement verification tasks. Task 1 consisted of statements that were likely to elicit an affirmative knowledge representation,You have three eyes, is likely to elicit the representation,I have two eyes. Task 2 consisted of statements that were likely to elicit a negative knowledge of representation,You have a tail, is likely to elicit a negative representation,I do not have a tail. All statements varied in two dimensions, polarity (affirmative vs. negative) and truth value (true vs. false). Negative statements in Task 1 were found to be more difficult for children to verify than those in Task 2. This performance difference was used to infer the form of knowledge representation generated in verifying negative statements.     

Cross-linguistic contrasts of verification and answering among children

This review article examines how children verify a statement (e.g.,You are a child. Right or wrong?) and answer a corresponding question (e.g.,Are you a child? Yes or no?) in English, French, Japanese, and Korean. While people verify affirmative statements and answer affirmative questions similarly across the four languages, they answer negative questions differently across the four languages. In English, answering negative questions works in a way opposite to verification (e.g.,Are you not a child? Yes; You are not a child. Wrong). In French,si is used in the place of theyes response in English. In Japanese and Korean, answering negative questions works in a way similar to verification (e.g.,Are you not a child? No; You are not a child. Wrong). The effects of these linguistic characteristics are examined. Findings are: (1) All children across the four languages appear to start answering negative questions using the English system; (2) English-speaking children find verifying negative statements more difficult than answering the corresponding questions but Japanese-speaking children find it less difficult; and (3) while English-speaking and Korean-speaking children find true negative statements more difficult to verify than false negative statements, Japanese-speaking children find them less difficult. Language-universal and language-specific processes in verification and answering are discussed.     

The inconceivability of zombies

I argue for the claim that if Lewis’s regularity theory of laws were true, we could not know any positive law statement to be true. Premise 1: According to that theory, for any law statement true of the actual world, there is always a nearby world where the law statement is false (a world that differs with respect to one matter of particular fact). Premise 2: One cannot know a proposition to be true if it is false in a nearby world (the epistemological safety principle). The conclusion that no law statement can be known to be true follows immediately from the two premises.     

Fārābī and Avicenna on Contraposition

The rule of contraposition has been investigated thoroughly by Arabic logicians. In this paper, we study the work done by Fārābā and Avicenna, the fathers of Arabic logic. Fārābā studied contraposition of universal affirmatives, discussed its four forms, and discovered a relation between one form and the conversion of negative universals. Although Fārābā and logicians before him have used contraposition only for conditionals, as well as for indefinite and universal affirmative categorical propositions, Avicenna generalized the rule to all the four Aristotelian quantified categorical propositions. However, many of his ideas on contraposition were opposed by his 12th and 13th century followers, which are to be investigated later.     

When negation is easier than affirmation

An experiment is reported which establishes that affirmative sentences are not always easier to grasp than negative sentences. The subjects had to make inferences from pairs of premises such as: “Either John is intelligent or he is rich. John is not rich”. The task was reliably easier when the second premise was explicitly negative (as in the example) than when it was an affirmative (“John is poor”). It was most difficult when the negative occurred in the disjunctive premise and was denied by an affirmative (e.g. “John is intelligent or he is not rich. John is rich”). It is argued that it is simpler to establish that two statements are mutually inconsistent when one is the explicit negation of the other, but that the natural function of the negative is to deny.     

A model statement does not enhance the verifiability approach

The present experiment investigated to what extent providing participants with a model statement influences the ability of the verifiability approach to detect deception. Participants gave a true and false statement about a negative autobiographical event, with half of the participants receiving a detailed model statement just before giving their statement. We expected false statements to include more nonverifiable and less verifiable details than true statements and that providing a model statement would increase these differences. False statements indeed included more nonverifiable details than truthful statements but did not differ in the number of verifiable details. True statements included a higher ratio of verifiable details. The model statement encouraged participants to give a longer and more detailed statement. However, it prompted participants to increase the number of included verifiable—and not nonverifiable—details, regardless of veracity. Using a model statement did not influence the discriminability of the verifiability approach.     

Negation: A rejoinder to Wales and Grieve

Wales and Grieve (1969) report an experiment in which they show that a factor of “confusability” affects the comprehension of affirmative and negative sentences, and then claim that this is a relevant factor in explaining the difficulty of negatives. The present paper submits arguments and experimental evidence to dispute this claim.     

Effects of standard modality, comparison modality and retention interval on matching of form

Garvill, J. & Molander, B. Effects of standard modality, comparison modality and retention interval on matching of form. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 203–206.MdashIntra-modal and cross-modal matching of nonsense forms was studied in a 2 (standard modalities: visual vs. tactual) by 2 (comparison modalities: visual vs. tactual) by 3 (intervals between standard and comparison: 1, 10 and 30 sec) factorial experiment. The errors were divided into false negatives and false positives. Significant effects of standard modality and of comparison modality were found for false negatives. For false positives the most prominent effect was an interaction between the standard modality and the comparison modality. Retention interval had no effect in any of the modality conditions. The effects are discussed in terms of differential information processing capacity for the visual and the tactual modalities.     

Can fabricated evidence induce false eyewitness testimony?

False information can influence people's beliefs and memories. But can fabricated evidence induce individuals to accuse another person of doing something they never did? We examined whether exposure to a fabricated video could produce false eyewitness testimony. Subjects completed a gambling task alongside a confederate subject, and later we falsely told subjects that their partner had cheated on the task. Some subjects viewed a digitally manipulated video of their partner cheating; some were told that video evidence of the cheating exists; and others were not told anything about video evidence. Subjects were asked to sign a statement confirming that they witnessed the incident and that their corroboration could be used in disciplinary action against the accused. See‐video subjects were three times more likely to sign the statement than Told‐video and Control subjects. Fabricated evidence may, indeed, produce false eyewitness testimony; we discuss probable cognitive mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's emotional false memories

Eight- and 12-year-old children were presented with neutral and negative emotional Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists equated on familiarity and associative strength. Both recall and recognition (A') measures were obtained. Recall measures exhibited the usual age increments in true and false recollection. True neutral items were better recalled and recognized than true negative emotional items. Although the children showed more false recall for neutral than for negative emotional lists, false recognition was higher for negative emotional than for neutral items. A' analyses also showed that whereas true neutral information and false neutral information were easily discriminated by children regardless of age, the same was not the case for true and false negative emotional information. Together, these results suggest that although children may be able to censor negative emotional information at recall, such information promotes relational processing in children's memory, making true and false emotional information less discriminable overall.     

What Is so difficult about negation?

Previous experimental study of this topic suggests that negation is typically difficult to process. This notion, by now widely accepted, seems to rest on a view of negation as an operation on statements. We question this view by arguing that difficulty in processing negatives is a question of a complex of issues concerning the material to be processed, e.g., ambiguity, confusability, and context. Experimental results are presented indicating that a decrease in confusability facilitates the processing of true negative and false affirmative statements; these results are interpreted as consistent with predictions arising from the general argument. The results of a number of previous studies are then reconsidered and preliminary conclusions adduced.     

Post‐event information presented in a question form eliminates the misinformation effect

This study investigated the influences of sentence surface forms on the misinformation effect. After viewing a film clip, participants received a post‐event narrative describing the events in the film. Critical sentences in the post‐event narrative, presented in either a statement or a question form, contained misinformation instead of questions with embedded false presuppositions; thus participants did not have to answer questions about the original event. During the final cued‐recall test, participants were informed that any relevant information presented in the post‐event narrative was not in the original event and that they should not report it. Consistent with previous findings, Experiment 1 demonstrated that post‐event information presented as an affirmative statement produced the misinformation effect. More importantly, post‐event information presented in a question form, regardless of whether it contained a misleading or studied item, increased the recall of correct information and reduced false recall. Experiment 2 replicated the main finding and ruled out an alternative explanation based on the salience of misleading items. Post‐event information presented in a question form created a condition similar to that which produces the testing effect.     

Short-term memory for repeated and non-repeated items

Digit sequences containing repeated items are retained differently in short-term memory from sequences containing no repeated items. The repeated items are remembered better or worse than items in the corresponding positions of “all-different” sequences depending on the number of times the item is repeated, the number of items repeated, the number of items intervening between the occurences of a repeated item, and the position of the repeated items in relation to the beginning and end of the sequence. In every type of repetition studied, except one, memory for the non-repeated items in sequences with repeated items is better than for the corresponding items of all-different sequences. This is true in some cases despite significant specific interference between the (non-repeated) items following the separated occurrences of repeated items. The negative effects in memory for repeated items and the positive effects in memory for non-repeated items are greater when the items are presented at the rate of five per sec. than at one per sec., contrary to the hypothesis that differential rehearsal is responsible for these effects. The results are interpreted as supporting an “associative,” as opposed to a “non-associative,” theory of short-term memory, as this distinction is defined in the paper.     

Reasoning about a rule

Two experiments were carried out to investigate the difficulty of making the contra-positive inference from conditional sentences of the form, “if P then Q.” This inference, that not-P follows from not-Q, requires the transformation of the information presented in the conditional sentence. It is suggested that the difficulty is due to a mental set for expecting a relation of truth, correspondence, or match to hold between sentences and states of affairs. The elicitation of the inference was not facilitated by attempting to induce two kinds of therapy designed to break this set. It is argued that the subjects did not give evidence of having acquired the characteristics of Piaget's “formal operational thought.”     

A closer look at self-reported suicide attempts: false positives and false negatives

The validity of self-reported suicide attempt information is undermined by false positives (e.g., incidences without intent to die), or by unreported suicide attempts, referred to as false negatives. In a sample of 1,385 Austrian adults, we explored the occurrence of false positives and false negatives with detailed, probing questions. Removing false positives decreased the rate of suicide attempters from 4.3% to 2.7%. Probing questions also revealed 0.8% false negatives. We recommend using probing questions with both those who report a suicide attempt and those who do not report a suicide attempt to increase the validity of self-reported suicide-related information.