Forensic voice discrimination by lay listeners: The effect of speech type and background noise on performance

In forensic settings, lay (nonexpert) listeners may be required to compare voice samples for identity. In two experiments we investigated the effect of background noise and variations in speaking style on performance. In each trial, participants heard two recordings, responded whether the voices belonged to the same person, and provided a confidence rating. In Experiment 1, the first recording featured read speech and the second featured read or spontaneous speech. Both recordings were presented in quiet, or with background noise. Accuracy was highest when recordings featured the same speaking style. In Experiment 2, background noise either occurred in the first or second recording. Accuracy was higher when it occurred in the second. The overall results reveal that both speaking style and background noise can disrupt accuracy. Although there is a relationship between confidence and accuracy in all conditions, it is variable. The forensic implications of these findings are discussed.     

Editorial: The role of reasoning in mathematical thinking

ABSTRACT

Research into mathematics often focuses on basic numerical and spatial intuitions, and one key property of numbers: their magnitude. The fact that mathematics is a system of complex relationships that invokes reasoning usually receives less attention. The purpose of this special issue is to highlight the intricate connections between reasoning and mathematics, and to use insights from the reasoning literature to obtain a more complete understanding of the processes that underlie mathematical cognition. The topics that are discussed range from the basic heuristics and biases to the various ways in which complex, effortful reasoning contributes to mathematical cognition, while also considering the role of individual differences in mathematics performance. These investigations are not only important at a theoretical level, but they also have broad and important practical implications, including the possibility to improve classroom practices and educational outcomes, to facilitate people's decision-making, as well as the clear and accessible communication of numerical information.     

Interpolating physical exercise between instigation to aggress and aggression: The role of irritability and emotional susceptibility

Two studies were conducted using the Buss aggression machine paradigm to investigate the mediational role of physical exercise with respect to subsequent aggression in relation to the presence or absence of previous instigation. The irritability level of subjects was taken into account in the first study, and the subject' emotional susceptibility level in the second study. In both studies sex differences were also considered so that each study resulted in a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 design with ten subjects in each cell. As far as irritability is concerned, experimental subjects (pedaling on a bicycle ergonometer) delivered higher shocks than controls (who just waited out the 10 min the experimental subjects were pedaling), independent of irritability level or of the presence or absence of previous instigation. When emotional susceptibility was taken into consideration, physical exercise associated with high level of emotional susceptibility and previous instigation resulted in increased intensity of the shocks subsequently delivered. These findings are discussed in terms of the importance of stable personality characteristics that may differentially mediate aggression.     

The effect of geographic indication in advertising background pictures on product evaluation: The moderating role of familiarity

This study investigates whether geographic indications in the backgrounds of advertising pictures might affect the viewer's evaluation of a product. The findings reveal that participants in the proximal geographic indication evaluated the product more favourably than those in the distal geographic indication when they were exposed to feasibility‐related information. By contrast, participants in the distal geographic indication evaluated the product more favourably than those in the proximal geographic indication when they were exposed to desirability‐related information. However, familiarity with geographic indications eliminated this effect.     

Creativity and the Genome: The State of Affairs

This essay is focused on the research into the genetic etiology of creativity and related processes. In an attempt to identify the most salient points of this research, the article provides a brief overview of quantitative‐genetic (family and twin) and molecular‐genetic (candidate‐gene and whole‐genome) studies of creativity. To conclude, the essay formulates a future agenda for this subfield of scientific inquiry into creativity.     

Effects of translational background motion on visual localization

Three subjects were asked to judge the position of small spots of light flashed before, during or after rapid translational motion of the background grating pattern. Mislocalization of the spots was observed when the background moved during or immediately after presentation of the spot. In both cases, mislocalization always occurred in the direction of the fixation point. Furthermore, this mislocalization occurred only when the background moved in the opposite direction to the visual half-field in which the spot appeared. That is to say, a spot to the right of the fixation point was mislocalized when its background moved to the left, but not when it moved to the right, and the converse was also true. This finding was interpreted as reflecting a long-term adaptation to the optokinetic stimulation that we experience during forward and backward locomotion.     

A Swedish translation and validation of the Disgust Scale: a measure of disgust sensitivity

The psychometric properties of a Swedish version of Haidt, McCauley and Rozin's (1994) Disgust Scale were studied. Confirmatory factor analysis of the original model with eight factors (food, animals, body products, sex, body envelope violations, death, hygiene, and magic) provided satisfactory fit to the data (N= 280), significantly better than to the alternative one-factor and five-factor models. As in the US version women scored significantly higher than men. Positive correlations with measures of food neophobia (r= 0.30, p < 0.0001) and nausea frequency (rs= 0.28, p < 0.001) indicate convergent validity. In a separate study (N= 30) a behavioral measure of the willingness to touch, hold, and taste disgusting food objects correlated negatively with the Disgust Scale (r=-0.46, p < 0.01), indicating criterion-related validity.     

The role of individual differences,response profiles,and treatment consonance in anxiety disorders

The importance of individual differences, response profiles, and treatment consonance in anxiety-disorders clinical research is reviewed. Anxiety-disorders assessment, synchrony, and concordance phenomena are examined within the framework of the tripartite model. Issues regarding response stereotypy, response specificity, and etiological vs. current response typologies are discussed. Interactions of varying response profiles with different treatment modalities are addressed, in terms of both previous and prospective studies. A preliminary classification schema is offered, for illustrative purposes, with empirical support for the differential outcome of anxiety patients receiving consonant vs. nonconsonant response profile × treatment type pairings. Hypotheses are presented regarding predicted effects of consonant vs. nonconsonant subject-treatment interactions. Recommendations for programmatic research are offered to accelerate scientific inquiry into the role of individual differences and response profiles in anxiety-disorders assessment, treatment, and research.Preparation of this paper was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 36299.     

不确定性容忍度对跨期选择的影响及其情景依赖性

采用2(不确定性容忍度：高、低)×2(跨期日期：今天/14天、今天/180天)×2(延迟奖赏值：200元、1000元)混合实验设计,探讨不同任务特征下不确定性容忍度对跨期选择的影响。结果表明：跨期日期为180天时,不确定性容忍度主效应边缘显著;不确定性容忍度与延迟奖赏值交互作用显著：在200元时低容忍度个体对延迟奖赏的折扣程度大于高容忍度个体,在1000元时无此效应;跨期日期为14天时,不确定性容忍度的主效应及其与延迟奖赏值交互作用均不显著。这表明,不确定性容忍度对跨期选择存在影响,但这种影响受到跨期日期和延迟奖赏值的调节,具有情景依赖性。     

Learning about sounds contributes to learning about words: Effects of prosody and phonotactics on infant word learning

This research investigates how early learning about native language sound structure affects how infants associate sounds with meanings during word learning. Infants (19-month-olds) were presented with bisyllabic labels with high or low phonotactic probability (i.e., sequences of frequent or infrequent phonemes in English). The labels were produced with the predominant English trochaic (strong/weak) stress pattern or the less common iambic (weak/strong) pattern. Using the habituation-based Switch Task to test label learning, we found that infants readily learned high probability trochaic labels. However, they failed to learn low probability labels, regardless of stress, and failed to learn iambic labels, regardless of phonotactics. Thus, infants required support from both common phoneme sequences and a common stress pattern to map the labels to objects. These findings demonstrate that early word learning is shaped by prior knowledge of native language phonological regularities and provide support for the role of statistical learning in language acquisition.     

The Role of Temperament in Children's Reliance on Others as Sources of Information

By 3 years of age, children generally have a firm understanding of others' reliability, but there is considerable variation among individual children. Little attention has been paid to factors that influence such individual differences. This study addressed this by assessing the relation between reliability understanding and temperament in children approaching their third birthday. We measured children's ability to judge a speaker's trustworthiness and to selectively learn new information from a reliable informant. Observer ratings provided assessments of children's activity, task orientation, and affect/extraversion. Significant associations between selective trust and the temperament dimension of affect/extraversion were found, along with associations between selective trust and gender and language ability. This indicates that the ability to ascertain whether a speaker is a reliable person from whom to learn is related to several individual child characteristics. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Verbal and visual instruction with mental retardation: The role of subject characteristics and task factors

Past research and theory presents an inconsistent picture concerning the relative value of verbal versus visual instructional programs for individuals with mental retardation. From an empirical perspective, there is evidence that this inconsistency may be due to the differences in the type of tasks and the specific abilities of the subjects employed across studies. In this research, the effects of three instructional procedures (verbal, visual, and verbal plus visual) were evaluated with mentally retarded persons who varied in verbal and visual ability. Performance was examined on a visual task which incorporated stimuli of varying degrees of familiarity to the subjects. The results indicated that the use of the combined verbal-visual instruction procedure was more effective than the other two training programs when task stimuli were familiar to the subjects. When task stimuli were unfamiliar, instructional procedures which had a visual component were found to be superior to a procedure which employed only the use of verbal component. The subjects' visual ability was most strongly associated with performance outcome when visual instruction was employed and unfamiliar task stimuli were sorted. In contrast, subjects' verbal ability appeared to be equally important across instructional and task conditions. The implications of the results for the design of instructional programs and for future research are discussed.     

基于概念复杂度的加工容量观

探讨了一个认知科学的概念——容量,主要是介绍一种基于概念维度的加工容量观.这种观点认为加工容量最好以进入某一特定运算过程的独立维度来定义,容量的增长意味着可以表征更多的维度,而概念的组块与分割是常用的表征策略.个体差异通过表征的清晰度和有效性的差异来表现,而认知的发展则是成熟与经验相互作用的结果.     

Remembering environmental sounds: The role of verbalization at input

Two experiments investigated the role of verbalization in memory for environmental sounds. Experiment i extended earlier research (Bower & Holyoak, 1973) showing that sound recognition is highly dependent upon consistent verbal interpretation at input and test. While such a finding implies an important role for verbalization, Experiment 2 suggested that verbalization is not the only efficacious strategy for encoding environmental sounds. Recognition after presentation of sounds was shown to differ qualitatively from recognition after presentation of sounds accompanied with interpretative verbal labels and from recognition after presentation of verbal labels alone. The results also suggest that encoding physical information about sounds is of greater importance for sound recognition than for verbal free recall, and that verbalization is of greater importance for free recall than for recognition. Several alternative frameworks for the results are presented, and separate retrieval and discrimination processes in recognition are proposed.     

不确定性容忍度、损益概率及延迟风险对延迟选择的影响

研究通过两个实验考查了不确定性容忍度及相关变量对延迟选择的影响,其中实验1采用2（不确定性容忍度：高/低）×2（概率水平：高/中）被试间实验设计;研究2将实验任务设定在有延迟风险情景下中等概率水平,采用单因素（不确定性容忍度：高/低）被试间实验设计.实验1结果表明：不确定性容忍度与概率水平存在交互作用：中等概率时,低容忍度个体比高容忍度个体更偏好延迟选择,高概率时,两者的延迟选择无显著差异,都偏好于选择决策.实验2结果表明：在有延迟风险中等概率时,高、低容忍度个体的决策偏好无显著差异,都偏好选择决策.结论：不确定性容忍度对延迟选择存在影响且受概率水平和延迟风险的调节.     

Effects of conditionality on INDSCAL and ALSCAL weights

The role of conditionality in the INDSCAL and ALSCAL procedures is explained. The effects of conditionality on subject weights produced by these procedures is illustrated via a single set of simulated data. Results emphasize the need for caution in interpreting subject weights provided by these techniques.     

工作记忆广度对语篇理解中重读效应的影响

本文探索了工作记忆容量对语篇理解中重读效应的影响。采用阅读广度测验对工作记忆容量进行测量, 筛选出高、低广度两组被试。并采用听觉动窗实验范式, 比较两组被试在语篇理解中即时加工时间的差异。研究结果表明, 重读效应受到工作记忆广度的显著影响。对于低工作记忆广度被试, 一致性重读促进语篇理解, 不一致性重读阻碍语篇理解; 但对于高工作记忆广度被试, 一致性重读的促进效应和不一致性重读的阻碍效应都不显著。另外, 只有在不一致性重读条件下, 低广度者语篇理解的即时加工时间显著多于高广度者, 而在一致性重读和无重读条件下则没有显著差异。最后用工作记忆的控制性注意理论对研究结果进行了讨论。