The perception of /r/ and /l/ in syllable-initial and syllable-final position

American English liquids /r/ and /l/ have been considered intermediate between stop consonants and vowels acoustically, articulatorily, phonologically, and perceptually. Cutting (1947a) found position-dependent ear advantages for liquids in a dichotic listening task: syllable-initial liquids produced significant right ear advantages, while syllable-final liquids produced no reliable ear advantages. The present study employed identification and discrimination tasks to determine whether /r/and /l/ are perceived differently depending on syllable position when perception is tested by a different method. Fifteen subjects listened to two synthetically produced speech series—/li/ to /ri/ and /il/ to /ir/—in which stepwise variations of the third formant cued the difference in consonant identity. The results indicated that: (1) perception did not differ between syllable positions (in contrast to the dichotic listening results), (2) liquids in both syllable positions were perceived categorically, and (3) discrimination of a nonspeech control series did not account for the perception of the speech sounds.     

NEURAL EXCITATION AND SUSTAINED SINUSOIDAL ACOUSTIC STIMULATION

On the basis of equal-loudness contours expressed in terms of volume velocity of cochlear fluid, a theory is developed for equal loudness at high levels of stimulation. At these levels the theory assumes number of active nerve fibers to be proportional to volume velocity of cochlear fluid, and firing rate of fibers to be limited by the refractory period. Analysis of a set of threshold data seemed to confirm these assumptions, and was in disagreement with the notion of power summation at the absolute threshold.     

Event plausibility does not determine children's false memories

In this paper we ask how the plausibility of an event affects the likelihood that children will develop a false memory for it. Over three interviews 6-year-olds and 10-year-olds were shown two true photos and two false photos—a plausible and less plausible event—and reported what they could remember about those events. Children also rated their confidence that the events happened, and how much they could remember about the events. By the final interview, within each age group, there were no differences in children's confidence ratings for the two false events. In addition, within each age group, the rate of false memories was the same for each event; across age groups, younger children developed more false memories than older children.     

Source confusion influences the effectiveness of the autobiographical IAT

We examined the claim that the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) can detect concealed memories. Subjects read action statements (e.g., “break the toothpick”) and either performed the action or completed math problems. They then imagined some of these actions and some new actions. Two weeks later, the subjects completed a memory test and then an aIAT in which they categorized true and false statements (e.g., “I am in front of the computer”) and whether they had or had not performed actions from Session 1. For half of the subjects, the nonperformed statements were actions that they saw but did not perform; for the remaining subjects, these statements were actions that they saw and imagined but did not perform. Our results showed that the aIAT can distinguish between true autobiographical events (performed actions) and false events (nonperformed actions), but that it is less effective, the more that subjects remember performing actions that they did not really perform. Thus, the diagnosticity of the aIAT may be limited.     

Investigating the variability of memory distortion for an analogue trauma

In this paper, we examine whether source monitoring (SM) errors might be one mechanism that accounts for traumatic memory distortion. Participants watched a traumatic film with some critical (crux) and non-critical (non-crux) scenes removed. Twenty-four hours later, they completed a memory test. To increase the likelihood participants would notice the film's gaps, we inserted visual static for the length of each missing scene. We then added manipulations designed to affect people's SM behaviour. To encourage systematic SM, before watching the film, we warned half the participants that we had removed some scenes. To encourage heuristic SM some participants also saw labels describing the missing scenes. Adding static highlighting, the missing scenes did not affect false recognition of those missing scenes. However, a warning decreased, while labels increased, participants' false recognition rates. We conclude that manipulations designed to affect SM behaviour also affect the degree of memory distortion in our paradigm.     

Look there! The effect of perspective,attention, and instructions on how people understand recorded police encounters

Now more than ever, body cameras, surveillance footage, dash‐cam footage, and bystanders with phones enable people to see for themselves officer and civilian behavior and determine the justifiability of officers' actions. This paper examines whether the camera perspective from which people watch police encounters influences the conclusions that people draw. Consistent with recent findings showing that body camera footage leads people to perceive officers' actions as less intentional (Turner, Caruso, Dilich, & Roese, 2019), our first study demonstrates that participants who watched body‐camera footage, compared with people who watched surveillance footage of the same encounter, perceived the officer's behavior as being more justified and made more lenient punishment decisions. In our second study, only one of the four police encounters that participants watched led participants to perceive the officer more favorably when they watched body‐camera footage compared with bystander footage. Our results demonstrate that some body‐camera footage—specifically videos that capture an officer using his or her body to apprehend a civilian—can lead to biased perceptions of police encounters that benefit the officer. Our findings suggest that this occurs because: (i) in body‐camera footage, the civilian is the more easily visible figure, thus making less salient the officer's role in the encounter; and (ii) the body camera—attached to an officer's uniform—is unable to adequately capture certain use of force movements that are important in determining an officer's intent.     

Correcting the misinformation effect

Decades of memory research have demonstrated a dire need for effective methods of correcting misinformation, particularly once it has been encoded. However, much of this research has exposed participants to misinformation first then provided a correction, and used indirect memory questions. Using a misinformation effect (ME) paradigm, in which participants' memory is distorted by misleading postevent information, we examine whether corrections can combat memory distortion on direct memory tests. Experiment 1 showed corrections greatly reduced the ME. Experiment 2 replicated this finding with a longer lag time (3 min) between exposure to misinformation and its correction, except for participants that read only the misinformation and its correction. Experiment 3 ruled out the possibility that participants reported the most recent information they read, suggesting participants evaluate the correction's veracity. Finally, a meta‐analysis of the three experiments reiterates that corrections may be effective in combating misinformation.