Pictures and repeated exposure increase perceived accuracy of news headlines

Fake news, deliberately inaccurate and often biased information that is presented as accurate reporting, is perceived as a serious threat. Recent research on fake news has documented a high general susceptibility to the phenomenon and has focused on investigating potential explanatory factors. The present study examined how features of news headlines affected their perceived accuracy. Across four experiments (total N = 659), we examined the effects of pictures, perceptual clarity, and repeated exposure on the perceived accuracy of news headlines. In all experiments, participants received a set of true and false news headlines and rated their accuracy. The presence of pictures and repeated exposure increased perceived accuracy, whereas manipulations of perceptual clarity did not show the predicted effects. The effects of pictures and repeated exposure were similar for true and false headlines. These results demonstrate that accompanying pictures and repeated exposure can affect evaluations of truth of news headlines.     

The role of competency to stand trial in mental health courts

Concerns have been raised in the literature about the competency to stand trial and competency to make treatment decisions of defendants referred to mental health courts. However, there is little information reported about the evaluation and prevalence of incompetence, characteristics of incompetent mental health court defendants, and disposition of mentally ill defendants too disturbed to be diverted from the criminal justice system through mental health courts. This study reports on the 85 potential mental health court defendants referred for trial competency evaluations during the first three years of operation of the Akron Ohio Mental Health Court. Of the 80 defendants who could be located for evaluation, 77.5% were found incompetent, and 53% of the incompetent defendants were not restored to competence even after an average of 49 days of treatment in a state psychiatric hospital. The implications of these findings in terms of the diversion potential of mental health courts for the severely mentally ill are discussed.     

The role of similarity in deductive categorical inference

The category inclusion rule specifies that categories inherit the properties of their superordinates. For example, given thatall metals are pentavalent, it can be concluded thatall iron is pentavalent. Sloman (1998) showed that people do not fully endorse conclusions that follow from the category inclusion rule. He claims that people rely on the similarity between the premise and the conclusion categories (metals andiron), rather than applying the category inclusion rule. By allowing reasoners to rate their certainty for category relations (e.g.,iron is metal), as well as for conclusions, the present study shows that similarity has only an indirect effect on the certainty of conclusions: Reasoners are more certain that similar categories have a category inclusion relation, and this in turn affects the certainty of conclusions based on this relation.     

Synchronizing programs using Macromedia Director plug-ins: An example from the field of developmental psychopathology

Synchronizing the display of a stimulus with physiological recording or subjects’ behavioral responses is crucial for acquiring valid measures of performance. This article describes a technique for integrating the presentation of stimuli, behavior reports, and physiological data employing Macromedia Director and a standard biometric program using an example from the field of developmental psychopathology. Our experience has been that the use of this technique is effective in creating complex protocols for research. Although the temporal accuracy available from this particular method is adequate for some experiments, it is not suited for investigations requiring single millisecond accuracy. Considerations and suggestions for utilizing this and similar techniques for integrating data collection and stimuli presentation are discussed.     

Status and solidarity in social comparison: agentic and communal values and vertical and horizontal directions

Social comparison involves positioning the self relative to others on a vertical or status dimension (ranging from upward to downward comparisons) and a horizontal or solidarity dimension (ranging from contrastive to connective comparisons). Across 3 studies in which 389 undergraduates recorded everyday social comparisons (n = 4,417), downward and connective comparisons were rated as more helpful and mood enhancing than upward and contrastive comparisons. The effects of horizontal comparisons were greater for people for whom solidarity was an important value; however, the effects of vertical comparisons were not greater for people who valued status. The roles of the comparison target, topic, and situation were also explored; for example, noticing undesirable features of the target enhanced status but undermined solidarity.     

The Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms Distress Index: A pragmatic exploration of general factors to enhance a multidimensional scale

Objective: The authors attempted to develop and validate a general distress index for a multidimensional psychological symptom/outcome measure used in over 300 college counseling centers with more than 100,000 cases annually: the Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms (CCAPS). Method: Four models were compared for fit indices (n = 19,247): the existing first-order factor model (without a general factor), a second-order factor model, a bifactor model, and a single factor or “total score” model. In separate clinical and non-clinical samples, concurrent and divergent validity were examined using several well-established measures of psychological symptoms, as well as two-week test–retest and treatment utilization data. Results: Second-order and bifactor models which captured a single “distress” factor both exhibited good fit to the data relative to the baseline and “total score” model. Validity data indicated that factors adequately measured meaningful clinical onstructs. Conclusion: Both the bifactor and second-order models indicated the presence of a “distress index” comprised items across many of the CCAPS subscales. This distress scale has strong applicability for benchmarking the overall severity and complexity of patients at different centers, and can be used to help identify colleges and universities with areas of clinical strength, which can be studied to improve the field. Clinically, the distress index offers a parsimonious and efficient method for clinicians to monitor patients’ progress through treatment.     

Hyperactivity in boys with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): the association between deficient behavioral inhibition, attentional processes, and objectively measured activity

Contemporary models of ADHD hypothesize that hyperactivity reflects a byproduct of inhibition deficits. The current study investigated the relationship between children's motor activity and behavioral inhibition by experimentally manipulating demands placed on the limited-resource inhibition system. Twenty-two boys (ADHD = 11, TD = 11) between the ages of 8 and 12 years completed a conventional stop-signal task, two choice-task variants (no-tone, ignore-tone), and control tasks while their motor activity was measured objectively by actigraphs placed on their nondominant wrist and ankles. All children exhibited significantly higher activity rates under all three experimental tasks relative to control conditions, and children with ADHD moved significantly more than typically developing children across conditions. No differences in activity level were observed between the inhibition and noninhibition experimental tasks for either group, indicating that activity level was primarily associated with basic attentional rather than behavioral inhibition processes.     

Dopaminergic modulation of incentive motivation in adolescence: age-related changes in signaling, individual differences, and implications for the development of self-regulation

Behavioral activation that is associated with incentive-reward motivation increases in adolescence relative to childhood and adulthood. This quadratic developmental pattern is generally supported by behavioral and experimental neuroscience findings. It is suggested that a focus on changes in dopamine neurotransmission is informative in understanding the mechanism for this adolescent increase in reward-related behavioral activation and subsequent decline into adulthood. Evidence is presented to indicate that incentive-reward motivation is modulated by mesoaccumbens dopamine, and that it increases in adolescence before declining into adulthood because of normative developmental changes at the molecular level. Potential mechanisms of variation in functional mesoaccumbens dopamine transmission are discussed with a focus on the interplay between tonic and phasic modes of dopamine transmission in modulating both general incentive-motivational biases and the efficacy of reward learning during exposure to novel reward experiences. Interactions between individual difference factors and these age-related trends are discussed.