Susceptibility to postidentification feedback is affected by source credibility

How much a person is affected by postidentification feedback is dependent on the credibility of the person giving the feedback. Seven hundred and ninety participants across three experiments viewed a crime video, made judgments from a line‐up, were provided with co‐witness and/or outcome feedback (from police officers [high credibility] or children [low credibility]), and answered testimony‐relevant questions (e.g. How good a view did you get of the person in the video?). The aim was to find out how high versus low credibility co‐witness feedback affects a witness' retrospective judgments (Experiment 1) as well as estimations of these co‐witnesses' judgments (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 showed that the feedback effect was only observed when the co‐witness responses were attributed to a high credibility source. Experiment 2 showed that high credibility co‐witnesses were estimated to score higher on the testimony‐relevant questions as compared to low credibility co‐witnesses. Experiment 3 showed that outcome feedback (e.g. ‘you identified the suspect’) produces stronger effects on testimony‐relevant questions than co‐witness feedback. The implications of these findings are that when postidentification feedback is present, it is important to determine the source of this feedback. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When Eyewitnesses Talk

ABSTRACT— When two people witness an event, they often discuss it. Because memory is not perfect, sometimes this discussion includes errors. One person's errors can become part of another person's account, and this proliferation of error can lead to miscarriages of justice. In this article, we describe the social and cognitive processes involved. Research shows how people combine information about their own memory with other people's memories based on factors such as confidence, perceived expertise, and the social cost of disagreeing with other people. We describe the implications of this research for eyewitness testimony.     

Functions for traditional and multilevel approaches to signal detection theory

In the present article, functions written in the freeware R are presented that calculate several measures from traditional signal detection theory for each individual in a sample, along with summary statistics for the sample. Bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrap confidence intervals are also produced. Arguments are made for using an alternative approach—multilevel generalized linear models—and a function is presented for it. These functions are part of the R package sdtalt, which is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network. Recent data from memory recognition studies are used to illustrate these functions.     

Play enhances visual form perception in infancy–an active training study

Motor experiences and active exploration during early childhood may affect individual differences in a wide range of perceptual and cognitive abilities. In the current study, we suggest that active exploration of objects facilitates the ability to process object forms and magnitudes, which in turn impacts the development of numerosity perception. We tested our hypothesis by conducting a preregistered active exploration intervention with 59 8‐month‐old infants. The minimal intervention consisted of actively playing with and exploring blocks once a day for 8 weeks. In order to control for possible training effects on attention, we used book reading as a control condition. Pre‐ and post‐test assessments using eye‐tracking showed that block play improved visual form perception, where infants became better at detecting a deviant shape. Furthermore, using three control tasks, we showed that the intervention specifically improved infants' ability to process visual forms and the effect could not be explained by a domain general improvement in attention or visual perception. We found that the intervention did not improve numerosity perception and suggest that because of the sequential nature of our hypothesis, a longer time frame might be needed to see improvements in this ability. Our findings indicate that if infants are given more opportunities for play and exploration, it will have positive effects on their visual form perception, which in turn could help their understanding of geometrical concepts.     

Narratives of Support and Resistance: A Political Psychological Analysis of the Implementation of UNSCR 1325 in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article presents an analysis of norm change, and, more specifically, how gender equality norms are negotiated in Bosnia. The immediate reason for asking these questions is the adoption of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 in 2000 on women, peace, and security and the massive global effort to change gender equality norms in order to improve peacebuilding efforts. We argue that implementation of the United Nations' Women Peace and Security (WPS) agenda rests on localization of gender equality norms. Our contention is that this process takes place on different levels. Based on a series focus‐group interviews in Bosnia we offer depth to what a localization process can look like. We discuss what this means for the WPS agenda in Bosnia, for norm change, and for political psychological scholarship.     

The co-witness misinformation effect: Memory blends or memory compliance?

For 30 years hundreds of researchers have shown participants videos and slide-sequences of events, presented the participants with misleading information, and found that this misinformation distorted their memories. The purpose of this study was to establish whether those misled participants are reporting a memory blend of the two sources of information or whether they are simply complying with the post-event information. A total of 92 participants were shown one of two versions of six different videos, which included some subtle differences. After having watched each video individually, participants were paired with someone who had seen the other version and they discussed the clips together. They then individually answered questions about the videos, and their responses showed that some of the distorted memories were blends of the original information and the post-event information. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Examining mixed unknown distributions (mud)

A function, written in R, for testing whether the distribution of responses in one condition can be considered a combination of the distributions from two other conditions is described. The important aspect of this function is that it does not make any assumptions about the shape of the distributions. It is based o nthe Kolmogorov-Smirnov D statistic. The function also allows the user to test more specific and, hence, more statistically powerful hypotheses. One hypothesis, that the mixture does not capture the middle third of the distribution, is included as a built-in option, and code is provided so that other alternatives can easily be run. A power analysis reveals that the function is most likely to detect a difference between the combined conditions' distribution and the other distribution when the center of the other distribution is near the midpoint of the two original distributions. Critical p values are estimated for each set of distributions, using bootstrap methods. An example from human memory research, exploring the blending hypothesis of the misinformation effect, is used for illustrative purposes.     

A study on the mediating role of disgust with meat in the prediction of red meat consumption among young females

• Recent studies have examined young females' negative sentiments toward meat in the western world. This paper explored the role of various factors that may trigger disgust with meat and hence avoidance of red meat among young females. These include negative body esteem, disgust motivations related to ideational concerns, sensory‐affective concerns, and anticipation of negative consequences relating to the consumption of meat. The investigation showed that all of these factors were positively related to disgust with meat, and disgust with meat influenced red meat consumption negatively.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Universal parental support for parents of adolescents: Who wants municipality‐based parental support and in what form?

Parenting a child through adolescence can be a challenge for many parents; adolescents go through notable developmental, physical, and psychological changes that affect the relationships around them. Most parents find parental support during these years important. These young people's relationships with their parents are important to their mental health, but although parental support is universally available to parents of younger children, it is still scarce for parents of adolescents. The aim of this study was to explore what factors are associated with interest in universal parental support through telephone interviews and questionnaires with 223 parents of 13‐ to 17‐year‐olds. Parents’ interest in parental support was linked to their own anxious mood, their lower perceived parental capacity, their perception of the child as having psychiatric problems, the parents’ perception of their adolescents’ openness about things and their perception of the adolescent's overall difficulties in daily life due to psychiatric symptoms. The results show that lighter forms of support such as lectures or seminars were more appealing to parents with higher social status. Offering community‐based individual counseling and leader‐led parent training groups therefore has the potential to reach parents with difficulties more equally, while offering support only through lectures and seminars could increase the inequality between parents in different social situations.