The usual and the unusual suspects: level of suspicion and counter-interrogation tactics

The present study investigated guilty mock-suspects' counter-interrogation tactics with respect to the disclosure of possibly self-incriminating information, specifically, to what extent the disclosure of this information was moderated by (1) the suspects' criminal experience (naïve versus experienced) and (2) the degree of suspicion directed towards the suspects (low versus high). We found that experienced (versus naïve) suspects volunteered less self-incriminating information in an initial free recall phase. In a similar vein, when asked crime-specific questions, naïve (versus experienced) suspects admitted having committed more actions fitting with the crime under investigation. Furthermore, experienced suspects' willingness to report information was not affected by the degree of suspicion, whereas naïve suspects in a high-suspicion (versus low-suspicion) condition were more willing to report information. The results were discussed in the light of the psychology of guilt, the Strategic Use of Evidence technique for detecting deception, and the (over)use of naïve suspects as mock-suspects in psycho-legal research. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonautomated Pre-Performance Routine in Tennis: An Intervention Study

The effect of a nonautomated pre-performance routine (PPR) on performance in a high-pressure situation was investigated. Twenty-nine tennis players served in a low- and high-pressure condition in a pre- and posttest design. The intervention group learned a nonautomated PPR for 4 weeks. Increases in subjective but not objective (i.e., cortisol) levels of stress were detected in the high-pressure conditions. The intervention group showed a significant decrease in performance in the high-pressure condition in the pretest (p =.005) but not posttest (p =.161). Using a nonautomated PPR may benefit athletes who experience a drop in performance in high-pressure situations.     

Auditory habituation in the fetus and neonate: an fMEG study

Habituation – the most basic form of learning – is used to evaluate central nervous system (CNS) maturation and to detect abnormalities in fetal brain development. In the current study, habituation, stimulus specificity and dishabituation of auditory evoked responses were measured in fetuses and newborns using fetal magnetoencephalography (fMEG). An auditory habituation paradigm consisting of 100 trains of five 500 Hz tones, one 750 Hz tone (dishabituator) and two more 500 Hz tones, respectively, were presented to 41 fetuses (gestational age 30–39 weeks) and 22 newborns or babies (age 6–89 days). A response decrement between the first and fifth tones (habituation), an increment between the fifth tone and the dishabituator (stimulus specificity) and an increment between the fifth (last tone before the dishabituator) and seventh tones (first tone after the dishabituator) (dishabituation) were expected. Fetuses showed weak responses to the first tone. However, a significant response decrement between the second and fifth tones (habituation) and a significant increment between the fifth tone and the dishabituator (stimulus specificity) were found. No significant difference was found for dishabituation nor was a developmental trend found at the group level. From the neonatal data, significant values for stimulus specificity were found. Sensory fatigue or adaptation was ruled out as a reason for the response decrement due to the strong reactions to the dishabituator. Taken together, the current study used fMEG to directly show fetal habituation and provides evidence of fetal learning in the last trimester of pregnancy.     

How children with facial differences are perceived by non-affected children and adolescents: Perceiver effects on stereotypical attitudes

Children with a facial difference are presumed to be at risk of social stigmatization. The purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to assess the effect of facial differences on social perceptions by unaffected children and adolescents; and (2) to identify perceiver characteristics that predict stereotypical attitudes toward facial differences. Participants were 344 non-affected children and adolescents, ages 8–17 years. Participants rated digitally altered images of 12 children depicted either with or without a facial difference. Results show that participants attributed less favorable characteristics to children with a facial difference than to those without. Moreover, participants reported less willingness to interact with or befriend a child with a facial difference. Significant predictors of low discriminative attitudes were older participant age and previous contact with someone with a facial difference. Our data call attention to the need for public education programs targeted at reducing negative attitudes toward facial differences.     

The role of temporal delay and repeated prospective memory cue exposure on the deactivation of completed intentions

Previous studies have shown that completed prospective memory (PM) intentions entail aftereffects in terms of ongoing-task-performance decrements in trials containing repeated PM cues which previously served as PM cues triggering the intended action. Previous research reported that PM aftereffects decrease over time, thus revealing a specific time course of PM aftereffects. In the present study, we tested two accounts for this pattern, assuming either that the decline of aftereffects is related to the temporal distance to PM task completion or may be a result of the repeated exposure of repeated PM cues in the ongoing task. In three experiments, we manipulated both the temporal distance to PM task completion and the frequency of repeated PM cues and demonstrated that aftereffects of completed intentions declined with repeated exposure of formerly relevant PM cues. In addition, effects of repeated exposure were not only limited to the repetition of specific PM-cue exemplars but also generalized to other semantically related PM cues within the PM-cue category. Together, findings show that decreased aftereffects of completed intentions are not related to the temporal duration of the subsequent test block, but crucially depend on the repeated exposure of the previously relevant PM cues.     

Prepartum autobiographical memory specificity predicts post-traumatic stress symptoms following complicated pregnancy

Prior research has shown that reduced autobiographical memory specificity predicts an increase in post-traumatic stress severity in traumatised individuals. Studies have also demonstrated that reduced memory specificity predicts later symptoms of depression after pregnancy-related life stress. So far, no reported studies have tested the predictive value of memory specificity at the onset of a potentially traumatic situation. Therefore the aim of the present study was to investigate whether prenatal memory specificity would predict post-traumatic stress after complicated pregnancy. The results demonstrate that women who retrieved fewer specific memories with a pregnancy-related content to positive cues during pregnancy (i.e., directly after hospitalisation) reported more post-traumatic stress 6 weeks after giving birth. This relationship remained significant after controlling for variables that were related to both baseline autobiographical memory specificity and later post-traumatic stress. A similar pattern was found for depression symptomatology, even when somatic symptoms were excluded from the analyses. Taken together, these data suggest that the relationship of memory specificity with later depression can be generalised to post-traumatic stress symptoms.     

Think globally: cross-linguistic variation in electrophysiological activity during sentence comprehension

This paper demonstrates systematic cross-linguistic differences in the electrophysiological correlates of conflicts between form and meaning (“semantic reversal anomalies”). These engender P600 effects in English and Dutch (e.g. [Kolk et al., 2003] and [Kuperberg et al., 2003]), but a biphasic N400 - late positivity pattern in German (Schlesewsky and Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, 2009), and monophasic N400 effects in Turkish (Experiment 1) and Mandarin Chinese (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 revealed that, in Icelandic, semantic reversal anomalies show the English pattern with verbs requiring a position-based identification of argument roles, but the German pattern with verbs requiring a case-based identification of argument roles. The overall pattern of results reveals two separate dimensions of cross-linguistic variation: (i) the presence vs. absence of an N400, which we attribute to cross-linguistic differences with regard to the sequence-dependence of the form-to-meaning mapping and (ii) the presence vs. absence of a late positivity, which we interpret as an instance of a categorisation-related late P300, and which is observable when the language under consideration allows for a binary well-formedness categorisation of reversal anomalies. We conclude that, rather than reflecting linguistic domains such as syntax and semantics, the late positivity vs. N400 distinction is better understood in terms of the strategies that serve to optimise the form-to-meaning mapping in a given language.     

Visual information and rubber hand embodiment differentially affect reach-to-grasp actions

During the “rubber hand illusion” (RHI) participants feel touch originating from an artificial hand, which is felt to belong to the own body. The perceived location of the real hand is shifted towards the location of the artificial hand. However, evidence as to whether the RHI is accompanied by alterations of hand action is mixed. We found that the perceived size of one's own hand was affected by the size of the artificial hand that was used to elicit the illusion. Moreover, we tested a possible transfer of the RHI to a reach-to-grasp action. We observed that hand transport (i.e., reach) errors after RHI induction were independent of artificial hand size, showing that the parameter which is important for these reaching errors is the hand's perceived location. Results thus show that the RHI affects not only perceptual, but also action processing. In contrast, grip aperture was affected by artificial hand size independent of the RHI, suggesting that visual information about hand size affects grasping independent of embodiment of the artificial hand. Grip size increased with artificial hand size; this effect is explained by a higher reliance on proprioceptive information during blind reaching after receiving distorted visual information.