Estimating the validity of the guilty knowledge test from simulated experiments: the external validity of mock crime studies

This experiment was designed to examine the external validity of the standard mock-crime procedure used extensively to evaluate the validity of polygraph tests. The authors manipulated the type of mock-crime procedure (standard vs. a more realistic version) and the time of test (immediate vs. delayed) and examined their effects on the validity of the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT) and the recall rate of the relevant items. The results indicated that only the type of mock-crime affected the 2 outcome variables. The realistic procedure was associated with a lower recall rate and weaker detection efficiency than the standard procedure. However, these effects were mediated by the type of GKT questions used. Practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Effects of Movement Improvisation and Aerobic Dancing on Motor Creativity and Divergent Thinking

Creativity is considered to be an embodied concept, where internal psychological and external behavioral processes are intertwined. Creativity enhancement programs often target the cognitive side of this bi‐dimensionality leaving the impact of motor interventions underexplored. To address this gap in the literature, we tested the effectiveness of two motor programs on motor creativity and divergent thinking (verbal and figural). A total of 92 college students (M_age = 25.36, SD = 2.66) were randomly allocated to a movement improvisation, an aerobic dance, or a control condition. Participants in both motor programs took part in ten 30‐minute classes twice a week over a period of 5 weeks. The findings revealed a significant effect of the motor programs on motor fluency and flexibility. Movement improvisation yielded the greatest effects on those variables, followed by aerobic dancing and control condition. Movement improvisation also impacted significantly more figural originality than the control condition. However, the effects were limited to the motor domain and failed to transfer into other divergent thinking variables. The findings highlighted the contribution of movement programs to creative potential development, and the imperative role of a non‐judgmental environment, where individuals are free to move spontaneously.     

Rational Inference of Beliefs and Desires From Emotional Expressions

We investigated people's ability to infer others’ mental states from their emotional reactions, manipulating whether agents wanted, expected, and caused an outcome. Participants recovered agents’ desires throughout. When the agent observed, but did not cause the outcome, participants’ ability to recover the agent's beliefs depended on the evidence they got (i.e., her reaction only to the actual outcome or to both the expected and actual outcomes; Experiments 1 and 2). When the agent caused the event, participants’ judgments also depended on the probability of the action (Experiments 3 and 4); when actions were improbable given the mental states, people failed to recover the agent's beliefs even when they saw her react to both the anticipated and actual outcomes. A Bayesian model captured human performance throughout (rs ≥ .95), consistent with the proposal that people rationally integrate information about others’ actions and emotional reactions to infer their unobservable mental states.     

Sensitivity to the Sampling Process Emerges From the Principle of Efficiency

Humans can seamlessly infer other people's preferences, based on what they do. Broadly, two types of accounts have been proposed to explain different aspects of this ability. The first account focuses on spatial information: Agents' efficient navigation in space reveals what they like. The second account focuses on statistical information: Uncommon choices reveal stronger preferences. Together, these two lines of research suggest that we have two distinct capacities for inferring preferences. Here we propose that this is not the case, and that spatial‐based and statistical‐based preference inferences can be explained by the assumption that agents are efficient alone. We show that people's sensitivity to spatial and statistical information when they infer preferences is best predicted by a computational model of the principle of efficiency, and that this model outperforms dual‐system models, even when the latter are fit to participant judgments. Our results suggest that, as adults, a unified understanding of agency under the principle of efficiency underlies our ability to infer preferences.     

Indirect evidence and the poverty of the stimulus: the case of anaphoric one

It is widely held that children's linguistic input underdetermines the correct grammar, and that language learning must therefore be guided by innate linguistic constraints. Here, we show that a Bayesian model can learn a standard poverty-of-stimulus example, anaphoric one , from realistic input by relying on indirect evidence, without a linguistic constraint assumed to be necessary. Our demonstration does, however, assume other linguistic knowledge; thus, we reduce the problem of learning anaphoric one to that of learning this other knowledge. We discuss whether this other knowledge may itself be acquired without linguistic constraints.     

The effects of an interactive cognitive task (ICT) in suppressing fatigue symptoms in driving

BackgroundProlonged drive on inter-urban, monotonous roads has the potential of causing a decrease in the general level of arousal leading to a state of underload and fatigue. This study examines the effectiveness of an interactive cognitive task (ICT) in delaying fatigue symptoms induced by underload conditions. The ICT is an auditory-motor task which is based on the basic principles of a knowledge game known as “Trivia”.MethodTen participants took part in two experimental sessions of 140 min drive in a fixed-base simulator. In a within-subject counterbalanced design one session consisted of driving without ICT and the other included ICT operation. In the ICT session the game was activated after 60 min of driving.ResultsWhen activated, the ICT increased physiological indicators of arousal, increased subjective feelings of alertness, and improved driving performance. The physiological and driving performance measures revealed that the ICT activation had an immediate but localized influence on arousal. Post-drive questionnaires showed that in the ICT condition, the participants’ level of motivation increased and their feelings of sleepiness decreased.ConclusionsEngaging in cognitive tasks can counteract the effects of underload and increases driving safety as long as they are active. However, additional research is necessary to determine the effects of long term use.     

Gender Comparisons in Mother-Child Emotion Talk: A Meta-Analysis

Sex Roles - Mother-child emotion talk is one of the main ways through which children learn about emotions. Some previous research studies have suggested that mother-child emotion talk is a gendered...