Developmental progression in the confidence‐accuracy relationship in event recall: insights provided by a calibration perspective

The development of discrimination and realism was investigated in the event recall of 156 8‐year‐olds, 133 10‐year‐olds and 146 adults, using categorical confidence judgements. Target questions were either a mixture of misleading and unbiased (‘non‐bombardment’), or restricted to one question format (‘bombardment’). The confidence judgements of all age groups discriminated between incorrect and correct responses to unbiased questions, but with misleading questions, this ability was undermined in the children, particularly when ‘bombarded’. Calibration‐style analyses of unbiased questions revealed a systematic confidence–accuracy association across age and question mix for unbiased questions. For misleading questions, however, the absence of a drop in performance from intermediate to low confidence at all ages suggested relative underconfidence at the lowest confidence level. At high confidence levels, there was evidence of realistic congruence between confidence and performance in adults, but this was not the case in the 10‐year‐olds when bombarded with misleading questions, or in the 8‐year‐olds, regardless of bombardment. Exploratory analyses of question difficulty revealed poor calibration across ages for difficult unbiased questions, and in the 8‐year‐olds, even for easy unbiased questions when intermixed with misleading questions. Bombardment with difficult misleading questions further undermined children's calibration. Implications for the role of social and cognitive factors in the development of metacognitive monitoring are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Children's event reports: Factors affecting responses to repeated questions in vignette scenarios and event recall interviews

When adults repeat questions, children often give inconsistent answers. This study aimed to test the claim that these inconsistencies occur because children infer that their first answer was unsatisfactory, and that the adult expects them to change their answer. Children aged 4, 6, and 8 years (N= 134) were asked about vignettes in which an adult repeated a question, with manipulation of the adult's overt dissatisfaction (high vs. low pressure) and knowledge about the information sought. On a separate occasion, the children were given an unrelated event recall interview containing repeated questions. All age groups showed sensitivity to adult dissatisfaction, interpreting question repetition as an implicit request for answer change more frequently in the high than in the low‐pressure vignettes. Overall, however, these ‘change‐expected’ interpretations were least frequent in the younger children, who were the most prone to shifting. Also there was no evidence that these interpretations were associated with more frequent shifting in the recall interview. The results do not provide clear support for a simple conversational inference account of shifting, especially in younger children.     

Book reviews

SCHIFF, W. AND FOULKE, E. (Eds.). Tactual Perception: A Source Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982. Pp. 464. ISBN 0 521 24095 6. £25.00.

GILHOOLY, K. J. Thinking: Directed, Undirected and Creative. London: Academic Press. 1982. Pp. 178. ISBN 0 12283482 8. £5.50.

DEUTSCH, D. The Psychology of Music. New York: Academic Press, 1982. Pp. 542. $49.50. ISBN 0 12 2135601.

SHEPARD, R. N. and COOPER, L. A. Mental Irnuges and Their Transfomutions. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. 1982. Pp. 364. ISBN 0 262 19200 4. £17.50

WADE, N. The Art and Science of Visual Illusions. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1982. Pp. 293. E1y. 95 ISBN 0 7100 0868 6.

REED, S.K. Cognition: Theory and Applications. Montery, Calif.; BrooksiCole Publishing Co. 1982. Pp. 394. $19.95 ISBN 0 8185 0462 5.

CAELLI, T. Visual Perception Theonl and Practice. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1981Pp. 197. £8.50 (paper) ISBN 0 08 oz4419/0~4420.

A. M. UTTLEY. Infomation Transmission in the Nervous System. London: Academic Press. 1979.Pp. 111 £7.50 ISBN 0 12709750 3.

ANDERSON, J. R. (Ed.). Cognitive Skills and their-Acquisition. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum. 1981. Pp. 386. 00.00. ISBN 0 89859 093 0.

KUCZAC, S. (Ed.). Language Development. Volume I: Syntux and Semantics. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. 1982. Pp. 492. ISBN 0 89859 1OO 7.

DEUTSCH, W. (Ed.). The Child's Construction of Languuge. London: Academic Press. 1981. Pp. 393. ISBN 0 12213580 6. £19.20.

BAKER, C. L. and MCCARTHY, J. J. (Eds). The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1981. Pp. 358. ISBN 0 262 02159 5. £19.25.

DIXON, N. F. Preconscious Processing Chichester: Wiley 1981. Pp. 313. ISBN 0 471 27982 X. £14.95.     

The effect of product type on value linkages in the means‐end chain: implications for theory and method

Means‐end chain (MEC) theory proposes that consumer motivation can only be understood in terms of the hierarchical linkages between attributes, consequences and values. Other researchers have suggested a much more immediate impact of values on motivation. Seeking to explain these conflicting views, this research suggests and empirically tests the proposition that the role of values in consumer motivation differs by product type and also tests that the linkages are not affected by individual differences in the need for cognition. A sample of 191 consumers indicated their motivation to consume utilitarian and non‐utilitarian products using an adapted association pattern matrix technique. Responses were analysed using mixed‐design ANOVAs with planned comparisons. Results indicate significant differences related to product type in the role of values in consumer motivation. Limitations, implications for MEC theory and future research are discussed. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications Ltd.     

Helping Callers to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Who Are at Imminent Risk of Suicide: The Importance of Active Engagement,Active Rescue,and Collaboration Between Crisis and Emergency Services

In 2012, the SAMHSA‐funded National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (Lifeline) completed implementation of the first national Policy for Helping Callers at Imminent Risk of Suicide across its network of crisis centers. The policy sought to: (1) provide a clear definition of imminent risk; (2) reflect the state of evidence, field experience, and promising practices related to reducing imminent risk through hotline interventions; and (3) provide a uniform policy and approach that could be applied across crisis center settings. The resulting policy established three essential principles: active engagement, active rescue, and collaboration between crisis and emergency services. A sample of the research and rationale that underpinned the development of this policy is provided here. In addition, policy implementation, challenges and successes, and implications for interventions to help Lifeline callers at imminent risk of suicide are detailed.     

Nonidentity,Negative Experience and the Pre‐Reflective Cogito

This paper contributes to the current academic debate on the nature of embodied, intentional consciousness, specifically the attempt to inaugurate a rapprochement between phenomenological existentialism and critical theory. This is accomplished through a critical comparison of the concepts of negative experience and nonidentity in Theodor Adorno's negative dialectics and Jean‐Paul Sartre's early phenomenology. By comparing how each engages with Hegel, I suggest that Sartre offers a broad, anthropological account of negative experience and nonidentity helpful to critical theorists but that there remains a critical deficit which Adorno's more restricted—and political—sense of nonidentity remedies. Sartre's anthropological portrayal of ‘persistent negation’ worries Adorno but I suggest that it can be understood as a pragmatic presupposition for problem‐solving rather than as a transcendental condition of experience.     

Perceived trustworthiness of faces drives trust behaviour in children

Facial appearances can powerfully influence adults' trust behaviour, despite limited evidence that these cues constitute honest signals of trustworthiness. It is not clear, however, whether the same is also true for children. The current study investigated whether, like adults, 5‐year‐olds and 10‐year‐olds are more likely to place their trust in partners that look trustworthy than those that look untrustworthy. A second, closely related question was whether children also explicitly value the information from face cues when making trust decisions. We investigated these questions using Token Quest: an economic trust game that gave participants the opportunity to make investments with a series of partners who might (or might not) repay their trust with large returns. These interactions occurred under different conditions, including one in which participants were shown the face of each partner and another in which they could ‘purchase’ access to faces with a portion of their investment capital. Results indicated that, like adults, 10‐year‐old children selectively placed their trust in those partners they perceived as looking trustworthy and many were willing to ‘pay’ to purchase access to these face cues during the trust game. We observed a similar profile of trust behaviour in 5‐year‐olds, with no significant group difference in the impact of face cues on behaviour across the three age groups. Together, these findings indicate that the influence of face cues on trust behaviour emerges early, and highlight a capacity for sophisticated social cognition in young children.     

MENTAL WELL‐BEING,NEUROSCIENCE, AND RELIGION: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE SCIENCE AND RELIGION FORUM

The Science and Religion Forum (SRF) seeks to be the premier organization promoting the discussion between science and religion in the United Kingdom. Each year, the SRF holds a conference tackling a topical issue, and in 2017 focused on mental well‐being, neuroscience, and religion. This article introduces the thematic section which is made up of five papers from that conference. As a new field within the science and religion academy, these articles are both wide‐ranging and detailed. This introductory article locates this section within the academy and argues that its place is not only valid but vital, given the increase of mental health problems and the need for medicine, church, and society to answer this problem and present ways to help.