Veracity is in the eye of the beholder: A lens model examination of consistency and deception

Research has attempted to explain perceived cues to deception based upon self-report of what participants believe are ‘good’ cues to deception, or self-report of what cues participants say they base their veracity judgements on. However, it is not clear to what extent participants can accurately self-report what influences their decision-making. Using a within-subjects design, 285 participants completed a questionnaire regarding their beliefs about deception before rating a selection of truthful and deceptive statements on a variety of cues. Expert coders also rated the statements for the same cues. Laypeople and expert coders do not conceptualise between-subject consistency in the same way. A lens model showed that whilst perceptions of cues, such as consistency and amount of detail, influence veracity judgements, these perceptions (and overall veracity judgements) are mostly inaccurate. Fundamentally, there seems to be inconsistencies between how deception research examines consistency and how it is understood and used by laypeople.     

Do children with autism use inner speech and visuospatial resources for the service of executive control? Evidence from suppression in dual tasks

Three experiments used dual‐task suppression methodology to study the use of inner speech and visuospatial resources for mediating central executive performance by children with autism (CWA) and group‐matched typically developing (TD) controls. Expt 1 revealed that CWA did not recruit inner speech to facilitate arithmetic task‐switching performance: there was no effect of articulatory suppression (AS) on completion time for CWA compared to the TD group. Expt 2 revealed that suppression of visuospatial resources disrupted the task‐switching performance of both CWA and TD groups. It also confirmed that the task‐switching performance of CWA was significantly slowed by visuospatial compared to AS. Expt 3 showed that CWA also did not employ inner speech, compared to visuospatial resources, for implementing planning movements. Overall, compared to the mixture of representations used by the TD group for problem solving, CWA seemed to use visuospatial working memory resources but not inner speech to service executive control.     

Sensitivity to differences between enjoyment and non‐enjoyment smiles in children with autism spectrum disorder

The sensitivity of male children (5–15 years) with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to the affective state of others was tested using an emotion recognition task. Only children without ASD could reliably differentiate between enjoyment and non‐enjoyment smiles. Results are considered in terms of the social impairments of children with ASD.     

Grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) show a feature-negative effect specific to social learning

Previous laboratory studies on social learning suggest that some animals can learn more readily if they first observe a conspecific demonstrator perform the task unsuccessfully and so fail to obtain a food reward than if they observe a successful demonstrator that obtains the food. This effect may indicate a difference in how easily animals are able to associate different outcomes with the conspecific or could simply be the result of having food present in only some of the demonstrations. To investigate we tested a scatter-hoarding mammal, the eastern grey squirrel, on its ability to learn to choose between two pots of food after watching a conspecific remove a nut from one of them on every trial. Squirrels that were rewarded for choosing the opposite pot to the conspecific chose correctly more frequently than squirrels rewarded for choosing the same pot (a feature-negative effect). Another group of squirrels was tested on their ability to choose between the two pots when the rewarded option was indicated by a piece of card. This time, squirrels showed no significant difference in their ability to learn to choose the same or the opposite pot. The results add to anecdotal reports that grey squirrels can learn by observing a conspecific and suggest that even when all subjects are provided with demonstrations with the same content, not all learning occurs equally. Prior experience or expectations of the association between a cue (a conspecific) and food influences what can be learned through observation whilst previously unfamiliar cues (the card) can be associated more readily with any outcome.     

Stereotyping starlings are more ‘pessimistic’

Negative affect in humans and animals is known to cause individuals to interpret ambiguous stimuli pessimistically, a phenomenon termed ‘cognitive bias’. Here, we used captive European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) to test the hypothesis that a reduction in environmental conditions, from enriched to non-enriched cages, would engender negative affect, and hence ‘pessimistic’ biases. We also explored whether individual differences in stereotypic behaviour (repetitive somersaulting) predicted ‘pessimism’. Eight birds were trained on a novel conditional discrimination task with differential rewards, in which background shade (light or dark) determined which of two covered dishes contained a food reward. The reward was small when the background was light, but large when the background was dark. We then presented background shades intermediate between those trained to assess the birds’ bias to choose the dish associated with the smaller food reward (a ‘pessimistic’ judgement) when the discriminative stimulus was ambiguous. Contrary to predictions, changes in the level of cage enrichment had no effect on ‘pessimism’. However, changes in the latency to choose and probability of expressing a choice suggested that birds learnt rapidly that trials with ambiguous stimuli were unreinforced. Individual differences in performance of stereotypies did predict ‘pessimism’. Specifically, birds that somersaulted were more likely to choose the dish associated with the smaller food reward in the presence of the most ambiguous discriminative stimulus. We propose that somersaulting is part of a wider suite of behavioural traits indicative of a stress response to captive conditions that is symptomatic of a negative affective state.     

Accuracy and Bias in Perceptions of Spouses' Life‐Sustaining Medical Treatment Preferences1

This research investigated accuracy, projection bias, and base‐rate utilization in spouses' perceptions of end‐stage renal disease patients' preferences for life‐sustaining medical treatment in hypothetical conditions of declining health. Multilevel models revealed that spouses' perceptions were largely biased, determined by their own preferences for the patients' treatment (projection bias) and by typical treatment preferences (base‐rate utilization). Both biases, however, served as indirect routes to a modest degree of accuracy. Moreover, spouses who overestimated patients' preferences for life‐sustaining treatment and who perceived patients' preferences as consistent with their own reported higher levels of marital adjustment than did those who were less biased. Results suggest that spouses' biases in judgments of patients' treatment preferences may promote accuracy and marital adjustment functionally.     

The role of the regular teacher in a whole school approach to guidance counselling in Ireland

A whole school approach to guidance counselling has been promulgated by Irish policy-makers as a model of good practice in the delivery of guidance counselling in the post-primary sector since the 1998 Education Act (DES, 2005a, 2009, 2012). This approach to guidance counselling provision is viewed as a whole school responsibility where schools are expected to collaboratively develop a school guidance plan to support the needs of their students. The role of the regular teacher in a whole school approach to guidance counselling has received very little attention either in the Irish education system or in empirical research. This article will address this deficit through its discussion of a case study carried out in one school in 2012. It will position the findings from the study in the context of the re-allocation of post-primary guidance counselling provision in the national Budget 2012 that has witnessed the substantive erosion of the guidance counselling service in the last two years.     

Changed Responses Under Cross‐examination: The Role of Anxiety and Individual Differences in Child Witnesses

The present study explored whether levels of anxiety, and a range of individual differences measures (age, IQ and suggestibility), could predict performance during cross‐examination questioning. Eighty‐three children (aged 4–11 years) witnessed a staged event before being interviewed (3–6 days later) and cross‐examined (10 months later). Results demonstrated that cross‐examination induced a significant rise in anxiety levels. Further, recall of unchallenged details (based on children's initial testimony, which they reviewed prior to cross‐examination) and anxiety levels were the only significant predictors of cross‐examination performance. Further research is needed to explore the interrelationship between anxiety and other individual difference measures on cross‐examination performance, and to determine how to alleviate the anxiety of child witnesses (to enable them to achieve their best evidence in court). Preparation to ensure children understand the importance of attending to the recording of their original evidence may improve children's resilience under cross‐examination and reduce anxiety levels. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.