That’s the man who did it,or was it a woman? Actor similarity and binding errors in event memory

Mistakes in eyewitness identification frequently occur when incorrect associations are made between a familiar person and the actions of another person. The present research demonstrates that actors do not need to be similar in appearance for such conjunction errors to occur. The actors can, in fact, be very different in appearance, even of different sexes. Participants attempted to remember a series of brief everyday events, each involving an actor performing an action. Increases in actor similarity led to increases in conjunction errors in which participants incorrectly associated a familiar actor with a familiar action that was actually performed by someone else, but conjunction errors frequently occurred even when the familiar actor was of a different sex than the original actor, arguing against the hypothesis that these conjunction errors are due solely to mistaken identity.     

The existential cost of economic insecurity: Threatened financial security undercuts meaning

Financial security (i.e., a person’s sense that they can afford the things they need now and in the foreseeable future) contributes to psychological health and well-being. In the present research, we explored the implications of financial security for perceptions of meaning in life. In Study 1, we found that perceptions of financial insecurity predicted perceptions of meaning in life above and beyond income. Further, income only predicted perceptions of meaning to the extent that it was associated with reduced financial insecurity. In Studies 2 and 3, we found that financial security threats undermined perceptions of meaning in life. Taken together, these studies suggest that maintaining financial security is important for a sense of meaning in life.     

Feelings of familiarity and false memory for specific associations resulting from mugshot exposure

This research reveals that mugshot viewing accompanied by questions about an action can cause young adults to associate the pictured person and the queried action, leading to later false recollection of having seen that person perform that action. In contrast, mugshot viewing in older adults can lead to vague feelings of familiarity for the pictured person, encouraging older adults to later falsely recognize the pictured person performing any familiar action. Participants viewed events involving actors performing different actions and then were asked verbal questions about which actor had performed each action, with each question accompanied by mugshots of potential “perpetrators” of the action. In a later recognition test, older adults were more likely to falsely recognize a novel conjunction of a familiar actor and action if they had seen a mugshot of that actor, regardless of whether the mugshot had accompanied a question about that action. In contrast, young adults were more likely to falsely recognize a conjunction event only if it involved an actor whose mugshot had accompanied a question about that particular action. This effect remained when the analysis was limited to trials involving actors whose mugshots had not been previously selected, implicating false recollection rather than commitment effects.     

Concurrent Validity of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in an Indigenous Pre-School Population

The strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) is a frequently used tool for universal screening of pre-schoolers’ behavioural and emotional problems. However, evidence for its concurrent validity is equivocal and has not been tested in a Māori population. We aimed to evaluate the concurrent validity of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) in Māori pre-schoolers (tamariki), aged 4 and 5. We carried out a prospective study of 225 tamariki (46% female) for whom a recent SDQ was available from the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s Before School Check database. A trained nurse carried out a standardised wellbeing and behavioural assessment for these children. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive and negative predictive values were calculated, using optimal total difficulty scale threshold values published for the SDQ (parent version SDQ-P; teacher version SDQ-T). Primary outcome: an assessment-based child referral to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services or to a Paediatric outpatient service. Secondary outcomes: assessment-based parental referral to a parenting programme and combined referral. The optimal thresholds for child referral were low for the SDQ-P (13) and SDQ-T (7). Child referral SDQ-P: sensitivity 62%, specificity 83%, positive predictive value 0.35, negative predictive value 0.94. Child referral SDQ-T: sensitivity 77%, specificity 78%, positive predictive value 0.31, negative predictive value 0.96. The findings demonstrate optimal threshold values for referral for Māori on the SDQ-P and SDQ-T are much lower when compared to published thresholds (17 vs. 16). Sensitivity values were also low. A surveillance approach for the assessment of psychosocial problems is recommended for pre-schoolers.     

Is color an intrinsic property of object representation?

The role of color in object representation was examined by using a variation of the Stroop paradigm in which observers named the displayed colors of objects or words. In experiment 1, colors of color-diagnostic objects were manipulated to be either typical or atypical of the object (eg a yellow banana versus a purple banana). A Stroop-like effect was obtained, with faster color-naming times for the typical as compared to the atypical condition. In experiment 2, naming colors on words specifying these same color-diagnostic objects reversed this pattern, with the typical condition producing longer response times than the atypical condition. In experiment 3, a blocked condition design that used the same words and colors as experiment 2 produced the standard Stroop-like facilitation for the typical condition. These results indicate that color is an intrinsic property of an object's representation at multiple levels. In experiment 4, we examined the specific level(s) at which color-shape associations arise by following the tasks used in experiments 1 and 2 with a lexical-decision task in which some items were conceptually related to items shown during color naming (eg banana/monkey). Priming for these associates was observed following color naming of words, but not pictures, providing further evidence that the color-shape associations responsible for the differing effects obtained in experiments 1 and 2 are due to the automatic activation of color-shape associations at different levels of representation.