Virtual reality and the new psychophysics

Virtual reality (VR) promises methodological rigour with the extra benefit of allowing us to study the context-dependent behaviour of individuals in their natural environment. Pan and Hamilton (2018, Br. J. Psychol.) provide a useful overview of methodological recommendations for using VR. Here, we highlight some other aspects of the use of VR. Our first argument is that VR can be useful by virtue of its differences from the normal perceptual environment. That is, by virtue of its relative non-realism and poverty of its perceptual elements, it can actually offer increased clarity with respect to the features of interest for the researcher. Our second argument is that VR exerts its measurable influence more by eliciting an acceptance of the virtual world (i.e., ‘suspension of disbelief’) rather than by eliciting a true belief of the realism of the VR environment. We conclude by providing a novel suggestion for combining neuroimaging methods with embodied VR that relies on the suspension of disbelief.     

The absence of numbers to express the amount may affect delay discounting with humans

Human delay discounting is usually studied with experimental protocols that use symbols to express delay and amount. In order to further understand discounting, we evaluated whether the absence of numbers to represent reward amounts affects discount rate in general, and whether the magnitude effect is generalized to nonsymbolic situations in particular. In Experiment 1, human participants were exposed to a delay‐discounting task in which rewards were presented using dots to represent monetary rewards (nonsymbolic); under this condition the magnitude effect did not occur. Nevertheless, the magnitude effect was observed when equivalent reward amounts were presented using numbers (symbolic). Moreover, in estimation tasks, magnitude increments produced underestimation of large amounts. In Experiment 2, participants were exposed only to the nonsymbolic discounting task and were required to estimate reward amounts in each trial. Consistent with Experiment 1, the absence of numbers representing reward amounts produced similar discount rates of small and large rewards. These results suggest that value of nonsymbolic rewards is a nonlinear function of amount and that value attribution depends on perceived difference between the immediate and the delayed nonsymbolic rewards.     

Two‐year‐olds’ naîve predictions for horizontal trajectories

Hood recently reported that preschool children overgeneralized the prediction that falling objects travel in a straight line in spite of extensive counter‐evidence that the object had been deviated to a non‐aligned box by a tube. This behaviour was interpreted as a na?^ve theory of gravity resulting from an overgeneralization derived from experience of falling objects. The current study set out to test whether there was also a significant tendency for 2‐year‐olds to predict that objects travel in a straight line in the horizontal plane. This was achieved by comparing search for an invisibly displaced object moving either vertically or horizontally. The findings confirmed a gravity bias for falling events but did not reveal a similar tendency in the horizontal condition. In the horizontal task, children were as likely to search at an incorrect non‐aligned box as an aligned incorrect box. This supports the interpretation of a na?^ve gravity bias present from at least 2 years of age.     

Motor development during the first 6 months: the case of Brazilian infants

This investigation documents the pattern of motor development of Brazilian infants over the first 6 months and compares the findings with a US norm. Infants were assessed once each month for the 6‐month period using the Bayley II Motor Scale, which represented the US norm for comparison. Participants monthly scores increased with age and were similar to the US profile. However, the Brazilian infants did exhibit mean scores significantly lower than their counterparts on tasks of sitting and grasping in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th month; at the 6th month, scores were comparable. Explanations for differences focus on possible cross‐cultural and maturational influences. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Retractions in the Engineering Field: A Study on the Web of Science Database

This study assesses the retractions of scientific articles in engineering journals indexed on the Web of Science from 1945 to 2015. The data set was built based on documents containing the keywords retracted, retraction, withdrawal, or redress. We used database exploration techniques, including Structured Query Language and analysis of variance, for data analysis. We analyzed 238 retractions published by 117 journals. The most common reason for retraction was unethical research, and higher impact factors journals tended to publish more retractions. In conclusion, most of the analyzed retractions were the result of unethical research and were retracted by editors.     

Instrumentalist analyses of the functions of ethics concept-principles: a proposal for synergetic empirical and conceptual enrichment

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics - Bioethics has made a compelling case for the role of experience and empirical research in ethics. This may explain why the movement for empirical ethics has...     

Subjective Well-Being,Life Satisfaction and Interpersonal Relationships Associated to Socio-Demographic and Contextual Variables

Applied Research in Quality of Life - This study aims associating children’s satisfaction to their interpersonal relationships within their main contexts of interaction (family, friends and...     

Capuchins (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Cebus apella</Emphasis>) fail to show an asymmetric dominance effect

The asymmetric dominance effect (ADE) occurs when the introduction of a partially dominated decoy option increases the choice share of its dominating alternative. The ADE is a violation of regularity and the constant-ratio rule, which are two derivations of the independence of irrelevant alternatives axiom, a core tenant of rational choice. The ADE is one of the most widely reported human choice phenomena, leading researchers to probe its origins by studying a variety of non-human species. We examined the ADE in brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella), a species that displays many other decision biases. In Experiment 1, we used a touchscreen method to elicit choice-based preferences for food rewards in asymmetrically dominated choice sets. In Experiments 2 and 3, we distinguished between different types of judgments and used a free selection task to elicit consumption-based preferences for juice rewards. However, we found no evidence for the ADE through violations of regularity or the constant-ratio rule, despite the similarity of our stimuli to other human and non-human experiments. While these results appear to conflict with existing literature on the ADE in non-human species, we point out methodological differences—notably, the distinction between value-based and perception-based stimuli—that have led to a collection of phenomena that are difficult to understand under a unitary theoretical framework. In particular, we highlight key differences between the human and non-human research and provide a series of steps that researchers could take to better understand the ADE.