The case of Pinocchio: teachers’ ability to detect deception

In a study with 365 teacher students, 447 teacher trainees, and 123 teachers, the ability to detect students’ deception was tested. Participants judged the credibility of videotaped students who were accused of academic dishonesty (having cheated in a test). Half of these messages were actually true (students had not cheated on the test) and half of them were deceptive (students had cheated on the test). As expected and in line with findings on the influence of expertise on the ability to detect deception from other fields, we found that the overall accuracy rate of teachers was not higher than that of teacher trainees and teacher students. Moreover, we found no effect of teaching experience (years working as a teacher) on overall detection of deception accuracy. Interestingly, teachers were found to have a stronger truth bias and therefore had a lower accuracy in detecting deceptive messages than teacher students and teacher trainees (veracity effect). While teacher characteristics accounted for very little variance, senders’ opportunity to prepare and their gender had strong effects. Detection accuracy was higher for messages where the student had no chance to prepare before being accused of cheating. Overall, independent, or experience, participants hold inaccurate beliefs about deception.     

Age and gender comparisons of driving while sleepy: Behaviours and risk perceptions

To assist road safety professionals in developing effective strategies to combat the risk associated with driving while fatigued, a survey was administered to 1000 Australian drivers. Participants reported their past behaviours in regards to driving while sleepy and their perceptions of risk associated with driving fatigued as compared to speeding and driving under the influence of alcohol. Although participants appeared to be aware of the substantial risk associated with driving while sleepy, many drivers reported that they frequently drive when sleepy. Age and gender comparisons, revealed that risk taking behaviour in regards to driving while sleepy is occurring across all age groups and in both male and female drivers. Overall young to middle age drivers and male drivers reported the highest frequency of driving while sleepy and reported the lowest perceived personal risk in regards to driving while sleepy.     

Aging, source memory, and emotion

In 2 experiments we assessed younger and older adults' ability to remember contextual information about an event. Each experiment examined memory for 3 different types of contextual information: (a) perceptual information (e.g., location of an item); (b) conceptual, nonemotional information (e.g., quality of an item); and (c) conceptual, emotional information (e.g., safety of an item). Consistent with a large literature on aging and source memory, younger adults outperformed older adults when the contextual information was perceptual in nature and when it was conceptual, but not emotional. Age differences in source memory were eliminated, however, when participants recalled emotional source information. These findings suggest that emotional information differentially engages older adults, possibly evoking enhanced elaborations and associations. The data are also consistent with a growing literature, suggesting that emotional processing remains stable with age (e.g., Carstensen & Turk-Charles, 1994, 1998; Isaacowitz, Charles, & Carstensen, 2000).     

Relationships among compulsive hoarding, trauma, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

The current study investigated aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder and attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among hoarders. Compared to a sample of 36 controls, hoarders (n=26) reported a significantly greater number of different types of trauma, more frequent traumatic experiences, more symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and greater comfort derived from possessions. These findings are consistent with previous reports of extensive comorbidity associated with hoarding behaviors, and may reflect the potential usefulness of assessing PTSD and ADHD symptoms at the outset of hoarding treatments, as well as considering alternative pharmacological interventions.     

Level of alliance, pattern of alliance, and outcome in short-term group therapy

This study investigated the relationships between initial level of alliance, pattern of alliance over sessions, and outcome in a sample of 107 patients who completed short-term group therapy for complicated grief. Both patient-rated alliance and therapist-rated alliance were studied. For patient-rated alliance, both the initial level of alliance and the linear pattern of alliance were directly and significantly related to favorable outcome. For therapist-rated alliance, no significant direct relationships with outcome were found. Instead, significant interaction effects were found. For patients with relatively high initial alliance, the greater the increase in alliance over sessions, the better the outcome. For patients with relatively low initial alliance, the greater the decrease in alliance over sessions, the better the outcome. Explanations for the findings are considered as well as possible clinical implications.     

Understanding words in sentence contexts: the time course of ambiguity resolution

Spoken language comprehension requires rapid integration of information from multiple linguistic sources. In the present study we addressed the temporal aspects of this integration process by focusing on the time course of the selection of the appropriate meaning of lexical ambiguities ("bank") in sentence contexts. Successful selection of the contextually appropriate meaning of the ambiguous word is dependent upon the rapid binding of the contextual information in the sentence to the appropriate meaning of the ambiguity. We used the N400 to identify the time course of this binding process. The N400 was measured to target words that followed three types of context sentences. In the concordant context, the sentence biased the meaning of the sentence-final ambiguous word so that it was related to the target. In the discordant context, the sentence context biased the meaning so that it was not related to the target. In the unrelated control condition, the sentences ended in an unambiguous noun that was unrelated to the target. Half of the concordant sentences biased the dominant meaning, and the other half biased the subordinate meaning of the sentence-final ambiguous words. The ISI between onset of the target word and offset of the sentence-final word of the context sentence was 100 ms in one version of the experiment, and 1250 ms in the second version. We found that (i) the lexically dominant meaning is always partly activated, independent of context, (ii) initially both dominant and subordinate meaning are (partly) activated, which suggests that contextual and lexical factors both contribute to sentence interpretation without context completely overriding lexical information, and (iii) strong lexical influences remain present for a relatively long period of time.     

Establishing and maintaining a low-cost zebrafish breeding and behavioral research facility

The purpose of this paper is to describe how to establish and maintain a low-cost zebrafish facility that can be used for both teaching and research purposes. The cost of the facility ranges from about 250 to250 to 1,000, depending on the size of the facility and the experiments that will be conducted. The facility plan presented here also has the advantage that it can be disassembled so that it need not function year-round. A detailed list of supplies and materials is provided, along with detailed instructions on how to set up and maintain the adult and breeding portions of the facility. Finally, there is discussion of some of the general uses of a zebrafish facility, including a variety of procedures that are currently being used in behavioral research with this species.     

Conservation as a predictor of individual differences in children’s susceptibility to leading questions

The relationships between susceptibility to leading questions and several individual differences variables—namely number and mass conservation; self-rated social desirability; and teacher-rated assertive social skills, shyness-anxiousness, and acting out—were examined for 36 first graders. As predicted, children whose conservation skills were more advanced were least susceptible to leading questions. However, there was no reliable direct association with any of the four personality variables assessed. Results were interpreted as evidence that the ability to simultaneously consider multiple dimensions may be one general cognitive factor underlying developmental and individual differences in susceptibility to leading questions.