Assessing driving-relevant attentional impairment after a multiday drinking session: A two-phase pilot study.

BACKGROUND: The possibility of residual impairment of cognitive performance after multiday drinking sessions is particularly important given the potential for the deleterious effects of fatigue and hangover. This pilot study aimed to devise a methodology to compare sober performance on driving-relevant attentional tasks at the end of a 4-day music festival with performance at varying levels of the breath-alcohol curve. METHODS: Fifty-two participants completed selective and sustained attention tasks at a breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) of 0.00%, 0.05%, and 0.08% following acute dosing in a controlled laboratory setting. A subset of participants (n = 13) were then tested at the conclusion of a 4-day music festival at 0.00% BrAC, with task performance compared with laboratory results. RESULTS: During the laboratory phase, sustained attention was poorer at the 0.05% ascending timepoint only (compared to 0.00% BrAC). During the festival phase, participants made a greater number of errors on the selective attention task predeparture than at 0.00% and 0.05% BrAC in the laboratory. Sustained attention performance was poorer while intoxicated in the laboratory. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the absence of blood alcohol acutely may not be indicative of unimpaired cognitive performance and that other factors related to multiday drinking may produce driving-related attentional deficits. The findings reinforce the need to measure attentional performance in real-world drinking contexts despite the methodological complexities of doing so. A larger study is warranted to replicate the findings and should include attentional measures that either are more sensitive to the effects of acute alcohol intoxication than those in our study or are based on a driving simulator.

Adult memory for instances of emotionally stressful and non-stressful repeated events.

Repeated offences, such as domestic violence, are often distressing for victims. When victims of such offences make an allegation of abuse, they are usually required to report details about specific incidents. Therefore, this pre-registered study examined whether memory for an emotionally stressful versus non-stressful repeated event would differ depending on the instance being recalled. Eighty female participants (Mage = 22.3, SD = 7.4) imagined being involved in four abusive (emotionally stressful repeated event) or non-abusive relationship instances (non-stressful repeated event) over a four-week period. One-week after the last instance, participants completed recall and source memory questions about each instance. We found no evidence that memory for stressful versus non-stressful repeated events differed depending on the instance being recalled. Instead, we found that memory was more accurate for the last instance relative to the other instances (i.e., recency effect), regardless of event stressfulness. We also found that memory accuracy was better across all instances in the stressful than the non-stressful group. The findings suggest that victim-survivors of abuse might find the last instance of abuse particularly memorable when the delay between the offence and report is one-week or less, and the stressfulness of the instance might help them recall more details.

Adult memory for instances of a repeated emotionally stressful event: does retention interval matter?

This pre-registered study examined the impact of different retention intervals on remembering each instance of an emotionally stressful, repeated event. Eighty-nine adult female participants imagined being a victim of four similar domestic violence instances over a four-week period. Participants then completed recall and recognition memory questions about each instance either immediately, one-week, or three-weeks after the final instance. Overall, the findings showed that memory performance was often most accurate for the first and last instance compared to the middle instances. That is, participants reported more correct information, made fewer memory errors, and had better quality memory reports for the first and last instances compared to the middle instances. However, following a short delay (i.e., no delay and one-week), participants reported more correct information and were better at discriminating between correct and false details for the last instance relative to the others instances, while at a longer delay (i.e., three-weeks), more correct information was recalled for the first instance compared to other instances (there was no effect for memory discrimination). These findings suggest that memory for instances of a repeated event can depend on the position of an instance, and under some circumstances, the retention interval.

Adult memory for specific instances of a repeated event: a preliminary review.

In cases of repeated victimisation, a complainant's statement of abuse, and therefore memory, is often critical evidence for forensic investigations and legal proceedings. It is therefore important to understand the functioning of adults' memory for repeated events. As such, the purpose of this paper was to review the extant literature on adult memory for instances of a repeated event. The results of the review revealed a small number of heterogeneous studies on adult repeated-event memory (N = 12). The literature so far shows that while adults might have difficulty in recalling information specific to instances (narrow accuracy), they are capable of remembering information across multiple instances (broad accuracy). It was also found that several factors may impact recall of instances including age, the number of experienced instances, rehearsing an event, repeated retrieval and event distinctiveness. The discussion highlights the forensic implications of this research and future research directions.

The impact of misinformation presented during jury deliberation on juror memory and decision-making.

When deliberating, jurors may introduce misinformation that may influence other jurors' memory and decision-making. In two studies, we explored the impact of misinformation exposure during jury deliberation. Participants in both studies read a transcript of an alleged sexual assault. In Study 1 (N = 275), participants encountered either consistent pro-prosecution misinformation, consistent pro-defense misinformation, or contradictory misinformation (pro-prosecution and pro-defense). In Study 2 (N = 339), prior to encountering either pro-prosecution or pro-defense misinformation while reading a jury deliberation transcript, participants either received or did not receive a judicial instruction about misinformation exposure during deliberation. Participants in both studies completed legal decision-making variables (e.g., defendant guilt rating) before and after deliberation, and their memory was assessed for misinformation acceptance via recall and source memory tasks. In Study 1, misinformation type did not influence legal decision-making, but pro-prosecution misinformation was more likely to be misattributed as trial evidence than pro-defense or contradictory misinformation. In Study 2, pro-defense misinformation was more likely to be misattributed to the trial than pro-prosecution misinformation, and rape myths moderated this. Furthermore, exposure to pro-defense misinformation skewed legal decision-making towards the defense's case. However, the judicial instruction about misinformation exposure did not influence memory or decision-making. Together, these findings suggest that misinformation in jury deliberations may distort memory for trial evidence and bias decision-making, highlighting the need to develop effective safeguards for reducing the impact of misinformation in trial contexts.

The transparency of quantitative empirical legal research published in highly ranked law journals (2018-2020): an observational study.

Background: Scientists are increasingly concerned with making their work easy to verify and build upon. Associated practices include sharing data, materials, and analytic scripts, and preregistering protocols. This shift towards increased transparency and rigor has been referred to as a "credibility revolution." The credibility of empirical legal research has been questioned in the past due to its distinctive peer review system and because the legal background of its researchers means that many often are not trained in study design or statistics. Still, there has been no systematic study of transparency and credibility-related characteristics of published empirical legal research. Methods: To fill this gap and provide an estimate of current practices that can be tracked as the field evolves, we assessed 300 empirical articles from highly ranked law journals including both faculty-edited journals and student-edited journals. Results: We found high levels of article accessibility (86%, 95% CI = [82%, 90%]), especially among student-edited journals (100%). Few articles stated that a study's data are available (19%, 95% CI = [15%, 23%]). Statements of preregistration (3%, 95% CI = [1%, 5%]) and availability of analytic scripts (6%, 95% CI = [4%, 9%]) were very uncommon. (i.e., they collected new data using the study's reported methods, but found results inconsistent or not as strong as the original). Conclusion: We suggest that empirical legal researchers and the journals that publish their work cultivate norms and practices to encourage research credibility. Our estimates may be revisited to track the field's progress in the coming years.

The diversity effect in inductive reasoning depends on sampling assumptions.

A key phenomenon in inductive reasoning is the diversity effect, whereby a novel property is more likely to be generalized when it is shared by an evidence sample composed of diverse instances than a sample composed of similar instances. We outline a Bayesian model and an experimental study that show that the diversity effect depends on the assumption that samples of evidence were selected by a helpful agent (strong sampling). Inductive arguments with premises containing either diverse or nondiverse evidence samples were presented under different sampling conditions, where instructions and filler items indicated that the samples were selected intentionally (strong sampling) or randomly (weak sampling). A robust diversity effect was found under strong sampling, but was attenuated under weak sampling. As predicted by our Bayesian model, the largest effect of sampling was on arguments with nondiverse evidence, where strong sampling led to more restricted generalization than weak sampling. These results show that the characteristics of evidence that are deemed relevant to an inductive reasoning problem depend on beliefs about how the evidence was generated.