Who Gets Caught in the Web of Lies?: Understanding Susceptibility to Phishing Emails, Fake News Headlines, and Scam Text Messages.

OBJECTIVE: The present study investigated if the same users are vulnerable to phishing emails, scam text messages, and fake news headlines and if there are universal predictors of susceptibility for all three tasks. BACKGROUND: Theoretical research provides support for the notion that the same users likely fall for multiple forms of online deception. However, no research has directly compared susceptibility for various online deceptions (eg phishing, disinformation, scam text messages) within the same group of users. METHOD: Participants completed an online survey consisting of demographic questions, the Cognitive Reflection Test (ie impulsivity), and the Digital Literacy Scale, and classified 90 legitimate and deceptive emails, text messages, and news headlines. RESULTS: Results suggest that individuals who struggle to discriminate between deceptive and legitimate stimuli on one task experience similar difficulties on the other two tasks. Additionally, while lower levels of digital literacy and cognitive reflectiveness predicted poorer discrimination abilities across all three tasks, age did not predict performance. Interestingly, participants appeared to be the most susceptible to phishing emails. CONCLUSION: Overall, individuals who fall for one form of online deception appear to be more likely to fall for other forms of deception, and digital literacy and cognitive reflectiveness can predict widespread vulnerability to online deception. APPLICATION: Organizations may be able to identify potential vulnerabilities for a variety of online attacks by measuring digital literacy, cognitive reflectiveness, and performance in one online deception task. Additionally, training interventions may be the most needed for phishing emails.

So Many Phish, So Little Time: Exploring Email Task Factors and Phishing Susceptibility.

OBJECTIVE: The present studies examine how task factors (e.g., email load, phishing prevalence) influence email performance. BACKGROUND: Phishing emails are a paramount cybersecurity threat for the modern email user. Research attempting to understand how users are susceptible to phishing attacks has been limited and has not fully explored how task factors (e.g., prevalence, email load) influence accurate detection. METHOD: In three experiments, participants classified emails as either legitimate or not legitimate and reported on a variety of other categorizations. The first two experiments examined how email load and phishing prevalence influence phishing detection independently. The third experiment examined the interaction of these two factors to determine whether they have compounding effects. All three experiments utilized individual difference variables to examine how cognitive, behavioral, and personality factors may influence classifications. RESULTS: Experiment 1 suggests that high email load can make the task appear more challenging. Experiment 2 indicates that low phishing prevalence can decrease sensitivity for phishing emails. Experiment 3 demonstrates that high levels of email load can decrease classification accuracy under 50/50 prevalence rates. Notably, performance was poor across all experiments, with phishing detection near chance levels and low discriminability for emails. Participants demonstrated poor metacognition with over confidence, low self-reported difficulty, and low perceived threat for the emails. CONCLUSION: Overall, the present studies suggest that high email load and low phishing prevalence can influence email classifications. APPLICATION: Organizations and researchers should consider the influences of both email load and phishing prevalence when implementing phishing interventions.

Which Phish Is on the Hook? Phishing Vulnerability for Older Versus Younger Adults.

OBJECTIVE: To determine if there are age-related differences in phishing vulnerability and if those differences exist under various task conditions (e.g., framing and time pressure). BACKGROUND: Previous research suggests that older adults may be a vulnerable population to phishing attacks. Most research exploring age differences has used limiting designs, including retrospective self-report measures and restricted email sets. METHOD: The present studies explored how older and younger adults classify a diverse sample of 100 legitimate and phishing emails. In Experiment 1, participants rated the emails as either spam or not spam. Experiment 2 explored how framing would alter the results when participants rated emails as safe or not safe. In Experiment 3, participants performed the same task as Experiment 1, but were put under time pressure. RESULTS: No age differences were observed in overall classification accuracy across the three experiments, rather all participants exhibited poor performance (20%-30% errors). Older adults took significantly longer to make classifications and were more liberal in classifying emails as spam or not safe. Time pressure seemed to remove this bias but did not influence overall accuracy. CONCLUSION: Older adults appear to be more cautious when classifying emails. However, being extra careful may come at the cost of classification speed and does not seem to improve accuracy. APPLICATION: Age demographics should be considered in the implementation of a cyber-training methodology. Younger adults may be less vigilant against cyber threats than initially predicted; older adults might be less prone to deception when given unlimited time to respond.

The psychological interaction of spam email features.

This study explored distinct perceptual and decisional contributions to spam email mental construal. Participants classified spam emails according to pairings of three stimulus features - presence or absence of awkward prose, abnormal message structure, and implausible premise. We examined dimensional interactions within general recognition theory (GRT; a multidimensional extension of signal detection theory). Classification accuracy was highest for categories containing either two non-normal dimension levels (e.g. awkward prose and implausible premise) or two normal dimension levels (e.g. normal prose and plausible premise). Modelling indicated both perceptual and decisional contributions to classification responding. In most cases, perceptual discriminability was higher along one dimension when stimuli contained a non-normal level of the paired dimension (e.g. prose discriminability was higher with abnormal structure). Similarly, decision criteria along one dimension were biased in favour of the non-normal response when stimuli contained a non-normal level of the paired dimension. Potential applications for training are discussed. Practitioner summary: We applied general recognition theory (i.e. multivariate signal detection theory) to spam email classification at low or high levels of three stimulus dimensions: premise plausibility, prose quality, and email structure. Relevant to training, this approach helped identify perceptual and decisional biases that could be leveraged to individualise training.

The Effects of Secondary Task Demands on Cybersickness in Active Exploration Virtual Reality Experiences.

Active exploration in virtual reality (VR) involves users navigating immersive virtual environments, going from one place to another. While navigating, users often engage in secondary tasks that require attentional resources, as in the case of distracted driving. Inspired by research generally studying the effects of task demands on cybersickness (CS), we investigated how the attentional demands specifically associated with secondary tasks performed during exploration affect CS. Downstream of this, we studied how increased attentional demands from secondary tasks affect spatial memory and navigational performance. We discuss the results of a multi-factorial between-subjects study, manipulating a secondary task's demand across two levels and studying its effects on CS in two different sickness-inducing levels of an exploration experience. The secondary task's demand was manipulated by parametrically varying $n$ in an aural $n$-back working memory task and the provocativeness of the experience was manipulated by varying how frequently users experienced a yaw-rotational reorientation effect during the exploration. Results revealed that increases in the secondary task's demand increased sickness levels, also resulting in a higher temporal onset rate, especially when the experience was not already highly sickening. Increased attentional demand from the secondary task also vitiated navigational performance and spatial memory. Overall, increased demands from secondary tasks performed during navigation produce deleterious effects on the VR experience.

The Effects of Auditory, Visual, and Cognitive Distractions on Cybersickness in Virtual Reality.

Cybersickness (CS) is one of the challenges that has hindered the widespread adoption of Virtual Reality (VR). Consequently, researchers continue to explore novel means to mitigate the undesirable effects associated with this affliction, one that may require a combination of remedies as opposed to a solitary stratagem. Inspired by research probing into the use of distractions as a means to control pain, we investigated the efficacy of this countermeasure against CS, studying how the introduction of temporally time-gated distractions affects this malady during a virtual experience featuring active exploration. Downstream of this, we discuss how other aspects of the VR experience are affected by this intervention. We discuss the results of a between-subjects study manipulating the presence, sensory modality, and nature of periodic and short-lived (5-12 seconds) distractor stimuli across 4 experimental conditions: (1) no-distractors (ND); (2) auditory distractors (AD); (3) visual distractors (VD); (4) cognitive distractors (CD). Two of these conditions (VD and AD) formed a yoked control design wherein every matched pair of 'seers' and 'hearers' was periodically exposed to distractors that were identical in terms of content, temporality, duration, and sequence. In the CD condition, each participant had to periodically perform a 2-back working memory task, the duration and temporality of which was matched to distractors presented in each matched pair of the yoked conditions. These three conditions were compared to a baseline control group featuring no distractions. Results indicated that the reported sickness levels were lower in all three distraction groups in comparison to the control group. The intervention was also able to both increase the amount of time users were able to endure the VR simulation, as well as avoid causing detriments to spatial memory and virtual travel efficiency. Overall, it appears that it may be possible to make users less consciously aware and bothered by the symptoms of CS, thereby reducing its perceived severity.

The depth of executive function: Depth information aids executive function under challenging task conditions.

The present studies investigated how three core aspects of executive functioning may be influenced by the presence of depth information. Specifically, participants were assigned to one of three executive functioning tasks: working memory (i.e., a change detection task), selective attention (i.e., a visual search task), or inhibitory control (i.e., a flanker task). For all three tasks, participants completed trials where the items in the display were presented either all in one depth plane or the target item was isolated in depth. For the working memory and selective attention tasks, there was an additional condition where items were evenly distributed across two depth planes. Each task also had multiple levels of difficulty to explore if task conditions influence the effect of depth information. Results indicated that although depth information can improve both working memory and selective attention performance, this benefit is specific to the task difficulty and depth information can even hinder performance under certain circumstances. Depth information did not appear to influence inhibitory control performance. Future work is required to investigate if depth can improve inhibitory control performance, and how/what task conditions influence the benefit of depth information. Until further research is completed, researchers and designers should be cautious when implementing multidimensional (3D) displays, as it remains unclear if the performance benefits of including depth information outweigh the present costs.

Is the key to phishing training persistence?: Developing a novel persistent intervention.

Most previous phishing interventions have employed discrete training approaches, such as brief instructions aimed at improving phishing detection. However, these discrete interventions have demonstrated limited success. The present studies focused on developing an alternative to discrete training by providing college-age adults with a persistent classification aid that guided them on what characteristics a phishing email might include. Experiment 1 determined if this classification aid improved email categorization performance relative to feedback and control. Experiment 2 continued the evaluation of the classification aid to determine whether performance improvements were due to increased systematic processing of emails. Experiment 3 explored whether the classification aid would be more effective when embedded directly into the email interface. The results suggested three major findings. (a) Persistent interventions can improve phishing email detection. (b) Performance improvements were largest when the classification aid was embedded into the task. (c) These benefits were likely driven by an improved systematic processing of the emails. This novel phishing classification aid serves as a promising persistent intervention that can be adaptable to specific email environments and individuals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Training detection of camouflaged targets in natural scenes: Backgrounds and targets both matter.

As target-background similarity increases, search performance declines, but this pattern can be attenuated with training. In the present study we (1) characterized training and transfer effects in visual search for camouflaged targets in naturalistic scenes, (2) evaluated whether transfer effects are preserved 3 months after training, (3) tested the suitability of the perceptual learning hypothesis (i.e., using learned scene statistics to aid camouflaged target detection) for explaining camouflage search improvements over training, and (4) provide guidance for camouflage detection training in practice. Participants were assigned to one of three training groups: adaptive camouflage (difficulty varied by performance), massed camouflage (difficulty increased over time), or an active control (no camouflage), and trained over 14 sessions. Additional sessions measured transfer (immediately post training) and retention of training benefits (10 days and 3 months post training). Both the adaptive and massed training groups showed improved camouflaged target detection up to 3 months following training, relative to the control. These benefits were observed only with backgrounds and targets that were similar to those experienced during training and are broadly consistent with the perceptual learning hypothesis. In practice, training interventions should utilize stimuli similar to the operational environment in which detection is expected to occur.

Depth benefits now loading: Visual working memory capacity and benefits in 3-D.

The present studies explored how performance in multidimensional displays varies as a function of visual working memory load, item distribution across depths, and individual capacity differences. In Experiment 1, the benefit of depth information (one depth vs. two depths) was examined across seven set sizes within a change-detection paradigm. Multiple depth planes engendered performance benefits with five items, but elicited performance decrements with three items. These effects were associated with working memory capacity, such that benefits were only observed when the working memory load exceeded an individual's max capacity. Experiment 2 evaluated how the distribution of items in depth aids working memory performance. Equal distribution of items across depths produced higher accuracy compared with when the target was isolated in depth. Lastly, Experiment 3 explored how differences in working memory capacity affect an individual's ability to use depth information to improve their performance. The results indicate that both low-capacity and high-capacity individuals can benefit from depth information, but this may vary as a function of working memory load. Overall, the results indicate that multidimensional displays can improve performance with sufficient working memory load, possibly through some sort of depth tag.