On the possible advantages of combining small lineups with instructions that discourage guessing-based selection.

The primary argument for including large numbers of known-to-be innocent fillers in lineups is that guessing-based selections are dispersed among a large number of lineup members, leading to low innocent-suspect identification rates. However, a recent study using the two-high threshold eyewitness identification model has demonstrated advantages of smaller lineups at the level of the processes underlying the observable responses. Participants were more likely to detect the presence of the culprit and less likely to select lineup members based on guessing in smaller than in larger lineups. Nonetheless, at the level of observable responses, the rate of innocent-suspect identifications was higher in smaller compared to larger lineups due to the decreased dispersion of guessing-based selections among the lineup members. To address this issue, we combined smaller lineups with lineup instructions insinuating that the culprit was unlikely to be in the lineup. The goal was to achieve a particularly low rate of guessing-based selections. These lineups were compared to larger lineups with neutral instructions. In two experiments, culprit-presence detection occurred with a higher probability in smaller compared to larger lineups. Furthermore, instructions insinuating that the culprit was unlikely to be in the lineup reduced guessing-based selection compared to neutral instructions. At the level of observable responses, the innocent-suspect identification rate did not differ between smaller lineups with low-culprit-probability instructions and larger lineups with neutral instructions. The rate of culprit identifications was higher in smaller lineups with low-culprit-probability instructions than in larger lineups with neutral instructions.

Verbal and pictorial single-item scales are as good as their 10-item counterparts for measuring perceived usability.

Single-item scales of perceived usability are attractive due to their efficiency and non-verbal scales are attractive because they enable collecting data from individuals irrespective of their language proficiency. We tested experimentally whether single-item verbal and pictorial scales can compete with their 10-item counterparts at reflecting the difference in usability between well-designed and poorly designed systems. N = 1079 (Experiment 1) and N = 1092 (Experiment 2) participants worked with two systems whose usability was experimentally manipulated. Perceived usability was assessed using the 10-item System Usability Scale, the single-item Adjective Rating Scale, the 10-item Pictorial System Usability Scale and the Pictorial Single-Item Usability Scale. The single-item scales reflect the difference in usability as good as their 10-item counterparts. The pictorial scales are nearly as valid as their verbal counterparts. The single-item Adjective Rating Scale and the Pictorial Single-Item Usability Scale are thus efficient and valid alternatives to their 10-item counterparts.

Verbal and pictorial single-item perceived-usability scales are viable alternatives to their 10-item counterparts. Specifically, the single-item Adjective Rating Scale is as good as the 10-item System Usability Scale and the Pictorial Single-Item Usability Scale is as good as the Pictorial System Usability Scale at reflecting differences in usability between systems.

Changing-state irrelevant speech disrupts visual-verbal but not visual-spatial serial recall.

In an influential article, Jones et al. (1995) provide evidence that auditory distraction by changing relative to repetitive auditory distracters (the changing-state effect) did not differ between a visual-verbal and visual-spatial serial recall task, providing evidence for an amodal mechanism for the representation of serial order in short-term memory that transcends modalities. This finding has been highly influential for theories of short-term memory and auditory distraction. However, evidence vis-à-vis the robustness of this result is sorely lacking. Here, two high-powered replications of Jones et al.'s (1995) crucial Experiment 4 were undertaken. In the first partial replication (n = 64), a fully within-participants design was adopted, wherein participants undertook both the visual-verbal and visual-spatial serial recall tasks under different irrelevant sound conditions, without a retention period. The second near-identical replication (n = 128), incorporated a retention period and implemented the task-modality manipulation as a between-participants factor, as per the original Jones et al. (1995; Experiment 4) study. In both experiments, the changing-state effect was observed for visual-verbal serial recall but not for visual-spatial serial recall. The results are consistent with modular and interference-based accounts of distraction and challenge some aspects of functional equivalence accounts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

On the advantages of using AI-generated images of filler faces for creating fair lineups.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) enable the generation of realistic facial images that can be used in police lineups. The use of AI image generation offers pragmatic advantages in that it allows practitioners to generate filler images directly from the description of the culprit using text-to-image generation, avoids the violation of identity rights of natural persons who are not suspects and eliminates the constraints of being bound to a database with a limited set of photographs. However, the risk exists that using AI-generated filler images provokes more biased selection of the suspect if eyewitnesses are able to distinguish AI-generated filler images from the photograph of the suspect's face. Using a model-based analysis, we compared biased suspect selection directly between lineups with AI-generated filler images and lineups with database-derived filler photographs. The results show that the lineups with AI-generated filler images were perfectly fair and, in fact, led to less biased suspect selection than the lineups with database-derived filler photographs used in previous experiments. These results are encouraging with regard to the potential of AI image generation for constructing fair lineups which should inspire more systematic research on the feasibility of adopting AI technology in forensic settings.

Is Less Sometimes More? An Experimental Comparison of Four Measures of Perceived Usability.

OBJECTIVE: In usability studies, the subjective component of usability, perceived usability, is often of interest besides the objective usability components, efficiency and effectiveness. Perceived usability is typically investigated using questionnaires. Our goal was to assess experimentally which of four perceived-usability questionnaires differing in length best reflects the difference in perceived usability between systems. BACKGROUND: Conventional measurement wisdom strongly favors multi-item questionnaires, as measures based on more items supposedly yield better results. However, this assumption is controversial. Single-item questionnaires also have distinct advantages and it has been shown repeatedly that single-item measures can be viable alternatives to multi-item measures. METHOD: N = 1089 (Experiment 1) and N = 1095 (Experiment 2) participants rated the perceived usability of a good or a poor web-based mobile phone contract system using the 35-item ISONORM 9241/10 (Experiment 1 only), the 10-item System Usability Scale (SUS), the 4-item Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX), and the single-item Adjective Rating Scale. RESULTS: The Adjective Rating Scale represented the perceived-usability difference between both systems at least as good as, or significantly better than, the multi-item questionnaires (significantly better than the UMUX and the ISONORM 9241/10 in Experiment 1, significantly better than the SUS in Experiment 2). CONCLUSION: The single-item Adjective Rating Scale is a viable alternative to multi-item perceived-usability questionnaires. APPLICATION: Extremely short instruments can be recommended to measure perceived usability, at least for simple user interfaces that can be considered concrete-singular in the sense that raters understand which entity is being rated and what is being rated is reasonably homogenous.

People punish defection, not failures to conform to the majority.

Do people punish others for defecting or for failing to conform to the majority? In two experiments, we manipulated whether the participants' partners cooperated or defected in the majority of the trials of a Prisoner's Dilemma game. The effects of this base-rate manipulation on cooperation and punishment were assessed using a multinomial processing tree model. High compared to low cooperation rates of the partners increased participants' cooperation. When participants' cooperation was not enforced through partner punishment, the participants' cooperation was closely aligned to the cooperation rates of the partners. Moral punishment of defection increased when cooperation rates were high compared to when defection rates were high. However, antisocial punishment of cooperation when defection rates were high was much less likely than moral punishment of defection when cooperation rates were high. In addition, antisocial punishment was increased when cooperation rates were high compared to when defection rates were high. The latter two results contradict the assumption that people punish conformity-violating behavior regardless of whether the behavior supports or disrupts cooperation. Punishment is thus sensitive to the rates of cooperation and defection but, overall, the results are inconsistent with the idea that punishment primarily, let alone exclusively, serves to enforce conformity with the majority.

Manipulations of richness of encoding do not modulate the animacy effect on memory.

The animacy effect refers to the memory advantage of words denoting animate beings over words denoting inanimate objects. Remembering animate beings may serve important evolutionary functions, but the cognitive mechanism underlying the animacy effect has remained elusive. According to the richness-of-encoding account, animate words stimulate participants to generate more ideas than inanimate words at encoding. These ideas may later serve as retrieval cues and thus enhance recall. There is as yet only correlational evidence associating rich encoding and the animacy advantage in memory. To experimentally test the assumption that richness of encoding plays a causal role, we examined whether the animacy effect can be modulated by facilitating or suppressing rich encoding. In Experiment 1, richness of encoding was manipulated by requiring participants to write down four ideas or one idea in response to animate and inanimate words. In Experiment 2, the one-idea-generation condition was compared to an unrestricted-idea-generation condition. In Experiment 3, the unrestricted-idea-generation condition was compared to a distractor-task condition in which the idea-generation process was suppressed. In Experiment 4, richness of encoding was manipulated by asking participants to rate the relevance of the words for achieving three survival-related goals or one survival-related goal. Animate words were better remembered than inanimate words. In three of the four experiments, rich encoding led to improved recall. However, none of the manipulations of richness of encoding affected the animacy effect on memory, demonstrating its robustness irrespective of the encoding conditions. These results weaken the richness-of-encoding account of the animacy effect on memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Evidence of a metacognitive illusion in judgments about the effects of music on cognitive performance.

Two experiments serve to examine how people make metacognitive judgments about the effects of task-irrelevant sounds on cognitive performance. According to the direct-access account, people have direct access to the processes causing auditory distraction. According to the processing-fluency account, people rely on the feeling of processing fluency to make heuristic metacognitive judgments about the distracting effects of sounds. To manipulate the processing fluency of simple piano melodies and segments of Mozart's sonata K. 448, the audio files of the music were either left in their original forward direction or reversed. The results favor the processing-fluency account over the direct-access account: Even though, objectively, forward and backward music had the same distracting effect on serial recall, stimulus-specific prospective metacognitive judgments showed that participants incorrectly predicted only backward music but not forward music to be distracting. The difference between forward and backward music was reduced but not eliminated in global retrospective metacognitive judgments that participants provided after having experienced the distracting effect of the music first-hand. The results thus provide evidence of a metacognitive illusion in people's judgments about the effects of music on cognitive performance.

The effects of lineup size on the processes underlying eyewitness decisions.

Here we apply the two-high threshold eyewitness identification model to identify the effects of lineup size on the detection-based and non-detection-based processes underlying eyewitness decisions. In Experiment 1, lineup size was manipulated by showing participants simultaneous or sequential lineups that contained either three or six persons. In Experiment 2, the lineups contained either two or five persons. In both experiments, the culprit was better detected in smaller than in larger lineups. Furthermore, participants made fewer guessing-based selections in smaller than in larger lineups. However, guessing-based selection in larger lineups was not increased to a level sufficient to offset the effect of increased protection of suspects in larger lineups due to the fact that the guessing-based selections that occur are distributed across more persons. The results show that increasing the lineup size causes several changes in the detection-based and non-detection-based processes underlying eyewitness decisions.

Communicating emotions, but not expressing them privately, reduces moral punishment in a Prisoner's Dilemma game.

The existence of moral punishment, that is, the fact that cooperative people sacrifice resources to punish defecting partners requires an explanation. Potential explanations are that people punish defecting partners to privately express or to communicate their negative emotions in response to the experienced unfairness. If so, then providing participants with alternative ways to privately express or to communicate their emotions should reduce moral punishment. In two experiments, participants interacted with cooperating and defecting partners in a Prisoner's Dilemma game. After each round, participants communicated their emotions to their partners (Experiments 1 and 2) or only expressed them privately (Experiment 2). Each trial concluded with a costly punishment option. Compared to a no-expression control group, moral punishment was reduced when emotions were communicated to the defecting partner but not when emotions were privately expressed. Moral punishment may thus serve to communicate emotions to defecting partners. However, moral punishment was only reduced but far from being eliminated, suggesting that the communication of emotions does not come close to replacing moral punishment. Furthermore, prompting participants to focus on their emotions had undesirable side-effects: Privately expressing emotions diminished cooperation, enhanced hypocritical punishment (i.e., punishment of defecting partners by defecting participants), and induced an unspecific bias to punish the partners irrespective of their actions.

The animacy effect on free recall is equally large in mixed and pure word lists or pairs.

The cognitive mechanisms underlying the animacy effect on free recall have as yet to be identified. According to the attentional-prioritization account, animate words are better recalled because they recruit more attention at encoding than inanimate words. The account implies that the animacy effect should be larger when animate words are presented together with inanimate words in mixed lists or pairs than when animate and inanimate words are presented separately in pure lists or pairs. The present series of experiments served to systematically test whether list composition or pair composition modulate the animacy effect. In Experiment 1, the animacy effect was compared between mixed and pure lists. In Experiments 2 and 3, the words were presented in mixed or pure pairs to manipulate the direct competition for attention between animate and inanimate words at encoding. While encoding was intentional in Experiments 1 and 2, it was incidental in Experiment 3. In each experiment, a significant animacy effect was obtained, but the effect was equally large in mixed and pure lists or pairs of animate and inanimate words despite considerable sensitivity of the statistical test of the critical interaction. These findings provide evidence against the attentional-prioritization account of the animacy effect.

Measuring lineup fairness from eyewitness identification data using a multinomial processing tree model.

The mock-witness task is typically used to evaluate the fairness of lineups. However, the validity of this task has been questioned because there are substantial differences between the tasks for mock witnesses and eyewitnesses. Unlike eyewitnesses, mock witnesses must select a person from the lineup and are alerted to the fact that one lineup member might stand out from the others. It therefore seems desirable to base conclusions about lineup fairness directly on eyewitness data rather than on mock-witness data. To test the importance of direct measurements of biased suspect selection in eyewitness identification decisions, we assessed the fairness of lineups containing either morphed or non-morphed fillers using both mock witnesses and eyewitnesses. We used Tredoux's E and the proportion of suspect selections to measure lineup fairness from mock-witness choices and the two-high threshold eyewitness identification model to measure the biased selection of the suspects directly from eyewitness identification decisions. Results obtained in the mock-witness task and the model-based analysis of data obtained in the eyewitness task converged in showing that simultaneous lineups with morphed fillers were significantly more unfair than simultaneous lineups with non-morphed fillers. However, mock-witness and eyewitness data converged only when the eyewitness task mimicked the mock-witness task by including pre-lineup instructions that (1) discouraged eyewitnesses to reject the lineups and (2) alerted eyewitnesses that a photograph might stand out from the other photographs in the lineup. When a typical eyewitness task was created by removing these two features from the pre-lineup instructions, the morphed fillers no longer lead to unfair lineups. These findings highlight the differences in the cognitive processes of mock witnesses and eyewitnesses and they demonstrate the importance of measuring lineup fairness directly from eyewitness identification decisions rather than indirectly using the mock-witness task.

Evaluating the impact of first-yes-counts instructions on eyewitness performance using the two-high threshold eyewitness identification model.

In eyewitness research, multiple identification decisions in sequential lineups are typically prevented by telling participants that only their first identification decision counts. These first-yes-counts instructions are incompatible with standard police protocols prescribing that witnesses shall see the entire lineup. Horry et al. were the first to experimentally test how this discrepancy between eyewitness research and standard police protocols affects eyewitness identification decisions. Here, the two-high threshold eyewitness identification model was used to disentangle the effect of the first-yes-counts instructions on the detection and guessing processes underlying eyewitness identification decisions. We report both a reanalysis of Horry et al.'s data and a conceptual replication. Both the reanalysis and the results of the conceptual replication confirm that first-yes-counts instructions do not affect the detection of the culprit but decrease the probability of guessing-based selections. To improve the ecological validity, research on sequential lineups should avoid first-yes-counts instructions.

Animacy enhances recollection but not familiarity: Convergent evidence from the remember-know-guess paradigm and the process-dissociation procedure.

Words representing living beings are better remembered than words representing nonliving objects, a robust finding called the animacy effect. Considering the postulated evolutionary-adaptive significance of this effect, the animate words' memory advantage should not only affect the quantity but also the quality of remembering. To test this assumption, we compared the quality of recognition memory between animate and inanimate words. The remember-know-guess paradigm (Experiment 1) and the process-dissociation procedure (Experiment 2) were used to assess both subjective and objective aspects of remembering. Based on proximate accounts of the animacy effect that focus on elaborative encoding and attention, animacy is expected to selectively enhance detailed recollection but not the acontextual feeling of familiarity. Multinomial processing-tree models were applied to disentangle recollection, familiarity, and different types of guessing processes. Results obtained from the remember-know-guess paradigm and the process-dissociation procedure convergently show that animacy selectively enhances recollection but does not affect familiarity. In both experiments, guessing processes were unaffected by the words' animacy status. Animacy thus not only enhances the quantity but also affects the quality of remembering: The effect is primarily driven by recollection. The results support the richness-of-encoding account and the attentional account of the animacy effect on memory.

The manifestation of affective symptoms in multiple sclerosis and discussion of the currently available diagnostic assessment tools.

INTRODUCTION: In addition to physical and cognitive symptoms, patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) have an increased risk of experiencing mental health problems. METHODS: This narrative review provides an overview of the appearance and epidemiology of affective symptoms in MS such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, euphoria, and pseudobulbar affect. Furthermore, the association between affective symptoms and quality of life and the currently used diagnostic instruments for assessing these symptoms are considered whereby relevant studies published between 2009 and 2021 were included in the review. RESULTS: Patients with mild and moderate disability more frequently reported severe problems with depression and anxiety than severe mobility problems. Apart from the occurrence of depression, little is known about the association of other affective symptoms such as anxiety, bipolar disorder, euphoria, and pseudobulbar affect and subsyndromal symptoms, which fail to meet the diagnostic criteria but are nevertheless a significant source of distress. Although there are a few recommendations in the research to perform routine screenings for diagnosable affective disorders, a standardized diagnostic procedure to assess subsyndromal symptoms is still lacking. As the applied measurements are diverse and show low accuracy to detect these symptoms, patients who experience affective symptoms are less likely to be identified. DISCUSSION: In addition to the consideration of definite psychiatric diagnoses, there is an unmet need for a common definition and assessment of disease-related affective symptoms in MS. Future studies should focus on the improvement and standardization of a common diagnostic procedure for subsyndromal affective symptoms in MS to enable integrated and optimal care for patients.

Negative target stimuli do not influence cross-modal auditory distraction.

The present study served to test whether emotion modulates auditory distraction in a serial-order reconstruction task. If auditory distraction results from an attentional trade-off between the targets and distractors, auditory distraction should decrease when attention is focused on targets with high negative arousal. Two experiments (with a total N of 284 participants) were conducted to test whether auditory distraction is influenced by target emotion. In Experiment 1 it was examined whether two benchmark effects of auditory distraction-the auditory-deviant effect and the changing-state effect-differ as a function of whether negative high-arousal targets or neutral low-arousal targets are used. Experiment 2 complements Experiment 1 by testing whether target emotion modulates the disruptive effects of reversed sentential speech and steady-state distractor sequences relative to a quiet control condition. Even though the serial order of negative high-arousal targets was better remembered than that of neutral low-arousal targets, demonstrating an emotional facilitation effect on serial-order reconstruction, auditory distraction was not modulated by target emotion. The results provide support of the automatic-capture account according to which auditory distraction, regardless of the specific type of auditory distractor sequence that has to be ignored, is a fundamentally stimulus-driven effect that is rooted in the automatic processing of the to-be-ignored auditory stream and remains unaffected by emotional-motivational factors.

Coping with high advertising exposure: a source-monitoring perspective.

Consumers are exposed to large amounts of advertising every day. One way to avoid being manipulated is to monitor the sources of persuasive messages. In the present study it was tested whether high exposure to advertising affects the memory and guessing processes underlying source attributions. Participants were exposed to high or low proportions of advertising messages that were intermixed with product statements from a trustworthy source. In a subsequent memory test, participants had to remember the sources of these statements. In Experiments 1 and 2, high advertising exposure led to increased source memory and decreased recognition of the statements in comparison to low advertising exposure. High advertising exposure also induced an increased tendency toward guessing that statements whose sources were not remembered came from advertising. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that the presence of advertising, relative to its absence, leads to a skeptical guessing bias. Being exposed to advertising thus has pronounced effects on the memory and guessing processes underlying source attributions. These changes in source monitoring can be interpreted as coping mechanisms that serve to protect against the persuasive influence of advertising messages.

Experimental validation of a multinomial processing tree model for analyzing eyewitness identification decisions.

To improve police protocols for lineup procedures, it is helpful to understand the processes underlying eyewitness identification performance. The two-high threshold (2-HT) eyewitness identification model is a multinomial processing tree model that measures four latent cognitive processes on which eyewitness identification decisions are based: two detection-based processes (the detection of culprit presence and absence) and two non-detection-based processes (biased and guessing-based selection). The model takes into account the full 2 × 3 data structure of lineup procedures, that is, suspect identifications, filler identifications and rejections in both culprit-present and culprit-absent lineups. Here the model is introduced and the results of four large validation experiments are reported, one for each of the processes specified by the model. The validation experiments served to test whether the model's parameters sensitively reflect manipulations of the processes they were designed to measure. The results show that manipulations of exposure duration of the culprit's face at encoding, lineup fairness, pre-lineup instructions and ease of rejection of culprit-absent lineups were sensitively reflected in the parameters representing culprit-presence detection, biased suspect selection, guessing-based selection and culprit-absence detection, respectively. The results of the experiments thus validate the interpretations of the parameters of the 2-HT eyewitness identification model.

A validation of the two-high threshold eyewitness identification model by reanalyzing published data.

The two-high threshold (2-HT) eyewitness identification model serves as a new measurement tool to measure the latent cognitive processes underlying eyewitness identification performance. By simultaneously taking into account correct culprit identifications, false innocent-suspect identifications, false filler identifications in culprit-present and culprit-absent lineups as well as correct and false lineup rejections, the model capitalizes on the full range of data categories that are observed when measuring eyewitness identification performance. Thereby, the model is able to shed light on detection-based and non-detection-based processes underlying eyewitness identification performance. Specifically, the model incorporates parameters for the detection of culprit presence and absence, biased selection of the suspect and guessing-based selection among the lineup members. Here, we provide evidence of the validity of each of the four model parameters by applying the model to eight published data sets. The data sets come from studies with experimental manipulations that target one of the underlying processes specified by the model. Manipulations of encoding difficulty, lineup fairness and pre-lineup instructions were sensitively reflected in the parameters reflecting culprit-presence detection, biased selection and guessing-based selection, respectively. Manipulations designed to facilitate the rejection of culprit-absent lineups affected the parameter for culprit-absence detection. The reanalyses of published results thus suggest that the parameters sensitively reflect the manipulations of the processes they were designed to measure, providing support of the validity of the 2-HT eyewitness identification model.

Perceived software usability and usability-related stress in German craft enterprises.

BACKGROUND: Digitalisation is reaching German craft enterprises which must increasingly deal with complex software. The usability of the software is crucial for the effective use in everyday work and insufficient usability is associated with increased stress and strain. It thus seems necessary to identify possible usability-related stressors in craft-enterprise software. OBJECTIVE: Here we examine how users evaluate the usability of craft-enterprise software and whether usability is associated with perceived work-related stress. METHODS: To assess the perceived usability of German craft-enterprise software, an online survey was conducted with 161 participants from craft enterprises using a validated usability questionnaire based on ISO 9241-110. In addition, 26 guideline-based interviews were conducted to identify the experience of managers and employees with craft-enterprise software, possible usability-related stress and strain. RESULTS: Both studies show that craft enterprises use software but only to a limited extend. While back-office administrative processes are routinely supported by software, mobile software support to manage customer service is used less frequently. Increasing complexity of craft-enterprise software is posing growing demands on the users. Software usability was rated to be crucial in the online survey, but the available software is only rated to be acceptable. This was also reflected in the interviews. Participants described usability problems and their relevance as stressors during software use. In consequence, the users experience strain such as feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. CONCLUSION: It can be concluded that improving the usability of craft-enterprise software should reduce work-related stress and support craft enterprises to master the digitalisation process.