'So Help Me God'? Does oath swearing in courtroom scenarios impact trial outcomes?

In countries such as Britain and the US, court witnesses must declare they will provide truthful evidence and are often compelled to publicly choose between religious ("oath") and secular ("affirmation") versions of this declaration. Might defendants who opt to swear an oath enjoy more favourable outcomes than those who choose to affirm? Two preliminary, pre-registered survey studies using minimal vignettes (Study 1, N = 443; Study 2, N = 913) indicated that people associate choice of the oath with credible testimony; and that participants, especially religious participants, discriminate against defendants who affirm. In a third, Registered Report study (Study 3, N = 1821), we used a more elaborate audiovisual mock trial paradigm to better estimate the real-world influence of declaration choice. Participants were asked to render a verdict for a defendant who either swore or affirmed, and were themselves required to swear or affirm that they would try the defendant in good faith. Overall, the defendant was not considered guiltier when affirming rather than swearing, nor did mock-juror belief in God moderate this effect. However, jurors who themselves swore an oath did discriminate against the affirming defendant. Exploratory analyses suggest this effect may be driven by authoritarianism, perhaps because high-authoritarian jurors consider the oath the traditional (and therefore correct) declaration to choose. We discuss the real-world implications of these findings and conclude the religious oath is an antiquated legal ritual that needs reform.

Does that sound right? A novel method of evaluating models of reading aloud : Rating nonword pronunciations.

Nonword pronunciation is a critical challenge for models of reading aloud but little attention has been given to identifying the best method for assessing model predictions. The most typical approach involves comparing the model's pronunciations of nonwords to pronunciations of the same nonwords by human participants and deeming the model's output correct if it matches with any transcription of the human pronunciations. The present paper introduces a new ratings-based method, in which participants are shown printed nonwords and asked to rate the plausibility of the provided pronunciations, generated here by a speech synthesiser. We demonstrate this method with reference to a previously published database of 915 disyllabic nonwords (Mousikou et al., 2017). We evaluated two well-known psychological models, RC00 and CDP++, as well as an additional grapheme-to-phoneme algorithm known as Sequitur, and compared our model assessment with the corpus-based method adopted by Mousikou et al. We find that the ratings method: a) is much easier to implement than a corpus-based method, b) has a high hit rate and low false-alarm rate in assessing nonword reading accuracy, and c) provided a similar outcome as the corpus-based method in its assessment of RC00 and CDP++. However, the two methods differed in their evaluation of Sequitur, which performed much better under the ratings method. Indeed, our evaluation of Sequitur revealed that the corpus-based method introduced a number of false positives and more often, false negatives. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Unveiling the boost in the sandwich priming technique.

The masked priming technique (which compares #####-house-HOUSE vs. #####-fight-HOUSE) is the gold-standard tool to examine the initial moments of word processing. Lupker and Davis showed that adding a pre-prime identical to the target produced greater priming effects in the sandwich technique (which compares #####-HOUSE-house-HOUSE vs #####-HOUSE-fight-HOUSE). While there is consensus that the sandwich technique magnifies the size of priming effects relative to the standard procedure, the mechanisms underlying this boost are not well understood (i.e., does it reflect quantitative or qualitative changes?). To fully characterise the sandwich technique, we compared the sandwich and standard techniques by examining the response times (RTs) and their distributional features (delta plots; conditional-accuracy functions), comparing identity versus unrelated primes. The results showed that the locus of the boost in the sandwich technique was two-fold: faster responses in the identity condition (via a shift in the RT distributions) and slower responses in the unrelated condition. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.

Efficacy information influences intention to take COVID-19 vaccine.

OBJECTIVES: A successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic requires achieving high levels of vaccine uptake. We tested whether directly contrasting the high efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines with the lower efficacy of the annual flu vaccine would increase intentions to take a COVID-19 vaccine. DESIGN: A pre-registered online study of 481 participants compared four information conditions: (1) no information; (2) COVID-19 Vaccine Information Only; and COVID-19 Vaccine Information combined with flu vaccine information suggesting either (3) 60% efficacy or (4) 40% efficacy; we measured COVID-19 and flu vaccine intentions along with several other vaccine-related variables. METHODS: The Prolific platform was used to recruit 481 UK participants (64% female; aged between 18 and 85 years) who had been pre-screened to have intermediate levels of vaccine hesitancy. After reading a short text (~200 words) about COVID-19 vaccines, participants were asked about their vaccination intentions. RESULTS: Providing information about the safety and efficacy of the new COVID-19 vaccines resulted in vaccination intentions that were, on average, 0.39 standard deviations (SDs) higher than those in the no information condition; providing the same COVID vaccine efficacy information in the context of information about flu vaccine efficacy resulted in a further significant increase in vaccination intentions that were 0.68 SD higher than those in the no information condition. This positive contrast effect for the COVID-19 vaccine was not associated with reduced flu vaccine intentions. CONCLUSIONS: Vaccination intentions can be strengthened through a simple messaging intervention that utilizes context effects to increase perceived response efficacy.

Vision: What's so special about words?

Readers are sensitive to the statistics of written language. New research suggests that this sensitivity may be driven by the same domain-general mechanisms that enable the visual system to detect statistical regularities in the visual environment.

Is zjudge a better prime for JUDGE than zudge is?: A new evaluation of current orthographic coding models.

Three masked priming paradigms, the conventional masked priming lexical-decision task (Forster & Davis, 1984), the sandwich priming task (Lupker & Davis, 2009), and the masked priming same-different task (Norris & Kinoshita, 2008), were used to investigate priming for a given target (e.g., JUDGE) from primes created by either adding a letter to the beginning of the target (e.g., zjudge) or replacing the target's initial letter (e.g., zudge). Virtually all models of orthographic coding that allow calculation of orthographic similarity measures predict that zjudge should be the better prime because zjudge contains all the letters in JUDGE in their correct order whereas zudge does not. Nonetheless, Adelman et al.'s (2014) megastudy data indicated no difference in the effectiveness of these two prime types. The present experiments provide additional support for the conclusion of no difference between these two prime types with the only observed difference being a small zudge prime advantage in Experiment 1b (sandwich priming). These results suggest that models of orthographic coding/word recognition may be well served by allowing inconsistent information (e.g., the "z" in both zjudge and zudge indicates that the presented prime is not JUDGE) to be given considerable weight during the orthographic coding/word recognition process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Masked form priming as a function of letter position: An evaluation of current orthographic coding models.

A word's exterior letters, particularly its initial letter, appear to have a special status when reading. Therefore, most orthographic coding models incorporate assumptions giving initial letters and, in some cases, final letters, enhanced importance during the orthographic coding process. In the present article, 3 masked priming experiments were carried out, using the conventional lexical-decision task, the sandwich priming lexical-decision task and the masked priming same-different task, in an attempt to examine a number of those models with a specific focus on the implications of the models' assumptions concerning the different letter positions. The related primes and targets were 6-letter strings that differed in 2 letter positions, initial (e.g., jnckey-HOCKEY), middle (e.g., hojney-HOCKEY), or final (hockjn-HOCKEY), with the middle-letters different primes being the primes that maintained both end letters. To the extent possible, the predictions of the models were derived by using easyNet, the simulation program recently developed by Adelman, Gubian, and Davis (2017). In all experiments, the final-letters different primes were the most effective primes with there being no clear distinction between the other 2 prime types, a pattern that none of the models predicted. The lack of an advantage for the middle-letters different primes suggests that the orthographic code driving masked priming is not one that places a special emphasis on the identities of the exterior letters. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Semantic interpretability does not influence masked priming effects.

Much of the recent masked nonword priming literature demonstrates no difference in priming between affixed and non-affixed nonword primes (e.g., maskity-MASK vs. maskond-MASK). A possible explanation for the absence of a difference is that studies have used affixed primes which were semantically uninterpretable. Therefore, this explanation indicates semantic interpretability plays a fundamental role in masked priming. To test this account, we conducted an experiment using the masked priming paradigm in the lexical decision task. We compared responses with targets which were preceded by one of four primes types: (1) interpretable affixed nonwords (e.g., maskless-MASK), (2) uninterpretable affixed nonwords (e.g., maskity-MASK), (3) non-affixed nonwords (e.g., maskond-MASK), and (4) unrelated words (e.g., tubeful-MASK). Our results follow the trend of finding no difference between affixed and non-affixed primes. Critically, however, we observed no difference in priming between uninterpretable and interpretable affixed primes. Thus, our results suggest that semantic interpretability does not influence masked priming.

Evidence from masked-priming that initial identification of brand names is via abstract letter identities.

Although visual-word recognition is often assumed to proceed on the basis of case-invariant letter representations, previous research has shown a role for letter-case in recognizing brand names. One recent study reported early effects of letter-case in a brand-decision task using masked primes (Perea et al., 2015, British Journal of Psychology, 106, 162). The present study attempts to replicate this finding using brand names typically presented in all lowercase (e.g., adidas), all uppercase (e.g., IKEA), or titlecase (e.g., Ford). Across three masked-priming experiments, we found no advantage for case-matched identity primes over case-mismatched identity primes. This finding suggests that brand-specific letter-case information does not play a role in the early processing of brand names. However, we observed evidence that case may be used as a cue for making brand decisions, which may explain the effect reported by Perea et al. (2015, British Journal of Psychology, 106, 162).

A backwards glance at words: Using reversed-interior masked primes to test models of visual word identification.

The experiments reported here used "Reversed-Interior" (RI) primes (e.g., cetupmor-COMPUTER) in three different masked priming paradigms in order to test between different models of orthographic coding/visual word recognition. The results of Experiment 1, using a standard masked priming methodology, showed no evidence of priming from RI primes, in contrast to the predictions of the Bayesian Reader and LTRS models. By contrast, Experiment 2, using a sandwich priming methodology, showed significant priming from RI primes, in contrast to the predictions of open bigram models, which predict that there should be no orthographic similarity between these primes and their targets. Similar results were obtained in Experiment 3, using a masked prime same-different task. The results of all three experiments are most consistent with the predictions derived from simulations of the Spatial-coding model.

Diagnostic accuracy of Cancer Antigen 125 (CA125) for endometriosis in symptomatic women: A multi-center study.

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To assess the diagnostic accuracy of serum Cancer Antigen 125 (CA 125)≥30units/milliliter (u/ml) for diagnosing endometriosis in symptomatic women. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective observational cohort study including patients with symptoms of pelvic pain or subfertility undergoing elective diagnostic laparoscopy at two tertiary referral hospitals. We excluded patients suspected to have other gynecological pathology. We evaluated the accuracy of serum CA 125 (index test) with histologically confirmed endometriosis (reference standard). MAIN RESULTS: Fifty-eight consecutive women recruited between October 2013 to March 2015. Women with endometriosis had a higher CA 125 level than those without endometriosis (mean 54.7+/-71.6 vs 16.2+/- 8.0). The specificity of CA 125≥30u/ml was 96% (95% CI 81.7-99.9%) and sensitivity was 57% (95% CI 37.4-74.5%). The positive likelihood ratio for the histological presence of endometriosis with a CA 125≥30u/ml was 15.8 (95% CI 2.3-112) providing a post-test probability of 94% (95% CI 71%-99%) in women with pelvic pain or subfertility. The area under the curve, 0.85 (95% CI 0.74-0.96) indicates high test accuracy. CONCLUSIONS: CA 125≥30u/ml is highly predictive of endometriosis in women with symptoms of pain and/or subfertility. CA 125 should be considered as a rule-in test for expediting the diagnosis and management of endometriosis, CA 125 <30u/ml is, however, unable to rule out endometriosis.

Googling endometriosis: a systematic review of information available on the Internet.

BACKGROUND: The demand for health information online is increasing rapidly without clear governance. OBJECTIVE: We aim to evaluate the credibility, quality, readability, and accuracy of online patient information concerning endometriosis. STUDY DESIGN: We searched 5 popular Internet search engines: aol.com, ask.com, bing.com, google.com, and yahoo.com. We developed a search strategy in consultation with patients with endometriosis, to identify relevant World Wide Web pages. Pages containing information related to endometriosis for women with endometriosis or the public were eligible. Two independent authors screened the search results. World Wide Web pages were evaluated using validated instruments across 3 of the 4 following domains: (1) credibility (White Paper instrument; range 0-10); (2) quality (DISCERN instrument; range 0-85); and (3) readability (Flesch-Kincaid instrument; range 0-100); and (4) accuracy (assessed by a prioritized criteria developed in consultation with health care professionals, researchers, and women with endometriosis based on the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology guidelines [range 0-30]). We summarized these data in diagrams, tables, and narratively. RESULTS: We identified 750 World Wide Web pages, of which 54 were included. Over a third of Web pages did not attribute authorship and almost half the included pages did not report the sources of information or academic references. No World Wide Web page provided information assessed as being written in plain English. A minority of web pages were assessed as high quality. A single World Wide Web page provided accurate information: evidentlycochrane.net. Available information was, in general, skewed toward the diagnosis of endometriosis. There were 16 credible World Wide Web pages, however the content limitations were infrequently discussed. No World Wide Web page scored highly across all 4 domains. CONCLUSION: In the unlikely event that a World Wide Web page reports high-quality, accurate, and credible health information it is typically challenging for a lay audience to comprehend. Health care professionals, and the wider community, should inform women with endometriosis of the risk of outdated, inaccurate, or even dangerous information online. The implementation of an information standard will incentivize providers of online information to establish and adhere to codes of conduct.

Why do some neurons in cortex respond to information in a selective manner? Insights from artificial neural networks.

Why do some neurons in hippocampus and cortex respond to information in a highly selective manner? It has been hypothesized that neurons in hippocampus encode information in a highly selective manner in order to support fast learning without catastrophic interference, and that neurons in cortex encode information in a highly selective manner in order to co-activate multiple items in short-term memory (STM) without suffering a superposition catastrophe. However, the latter hypothesis is at odds with the widespread view that neural coding in the cortex is highly distributed in order to support generalization. We report a series of simulations that characterize the conditions in which recurrent Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) models of immediate serial can recall novel words. We found that these models learned localist codes when they succeeded in generalizing to novel words. That is, just as fast learning may explain selective coding in hippocampus, STM and generalization may help explain the existence of selective codes in cortex.

Variation in outcome reporting in endometriosis trials: a systematic review.

OBJECTIVE: We reviewed the outcomes and outcome measures reported in randomized controlled trials and their relationship with methodological quality, year of publication, commercial funding, and journal impact factor. DATA SOURCES: We searched the following sources: (1) Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, (2) Embase, and (3) MEDLINE from inception to November 2014. STUDY ELIGIBILITY: We included all randomized controlled trials evaluating a surgical intervention with or without a medical adjuvant therapy for the treatment of endometriosis symptoms. STUDY DESIGN: Two authors independently selected trials, assessed methodological quality (Jadad score; range, 1-5), outcome reporting quality (Management of Otitis Media with Effusion in Cleft Palate criteria; range, 1-6), year of publication, impact factor in the year of publication, and commercial funding (yes or no). Univariate and bivariate analyses were performed using Spearman Rh and Mann-Whitney U tests. We used a multivariate linear regression model to assess relationship associations between outcome reporting quality and other variables. RESULTS: There were 54 randomized controlled trials (5427 participants), which reported 164 outcomes and 113 outcome measures. The 3 most commonly reported primary outcomes were dysmenorrhea (10 outcome measures; 23 trials), dyspareunia (11 outcome measures; 21 trials), and pregnancy (3 outcome measures; 26 trials). The median quality of outcome reporting was 3 (interquartile range 4-2) and methodological quality 3 (interquartile range 5-2). Multivariate linear regression demonstrated a relationship between outcome reporting quality with methodological quality (ß = 0.325; P = .038) and year of publication (ß = 0.067; P = .040). No relationship was demonstrated between outcome reporting quality with journal impact factor (Rho = 0.190; P = .212) or commercial funding (P = .370). CONCLUSION: Variation in outcome reporting within published endometriosis trials prohibits comparison, combination, and synthesis of data. This limits the usefulness of research to inform clinical practice, enhance patient care, and improve patient outcomes. In the absence of a core outcome set for endometriosis we recommend the use of the 3 most common pain (dysmenorrhea, dyspareunia, and pelvic pain) and subfertility (pregnancy, miscarriage, and live birth) outcomes. International consensus among stakeholders is needed to establish a core outcome set for endometriosis trials.

Masked suffix priming and morpheme positional constraints.

Although masked stem priming (e.g., dealer-DEAL) is one of the most established effects in visual word identification, it is less clear whether primes and targets sharing a suffix (e.g., kindness-WILDNESS) also yield facilitation. In a new take on this issue, we show that prime nonwords facilitate lexical decisions to target words ending with the same suffix (sheeter-TEACHER) compared to a condition where the critical suffix was substituted by another one (sheetal-TEACHER) or by an unrelated nonmorphological ending (sheetub- TEACHER). We also show that this effect is genuinely morphological, as no priming emerged in noncomplex items with the same orthographic characteristics (sportel-BROTHEL vs. sportic-BROTHEL vs. sportur-BROTHEL). In a further experiment, we took advantage of these results to assess whether suffixes are recognized in a position-specific fashion. Masked suffix priming did not emerge when the relative order of stems and suffixes was reversed in the prime nonwords-ersheet did not yield any time saving in the identification of teacher as compared to either alsheet or obsheet. We take these results to show that -er was not identified as a morpheme in ersheet, thus indicating that suffix identification is position specific. This conclusion is in line with data on interference effects in nonword rejection and strongly constrains theoretical proposals on how complex words are identified. In particular, because these findings were reported in a masked priming paradigm, they suggest that positional constraints operate early, most likely at a prelexical level of morpho-orthographic analysis.

Preoperative assessment and diagnosis of endometriosis: are we any closer?

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The management of endometriosis has progressed vastly with medical treatments providing a large role in controlling endometriosis symptoms. Despite these advances we still lack an accurate noninvasive test to diagnose endometriosis. This has a large role in the delay to diagnosis, management and progression of the disease amongst a population that is choosing to conceive later. RECENT FINDINGS: Endometriosis is now thought to affect 1 in 10 women with patient annual healthcare costs estimated at &OV0556;9579. The diagnosis of this disease is still delayed by an average of 6-9 years allowing disease and symptom progression. Researchers have assessed a wide variety of noninvasive markers from urinary derivatives to MRI. There has been limited success in producing a highly sensitive and specific preoperative test for endometriosis. Novel markers such as miRNA provide the most encouraging diagnostic accuracy. SUMMARY: The development of a noninvasive accurate marker for endometriosis is a research target and priority of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. The current markers in use have moderate sensitivity and sensitivity. The inflammatory basis for the disease underpins many biomarkers but also many other concomitant diseases reducing accuracy and increasing false positive results.

Superset versus substitution-letter priming: an evaluation of open-bigram models.

In recent years, a number of models of orthographic coding have been proposed in which the orthographic code consists of a set of units representing bigrams (open-bigram models). Three masked priming experiments were undertaken in an attempt to evaluate this idea: a conventional masked priming experiment, a sandwich priming experiment (Lupker & Davis, 2009) and an experiment involving a masked prime same-different task (Norris & Kinoshita, 2008). Three prime types were used, first-letter superset primes (e.g., wjudge-JUDGE), last-letter superset primes (e.g., judgew-JUDGE) and standard substitution-letter primes (e.g., juwge-JUDGE). In none of the experiments was there any evidence that the superset primes were more effective primes, the prediction made by open-bigram models. In fact, in the second and third experiments, first-letter superset primes were significantly worse primes than the other two prime types. These results provide no evidence for the existence of open-bigram units. They also suggest that prime-target mismatches at the first position produce orthographic codes that are less similar than mismatches at other positions. Implications for models of orthographic coding are discussed.

Neural networks learn highly selective representations in order to overcome the superposition catastrophe.

A key insight from 50 years of neurophysiology is that some neurons in cortex respond to information in a highly selective manner. Why is this? We argue that selective representations support the coactivation of multiple "things" (e.g., words, objects, faces) in short-term memory, whereas nonselective codes are often unsuitable for this purpose. That is, the coactivation of nonselective codes often results in a blend pattern that is ambiguous; the so-called superposition catastrophe. We show that a recurrent parallel distributed processing network trained to code for multiple words at the same time over the same set of units learns localist letter and word codes, and the number of localist codes scales with the level of the superposition. Given that many cortical systems are required to coactivate multiple things in short-term memory, we suggest that the superposition constraint plays a role in explaining the existence of selective codes in cortex.

A behavioral database for masked form priming.

Reading involves a process of matching an orthographic input with stored representations in lexical memory. The masked priming paradigm has become a standard tool for investigating this process. Use of existing results from this paradigm can be limited by the precision of the data and the need for cross-experiment comparisons that lack normal experimental controls. Here, we present a single, large, high-precision, multicondition experiment to address these problems. Over 1,000 participants from 14 sites responded to 840 trials involving 28 different types of orthographically related primes (e.g., castfe-CASTLE) in a lexical decision task, as well as completing measures of spelling and vocabulary. The data were indeed highly sensitive to differences between conditions: After correction for multiple comparisons, prime type condition differences of 2.90 ms and above reached significance at the 5% level. This article presents the method of data collection and preliminary findings from these data, which included replications of the most widely agreed-upon differences between prime types, further evidence for systematic individual differences in susceptibility to priming, and new evidence regarding lexical properties associated with a target word's susceptibility to priming. These analyses will form a basis for the use of these data in quantitative model fitting and evaluation and for future exploration of these data that will inform and motivate new experiments.