The Psychology of COVID-19 Booster Hesitancy, Acceptance and Resistance in Australia.

COVID-19 booster vaccinations have been recommended as a primary line of defence against serious illness and hospitalisation. This study identifies and characterises distinct profiles of attitudes towards vaccination, particularly the willingness to get a booster dose. A sample of 582 adults from Australia completed an online survey capturing COVID-related behaviours, beliefs and attitudes and a range of sociodemographic, psychological, political, social and cultural variables. Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) identified three subgroups: Acceptant (61%), Hesitant (30%) and Resistant (9%). Compared to the Acceptant group, the Hesitant and Resistant groups were less worried about catching COVID-19, used fewer official COVID-19 information sources, checked the news less, were lower on the agreeableness personality dimension and reported more conservatism, persecutory thinking, amoral attitudes and need for chaos. The Hesitant group also reported checking the legitimacy of information sources less, scored lower on the openness to new experiences personality dimension and were more likely than the Resistant and Acceptant groups to report regaining freedoms (e.g., travel) and work requirements or external pressures as reasons to get a booster. The Resistant group were higher on reactance, held more conspiratorial beliefs and rated their culture as being less tolerant of deviance than the Hesitant and Acceptant groups. This research can inform tailored approaches to increasing booster uptake and optimal strategies for public health messaging.

Are two naïve and distributed heads better than one? Factors influencing the performance of teams in a challenging real-time task.

Introduction: Collective decisions in dynamic tasks can be influenced by multiple factors, including the operational conditions, quality and quantity of communication, and individual differences. These factors may influence whether two heads perform better than one. This study examined the "two heads are better than one" effect (2HBT1) in distributed two-person driver-navigator teams with asymmetrical roles performing a challenging simulated driving task. We also examined the influence of communication quality and quantity on team performance under different operational conditions. In addition to traditional measures of communication volume (duration and speaking turns), patterns of communication quality (optimality of timing and accuracy of instructions) were captured. Methods: Participants completed a simulated driving task under two operational conditions (normal and fog) either as individual drivers (N = 134; 87 females, mean age = 19.80, SD = 3.35) or two-person teams (driver and navigator; N = 80; 109 females, mean age = 19.70, SD = 4.69). The normal condition was characterized by high visibility for both driver and navigator. The fog condition was characterized by reduced visibility for the driver but not for the navigator. Participants were also measured on a range of cognitive and personality constructs. Results: Teams had fewer collisions than individuals during normal conditions but not during fog conditions when teams had an informational advantage over individuals. Furthermore, teams drove slower than individuals during fog conditions but not during normal conditions. Communication that was poorly timed and/or inaccurate was a positive predictor of accuracy (i.e., collisions) during the normal condition and communication that was well timed and accurate was a negative predictor of speed during the fog condition. Our novel measure of communication quality (i.e., content of communication) was a stronger predictor of accuracy, but volume of communication was a stronger predictor of time (i.e., speed). Discussion: Results indicate when team performance thrives and succumbs compared with individual performance and informs theory about the 2HBT1 effect and team communication.

The Parent and Child Memory Questionnaires: Convergent validity, factor structure, internal consistency, and cross-informant reliability in typically developing children.

The Parent Memory Questionnaire (PMQ) and Child Memory Questionnaire (Child MQ) assess children's memory functioning in daily activities. Their psychometric properties are largely unknown. Hence, this study aimed to establish the psychometric properties of the PMQ and Child MQ. A sample included 239 neurotypical children (113 females; Mage = 12.3 years) from Australia and Canada and their parents (n = 306; 149 females). Children also completed standardized and experimental verbal memory tests that assessed working memory, immediate recall, and recall after short (2 min, 30 min) and long (7 day) delays. Convergent validity with memory tests was low for both questionnaires, with significant, albeit small, correlations found for the WISC IV Digit Span Forward only. Exploratory factor analysis (Principal Axis Factoring with Promax rotation) of the PMQ and Child MQ yielded two (Forgetting and Remembering) and four factors (Forgetting, Remembering, Retrieval, and Episodic Memory) accounting for 49.3% and 40.6% of the variance, respectively, and reduced the number of items from 28 to 17. Both PMQ factors showed good internal consistency. Inter-rater reliability was adequate but children rated their memory as significantly poorer than their parents. The present study revealed different factorial structures for the PMQ and Child MQ. Our findings highlighted that memory questionnaires assess several aspects of memory and may complement objective memory tests in children's memory evaluation.

Health-related quality of life of Australians during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic: a comparison with pre-pandemic data and factors associated with poor outcomes.

PURPOSE: Compare the health-related quality of life (HRQL) of the Australian general population during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) with pre-pandemic data (2015-2016) and identify pandemic-related and demographic factors associated with poorer HRQL. METHODS: Participants were quota sampled from an online panel by four regions (defined by active COVID-19 case numbers); then by age and sex. Participants completed an online survey about their HRQL [EORTC QLQ-C30 questionnaire and General Health Question (GHQ)], demographic characteristics, and the impact of the pandemic on daily life. HRQL scores were compared to a 2015-2016 reference sample using independent t-tests, adjusted for multiple testing. Associations between 22 pre-specified factors (pandemic-related and demographic) and 15 QLQ-C30 domains and GHQ, were assessed with multiple regressions. RESULTS: Most domains were statistically significantly worse for the 2020 sample (n = 1898) compared to the reference sample (n = 1979), except fatigue and pain. Differences were largest for the youngest group (18-29 years) for cognitive functioning, nausea, diarrhoea, and financial difficulties. Emotional functioning was worse for 2020 participants aged 18-59, but not for those 60 +. All models were statistically significant at p < .001; the most variance was explained for emotional functioning, QLQ-C30 global health/QOL, nausea/vomiting, GHQ, and financial difficulties. Generally, increased workload, negative COVID-19 impacts, COVID-19-related worries, and negative attitudes towards public health order compliance were associated with poorer HRQL outcomes. CONCLUSION: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Australians reported poorer HRQL relative to a pre-pandemic sample. Risk factors for poor HRQL outcomes included greater negative pandemic-related impacts, poorer compliance attitudes, and younger age. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ANZCTR number is: ACTRN12621001240831. Web address of your trial: https://www.anzctr.org.au/ACTRN12621001240831.aspx . Date submitted: 26/08/2021 2:56:53 PM. Date registered: 14/09/2021 9:40:31 AM. Registered by: Margaret-Ann Tait. Principal Investigator: Madeleine King.

I Choose to Opt-Out of Answering: Individual Differences in Giving Up Behaviour on Cognitive Tests.

Under the Meta-reasoning model, the process of giving up when a solution may not be feasible reflects an adaptive metacognitive strategy, where individuals opt-out of responding to mitigate error and resource costs. However, research is still needed to determine whether individuals systematically vary in this behaviour and if so, which variables it meaningfully relates with. The current study (N = 176) is the first to examine factorial stability in giving up tendencies and its relationships with on-task confidence, cognitive ability, decision-making predispositions, and academic performance. To measure giving up tendencies, participants completed three cognitive tests which allowed for opting out, thereby capturing giving up frequency within each test and its consistency across tests. Participants also completed five other cognitive tasks embedded with confidence ratings, and a decision-making styles questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on all giving up, confidence, and accuracy variables, with a three-factor solution having the best fit (containing a giving up factor, confidence factor, and cognitive ability factor). Supporting the proposed adaptive nature of giving up tendencies, the giving up factor correlated positively with cognitive ability, rational decision making, and academic performance. This research establishes factorial stability in giving up tendencies and provides a foundation for further investigation into its role within Meta-reasoning theory.

Unraveling the Physiological Correlates of Mental Workload Variations in Tracking and Collision Prediction Tasks.

Modern work environments have extensive interactions with technology and greater cognitive complexity of the tasks, which results in human operators experiencing increased mental workload. Air traffic control operators routinely work in such complex environments, and we designed tracking and collision prediction tasks to emulate their elementary tasks. The physiological response to the workload variations in these tasks was elucidated to untangle the impact of workload variations experienced by operators. Electroencephalogram (EEG), eye activity, and heart rate variability (HRV) data were recorded from 24 participants performing tracking and collision prediction tasks with three levels of difficulty. Our findings indicate that variations in task load in both these tasks are sensitively reflected in EEG, eye activity and HRV data. Multiple regression results also show that operators' performance in both tasks can be predicted using the corresponding EEG, eye activity and HRV data. The results also demonstrate that the brain dynamics during each of these tasks can be estimated from the corresponding eye activity, HRV and performance data. Furthermore, the markedly distinct neurometrics of workload variations in the tracking and collision prediction tasks indicate that neurometrics can provide insights on the type of mental workload. These findings have applicability to the design of future mental workload adaptive systems that integrate neurometrics in deciding not just "when" but also "what" to adapt. Our study provides compelling evidence in the viability of developing intelligent closed-loop mental workload adaptive systems that ensure efficiency and safety in complex work environments.

Semantic and episodic memory in adults with temporal lobe epilepsy.

The primary aims were to (1) identify the factor structure of tests thought to measure semantic and episodic memory and (2) examine whether patterns of impairment would show a double dissociation between these two memory systems at an individual level in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). The secondary aim was to explore the impact of epilepsy-related variables on performance. This retrospective study involved a cohort of 54 adults who had been diagnosed with TLE and had undergone a neuropsychological assessment that included four memory tests traditionally used to measure either semantic memory (picture naming, animal fluency) or episodic memory (story recall, word list recall) at a single epilepsy surgery center in Australia. Principal component analysis revealed two factors albeit with unexpected loadings. Picture naming and story recall loaded on one factor. Animal fluency and word list recall loaded on another factor. There was no evidence of a double dissociation between semantic and episodic memory at an individual level. Left hemisphere seizure focus and early age of seizure onset related to worse performance on word list recall, picture naming and animal fluency, respectively. Our study highlights the importance of caution when interpreting the results of neuropsychological assessments, as not all putative tests of semantic and episodic memory may necessarily be measuring the same construct. Future directions for research are also considered.

To kill or not to kill: A systematic literature review of high-stakes moral decision-making measures and their psychometric properties.

Introduction: The present systematic review investigates the psychological tools available for capturing high-stakes decisions involving life-death content and their psychometric properties. Valid measurement of these individual differences will provide crucial information in the personnel selection and training in fields where high-stakes moral issues exist (e.g., military, medicine). To our knowledge, this is the first systematic examination of such instruments. Methods: Systematic searches of 6 electronic databases were conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines. An appraisal tool evaluated the quality of identified measures. Twenty studies met pre-determined inclusion criteria. Moral decision-making was assessed with either a self-report scale (n = 3) or moral dilemmas (n = 17). Results: The findings identified two measures, the Defining Issues Test and the Oxford Utilitarianism Scale as psychometrically sound measures of moral decision-making. However, they are unlikely to be considered "gold standard" measures due to their theoretically specific, but limited, scope. Overall, the findings suggest that research in the area has been scattered. There is a lack of consensus on the definition of moral decision-making, and a lack of cross-validation on how different measures of moral decision-making relate to each other. This presents a gap between theory and empirical measurement in moral decision-making. Further work is needed for a unified conceptualization of moral decision-making to pave the way to both theory development and the development of well-validated measurement tools, and this review provides a critical foundation for both.

Building a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive drivers of performance under pressure: An international multi-panel Delphi study.

Introduction: The ability to perform optimally under pressure is critical across many occupations, including the military, first responders, and competitive sport. Despite recognition that such performance depends on a range of cognitive factors, how common these factors are across performance domains remains unclear. The current study sought to integrate existing knowledge in the performance field in the form of a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie performance under pressure. Methods: International experts were recruited from four performance domains [(i) Defense; (ii) Competitive Sport; (iii) Civilian High-stakes; and (iv) Performance Neuroscience]. Experts rated constructs from the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework (and several expert-suggested constructs) across successive rounds, until all constructs reached consensus for inclusion or were eliminated. Finally, included constructs were ranked for their relative importance. Results: Sixty-eight experts completed the first Delphi round, with 94% of experts retained by the end of the Delphi process. The following 10 constructs reached consensus across all four panels (in order of overall ranking): (1) Attention; (2) Cognitive Control-Performance Monitoring; (3) Arousal and Regulatory Systems-Arousal; (4) Cognitive Control-Goal Selection, Updating, Representation, and Maintenance; (5) Cognitive Control-Response Selection and Inhibition/Suppression; (6) Working memory-Flexible Updating; (7) Working memory-Active Maintenance; (8) Perception and Understanding of Self-Self-knowledge; (9) Working memory-Interference Control, and (10) Expert-suggested-Shifting. Discussion: Our results identify a set of transdisciplinary neuroscience-informed constructs, validated through expert consensus. This expert consensus is critical to standardizing cognitive assessment and informing mechanism-targeted interventions in the broader field of human performance optimization.

Detection of Psychopathic Traits in Emotional Faces.

When meeting someone at zero acquaintance, we make assumptions about each other that encompass emotional states, personality traits, and even cognitive abilities. Evidence suggests individuals can accurately detect psychopathic personality traits in strangers based on short video clips or photographs of faces. We present an in-depth examination of this ability. In two studies, we investigated whether high psychopathy traits are perceivable and whether other traits affect ratings of psychopathic traits in the sense of a halo effect. On the perceiver's end, we additionally examined how cognitive abilities and personality traits of the responders affect these ratings. In two studies (n1 = 170 community adults from the USA, n2 = 126 students from Australia), participants rated several targets on several characteristics of psychopathy, as well as on attractiveness, masculinity, sympathy, trustworthiness, neuroticism, intelligence, and extraversion. Results show that responders were generally able to detect psychopathy. Responders generally came to a consensus in their ratings, and using profile similarity metrics, we found a weak relation between ratings of psychopathy and the targets' psychopathy level as determined by the Psychopathy Checklist: Short Version. Trait ratings, though, were influenced by the ratings of other traits like attractiveness. Finally, we found accuracy in the perception of psychopathy was positively related to fluid intelligence but unrelated to emotion perception ability.

To comply or not comply? A latent profile analysis of behaviours and attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How and why do people comply with protective behaviours during COVID-19? The emerging literature employs a variable-centered approach, typically using a narrow selection of constructs within a study. This study is the first to adopt a person-centred approach to identify complex patterns of compliance, and holistically examine underlying psychological differences, integrating multiple psychology paradigms and epidemiology. 1575 participants from Australia, US, UK, and Canada indicated their behaviours, attitudes, personality, cognitive/decision-making ability, resilience, adaptability, coping, political and cultural factors, and information consumption during the pandemic's first wave. Using Latent Profile Analysis, two broad groups were identified. The compliant group (90%) reported greater worries, and perceived protective measures as effective, whilst the non-compliant group (about 10%) perceived them as problematic. The non-compliant group were lower on agreeableness and cultural tightness-looseness, but more extraverted, and reactant. They utilised more maladaptive coping strategies, checked/trusted the news less, and used official sources less. Females showed greater compliance than males. By promoting greater appreciation of the complexity of behaviour during COVID-19, this research provides a critical platform to inform future studies, public health policy, and targeted behaviour change interventions during pandemics. The results also challenge age-related stereotypes and assumptions.

An integrative process model of resilience in an academic context: Resilience resources, coping strategies, and positive adaptation.

Tertiary study presents students with a number of pressures and challenges. Thus, mental resilience plays a key role in students' well-being and performance. Resilience research has moved away from conceptualising resilience as a trait and towards studying resilience as a process by which resources protect against the negative impact of stressors to produce positive outcomes. However, there is a lack of research in the academic domain examining the mechanisms underlying this process. This study addressed this gap by examining a range of personal resilience resources and their interaction with coping responses to produce positive adaptation outcomes, in a sample of 306 undergraduate students. Firstly, individual differences in resilience were examined, whereby factor analysis resulted in self-report measures of resilience-related attributes converging onto an overarching factor. The extracted factor was then validated against markers of positive adaptation (mental well-being, university adjustment, and somatic health symptoms), and the mediating roles of coping strategies were investigated through structural equation modelling. The resilience resources factor directly predicted mental well-being and adjustment; and indirectly predicted adjustment and somatic health symptoms through support-seeking and avoidant coping, respectively. These findings have theoretical implications for how resilience is conceptualised, as well as practical implications for improving student well-being and adjustment through promoting social support and reducing disengaged and avoidant coping strategies.

Applying Evidence-Centered Design to Measure Psychological Resilience: The Development and Preliminary Validation of a Novel Simulation-Based Assessment Methodology.

Modern technologies have enabled the development of dynamic game- and simulation-based assessments to measure psychological constructs. This has highlighted their potential for supplementing other assessment modalities, such as self-report. This study describes the development, design, and preliminary validation of a simulation-based assessment methodology to measure psychological resilience-an important construct for multiple life domains. The design was guided by theories of resilience, and principles of evidence-centered design and stealth assessment. The system analyzed log files from a simulated task to derive individual trajectories in response to stressors. Using slope analyses, these trajectories were indicative of four types of responses to stressors: thriving, recovery, surviving, and succumbing. Using Machine Learning, the trajectories were predictive of self-reported resilience (Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale) with high accuracy, supporting construct validity of the simulation-based assessment. These findings add to the growing evidence supporting the utility of gamified assessment of psychological constructs. Importantly, these findings address theoretical debates about the construct of resilience, adding to its theory, supporting the combination of the "trait" and "process" approaches to its operationalization.

Impostor Phenomenon Measurement Scales: A Systematic Review.

The impostor phenomenon is a pervasive psychological experience of perceived intellectual and professional fraudulence. It is not a diagnosable condition yet observed in clinical and normal populations. Increasingly, impostorism research has expanded beyond clinical and into applied settings. However, to date, a systematic review examining the methodological quality of impostorism measures used to conduct such research has yet to be carried out. This systematic review examines trait impostor phenomenon measures and evaluates their psychometric properties against a quality assessment framework. Systematic searches were carried out on six electronic databases, seeking original empirical studies examining the conceptualization, development, or validation of self-report impostor phenomenon scales. A subsequent review of reference lists also included two full-text dissertations. Predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria were specified to select the final 18 studies in the review sample. Of the studies included, four measures of the impostor phenomenon were identified and their psychometric properties assessed against the quality appraisal tool-Clance Impostor Phenomenon Scale, Harvey Impostor Scale, Perceived Fraudulence Scale, and Leary Impostor Scale. The findings often highlighted that studies did not necessarily report poor psychometric properties; rather an absence of data and stringent assessment criteria resulted in lower methodological ratings. Recommendations for future research are made to address the conceptual clarification of the construct's dimensionality, to improve future study quality and to enable better discrimination between measures.

It's the deceiver and the receiver: Individual differences in phishing susceptibility and false positives with item profiling.

Phishing email is one of the biggest risks to online information security due to its ability to exploit human trust and naivety. Prior research has examined whether some people are more susceptible to phishing than others and what characteristics may predict this susceptibility. Given that there are no standardised measures or methodologies to detect phishing susceptibility, results have conflicted. To address this issue, the current study created a 40-item phishing detection task to measure both cognitive and behavioural indicators of phishing susceptibility and false positives (misjudged genuine email). The task is based on current real-life email stimuli (i.e., phishing and genuine) relevant to the student and general population. Extending previous literature we also designed a methodology for assessing phishing susceptibility by allowing participants to indicate perception of maliciousness of each email type and the actions they would take (keep it, trash it or seek further information). This enabled us to: (1) examine the relationships that psychological variables share with phishing susceptibility and false positives-both captured as consistent tendencies; (2) determine the relationships between perceptions of maliciousness with behavioural outcomes and psychological variables; and (3) determine the relationships between these tendencies and email characteristics. In our study, 150 undergraduate psychology students participated in exchange for partial course credit (98 Females; Mean age = 19.70, SD = 2.27). Participants also completed a comprehensive battery of psychometric tests assessing intelligence, pre- and on-task confidence, Big 6 personality, and familiarity/competence in computing and phishing. Results revealed that people showed distinct and robust tendencies for phishing susceptibility and false positives. A series of regression analyses looking at the accuracy of both phishing and false positives detection revealed that human-centred variables accounted for a good degree of variance in phishing susceptibility (about 54%), with perceptions of maliciousness, intelligence, knowledge of phishing, and on-task confidence contributing significantly, directly and/or indirectly via perception of maliciousness. A regression model looking at discriminating false positives has also shown that human-centred variables accounted for a reasonable degree of variance (41%), with perceptions of maliciousness, intelligence and on-task confidence contributing significantly, directly and/or indirectly via perception of maliciousness. Furthermore, the characteristics of the most effective phishing and misjudged genuine email items were profiled. Based on our findings, we suggest that future research should investigate these significant variables in more detail. We also recommend that future research should capture consistent response tendencies to determine vulnerability to phishing and false positives (rather than a one off response to a single email), and use the collection of the most current phishing email obtained from relevant sources to the population. It is important to capture perceptions of maliciousness of email because it is a key predictor of the action taken on the email. It directly predicts accuracy detection of phishing and genuine email, as well as mediating the relationships between some other predictors whose role would have been overlooked if the perceptions were not captured. The study provides the framework of human-centred variables which predict phishing and false positive susceptibility as well as the characteristics of email which most deceive people.

It's the deceiver, not the receiver: No individual differences when detecting deception in a foreign and a native language.

Individual differences in lie detection remain poorly understood. Bond and DePaulo's meta-analysis examined judges (receivers) who were ascertaining lies from truths and senders (deceiver) who told these lies and truths. Bond and DePaulo found that the accuracy of detecting deception depended more on the characteristics of senders rather than the judges' ability to detect lies/truths. However, for many studies in this meta-analysis, judges could hear and understand senders. This made language comprehension a potential confound. This paper presents the results of two studies. Extending previous work, in Study 1, we removed language comprehension as a potential confound by having English-speakers (N = 126, mean age = 19.86) judge the veracity of German speakers (n = 12) in a lie detection task. The twelve lie-detection stimuli included emotional and non-emotional content, and were presented in three modalities-audio only, video only, and audio and video together. The intelligence (General, Auditory, Emotional) and personality (Dark Triads and Big 6) of participants was also assessed. In Study 2, a native German-speaking sample (N = 117, mean age = 29.10) were also tested on a similar lie detection task to provide a control condition. Despite significantly extending research design and the selection of constructs employed to capture individual differences, both studies replicated Bond and DePaulo's findings. The results of Study1 indicated that removing language comprehension did not amplify individual differences in judge's ability to ascertain lies from truths. Study 2 replicated these results confirming a lack of individual differences in judge's ability to detect lies. The results of both studies suggest that Sender (deceiver) characteristics exerted a stronger influence on the outcomes of lie detection than the judge's attributes.

Confirmatory factor analysis and examination of the psychometric properties of the eating beliefs questionnaire.

BACKGROUND: The Eating Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) is a 27-item self-report measure that assesses positive and negative beliefs about binge eating. It has been validated and its factor structure explored in a non-clinical sample. This study tested the psychometric properties of the EBQ in a clinical and a non-clinical sample. METHOD: A sample of 769 participants (573 participants recruited from the university and general community, 76 seeking treatment for an eating disorder and 120 participating in obesity research) completed a battery of questionnaires. A subset of clinical participants with a diagnosis of Bulimia Nervosa or Binge Eating Disorder completed the test-battery before and after receiving a psychological treatment (n = 27) or after allocation to a wait-list period (n = 28), and a subset of 35 community participants completed the test battery again after an interval of two-weeks. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed. RESULTS: CFA found a two-factor structure that provided a good fit to the data, supporting the solution presented in the development paper. Items with poor psychometric properties were removed, resulting in a 16 item measure. EBQ scores were found to correlate with binge eating episode frequency, increases in body mass index (BMI), and measures of eating disorder behaviours and related psychopathology. The EBQ was found to have excellent internal consistency (α = .94), good test-retest reliability (r = .91) and sensitivity to treatment. CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that the EBQ is a psychometrically sound and clinically useful measure.

Cognitive Abilities, Monitoring Confidence, and Control Thresholds Explain Individual Differences in Heuristics and Biases.

In this paper, we investigate whether individual differences in performance on heuristic and biases tasks can be explained by cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, and control thresholds. Current theories explain individual differences in these tasks by the ability to detect errors and override automatic but biased judgments, and deliberative cognitive abilities that help to construct the correct response. Here we retain cognitive abilities but disentangle error detection, proposing that lower monitoring confidence and higher control thresholds promote error checking. Participants (N = 250) completed tasks assessing their fluid reasoning abilities, stable monitoring confidence levels, and the control threshold they impose on their decisions. They also completed seven typical heuristic and biases tasks such as the cognitive reflection test and Resistance to Framing. Using structural equation modeling, we found that individuals with higher reasoning abilities, lower monitoring confidence, and higher control threshold performed significantly and, at times, substantially better on the heuristic and biases tasks. Individuals with higher control thresholds also showed lower preferences for risky alternatives in a gambling task. Furthermore, residual correlations among the heuristic and biases tasks were reduced to null, indicating that cognitive abilities, monitoring confidence, and control thresholds accounted for their shared variance. Implications include the proposal that the capacity to detect errors does not differ between individuals. Rather, individuals might adopt varied strategies that promote error checking to different degrees, regardless of whether they have made a mistake or not. The results support growing evidence that decision-making involves cognitive abilities that construct actions and monitoring and control processes that manage their initiation.

Commentary-a united front: using the range of psychological variance in cutting-edge practice and emerging research.

Psychological and behavioral variance can be explained by differences in the environment, and between and within individuals. Almost 60 years ago, Cronbach (1957) called for converging investigations into all three sources as important for the development of accurate science and useful applications in the real world. Yet rifts among researchers tackling these various sources still exist. The articles in this issue, for example, differ greatly in terms of content, methodological approaches, and the sources of variance being addressed. On the basis of these articles, this commentary seeks to reignite Cronbach's call as an important step for psychological research to progress as a unified and useful science.

Low cognitive load and reduced arousal impede practice effects on executive functioning, metacognitive confidence and decision making.

The present study investigated the effects of low cognitive workload and the absence of arousal induced via external physical stimulation (motion) on practice-related improvements in executive (inhibitory) control, short-term memory, metacognitive monitoring and decision making. A total of 70 office workers performed low and moderately engaging passenger tasks in two successive 20-minute simulated drives and repeated a battery of decision making and inhibitory control tests three times­before, between and after these drives. For half the participants, visual simulation was synchronised with (moderately arousing) motion generated through LAnd Motion Platform, with vibration levels corresponding to a well-maintained unsealed road. The other half performed the same simulated drive without motion. Participants' performance significantly improved over the three test blocks, which is indicative of typical practice effects. The magnitude of these improvements was the highest when both motion and moderate cognitive load were present. The same effects declined either in the absence of motion (low arousal) or following a low cognitive workload task, thus suggesting two distinct pathways through which practice-related improvements in cognitive performance may be hampered. Practice, however, degraded certain aspects of metacognitive performance, as participants became less likely to detect incorrect decisions in the decision-making test with each subsequent test block. Implications include consideration of low cognitive load and arousal as factors responsible for performance decline and targets for the development of interventions/strategies in low load/arousal conditions such as autonomous vehicle operations and highway driving.