Active exploration of faces in police lineups increases discrimination accuracy.

Eyewitness identifications play a key role in the justice system, but eyewitnesses can make errors, often with profound consequences. We used findings from basic science and innovative technologies to develop and test whether a novel interactive lineup procedure, wherein witnesses can rotate and dynamically view the lineup faces from different angles, improves witness discrimination accuracy compared with a widely used procedure in laboratories and police forces around the world-the static frontal-pose photo lineup. No novel procedure has previously been shown to improve witness discrimination accuracy. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 220) identified culprits from sequentially presented interactive lineups or static frontal-pose photo lineups. In Experiment 2, participants (N = 8,507) identified culprits from interactive lineups that were either presented sequentially, simultaneously wherein the faces could be moved independently, or simultaneously wherein the faces moved jointly into the same angle. Sequential interactive lineups enhanced witness discrimination accuracy compared with static photo lineups, and simultaneous interactive lineups enhanced witness discrimination accuracy compared with sequential interactive lineups. These finding were true both when participants viewed suspects who were of the same or different ethnicity/race as themselves. Our findings exemplify how basic science can be used to address the important applied policy issue on how best to conduct a police lineup and reduce eyewitness errors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Locomotor activity rhythm in catfish Heteropneustes fossilis as a function of shoal size under different light regimens.

The information on the circadian characteristics of catfish in shoals is scanty. We examined the circadian locomotor activity rhythm of catfish Heteropneustes fossilis either singly housed (SS1) or in shoals of four (SS4) and six (SS6) under different light regimens. We carried out the study sequentially under LD1 (12:12), constant darkness (DD), LD2, continuous light (LL), LD3, and DL (12:12). Each condition was for at least 10-12 consecutive days. We analyzed the time-series data by employing Cosinor rhythmometry to detect circadian rhythm characteristics in locomotor activity at a fixed time window with a τ = 24 h. Results indicated that singly housed or shoals exhibited statistically significant (p < .001) circadian rhythm in locomotor activity under LD conditions with a higher activity level during the dark phase. Further, we observed free-running rhythms in locomotor activity under DD and LL, irrespective of the shoal sizes. In phase inverse DL, both singly housed and shoals demonstrated higher activity in the dark phase. The two-way ANOVA results revealed a significant effect of the factor 'light regimen' on amplitude and acrophase; the factor 'shoal size' produced a statistically significant impact on the mesor only. Both shoals showed significantly higher mesor than singly housed fish. The circadian amplitude declined under constant conditions of DD and LL. The locomotor activity rhythm exhibited a free-running pattern with a τFR greater than 24 h under both DD and LL conditions. We conclude that light is a more prominent factor for the entrainment of circadian activity in catfish H. fossilis. However, the extent of social aggregation (shoal size) has little or no effects on the characteristics of circadian locomotor activity rhythm in H. fossilis.

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology through a Distributed Collaborative Network.

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions, or attempt to replicate prior research, in large, diverse samples. The PSA's mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time-limited), efficient (in terms of re-using structures and principles for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in terms of participants and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside of the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance our understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematically examining its generalizability.