“That’s the way my Wednesdays always go”: reverse-order instructions insufficient to mitigate schema-consistent errors in alibi generation

Purpose The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of innocent suspects to produce accurate alibis, as well as to identify procedures police interviewers can use to increase the probability of generating accurate alibis. Design/methodology/approach In Study 1, 54 university students had a lecture (target event) end at either the normal time (schema group) or 25 min early (non-schema group) and then attempted to generate an alibi for the target event after either a short, moderate or long delay. In Study 2, 20 students had a lecture end 25 min early and underwent an interview regarding their whereabouts using a reverse-order interview technique designed to disrupt schema usage. Findings Results from Study 1 suggested that participants relied on schemas to generate their alibis, which led to false alibis for the non-schema group, and this reliance was more pronounced as the delay between event and recall increased. In Study 2, all but one participant produced a false alibi, suggesting reverse order is ineffective in increasing accurate recall in alibi situations. Practical implications Results from the two studies revealed that people can produce false alibis easily in mock police interviews – a finding that appears to result from the reliance on schemas. These findings highlight the relative ease with which innocent individuals can produce false alibis. Further research, specific to the alibi generation process, is needed to give police interviewers the tools to produce more accurate and detailed alibis. Originality/value This research provides additional evidence regarding the role of schemas in alibi generation. Contrary to findings from the eyewitness area, reverse-order instructions failed to disrupt schema reliance and do not appear to be an effective alibi-elicitation technique.

High-precision, absolute earthquake location based on waveform similarity between events and application to imaging foreshocks, fault complexity and damage zones for recent western US earthquakes.

<p>We present a high-precision, absolute earthquake location procedure (NLL-SSST-coherence) based on waveform similarity between events and using the probabilistic, global-search NonLinLoc (NLL) location algorithm. NLL defines a posterior probability density function (PDF) in 3D space for absolute hypocenter location and invokes the equal differential-time (EDT) likelihood function which is very robust in the presence of outlier data. For NLL-SSST-coherence location we take initial NLL locations and iteratively generate smooth, 3D, source-specific, station travel-time corrections (SSST) for each station and phase type and an updated set of locations. Next, we greatly reduce absolute location, aleatoric error by combining location information across events based on waveform coherency between the events. This absolute coherency relocation is based on the concept that if the waveforms at a station for two or more events are very similar (have high coherency) up to a given frequency, then the distance separating these “multiplet” events is small relative to the seismic wavelength at that frequency. The NLL coherency relocation for a target event is a stack over 3D space of the event’s SSST location PDF and the SSST PDF’s for other similar events, each weighted by the waveform coherency between the target event and the other event. Absolute coherency relocation requires waveforms from only one or a few stations, allowing precise relocation for sparse networks, and for foreshocks and early aftershocks of a mainshock sequence or swarm before temporary stations are installed.</p><p>We apply the NLL-SSST-coherence procedure to the Mw5.8 Lone Pine CA, Mw5.7 Magna UT and Mw6.4 Monte Cristo NV earthquake sequences in 2020 and compare with other absolute and relative seismicity catalogs for these events. The NLL-SSST-coherence relocations generally show increased organization, clustering and depth resolution over other absolute location catalogs. The NLL-SSST-coherence relocations reflect well smaller scale patterns and features in relative location catalogs, with evidence of improved depth precision and accuracy over relative location results when there are no stations over or near the seismicity.</p><p>For all three western US sequences in 2020 the NLL-SSST-coherence relocations show mainly sparse clusters of seismicity. We interpret these clusters as damage zones around patches of principal mainshock slip containing few events, larger scale damage zone and splay structures around main slip patches, and background seismicity reactivated by stress changes from mainshock rupture. The Monte Cristo Range seismicity (Lomax 2020) shows two, en-echelon primary slip surfaces and surrounding, characteristic shear-crack features such as edge, wall, tip, and linking damage zones, showing that this sequence ruptured a complete shear crack system. See presentation EGU21-13447 for more details.</p><p>Lomax (2020) The 2020 Mw6.5 Monte Cristo NV earthquake: relocated seismicity shows rupture of a complete shear-crack system. Preprint: https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/1904</p><p> </p>

Early, but no late ERP signature of auditory awareness in cross-modal distractor-induced deafness

Previous research showed that dual-task processes such as the attentional blink are not always transferable from unimodal to cross-modal settings. Here we ask whether such a transfer can be stated for a distractor-induced impairment of target detection, which has been established in vision (distractor-induced blindness, DIB) and was recently observed in the auditory modality (distractor-induced deafness, DID). The current study aimed to replicate the phenomenon in a cross-modal set up. An auditory target indicated by a visual cue should be detected, while task-irrelevant auditory distractors appearing before the cue had to be ignored. Behavioral data confirmed a cross-modal distractor-induced deafness: target detection was significantly reduced if multiple distractors preceded the target. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to identify the process crucial for target detection. ERPs revealed that successful target report was indicated by a larger frontal negativity around 200 ms. The same signature of target awareness has been previously observed in the auditory modality. In contrast to unimodal findings, P3 amplitude was not enhanced in case of an upcoming hit. Our results add to recent evidence that an early frontal attentional process is linked to auditory awareness, whereas the P3 is apparently not a consistent indicator of target access.

A Counterfactual Analysis of Causation

A counterfactual analysis of causation is developed by distinctive notion of chance-raising characterized by probabilistic Σ‎-dependence, when a causal chain is complete appealing to chance-raising at a time just before the time of the effect, and a requirement that the causal chain is made up of actual events to avoid the standard problems with conditional analyses, due to potential changes in the circumstances when the antecedents are true. Although the development takes the form of a consideration of difficult cases of causation (especially probabilistic cases of pre-emption), the resulting idea has independent motivation and simplicity. It is that causes of a target event are those which (independently of its competitors) both make the mean chance of an effect very much greater than its mean background chance, and actually influence the probability of the effect in this way, at the time at which the effect occurred via a complete causal chain.

Cognitive principles underlying predicational metonymy

Metonymy of a predicate, in which the source event implies the target event, is called predicational metonymy. This paper focused on a Japanese productive predicational metonymy, action for causation, and described its linguistic preference in terms of aspectual construal based on a corpus-driven quantitative investigation. The results revealed that an event that is bounded and durative is preferred as the metonymic vehicle in action for causation metonymy. The two cognitive principles, bounded over unbounded and durative over punctual, were proposed to explain the linguistic preference. It was suggested that the two principles can be subsumed under the fundamental cognitive principle of good Gestalt over poor Gestalt, and that this general principle governs metonymic preference of both predicates and nominal phrases.

What's Epistemically Wrong with Conspiracy Theorising?

Belief in conspiracy theories is often taken to be a paradigm of epistemic irrationality. Yet, as I argue in the first half of this paper, standard criticisms of conspiracy theorising fail to demonstrate that the practice is invariably irrational. Perhaps for this reason, many scholars have taken a relatively charitable attitude toward conspiracy theorists and conspiracy theorising in recent years. Still, it would be a mistake to conclude from the defence of conspiracy theorising offered here that belief in conspiracy theories is on an epistemic par with belief in other theories. I argue that a range of epistemic errors are pervasive among conspiracy theorists. First, the refusal of conspiracy theorists to accept the official account of some target event often seems to be due to the exercise of a probabilistic, and fallacious, extension of modus tollens. Additionally, conspiracy theorists tend to be inconsistent in their intellectual attention insofar as the effort they expend on uncovering the truth excludes attention to their own capacities for biased or otherwise erroneous reasoning. Finally, the scepticism with which conspiracy theorists tend to view common sources of information leaves little room for conspiracy theorists to attain positive warrant for their preferred explanations of target events.

Loss of salience as a source of latent inhibition in human associative learning

Two experiments made use of a procedure known to generate latent inhibition in human associative learning. Participants received training consisting of exposure to a list of actions performed by a fictitious Mr. X. For most of his actions, an outcome was described, but some were not followed by any outcome. The last action performed by Mr. X was novel for participants in the NOVEL condition. For participants in the EXPOSED condition, Mr. X had performed that target action on repeated occasions, without it producing any outcome. After training, all participants were tested on their ability to retrieve what was the last action performed by Mr. X. In both experiments, retrieval of the target action was poorer in the EXPOSED than in the NOVEL condition. Experiment 2 also included a condition in which the target action was followed by a novel outcome and demonstrated a latent inhibition effect—poorer performance in the EXPOSED condition on a test of the association between the target event and its outcome. These results are interpreted in terms of an attention-reducing mechanism, triggered by the repeated preexposure to the target in the absence of a following event. It is argued that the attentional change involves a reduction in the effective salience of the stimulus of the target event, and thus reduces the processing necessary for encoding in memory and the ability of the event to enter into associations.