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2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Robert Taylor

<p>During a criminal proceeding, jurors need to weigh up the presented evidence and determine a verdict. Research has shown that witness identification evidence is compelling to jurors, despite the fact that it can be unreliable. How reliable are the combined lineup decisions gathered from multiple witnesses? Generally, the more witnesses who identify the same person from a lineup, the more likely that person is guilty. But recent theoretical evidence suggests that a greater number of witnesses identifying the same person from a biased lineup can indicate that person is actually less likely to be guilty than if there were a smaller number of witnesses identifying that person (Gunn et al., 2016). As the number of agreeing witnesses increases, the more likely that agreement is caused by the lineup bias, rather than consistent witness memories of the crime. In this thesis, I examined how unanimity and lineup bias influenced jurors’ perceptions of guilt. Subjects who saw a biased lineup gave lower ratings of guilt compared to subjects that were shown a lineup that had no obvious bias. In addition, warning subjects that a lineup was biased led them to give lower guilt ratings than subjects who did not receive a warning. Subjects who were told there were two witnesses who identified the police suspect gave higher guilt ratings than subjects who were told there was one witness who identified the police suspect, but only when the lineup was clearly not biased. Subjects’ guilt ratings were not significantly greater in conditions with more than two unanimous witnesses identifying the police suspect. It seems subjects had a limit of certainty based on changes in witness numbers alone. We also found that the way in which witness numbers were presented to subjects influenced guilt ratings. When we presented witnesses coming forward in different groups and on different days, subjects shifted their guilt ratings upwards. When the number of witnesses decreased during the experiment, subjects did not decrease their guilt ratings to the same extent as those subjects in conditions in which the number of witnesses increased by the same magnitude. This finding is consistent with the literature on confirmation bias and the story model of juror decision-making—subjects likely formed an initial belief that the identified suspect was guilty and subsequent evidence was evaluated against that belief (Nickerson, 1988; Pennington & Hastie, 1993). The finding that presenting witnesses coming forward in separate groups increased subjects’ guilt ratings adds to the literature showing that jurors are influenced by irrelevant information presented to them during a proceeding. This research also demonstrates that future research should examine strength of evidence manipulations over multiple levels—rather than as dichotomous “strong” and “weak” extremes.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Robert Taylor

<p>During a criminal proceeding, jurors need to weigh up the presented evidence and determine a verdict. Research has shown that witness identification evidence is compelling to jurors, despite the fact that it can be unreliable. How reliable are the combined lineup decisions gathered from multiple witnesses? Generally, the more witnesses who identify the same person from a lineup, the more likely that person is guilty. But recent theoretical evidence suggests that a greater number of witnesses identifying the same person from a biased lineup can indicate that person is actually less likely to be guilty than if there were a smaller number of witnesses identifying that person (Gunn et al., 2016). As the number of agreeing witnesses increases, the more likely that agreement is caused by the lineup bias, rather than consistent witness memories of the crime. In this thesis, I examined how unanimity and lineup bias influenced jurors’ perceptions of guilt. Subjects who saw a biased lineup gave lower ratings of guilt compared to subjects that were shown a lineup that had no obvious bias. In addition, warning subjects that a lineup was biased led them to give lower guilt ratings than subjects who did not receive a warning. Subjects who were told there were two witnesses who identified the police suspect gave higher guilt ratings than subjects who were told there was one witness who identified the police suspect, but only when the lineup was clearly not biased. Subjects’ guilt ratings were not significantly greater in conditions with more than two unanimous witnesses identifying the police suspect. It seems subjects had a limit of certainty based on changes in witness numbers alone. We also found that the way in which witness numbers were presented to subjects influenced guilt ratings. When we presented witnesses coming forward in different groups and on different days, subjects shifted their guilt ratings upwards. When the number of witnesses decreased during the experiment, subjects did not decrease their guilt ratings to the same extent as those subjects in conditions in which the number of witnesses increased by the same magnitude. This finding is consistent with the literature on confirmation bias and the story model of juror decision-making—subjects likely formed an initial belief that the identified suspect was guilty and subsequent evidence was evaluated against that belief (Nickerson, 1988; Pennington & Hastie, 1993). The finding that presenting witnesses coming forward in separate groups increased subjects’ guilt ratings adds to the literature showing that jurors are influenced by irrelevant information presented to them during a proceeding. This research also demonstrates that future research should examine strength of evidence manipulations over multiple levels—rather than as dichotomous “strong” and “weak” extremes.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 480-480
Author(s):  
Shraddha Shende ◽  
Lydia Nguyen ◽  
Grace Rochford ◽  
Raksha Mudar

Abstract Inhibitory control involves suppression of goal irrelevant information and responses. Emerging evidence suggests alterations in inhibitory control in individuals with age-related hearing loss (ARHL), however, few have specifically studied individuals with mild ARHL. We examined behavioral and event related potential (ERP) differences between 14 older adults with mild ARHL (mean age: 69.43 ± 7.73 years) and 14 age- and education-matched normal hearing (NH, mean age: 66.57 ± 5.70 years) controls on two Go/NoGo tasks: a simpler, basic categorization task (Single Car; SC) and a more difficult, superordinate categorization task (Object Animal; OA). The SC task consisted of exemplars of a single car and dog, and the OA task consisted of exemplars of multiple objects and animals. Participants were required to respond to Go trials (e.g., cars in SC) with a button press, and withhold responses on NoGo trials (e.g., dogs in SC task). Behavioral results revealed that ARHL group had worse accuracy on NoGo trials on the OA task, but not on the SC task. ARHL group had longer N2 latency for NoGo compared to Go trials in the simpler SC Task, but no differences were observed on the OA task between Go and NoGo trials. These findings suggest that more prolonged neural effort in the ARHL group on the SC task NoGo trials may have contributed to their ability to successfully suppress false alarms comparable to the NH group. Overall, these findings provide evidence for behavioral and neural changes in inhibitory control in ARHL.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malte Wöstmann ◽  
Viola S. Störmer ◽  
Jonas Obleser ◽  
Douglas A Addleman ◽  
Søren Andersen ◽  
...  

Distractor suppression refers to the ability to filter out distracting and task-irrelevant information. Distractor suppression is essential for survival and considered a key aspect of selective attention. Despite the recent and rapidly evolving literature on distractor suppression, we still know little about how distracting information is suppressed. What limits progress is that we lack mutually agreed upon principles of how to study distractor suppression. Here, we offer ten simple rules that we believe are fundamental when investigating distractor suppression. We provide guidelines on how to design conclusive experiments on distractor suppression (Rules 1-3), discuss different types of distractor suppression that need to be distinguished (Rules 4-6), and provide an overview of models of distractor suppression and considerations of how to evaluate distractor suppression statistically (Rules 7-10). Together, these rules provide a concise and comprehensive synopsis of promising advances in the field of distractor suppression. Following these rules will propel research on distractor suppression in important ways, not only by highlighting prominent issues to both new and more advanced researchers in the field, but also by facilitating communication between sub-disciplines.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0258110
Author(s):  
Jennifer E. Ashton ◽  
Scott A. Cairney

Overnight consolidation processes are thought to operate in a selective manner, such that important (i.e. future-relevant) memories are strengthened ahead of irrelevant information. Using an online protocol, we sought to replicate the seminal finding that the memory benefits of sleep are enhanced when people expect a future test [Wilhelm et al., 2011]. Participants memorised verbal paired associates to a criterion of 60 percent (Experiment 1) or 40 percent correct (Experiment 2) before a 12-hour delay containing overnight sleep (sleep group) or daytime wakefulness (wake group). Critically, half of the participants were informed that they would be tested again the following day, whereas the other half were told that they would carry out a different set of tasks. We observed a robust memory benefit of overnight consolidation, with the sleep group outperforming the wake group in both experiments. However, knowledge of an upcoming test had no impact on sleep-associated consolidation in either experiment, suggesting that overnight memory processes were not enhanced for future-relevant information. These findings, together with other failed replication attempts, show that sleep does not provide selective support to memories that are deemed relevant for the future.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena Mastria ◽  
Sergio Agnoli ◽  
GIOVANNI EMANUELE CORAZZA ◽  
Laura Franchin

What inspires us during a creative act? We know from past research that apparently irrelevant information for a task at hand can lead to higher creative performance, especially in open-minded individuals. But what does irrelevance mean and how can open-minded individuals be inspired by this kind of information? Through two diverse experimental procedures, the present work investigated which type of irrelevance information inspires (i.e., increases) the creative performance during a divergent thinking (DT) task. In Experiment 1, the attentional processing of information that was either relevant or irrelevant for the execution of a verbal DT task was assessed by means of an eye-tracking methodology. In Experiment 2, creative performance was explored through a verbal priming paradigm, which forcedly introduced irrelevant information during the DT task. In both experiments, the level of irrelevance was operationalized in terms of semantic distance between the information that is central for the task at hand and the information that is apparently irrelevant for its execution. Results from both experiments highlighted the role of irrelevant information and of the Openness trait in influencing the originality or uncommonness of the responses produced during the task as well as the role of the semantic meaning of the irrelevant information as one of the main determinants of inspiration (i.e., enhancement) of the creative performance. Inspiration emerged therefore to be related to the meaning of the inspirational (i.e., apparently irrelevant) information in a given context and to the individual disposition to process this kind of information.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 432
Author(s):  
Ismiati Ismiati

This study aims to analyze the types of implicature and flouting maxims and the reasons for doing the flouting in Taliwang Dialect. It applied the descriptive method with a qualitative approach. Data was collected by recording natural conversations among the natives of Taliwang Dialect. It was found two types of implicature, namely, Generalized Conversational Implicature (GCI) and Particularized Conversational Implicatures (PCI). In GCI, the speaker and interlocutor could easily understand the conveyed utterances because they mostly used general statements which are commonly spoken in the Taliwang dialect. In PCI, both speaker and the interlocutor needed a particular knowledge to understand each other because of the flouting maxim. Some speakers or hearers in PCI often break the maxim in a conversation due to some reasons such as accepting untrue or lie information, receiving more information than the needed information, getting irrelevant information and having unclear or ambiguous information.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Dames ◽  
Klaus Oberauer

How does the intent to remember or forget information affect working memory (WM)? To explore this question, in four experiments, we gauged the availability of the to-be-forgotten information directly. Participants remembered six words presented sequentially in separate frames. After each word offset, the frame turned either blue or orange, indicating a to-be-remembered or to-be-forgotten word, respectively. In all experiments, consistently poor recognition performance for to-be-forgotten words and facilitation of to-be-remembered words demonstrated that intent has a strong impact on WM. These directed-forgetting effects are remarkably robust: They can be observed when testing the to-be-forgotten words up to four times (Experiment 1, n=341), for both item and binding memory (Experiment 3, n=124), and even when information has to be maintained in WM up to 5s until the memory cue is presented (Experiment 2+4, n=302+321). Our study establishes a new method to jointly study the effects of intent on WM content for both relevant and irrelevant information and provides evidence for directed-forgetting in WM. Our research suggests that a combination of two processes cause directed-forgetting in WM: One process reduces memory strength of earlier memory representations as a function of subsequently encoded events. Another process rapidly encodes or boosts memory strength only when the person intends to remember that information.


2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonora Gkigkelou ◽  
Katharine Kirkpatrick ◽  
Duraisamy Ravichandran

Abstract Aims GP referral letters to rapid-diagnosis breast clinics are often poorly scanned copies of standard 2 week-wait proforma that are difficult to read, lengthy, and contain a large amount of irrelevant information. We studied the contribution of information in referral letters in patient management and compared this with information provided by patients themselves. Methods Patients completed a standard questionnaire (one side of A4) on arrival at clinic. This included all information relevant to a breast clinic such as family history and comorbidities. A consultant surgeon then saw the patients with the questionnaire and performed clinical assessment and imaging as necessary, without referring to GP letters. The letters were read before patients left clinic. Any additional useful information was noted. Results 202 consecutive new patients, median age 44 (16-93) seen in 23 clinics by 2 consultants were studied. The median number of pages in referral letter was 5 (1-14). Patient questionnaire took less than 30 seconds to read. The presenting complaints were real or perceived lump (n = 105), pain (n = 44), both (n = 14) and others (n = 39). 21 patients had cancer. Additional useful information in the referral letter was noted in 20 patients (10%). However, in no case this affected the patient management adversely. Conclusions GP letters are lengthy but contribute relatively little to the initial assessment and management of patients in a busy rapid diagnosis breast clinic. A patient-completed targeted questionnaire is quicker and can potentially replace a GP referral letter in most patients.


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