In online echo chambers, selected information, such as political, medical, and environmental ideas, are amplified by repetition within a closed system whereas competing views are censored or underrepresented. In a series of online experiments, we modelled this process of retrieval-induced belief revision using an adaptation of the retrieval-induced forgetting paradigm. We explored the roles of familiarity and form of belief content as well as indices of belief revision drawn from the belief bias and illusory truth paradigms. We highlight the ways in which selectively focusing on some information shapes both what people remember and how strongly they believe.

In an increasingly complex information landscape, science educators require new epistemological tools to empower citizens to assess online scientific claims (OECD, 2016). While inquiry-based instruction has been emphasized in science education reform for its hands-on approach to generating scientific knowledge, epistemological research largely focuses on its impact on understanding Nature of Science (NOS) (Elby et al., 2016). However, how scientific inquiry influences individuals' epistemic cognition in evaluating online scientific claims remains unclear. While NOS research often highlights the tentativeness of scientific knowledge, recognizing the varying degrees of uncertainty is also crucial (Sandoval, 2005). To address these gaps, this poster proposes a new inquiry-based instruction where learners solve scientific problems across disciplines and outlines a study of its impact on individuals’ scientific epistemology, including certainty level (Muis et al., 2016) and judgment criteria (Sandoval & Cam, 2011) when assessing online scientific claims.

This study examined the relationship between parent-children's reminiscing styles and the similarity of their memories. Sixty-six parents and their grown-up children watched a public event news separately and then discussed it together. This discussion was coded to identify their reminiscing styles. Afterward, participants recalled individually the event immediately after the discussion and again seven days later. These individual recalls were used to compute memories similarity scores. Results revealed that parents and their children adopted similar reminiscing styles, in terms of the structure of their interactions and the content they covered. We also found that the more the dyads discussed the news content similarly, the more likely they were to recall similar information during the immediate (but not delayed) recall. This suggested that children may have internalized their parents' reminiscing style and that social contagion could play a role in the influence of reminiscing styles on memories similarity.

Healthy aging affects episodic memory specificity, which is reflected in older adults (OAs)’s impaired ability to discriminate between similar focal stimuli. Yet, little is known about how aging alters the specificity of contextual features. Context reinstatement studies showed that young adults (YAs) automatically encode task-irrelevant contextual features with a high degree of specificity: visually similar lure backgrounds differentially influence recognition decisions for focal objects. In this registered report, we will investigate mnemonic discrimination of context with a context reinstatement paradigm including old, new, and visually similar lure background scenes in large samples of YAs and OAs. While we expect context reinstatement to increase hits and false alarms compared with lure contexts in YAs, this effect should be reduced in OAs. These results would show that although OAs automatically integrate task-irrelevant contextual features in memory, they do so with impaired specificity, contributing to the age-related decline in episodic memory

Real-world language is multimodal, containing rich communicative cues like gesture and disfluency. These cues serve a variety of communicative and cognitive functions for speakers and listeners. For example, both gesture and disfluency have been shown to enhance recall of spoken information. These two cues often co-occur, yet the literature lacks a combined account for how they interact to shape memory for speech. We address this gap by analyzing the impact of both gesture and disfluency on the recall of short narratives. Participants watch videos of a narrator telling a series of stories and immediately recall them. Across stories we manipulate whether the narrator produces filled disfluency, iconic gesture, or both. We predict gesture and disfluency will increase recall overall, particularly for the manipulated portions of the passages. We also predict that the interaction of gesture and disfluency will produce greater recall compared to either cue alone. Data collection is underway.

Grievers recall and share memories from the dying days of a deceased loved one, including final memories and memories of major health events, regardless of time since loss. This poster will present associations between reminiscence functions (intimacy maintenance, bitterness revival), grief outcomes (despair, adversarial growth), and dying days memories, as compared to other memories of the deceased, in a sample of 56 grievers in Germany. Results demonstrate a positive association between final memories and intimacy maintenance (b = .66, p < .05); this association reverses in participants reporting higher despair (b = -.67, p < .05). Results also demonstrate a positive association between health event memories and bitterness revival (b = .81, p < .05); this association reverses in participants reporting higher adversarial growth (b = -.56, p < .05). Establishing the functions of dying days memories, and the psychological conditions that promote these functions, guides grief support and education.

Reactivating a memory can render it temporarily labile, opening a window for memory modification. While we previously demonstrated that reminded neutral memories are impaired by post-reminder playing of Tetris, it is unclear whether emotional memories are similarly vulnerable to ‘reconsolidation impairment’. This is an important question for application, as symptoms of many psychiatric disorders are perpetuated by re-experiencing emotional memories, and accuracy of emotional memory is critical in the courtroom. In the present study, healthy participants are instructed to memorise positive, negative and neutral images. Two days later, participants undergo memory reactivation and the Tetris intervention in a 2 x 2 factorial design. Two days after the intervention session, free recall is tested. While we expect that participants who receive the reactivation and Tetris intervention will recall significantly fewer images than control groups, we aim to determine whether reconsolidation effects are sensitive to the emotional valence of the learned information.

Despite the convincing detail with which humans can recall their past, memory is far from a stable record of what happened. Over time, we are prone to forgetting, embellishing, contradicting, and schematizing details of our past experiences. From discrepancies in memory for a shared experience between friends to memory lapses made by eye-witnesses, the way memory changes is highly consequential for humans. Here, I contrast two approaches to examining the consistency of autobiographical memory over time. I introduce a standardized manual scoring procedure for quantifying the consistency of narrative recalls. I then review the Natural Language Processing model distilBERT, an automated approach to measuring similarity between texts. I compare the performance of both approaches on a dataset of memories recalled at two time points, 8 weeks apart (N(memory pairs)=1026). I conclude by highlighting the strengths and limitations of the two approaches, and best practices for implementing these tools.

Memory decline is an early manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), highlighting the need for accessible interventions. This study explores musical mnemonics and metacognition as learning strategies for patients with amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (aMCI), a population at heightened AD risk. We recruited 22 aMCI (of 40 planned) and 40 healthy older adults, who were asked to listen to and memorize audio excerpts presented in either sung or spoken modalities. Half of the participants provided Judgments of Learning (JOL) to estimate recall likelihood. Preliminary results in the aMCI group demonstrate a significant improvements in general content recognition for sung excerpts (p = .004) and in specific content recognition with JOLs (p = .014). These findings suggest promising pathways for memory rehabilitation strategies targeted at early-stage AD risks. Expanding this research could support the development of low-cost, easily implemented non-pharmacological interventions to extend patient autonomy and quality of life.

Episodic memory declines with age, but semantic knowledge helps older adults compensate for this decline. This study explores the use of the Method of Loci (MoL), adapted to incorporate semantic memory as support to learn new information. Young and older adults performed word recall tasks using the MoL under two encoding conditions: congruent and incongruent with semantic knowledge, compared to a control condition.
Results showed significant memory performance improvements in both groups with MoL and congruent associations. In the incongruent condition, performance was like that of no-strategy encoding, highlighting the importance of semantic links in memory retention. Higher intrusion rates in older participants underscored the role of inhibitory control in effectively using this technique. MoL with semantic congruence emerges as a promising compensatory strategy for older adults, although age-related executive function declines may limit its effectiveness.

There is very little research on flashbulb memories for the Covid19 pandemic, and previous findings on age-related differences in flashbulb memories are mixed. This study aims to determine whether the declaration of the alarm state triggered by Covid19 has the characteristics of flashbulb memories, and also to examine aging-related differences considering three age groups: young, middle-aged, and older adults. Typically used canonical categories were examined, considering the specificity and confidence of each response for each attribute. Additionally, thoughts and emotions generated by the event were analysed. The results show that the alarm state statement meets the main characteristics of flashbulb memories, that is, participants recalled the required attributes with detail, vividness, and confidence. Moreover, young people recalled the reported attributes in more detail than middle-aged or older adults did. Interestingly, middle-aged people behaved similarly to older people, showing the need to consider this age group in future memory research.

Soroban, which is one type of abaci, is a traditional Japanese calculator. Its feature is representing numerical values as a constellation of beads. In the novel “abacus number representation framework,” we hypothesized that beads that do not directly represent numerical value have an essential role in the mental abacus representation. In order to test this framework, we employed a mental calculation task (N = 74) in which a picture of an abacus constellation was shown as a stimulus within a series of Arabic numerals. Then we manipulated the number of beads in the lower part of the abacus constellation - It is not necessary for those beads to represent numerical value in the abacus picture. The result showed that higher error rates in the mental addition were observed when one extra bead was added at the bottom of the abacus constellation. This finding supported our abacus number representation framework.

The self-reference effect in memory describes the phenomenon that people remember information better when encoded in reference to the self. Previous studies have reported that this effect is spared by aging. However, Klein et al. (1989) noted that the self-reference effect can be elicited through two approaches: (1) judging trait adjectives for self-descriptiveness, (2) retrieving an autobiographical memory linked to a stimulus word. Upon inspection, we found that prior studies comparing age groups have exclusively used the first approach. In the present study, we compared the self-reference effect in young and old adults using both manipulations. We hypothesized that an autobiographically-laden task might provide older adults an advantage due to their richer autobiographical knowledge base. In a sample of 90 subjects, the autobiographical task resulted in a memory advantage for older adults compared to the self-descriptiveness task. Notably, the age-related differences in memory performance were smaller in the autobiographical condition.

Involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) are personal memories that come to mind without deliberate retrieval. Research on IAMs and aging has revealed inconsistencies, possibly due to procedural limitations, such as task difficulty or concerns that may disproportionately affect older adults. We developed a new ecological visuomotor activity with verbal cues and manipulation of a soft ball, without performance assessment, to address these issues. We compared it to a modified version of the activity that included performance. To explore age-related differences, sixty young and sixty older adults completed these activities in a 2x2 between-subjects-design. Results showed that the performance-free activity more effectively induced IAMs in both groups, with participants more likely to recall at least one IAM. Older adults were less likely to retrieve IAMs than young adults, but their memories were phenomenologically more vivid and emotionally engaging. These findings highlight the importance of non-performance activities in studying IAMs, especially in aging.

Can feedback improve human deepfake detection and reduce overconfidence? Tasked with classifying a series of authentic and deepfake videos (from the Deepfake Detection Challenge), participants were provided with varying levels of feedback on their performance and their confidence-accuracy calibration. While results revealed that participants were more sceptical of the videos’ authenticity when receiving feedback, feedback was unsuccessful in improving detection accuracy, or in reducing participant’s overconfidence in their answers. However, their level of Active Open-Minded Thinking (considering different alternatives when evaluating evidence) was associated with increased detection accuracy, and reduced overconfidence. Findings indicate that providing crowd-sourced veracity judgments may be used to improve human deepfake detection, which will be further explored in a subsequent study.

Jurors tend to place a lot of weight on eyewitness identification and latent fingerprint evidence (LPE) when making decisions in trials. There exist decades of systematic eyewitness research and, thus, eyewitness performance in many different circumstances is well understood. In contrast, LPE has comparatively little foundational research contributing to how examiner performance is understood. LPE research is lacking and has not been communicated to the public, so laypersons may have a weaker understanding of this type of evidence, resulting in more misconceptions about LPE than eyewitness evidence. We surveyed jury-eligible US citizens (N = 500) about their agreement with statements about eyewitness and fingerprint evidence, as well as information about their perceptions of eyewitness and forensic evidence. Results show differences in the prevalence of misconceptions held by lay individuals about eyewitness and LPE evidence. These findings will improve our understanding of how jurors interpret and weigh evidence in criminal cases.

The current study explored the use of high-order similarity indices (e.g., the S⌀rensen dissimilarity index; Baselga, 2013), commonly used in ecological research, to assess filler similarity in lineups using algorithms, with a database including 1,058 faces from 176 lineups across 21 studies. While algorithms offer advantages such as efficiency and stability in measuring filler similarity, they yield highly independent similarity ratings of pairs within a lineup, ignoring the influence of the other lineup members, which fails to capture overall lineup fairness (Lee, Mansour, & Penrod, 2024). To address the limitations of pairwise similarity ratings, the present study investigated: (1) whether high-order similarity indices, which assess similarity among multiple items simultaneously, are applicable for evaluating filler similarity in lineups; (2) whether these indices correlate reliably with existing lineup fairness measures (e.g., indices derived from the mock-witness paradigm); and (3) whether they can accurately predict eyewitness performance.

What best accounts for college grade point average: general cognitive abilities, or healthy habits like exercise and getting enough sleep? In a large (n = 267) sample of undergraduates, participants completed an extensive cognitive battery in four, two-hour sessions over four weeks such that each task was administered twice. The battery included tasks assessing attention control, executive function, long-term and short-term memory, working memory, fluid intelligence, and visuospatial skills. Participants also wore a Fitbit Charge 5 for the three weeks between the first and last cognitive testing session, which collected biometric data like sleep and physical activity. In the present study, researchers investigate through confirmatory factor analysis and multiple regression how overall cognitive ability, sleep regularity and duration, and physical activity uniquely contribute to grade point average. Pinpointing the main factors that support academic success has implications for how students can maximize their potential in their college career.

During a mass shooting in Lewiston, ME, a false report of the suspect’s apprehension spread widely on social media, illustrating the dangers of misinformation during crises. To understand how people vet (mis)information about mass violence, we examined how gender, perceived safety, and information type affect the likelihood of sharing true or false news about mass shootings online. In a simulated social media environment, 757 undergraduates viewed true or false headlines about mass shootings or general knowledge. Results show that both genders shared mass shooting content more frequently than general knowledge F(1,715)=20.969, p<.001, with women showing a stronger preference for violence-related information F(1,715)=5.516, p=.019. Additionally, individuals with lower perceived safety shared more content regardless of its accuracy F(1,715)=7.574, p=.006. These findings mirror the Lewiston incident, revealing how social media can amplify misinformation during crises when users prioritize broad sharing over accuracy.

The emotional intensity associated with an event can change from its occurrence to its recollection. On average, autobiographical memories (AMs) of negative events decrease in emotional intensity over time (fading affect), but they can also remain the same (fixed affect) or increase in emotional intensity (flourishing affect). The present study examined whether individuals differing in two emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, differ in the direction and magnitude of perceived emotional changes in negative AMs. Analyses were based on 1221 AMs of negative events reported by 243 younger (18-29 years) and older (60-87 years) adults. Results showed that emotional changes in participants’ negative AMs were associated with individual levels of, particularly, cognitive reappraisal and, to a lesser extent, expressive suppression. Age interactions indicated that this was predominantly true for younger but not older adults. The findings highlight the value of also considering retroactive, that is, past-oriented, emotion regulation.

Amnesiac Mild Cognitive Impairment, or aMCI, is an underdiagnosed, debilitating memory-loss condition and frequent precursor to dementia that remains largely unfamiliar to the public, though early detection can slow progression. Yet, even as the field of aMCI studies grows, the condition has rarely, if ever, been specifically addressed in literary works or examined in literary studies. Building upon scholarship by Lugea and the Queen’s University Dementia Fiction Project—which analysed the “mind styles” of cognitive impairment fiction—this talk extends their findings with a “mind style” analysis of amnesiac fiction. I then move towards a practice-oriented account of my own fiction writing, as I develop an emergent lexicon depicting the mindset of an aMCI-afflicted character in my novel-in-progress. This talk reflexively narrates my methods of creating a fictional voice for the subjective terrain of cognitive impairment, demonstrating how such a voice can challenge representational modes and literary conventions of memory loss.

Information on social media may contain misinformation that is difficult to resist, especially among children, because of their developing cognitive abilities and reliance on trusted sources. Research has shown ways to increase resilience to misinformation through active inoculation (van der Linden, 2023). The current study aimed to inoculate children against common misinformation strategies with the help of a quiz. Eighty-five children participated in an online experiment with a critical thinking test and credibility ratings of true and false news content before and after an inoculation quiz. The results showed that when the quiz contained feedback about the strategies, a greater difference was found in credibility ratings of true and false news content than when there was no feedback. Moreover, critical thinking skills, use of social media (number and duration), as well as whether children received parental and/or school guidance on using social media played a role in their credibility ratings.

While research has largely focused on cognitive processes underlying deception, emotional processes remain less explored. This study aimed to differentiate cognitive and emotional mechanisms involved in lying. An adapted version of the Sheffield Lie Test was used, in which participants (n=49) responded truthfully or deceptively to neutral or mock crime-related questions. After each block, participants rated the cognitive and emotional demands experienced. As hypothesized, deceptive responses resulted in longer reaction times and greater perceived cognitive and emotional load compared to truthful responses. The same was true for mock crime-related compared to neutral questions. However, no significant interaction was found between question type and response instruction. Additional analyses identified specific cognitive (e.g., response inhibition) and emotional (e.g., nervousness) processes that were heightened during lying, collectively contributing to the increase in reaction time during deception. These findings emphasize the critical role of both cognitive and emotional processes in deception.

Online information is constantly updated, edited, and removed. Such updating processes can play an important role in determining the spread of outdated and false information. The present study adapted the directed forgetting paradigm to examine how encoding instructions impact memory. Using a traditional item-method directed forgetting paradigm, participants were told to remember news headlines paired with a “Remember” cue and forget news headlines paired with a “Forget” cue. In another condition, participants were given additional instructions that to-be-remembered headlines contained true information whereas to-be-forgotten headlines contained false information. Participants also rated the truthfulness of the news headlines. Evidence of directed forgetting was observed in both conditions. Interestingly, participants also rated “Remember” headlines to be more truthful than “Forget” headlines, in both conditions. Results are discussed in the context of theories of directed forgetting and with implications for how people interact with and try to remember and forget potentially inaccurate information.

Mind-wandering—a ubiquitous human experience—is positively associated with depression. We know this relationship is influenced by negative cognitions and meta-awareness—explicit awareness of our thoughts—but how these factors contribute is unclear. We predicted that mind-wandering with negative cognitions (perseverative thinking/brooding), might increase dissociation—the temporary disconnection between consciousness, identity, memory and self-awareness—to avoid negative cognitions, and lead to decreased meta-awareness, ultimately increasing depression. Participants (N=261) completed mind-wandering, dissociation, perseverative thinking, brooding, meta-awareness, and depression measures. Serial mediation analyses showed perseverative thinking, brooding, dissociation, and meta-awareness independently mediated the relationship between mind-wandering and depression. However, meta-awareness did not contribute to the serial mediation. Instead, a four-chain serial mediation analysis showed that people who mind-wander with negative content tend to dissociate by avoiding, detaching from, or becoming absorbed in thoughts, which leads to greater depression. The results suggest people’s mind-wandering and dissociation tendencies could be considered in treating depression.

Although student conceptions of nature have been investigated with respect to content (e.g., inclusion of humans, non-human animals, plants, abiotic elements, and their interactions), little work has linked conceptions to other environmental cognitions. We elicited brief written definitions of nature and other measures of environmental thinking from 711 undergraduate students. Plants, non-human animals, and abiotic elements were each mentioned in roughly 33% of responses. Humans were included in only 8% of responses, whereas 54% of responses implicitly or explicitly excluded humans from the definition of nature. Moreover, avoiding human exclusion and demonstrating systems thinking were positively associated with perceived impact of nature on humans, endorsement of human-nature reciprocity, perceived human connectedness to surrounding ecosystems, and willingness to classify organisms in human context (e.g. a bird on wire) as “nature.” Results suggest that conceptualizations of nature and humans’ place in it have important implications for pro-environmental beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.

Understanding how attempts at forgetting influence false memory formation is crucial for evaluating the validity of eyewitness testimony. In the current Registered Report, we aimed to investigate the effect of motivated forgetting on false memory formation through a novel paradigm combining the Deese/Roediger/McDermott (DRM) paradigm and the Think/No Think (TNT) paradigm. Participants will first learn 90 cue-target word pairs, with DRM words serving as the target words, after which they will be instructed to either remember or forget specific target words. Participants will then complete a cued recall test followed by a recognition test. Anticipated results include the suppression-induced forgetting effect, where No Think words are recalled significantly less than Baseline words. Data from the pre-pilot stage have validated the feasibility of the research design and will be presented during my talk.

As inherently social beings, the act of communication can be transformative in many ways such that, speakers and listeners can influence each other’s memory (Coman &Hirst, 2015; Hirst& Echterhoff, 2012). One way this phenomenon is measured is through socially shared retrieval- induced forgetting (SS-RIF), which suggests we need motivation to concurrently retrieve with a speaker. 169 participants from Mturk were tasked with studying lists of categories and exemplars and then listened/ watched an in group (same race) or out group (different race) speaker selectively recall a randomized combination of half the categories and half the exemplars. The results show the standard induced forgetting effect (i.e., Rp+>Nrp>Rp-, which comprises of the practice effect) and only participants who listened/watched a speaker of the same in group experienced the SS-RIF effect (Nrp>Rp-). This supports the notion that relational motivations might be utilized for in group members of the same race.

Fake news exposure can cause false beliefs. This can be mitigated by repeating fake news via reminders before corrections. The present experiment used eye tracking to investigate the role of attention to changed details in this effect. In Phase 1, subjects rated the familiarity and accuracy of real and fake news of unclear veracity. In Phase 2, subjects read real news that corrected or affirmed news from Phase 1. In Phase 3, subjects rerated headline accuracy and their memory for headline correction in Phase 2. Corrections with reminders reduced false beliefs the most and were remembered best. Recollected corrections were associated with more and earlier fixations to true details in Phase 2. This occurred most for corrections with reminders. This suggests that reminders guided attention to changed details that improved correction recollection. Fake news mitigation methods should direct attention to differences between true and false details to reduce false beliefs.

Reminder-based corrections of misinformation reduce false beliefs more than corrections without reminders. Correction effectiveness may also depend on source trustworthiness. The present experiment examined the roles of correction type and source credibility on beliefs in misinformation headlines. Democrats and Republicans read both true and false headlines attributed to media outlets affiliated with different political leanings (e.g., Fox News, CNN). False headlines were later corrected by a source affiliated with the opposite political leaning. We expected that corrections would reduce false beliefs more when a politically congruent source refuted misinformation from a politically incongruent source. Reminder-based corrections reduced false beliefs more than corrections without reminders did, regardless of political congruence, but Republicans tended to believe misinformation more than Democrats did, especially when it was initially attributed to a conservative source. These results suggest that mnemonic and social variables may independently affect how information is perceived when evaluating headline veracity.

Mediumship is a mystical yet globally practiced spiritual tradition that involves communication with supernatural beings. This study explores the life narratives of Chinese-style spirit mediums in Phuket, a community deeply rooted in this tradition. Thirty-four mediums were asked to share their significant life events, including high points, low points, turning points, and their initiations into mediumship. Content analysis revealed a profound spiritual dimension of their life stories, with deities playing central roles in pivotal moments of their lives. The findings also identified recurring patterns in their journeys to becoming mediums, often begun with traumatic or life-altering experiences, such as severe accidents or mysterious illnesses. Additionally, their narratives showed that the moral foundations of care and sanctity played crucial parts in shaping their moral identity. This research sheds light on the interplay between personal experience and spirituality within the practice of mediumship.

We investigated the social function of autobiographical memory using an experimental design. We hypothesized that individuals in a high loneliness condition would recall memories with greater social purposes than those in a low loneliness condition. A total of 157 participants (aged 18–76) were randomly assigned to a high, average, or low loneliness condition where their loneliness level was manipulated. Then participants narrated one emotionally positive and one negative event from the COVID-19 pandemic. These memories were coded for social richness and categorized as either specific or general. Results showed that social details did not vary significantly across loneliness levels; however, specific memories contained more social details than general memories. Additionally, age was negatively associated with the social function of memory. These findings contribute to understanding how autobiographical memory serves social functions and highlight the role of memory specificity and age in shaping these functions.

People often experience spontaneous simulations of the approximal future—events that might happen next in their current context. While future-oriented thinking is typically characterized by positive events related to future goals, approximal simulations are often associated with negative valence and threat detection. These studies aimed to expand the generalizability of this phenomenon and examine memory-based mechanisms. Canadian and American participants completed a Prolific survey where they described up to 5 prior instances of approximal simulations, rated their valence, and identified whether these simulations related to personal, vicarious, or public past events. Study 1 (18+ years, N = 160) found that approximal simulations, regardless of age, gender, or nationality, focused on threat and were most related to personal past experiences. In Study 2, younger (18-25 years; N = 82) and older (65+ years; N = 76) adults showed similar patterns with older adults reporting fewer approximal instances overall.

Conjunctive binding is the function by which objects features are integrated into unified object representations, which are subsequently encoded in short- and long-term memory. However, the actual processes underlying conjunctive binding are not entirely clear. Visual imagery, alongside semantic memory, have been suggested among potential necessary functions.
We tested the involvement of visual imagery in shape-colour short-term memory conjunctive binding through the study of participants who report an inability to voluntarily form mental visual images, i.e., aphantasic participants. We also tested the influence of semantic memory by manipulating the ease to label the shapes (e.g., “square”, “triangle”). Results showed a main effect of the possibility to use labels on performance. Aphantasic participants did not present any difference with control subjects, in line with the existing literature, suggesting that while semantic memory plays an important role in the formation of conjunctive representations, the role of visual imagery does not seem essential.

We investigated learning benefits of comparing varied exemplars. Participants watched brief lecture videos explaining t-tests, ANOVAs, and Chi-Squared tests. Then they studied 18 concrete application problems in 6 blocks of 3 examples (1 of each test type per block) that had either a consistent surface story for the 3 examples in a block (same story condition) or different surface stories for each example in the block (different story condition). On an immediate transfer test, participants classified novel examples of the statistical tests. Experiment 1 did not control for the number of stories participants were exposed to (6 vs. 18 total cover stories in the same vs. different conditions). Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 but resolved this confound. Similar to the discriminative contrast hypothesis, we hypothesize that studying superficially similar examples of different concepts in sequence will improve transfer by helping participants identify alienable differences across exemplars.

Involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) are memories of personal events that come to mind with no preceding attempt at retrieval. Over the last three decades considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding if and how IAMs may differ from voluntarily retrieved autobiographical memories (AMs). However, there is presently little consensus on which phenomenological characteristics (i.e. cognitive, emotional, and sensory) may differentiate the two.

In the present systematic review, results from 28 studies show that IAMs consistently involve more specific and emotionally intense events, as well as more mood impact at retrieval, than their voluntarily retrieved counterparts. No significant differences concerning the emotional valence of involuntarily vs voluntarily retrieved AMs emerged, whereas only half of the included studies reported IAMs to be more rehearsed.

We argue methodological differences between diary and laboratory studies to be a crucial factor in determining some of the extant inconsistencies regarding the phenomenology of AMs.

Health misinformation has existed for millennia, yet questions remain unanswered about how best to combat it. Previous systematic reviews of health misinformation have examined trends in specific health conditions or interventions, but a comprehensive review of the interventions against health misinformation is warranted. The current systematic review will synthesise the literature on interventions against health misinformation, examine which health-related topics are being studied within the literature, what intervention methods are being used, and the effectiveness of said methods. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA), the systematic review will be conducted by searching four databases (EBSCO, Web of Science, PubMed and Scopus), and articles fitting the inclusion criteria will be examined and synthesised. The aim of the review is to provide a basis for further research into effective interventions against health misinformation.

Exposure to fake news has become increasingly widespread, particularly during crisis events and political scandals. Research has demonstrated that individual differences such as political orientation, cognitive factors, and motivated reasoning play an important role in believing, remembering, and spreading misinformation. Understanding why some individuals are more susceptible to fake news than others is essential for addressing its societal impact. This scoping review aims to synthesise findings from studies by identifying which individual differences have been investigated in the current literature and determining which individual traits are most strongly associated with susceptibility to fake news. A systematic search of peer-reviewed English-language articles was conducted across academic databases, including Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO. Following abstract and full-text screening based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, 88 articles were included in this review. A narrative synthesis will summarise the findings, address conflicting findings, highlight research gaps, and suggest future research.

The motivated rejection of science occurs when individuals interpret scientific information through a biased lens, favouring interpretations that align with their personal agendas. While prior research has emphasised political affiliation and identity protective cognition as a key driver of this phenomenon, the current study posits that adherence to prior beliefs—whether political or not—plays a central role. Our study measured participants predictions on a range of fictional scientific studies with political, neutral, or conspiracy valence before they interpreted the results of these studies from contingency tables. We also investigated the role of actively openminded thinking, cognitive reflection, and conspiracy mentality as potential predictors of the motivated rejection of science. Multilevel modelling revealed participants demonstrated, over-and-above and thinking style differences, greater interpretation accuracy for studies aligning with their prior beliefs and lower accuracy for those that conflicted with them, irrespective of valence.

Associative memory deficit refers to older adults’ disproportionately greater difficulty in remembering associations compared to individual items, relative to younger adults. This deficit may impact older adults’ daily life (e.g., social withdrawal due to challenges remembering face-name associations). Ageing is associated with a motivational shift towards prioritizing emotional gratification over knowledge acquisition. Prior research suggests a memory advantage for goal-relevant information. This study examines the effect of goal-framing (emotion- vs. knowledge-oriented) on associative memory for face-name pairs in younger (N=60) and older adults (N=60). All participants complete a face-name memory task followed by an associative recognition test in which only intact pairs are recognized as OLD, whereas both re-arranged and new pairs are recognized as NEW. Associative memory scores will be submitted to a 2 (age) x 2 (goal-framing) mixed-model ANOVA. We predict that age differences in associative memory will be reduced in the emotion-oriented relative to the knowledge-oriented condition.

Studies show parental authoritarianism fosters children’s right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and prejudice attitudes. The mechanism behind its intergenerational transmission remains largely unexplained beyond the different types of discipline strategies. Theory of Mind (ToM) research suggests that parent mental state (MS) talk may mediate the relation between parenting style and children's social understanding. Parents reported their social attitudes, parenting style, and MS talk. Children completed ToM and race bias tasks. MS talk did not consistently correlate with child ToM across time. Compared to authoritarian parents, authoritative parents used more MS talk. After controlling for child age, there was some evidence that authoritarian parenting was associated with greater children's race bias, and parent responsiveness was associated with less children's race bias. Parents' social attitudes correlated with parenting style. These findings provide partial support for the existing ToM literature.

The present study investigates the individuals mentioned by children in their emotionally-charged memories. The aim of the current study is to investigate the role of maternal education, maternal employment, and rural-urban areas on children’s autobiographical memories. As part of a nationwide project, 1662 children were instructed to write one happy and one unhappy memory. These memories were coded as self-related, other-related, and we-related words, and the volume of the memories was calculated. A Three-Way ANOVA was conducted to examine the role of urban-rural settings, maternal employment status, and maternal education level on these memory characteristics. The findings revealed that maternal education had a significant role in the volume of memories and the use of self-related, other-related, and we-related words. Furthermore, children of educated and unemployed mothers living in rural talked about other people more and wrote longer memories than children of uneducated and employed mothers living in urban.

The cultural life script refers to a cognitive organization where culturally expected life events and their timings are ordered hierarchically, affecting the autobiographical recall processes. The current study examined the themes of cultural life script events nominated by 445 Turkish adolescents aged 11-17, based on the adolescents' demographic characteristics (school level, gender, type of residential area) and maternal socioeconomic characteristics (education level, working status, and past residential area type). The nominated events were assigned to social-relational or individual-achievement themes based on their content. The results showed that the themes differ by school level while there is no difference based on gender and type of residential area. For the maternal socioeconomic characteristics, we found an interaction effect for the higher socioeconomic status of mothers on the themes of their children's life scripts. This study presents the life scripts of Turkish adolescents with a novel approach to investigate the events thematically.

Mental imagery has been shown to enhance future expectations, and motivation in depression (Boland et al., 2018; Renner et al., 2019). Similarly, virtual reality has demonstrated potential in reducing hopelessness in future thinking in depression (Habak et al., 2021). However, it remains unclear whether virtual reality can enhance specific goal predictions beyond the benefits of mental imagery. This study investigated the effect of virtual reality on specific behavioural engagement predictions in dysphoria. 161 participants completed either a mental imagery, verbal reasoning, or virtual reality task. All tasks significantly increased the majority of behavioural engagement predictions across mood groups. Notably, mental imagery was found to be more beneficial than virtual reality in improving motivation for goal completion. These findings suggest that whilst all three tasks could be beneficial for improving specific goal predictions, the underlying mechanisms may differ, warranting further investigation.

Evidence suggests that factors such as gender, ambivalent sexism and endorsement of rape myths impact juror assessments in an acquaintance sexual assault scenario. The presence or absence of an expert witness testifying on the nature of memory can also impact judgements. In this study, participants completed an online study where they served as jurors for a mock sexual assault case. They also completed an ambivalent sexism scale and a rape myths scale. The relationship between gender, rape myth endorsement, ambivalent sexism and juror perceptions was examined, along with how these variables intersected with the presence or absence of expert witness testimony on memory on behalf of the defence, the prosecution, both, or none. This study will help shed light on how expert witness testimony related to memory is perceived by jurors, in light of latent individual differences.

The phenomenon of recovered memories in therapeutic contexts remains a topic of significant clinical and academic debate, yet little is known about how practicing psychologists navigate these complex presentations. This study examines the experiences and perspectives of Irish clinical psychologists on clients reporting recovered memories, a subject uniquely shaped by Ireland's child protection obligations and recent cultural reckoning with historical abuse. Using semi-structured interviews with approximately 10 psychologists, this research explores their clinical experiences, views on best practices, and educational needs regarding recovered memories. Reflexive thematic analysis will identify key themes, aiming to bridge gaps between clinical practice and research. The findings will offer practical insights to inform professional training and policymaking, contributing to a nuanced understanding of how clinicians address this ethically and legally sensitive issue.

The resurgence of the “memory wars” has revived debates over the validity of repressed memories. We propose that this revival is driven by extended statutes of limitations, naïveté about repression, and unchallenged social media content. In an online survey of the American public (N = 1581), we examined: (a) beliefs in repression and the body keeps the score, (b) prevalence of recovered memory claims, and (c) the impact of question phrasing on reporting. Results showed 94% believe in repression, while 77% endorse the body keeps the score. Qualitative analysis revealed a general lack of understanding about repression and widespread media influence. Our findings also suggested that framing questions about "unwanted experiences," rather than directly asking about abuse, yields more conservative estimates of recovered memory claims. Given potential emotional and legal consequences, memory experts should be better at giving our science away if the “memory wars” are ever truly to end.

Most suspicions of child sexual abuse arise during interactions with a non-offending parent. However, in both everyday and abuse disclosure conversations, parents are prone to use suggestive questioning to elicit their children’s reports – the very techniques that forensic interviewers are taught to avoid because of their likelihood to produce false accounts. As such, an important issue for researchers is examining ways to reduce parental suggestiveness in forensically relevant conversations and protect the reliability of children’s statements. In this study, we tested the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at reducing parents’ suggestive questioning and increasing their reliance on open-ended probes when talking with their children about an earlier staged event. Half of the parents received misinformation about their children’s experience during the event. Results explore the effectiveness of the intervention at reducing parents’ tendency to use suggestive questions and increasing the accuracy of children’s reports during a later formal interview.

Authenticity is often viewed as desirable, yet "dark authenticity" remains overlooked. This work examines how dark personality traits (self-interested, antisocial tendencies), agentic and communal values, and authenticity shape behaviour in gameplay. Using UNO in a naturalistic board-game paradigm, participants (n=58; 62% women, aged 18–39) played in groups of 4–6, followed by “decision rounds” where they could retain, donate, or erase others’ points under varying power dynamics: neutral, aristocrat, or pawn. Preliminary findings reveal that participants with lower dark traits and higher communal values donated more points. Intriguingly, power amplified prosocial behaviours, with "aristocrats” showing heightened generosity compared to their "subordinates”. These findings suggest that gameplay fosters alliances contingent on power or status among prosocial individuals. While most participants displayed communal values, this ongoing study aims to explore whether these effects extend to more agentic individuals. Implications reach beyond gameplay to authentic behaviour, moral decision-making, and power dynamics in high-stakes contexts.

This study aims to understand the impact of a warning on the cross-race effect. In the experimental condition, we manipulated the warning by informing participants of this effect and its consequences, providing a strategy to reduce it. The control group did not receive such a warning. The ethnicity of the faces was also manipulated, comparing Caucasian faces simultaneously with those of Asian, Latino, and Black individuals. Participants were Caucasian young adults (n = 178), predominantly women (n = 157), with an average age of 21. Results showed that the warning improved recognition (d’), particularly for Latino (p = 0.041) and Black (p = 0.042) faces. However, the warning only eliminates the cross-race effect on the Black ethnicity.

Sexual assault investigations hinge on victims' memory account, making it critical for interviews to elicit strong, reliable evidence. However, research suggests victims may be challenged on the plausibility of their memory account during an interview. This study will empirically investigate how challenges to the plausibility of memory during an investigative interview for an implied sexual assault affects individuals’ confidence in their memory, memory accuracy, and interviewer rapport. Participants (N=80) encode an implied sexual assault in virtual reality, then are randomly assigned to a control investigative interview, or a challenge investigative interview. Participants complete self-report measures of rapport and aggregate confidence after the interview. Interview transcripts will be coded for memory accuracy. Multi-level modelling will be used to explore differences in the variables across conditions. The findings will provide further insight into how current interview procedures may affect subsequent reporting and what steps can be taken to protect and preserve memory.

Extensive research has focused on how children disclose abuse during formal forensic interviews; however, most suspicions of abuse arise during interactions with a non-offending parent (Malloy et al., 2011). Recent research on these informal disclosures has revealed parents who hold preexisting beliefs about what happened are at risk for questioning their children in a biased manner, possibly engendering false claims (Principe & London, 2022). In this study, we explore laypeople’s perceptions of informal CSA disclosure by asking 109 adults to read transcripts of disclosure conversations between a parent and child, varying whether the parent questions their child suggestively. We hypothesized participants would rate the disclosures prompted by suggestive questioning as less accurate and reliable than those prompted in a non-suggestive manner. Once data is coded, findings will provide insight into laypeople’s ability to identify biased questions in informal conversations, with important implications for handling disclosures in legal cases involving maltreatment.

Previous research showed despite sharing common phenomenological qualities and functions, personal and vicarious memories differ in certain characteristics (Pillemer et al., 2015; Pond & Peterson, 2020). Current study compared the memory characteristics of personal memories and sibling vicarious memories in several dimensions. 181 young adults narrated low-point, high-point, and turning-point memories from their personal past and their siblings’ past, and rated memory characteristics. Results revealed personal memories were rated higher on significance, frequency of retrieval, and clarity compared to sibling vicarious memories across all three memory types while ease of retrieval is higher for vicarious low and turning-point memories compared to personal memories. Moreover, vicarious high-point and turning-point memories were rated less positive whereas vicarious low-point memories were rated less negative and less positive compared to personal memories (all ps <.05). These results suggest that differences in memory characteristics of personal and vicarious memories also apply to sibling vicarious memories.

Recent research has investigated the roles of episodic and semantic memories in "good" storytelling. Separately, research centering mediated intergroup contact has shown promise in reducing prejudice without the need for direct contact, specifically in reducing transphobia. The current research aims to test a novel methodology to elicit either mostly sematic or episodic memories (by percentage), using two sets of questions, an autobiographical memory condition that was designed to garner episodic memories and a biographical condition that aimed to collect more semantic content. Memories donated by transgender participants (n=4) were then used to create vignettes and presented to cisgender participants (n=180) in an intergroup contact intervention designed to reduce transphobia across two treatment and a control condition. Results suggest that our novel methodology elicits memories that, when shared with an outgroup, may reduce prejudice. We will discuss how this might be applied more broadly.

Research has shown that interpolating video-recorded lecture content with memory tests can sustain attention and improve learning. However, prior studies have primarily made use of video-recorded content in laboratory settings, and so little is known about whether interpolated testing might support attention and learning while participants view lectures in more unconstrained settings. In two experiment (N = 344), we assessed whether the previously observed benefits of interpolated testing on attention and learning stood up to differences in lecture content (i.e., introduction to statistics and personality; Exp. 1), interpolated activity format (i.e., cued recall and recognition; Exp. 1), and participant variability in ADHD symptomatology (Exp. 2). Interpolated testing did not improve attention, but nonetheless consistently improved new learning at the end of a lecture. Implications for online learning and theories of interpolated testing are considered.

Collective future thinking involves the mental representation of the future of groups to which people belong, such as the future of one’s nation. Recent research has demonstrated that increasing national identification is associated with more positive expectations for the national future. In the present study, we assessed whether tangible experiences with one’s nation play a role in the relationship between national identity and future thinking. Across two experiments (N = 770), participants rated how central their country was to their identity, the extent to which they had experiences with or on behalf of their country, and the valence of their nation's future. In both experiments, mediation analyses revealed that national identification mediated the relationship between personal experiences with one’s nation and the valence of the nation's future. These results suggest that experiences support the development of national identity, which in turn fosters expectations of a positive future for the nation.

Online learning is commonplace in higher education, but is also associated with inattention and poor learning outcomes. Recent research shows that inserting questions throughout a lecture can enhance learning. However, lab studies have shown that very frequent testing may impair learning by interrupting the encoding process. We examined the effects of test frequency on engagement and learning in a fully online experiment among university and community college students, for whom online learning is particularly relevant. A total of 490 participants watched a ~20-minute, four-segment STEM lecture and received test questions or review slides at varying frequency of interruptions: high (12 interruptions) vs. low (4 interruptions). Afterward, participants answered four questions on content from the lecture's criterial segment. Results show that relative to review, interpolated testing enhances learning regardless of test frequency. But there is a descriptive difference whereby the benefits of interpolated testing might be diminished during high test frequency.

Eyewitness memory plays an important role in the legal system, but memories are susceptible to misinformation, which may lead to the misidentification of perpetrators. Facial information about perpetrators is an important cue in the process of eyewitness identification. Therefore, we conducted two experiments to investigate what kinds of misinformation related to perpetrators' facial features would affect eyewitnesses' suggestive false memories. Results from Experiment 1 (N = 84) showed that misinformation about face shape led to mock eyewitnesses' false reports of perpetrator’s face shape, showing a misinformation effect. Experiment 2 (N= 107) further found that adding a salient facial birthmark on perpetrator’s face increased the misinformation effect in the memory test, suggesting that a salient facial feature may disrupt witnesses’ processing of other peripheral information. The research imply that a salient facial feature of the perpetrator may attract witnesses’ attention, making them more susceptible to misinformation about peripheral information.

The construction of the self and autobiographical memory is externalized online in the age of social media. Yet little is known about how self and autobiographical memory interact in this public space and whether culture plays a role. We investigated these questions in a cross-cultural study. Asian and European American participants were randomly assigned to work on a simulated social media platform or offline, where they provided self-descriptions and shared autobiographical memories. Self-descriptions online would be more positive than those offline, which would in turn relate to more detailed and positive autobiographical memories online than offline, particularly among European Americans.

Are consent risk-warnings used in trauma-related research harmful? Potentially. Risk-warnings might suggest psychological side-effects (e.g., distress) to participants, causing them to expect to experience, and manifest such side effects (i.e., nocebo effects; Benedetti et al., 2007). Yet, in a psychological trauma-related context, there is scant research addressing this possibility. We therefore randomly allocated participants (N = 200) to encounter a risk-warning (e.g., “you may experience distress”) or limited warning (e.g., warning only about content, not psychological symptoms) during informed consent procedures, prior to participation in an online trauma film paradigm study. Overall, we found no evidence participants experienced psychological nocebo effects (e.g., increased distress) and minimal difference between warning conditions for expected side-effects. Our results provide preliminary evidence that consent risk-warnings might not be working as intended. For example, warnings do not change people’s expectations about psychological symptoms associated with participation or influence their participation experience.

The risk of distressing content being posted online (e.g., to social media) has prompted companies to employ content moderators. Exposure to distressing content has led moderators to report negative psychological and physiological symptoms, similar to symptoms found in people diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However, little is known about moderators’ work environments, experiences and coping strategies. Therefore, we examined how content moderators take action on content, navigate workplace policies, operate during break times, and understand their own emotional processes, with findings intended to inform future experimental designs. We collected qualitative data from content moderators (N = 38) who we screened on crowdsourcing platforms. Moderators experienced pressure to continue working when adhering to quotas but described flexible break times. They followed varying processes for content action, navigating specific and ambiguous guidelines, and described emotions of moral disgust, conflict, and numbness. Support services for moderators varied, with inconsistent coping strategies identified.

Belief bias describes the tendency to evaluate information based on its believability rather than its logical validity or quality. This bias is well established in formal reasoning, and more recent research suggests its prevalence in informal reasoning. The main objective of the present study is to investigate perspective-taking as an intervention to attenuate belief bias in informal reasoning. We aim to replicate findings by McCrudden et al. (2017), indicating that perspective-taking attenuates belief bias for weak but not strong arguments in informal reasoning. For this, we employ the experimental paradigm of Deans-Browne and Singmann (2024), investigating belief bias in informal reasoning about political arguments. Using an online experiment (N = 123), we replicated the typical belief bias pattern, strengthening the literature on belief bias in informal reasoning. Against McCrudden et al. (2017) findings, we did not find supporting evidence that perspective-taking attenuates belief bias in informal reasoning about political arguments.

National identity shapes memory in the context of collective mental time travel (CMTT). In South Africa, racial disparities from Apartheid heavily influenced national identity attachment and few studies have investigated CMTT in this context, particularly how race affects collective memory. This study uses mixed methods approaches to explore how certainty about national identity relates to perceptions of South Africa’s national past and imagination of its collective future. Surveys were distributed to Black, White, Coloured, and Indian South Africans wherein they identify their feelings of connectedness towards their national identity (their extent of ‘South African-ness’) and list events from their nation’s past, and project future events. Survey findings will be analysed using mixed ANOVA and themes from interview studies will be reported and will deepen insight into South African collective identity and collective memory.

The self-administered interview (SAI) is a tool used to effectively collect eyewitness information. Conducting the SAI immediately after an event facilitates later recall; however, the effects of the SAI on subsequent identification remain unclear. We investigated whether the SAI affects subsequent identification when a lineup is involved. We asked 168 undergraduate participants to watch a mock crime video. Participants in the SAI condition were asked to describe the crime scene depicted in the video, while those in the control condition did not. Next, the participants were asked to identify the perpetrator in a lineup. The results showed that the SAI did not alter identification rates in the lineup, but when participants made a false identification in the target-present lineup, their confidence in the SAI condition was greater than in the control condition. The results suggest that confidence levels in identifications made by eyewitnesses using the SAI should be carefully assessed.

Research suggests that autobiographical memory retrieval among cognitively healthy older adults is influenced by the Apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 allele, a genetic marker linked to increased Alzheimer’s disease risk. APOE ε4 carriers exhibit reduced autobiographical memory specificity (Grilli et al., 2018) and are less likely to directly retrieve autobiographical memories (Knoff et al., 2023). However, prior studies included relatively small samples, limiting the exploration of dose-dependent effects of APOE ε4 status. To address this, we recruited 196 participants (M age = 71.14, range = 63–79), including 112 ε4 heterozygotes, 38 ε4 homozygotes, and 54 ε4 non-carriers. Participants generated autobiographical memories in response to five cue words and self-reported autobiographical memory specificity and retrieval method. ANOVA analyses revealed no significant effect of APOE status on autobiographical memory specificity or retrieval method. We discuss the possibility that this discrepancy with prior findings may stem from our use of self-report measures.

Vibrating notifications from nearby smartphones can impair memory in academic settings. In this research, we investigated whether a verbal intervention could increase critical awareness of the negative effects of phones and reduce their cognitive disruption. In Experiment 1, 442 participants completed a survey about behaviours and attitudes toward smartphones in the classroom, 215 received a short verbal intervention. The intervention increased participants’ awareness of the effects of phones. To assess the cognitive effects of the intervention, 100 participants watched an academic video with and without vibrations from a smartphone and completed a memory task about video content. Half the participants were exposed to the intervention. Results showed that memory was worse with vibrations but the intervention was not significant. In sum, the verbal intervention raised awareness of the negative effects of smartphones, but still these effects were not reduced, potentially pointing to automatic attentional processes triggered by notifications from smartphones.

The retrieval of some items in memory can cause the forgetting of other items in memory, a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting. The study of retrieval-induced forgetting has been extended to a variety of applied contexts, such as learning, eyewitness memory, autobiographical memory, and problem solving. In the current study, we examine a factor that may play an important role in determining the extent to which retrieval-induced forgetting is observed. Specifically, we manipulate what people do immediately after they engage in retrieval. Based on one theoretical account, participants who engage in wakeful rest following retrieval may exhibit greater levels of retrieval-induced forgetting than participants who engage in a task that is more cognitively taxing. Results will have important theoretical and practical implications for understanding when and to what extent retrieval causes forgetting, both in the laboratory, and in the context of the everyday use of memory.

We investigated collective future thinking among American and Chinese individuals for their own and each other’s countries, drawing on their distinct socio-political and economic structures to understand collective future thoughts. Additionally, we explored the roles of national identity, collective narcissism, and news consumption in shaping these thoughts. American and Chinese adults imagined what might happen in their own and the other country in the future and rated the emotional valence of the events. We found that the Chinese envisioned more positive events for their country than for the US. In contrast, Americans envisioned more positive events for China than for their country. Furthermore, the valence of the news individuals were exposed to was associated with the positivity of collective future thoughts for both their own country and the other country, while national identity and collective narcissism were associated only with Chinese collective future thoughts about China.

Sexual assault can often be reduced to a ‘he said, she said’ scenario as usually no outside witness is there to see it. The aim of this study is to find if an expert witness’s testimony on memory can influence a mock jury’s opinion of if a crime has been committed. Usually, expert witness testimony is utilised by the defence, this study will examine the effect of the prosecution utilising one too. Participants completed a short online survey where they acted as mock jurors to a contested sexual assault case. They were assigned to four conditions with varying expert witness testimony: none, both, defence, or prosecution. The implications for expert witness testimony will be outlined.

Concerns about technology in education often focus on potential downsides for student learning – however, we argue that it is more productive to assess HOW technology is used rather than to assume harm. Research shows that active strategies boost learning (Freeman et al., 2014), while passive strategies, such as copying or rereading, lead to worse learning and inflated judgments of understanding (Dunlosky et al., 2013; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). While simple internet searches can lead to overconfidence without learning benefits (Ward, 2021), we investigate searches that require active engagement and examine whether they benefit student learning. In our pre-registered study (N = 84), using the internet to search for countries on a map led to better performance on a later test than simply studying labeled maps. Our findings illustrate that not all searches should be considered equal -- the type of internet search has consequences for memory.

Maladaptive daydreaming is characterized by prolonged, immersive daydreams, often lasting hours and featuring vivid, detailed narratives that incorporate real-life elements. The intensity and the sense of presence they evoke may obscure the distinction between imagined and actual events, potentially resulting in the formation of false memories or the mistaken belief that imagined scenarios might have occurred in reality. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between maladaptive daydreaming and memory trust. Specifically, the study focused on two groups of participants: individuals exhibiting high versus low levels of maladaptive daydreaming. Additionally, the study explored how individual differences in absorption and the vividness of daydreams contribute to memory distrust, using questionnaires such as the Memory Distrust Scale, Tellegen Absorption Scale, Verbalizer-Visualizer Questionnaire, Mind-Wandering Questionnaire, and Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. The findings will be discussed in terms of the potential cognitive and clinical mechanisms that link maladaptive daydreaming to memory distrust.

The Cognitive Interview (CI) is a widely researched memory-enhancement tool, but its efficacy in reducing the misinformation effect remains unclear; the sparse research on this topic reports mixed findings. Literature can be broadly categorised into two main areas, 1st CI after misinformation (i.e., exploring if the CI can remedy previous misinformation exposure); 2nd CI before misinformation (exploring if the CI can protect against future misinformation). For each type, we report a meta-analysis comparing the CI and standard interviews (regarding
misinformation endorsement and/or accuracy as Dependent Variables). Our Meta-analysis (of 21 experiments so far) is in progress, aiming to test the CI's efficacy (and possible moderators) in reducing the misinformation effect. This may offer valuable guidance for forensic literature and the legal
system.

The study of déjà vu—the odd sense of having experienced something before that has never happened—has begun to reveal important aspects of human cognition. Our lab developed a virtual reality (VR) based virtual tour program designed to boost the probability of reporting déjà vu as participants navigate novel scenes containing identical spatial layouts to recently explored scenes that fail to be recalled. The present study implemented a Think Aloud protocol with this VR paradigm. In this presentation, we discuss how we examined the use of filler words (i.e. uhh, umm, hmm) and other speech disturbance patterns (i.e. repeated words, incomplete thoughts) to determine their relation with reports of déjà vu and feelings of familiarity. We hypothesize that these speech disruptions indicate the involuntary shifting of attention back and forth between being oriented inward toward memory search and outward toward features in the environment while amidst continuous verbal reporting.

Because DNA-testing became available in 1989, the National Registry of Exonerations catalogues cases Pre-Post 1989. We archivally mined data for Pre-1989 wrongful conviction exonerations and two Post-1989 random samples (Non-DNA, DNA). Across datasets exonerees were convicted predominantly due to multiple erroneous conviction factors (e.g., witness mistaken identification [WMID]; official misconduct [OM]) The current study extended analyses to include exoneree race and sentencing-type, focusing on death penalty (DP) cases. Caucasian and Minority DP sentencing was equivalent. Wrongful convictions in DP cases again revealed multiple causes. Numerous states have abolished the DP: thus, 22% of exonerees received the DP Pre-1989, while afterwards DP sentencing dropped to 5%. Additionally, we address cross-race misidentifications and OM’s Post-1989 disturbing increase and co-occurrence with other conviction factors. Overall, we suggest experiments, stressing everyday applications for eyewitness memory accuracy, propose criminal justice reforms building on the White Papers’ recommendations to protect against WMIDs, and discuss international implications.

When attributing guilt judgments, legal actors (e.g., police, jurors) weigh different evidence types—but it is unclear exactly how. There is thus ambiguity regarding which evidence types are most convincing of guilt or innocence. This study elucidates evaluations of both objective and subjective evidence based on evidence type. Research suggests that forensic evidence (e.g., DNA, fingerprint) is weighted substantially in assessments of guilt. Consistent with this, 52 online participants from our study judged confession evidence, DNA evidence, and video facial identification (VFI) evidence as most indicative of guilt after reading a vignette. Alternatively, participants judged handwriting, bystander eyewitness identification, and secondary confession evidence as least indicative of guilt. Half of the participants ranked DNA evidence as the most indicative of guilt, closely followed by confession evidence. Findings reveal misalignments between objective and subjective evaluations of evidence strength, revealing how different evidence types influence suspects being found guilty or innocent.

Previous research has implied that people tend to prefer their own name to others and pay attention to it. However, whether being called by one's own name affects the impression of the name user has not been thoroughly examined. This study examined how being called by name during a game affects impressions of name users. The study used a factorial design, with the gender of the stimulus person and the use or non-use of participant's name as independent variables, and changes in the impression participants got of the name user or non-name user from before to after the game as the dependent variable. Results showed that impressions tended to improve when participants were called by name compared to when they were not, and that impressions were influenced by the gender of the stimulus person. These findings suggest that being called by name may influence interpersonal impression formation.

Research shows that older adults attend to and remember positive information better than negative information, called the “age-related positivity effect” (Mather & Carstensen, 2005). However, prior studies have yielded mixed results regarding the basis for the age-related positivity effect. We conducted a series of studies to examine the role of one’s self-perception of aging in the age-related positivity effect in older adults. Specifically, we investigated if one’s subjective age (i.e., the age that they feel) was associated with the positivity effect in memory. Results showed that older adults' subjective age did not predict the positivity effect in memory. We discuss the underlying mechanisms of the age-related positivity effect and its link with the subjective experiences of aging.

Erroneous guessing with corrective feedback improves recall for related word pairs (e.g., “swim–float”) when feedback is provided immediately.

This study evaluates the effects of feedback timing and post-error warnings on cued recall. Participants studied word pairs by guessing the target and receiving feedback immediately, after a 5-minute delay, or with an immediate warning followed by delayed feedback.

Delayed feedback decreased the likelihood of accurate cue–target recall, and warnings mitigated this effect but not significantly. However, delayed feedback improved recall when participants were cued by their original guess (warnings non-significantly impaired recall). Thus, immediate feedback strengthened the cue–target association but weakened the error–target association.

This challenges the errors-as-mediators hypothesis, which suggests that errors function as additional retrieval routes to the target and that immediate feedback optimizes learning by strengthening the error–target association.

These findings indicate that, to maximize learning from errors, feedback should be provided immediately and include the correct answer.

Previous research mostly ignored the impact of bottom-up factors affecting judgmental time series forecasting. Across two experiments, we investigated bottom-up and top-down factors impacting forecasting, as we manipulated trend direction (upwards, downwards), slope (shallow, mid-level, steep), format (line, bar) and domain (no-domain, sales) using 10 different error series within each group as a control variable. While format effects were small and only visible in upward trending graphs, critical differences emerged in forecasts as a function of trend direction and slope. Critically, we observed damping effects even when no domain was specified, a finding typically associated with economic data and expected cyclical patterns. This suggests that trend damping in forecasts may stem from bottom-up factors. Also, forecasts were higher in sales vs. no-domain condition implying a general positivity/optimism bias. These findings indicate that the previously mentioned positivity is a top-down, but the damping is rather a bottom-up bias.

Studies of childhood amnesia have shown that most adults cannot remember events from before the age of about 3.5. A recent line of work, however, has shown that some individuals remember events from before 3.5 but misdate them to later ages, a phenomenon known as telescoping. This study takes a complementary approach to the investigation of early memories by searching for memories that cannot be telescoped—in this case, memories of the September 11th, 2001, attacks in the United States. 302 young adults were asked about their memory of 9/11. A substantial minority of participants had strong memories of the event even though they were between 2 and 3 at the time. The results provide further evidence that people can often remember events from the childhood-amnesia period.

The relationship between theory of mind (ToM) and episodic memory has been previously explored in developmental contexts, autism, and semantic dementia. However, few studies have systematically examined this relationship in neurotypical populations. In the present study, we investigate the association between episodic autobiographical memory recall and ToM. Participants (N= 18, ongoing data collection) narrated three differently-themed memories: regret, misunderstanding, and success memories. Then, they completed an affective (Reading in the Mind Test) and a cognitive (false belief questions) ToM task. Each narrative was coded based on episodic (internal) and semantic (external) detail categories (Levine et al., 2002). Preliminary findings suggest that for regret and misunderstanding memories, internal details are positively correlated with ToM performance, while external details are negatively correlated. This study highlights the significance of theory of mind (ToM) for autobiographical memory recall and its supportive role in memory specificity.

Reality monitoring (RM) is a particular type of memory monitoring required to distinguish between memories for perceived and imagined information. Previous studies indicate differences in bilingual memory monitoring depending on the language of information, yet these differences are not fully understood. We tested 112 Russian-English bilinguals using a 2 language (Russian, English) x 2 modality (perceived, imagined) within-subject paradigm. We did not find significant differences in memory performance related to the language in which information was encoded. However, overall accuracy for perceived items was better than for imagined items. Further investigating memory monitoring, we found specific patterns of memory errors: for imagined items participants showed a tendency to misattribute to perceived rather than to new; and for perceived - to new rather than to imagined. This study expands the findings of previous research showing language-dependent differences in self-other RM and provides new insights into information processing in bilingual populations

In this study, we aim to understand how attachment representations interact with the narratives of the shared autobiographical memories in romantic relationships. We argued that attachment dynamics and relational satisfaction can shape the recollective and narrative quality of the shared relational memories. We asked participants to retell the relationship memories from both their own and their partners’ perspectives and to rate the recollective features and emotional impact of these memories reported from both perspectives. The data collection is ongoing however preliminary findings showed differences depending on the perspective that the memory is narrated from. Attachment security is associated to have greater coherence, and recollections across perspectives. Despite this, avoidant attachment predicts less vivid and emotionally detached recollections in both perspectives, with even lower vividness and emotional engagement when recalling from the partner’s perspective. In contrast, anxious attachment is linked to higher recollection but lower coherence across perspectives.

People can update their beliefs about the world as they encounter new information, but how incoming information is evaluated during this process can vary depending on personal and situational factors. The Internet provides a unique environment in which people can selectively search for different types of information (i.e., affirming/disaffirming their existing beliefs). The present study investigates the role of such factors in the amount and quality of self-regulated online searching. Specifically, we examine whether encountering information that is either internally inconsistent or that challenges existing beliefs leads to cognitive conflict and, thus, increased feelings of curiosity. Curiosity may, in turn, affect the quantity and variety of information people search for online. This study helps us understand how people update their beliefs within the context of Internet use.

Early maladaptive schemas (EMS), the deep internalized patterns, have been found to predict lower levels of psychological well-being (PWB). However, there is limited understanding regarding which factors may moderate this relation and autobiographical memory functions (AMF) could be one of them since autobiographical memories have a strong role in shaping EMS. Young non-clinical adults (N = 190) from Türkiye completed the Young Early Maladaptive Schemas Scale (with 14 domains including Approval Seeking and Punitiveness), Ryff Psychological Well-Being Scale, and Thinking About Life Experiences Scale. Results showed that the negative relation between EMS and PWB is moderated by AMFs for approval-seeking and punitiveness domains. Specifically, these negative relations were significant at low and moderate levels of directive and self functions, but not significant at high levels of these functions. So, using self and directive functions more often may play a protective role against the negative impact of EMS domains on PWB.

Individuals construct a sense of identity alongside societal perspectives of an acceptable life course. Creating a stable, continuous sense of identity could be particularly complex for transgender individuals as they face pervasive cultural stereotypes of having “abnormal” or societally disruptive identities. The present study used a master narrative framework to expand on master narratives identified in previous literature as well as to identify new master narrative themes in the coming out narratives of 73 transgender adults. Thematic analysis identified two society-focused master narratives: (1) an individual should be their authentic self and (2) family should provide unconditional support, along with one transgender-focused master narrative: (3) cisnormativity, or the concept that being cisgender is the societal norm. Further understanding the experiences of transgender individuals as they navigate coming out to a parent can illustrate the way marginalization is encountered within this community and inform potential pathways to support.

A widespread observation in the cognitive neuroscience of aging is that older adults show a more bilateral pattern of task-related brain activation. The current study represents a targeted assessment of the role of bilaterality by employing a novel bilateral repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) paradigm. The objective of our study was to elucidate the neurophysiological effects of bilateral neuromodulation in healthy older adults (hOA) and older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Electroencephalography was recorded while participants received unilateral and bilateral rTMS trains at an alpha and beta frequency, as well as two sham conditions. Our results revealed that bilateral alpha and beta stimulation induced a widespread alpha power desynchronization, with hOAs showing greater desynchronization compared to MCIs. Overall, these results demonstrate frequency-specific responses to bilateral rTMS in the aging brain and provide support for inhibitory models of hemispheric interaction across multiple frequency bands.

Media multitasking (MM) refers to the simultaneous engagement with multiple forms of media or
multiple activities with at least one involving digital media. Given the rapid rise in accessibility and use of
technology, there has been an increasing interest in understanding the relationship between MM and
cognitive functioning. However, research in this area has been inconclusive. Some studies have found no
relationship between MM and cognitive task performance and others have indicated performance-
related differences between high and low multitaskers. The present study examined performance in a
battery of tasks measuring various cognitive constructs (e.g., attention control, working memory, etc.)
and media multitasking measured using the media multitasking index (MMI). We found no significant
relationship between cognitive task performance for any task and MMI. Likewise, we found no
significant differences in task performance between high or low MMI participants in any task.

We studied the effect of related but non-probative photos on judgments of the truth of trivia claims (truthiness). In the standard 1-phase condition, claims were presented with or without photos for truth judgments. In a new 2-phase procedure, photos were presented in one phase and claims were judged in a second phase. We predicted that the 2-phase procedure would reduce discounting and thus yield a larger truthiness effect. Across five experiments, the truthiness effect was comparable in the two conditions. But item analyses revealed that while most items yielded truthiness effects, a minority of items produced "falsiness" effects. Moreover, both truthiness and offsetting falsiness effects were larger in the 1-phase than 2-phase condition. Thus the 2-phase procedure produced a similar overall effect size as the 1-phase but had reduced truthiness and falsiness effects at the item level. These results highlight the nuanced role of item-level effects in shaping truth judgments.

Pictures are often used in debunking messages, in line with current recommendations on combating misinformation. Despite their frequent use, evidence for the role of pictures in debunking is mixed. In recent work, we have found that pictorial corrections have no impact on misinformation correction over and above the effects of text alone. What if readers cannot understand the debunking text? We assessed belief in true and false science claims before correcting the false claims. Critically, corrections were presented in Wingdings font, and were accompanied either by no image or a nonprobative image that either negated the misconception or reinforced the correction. Belief change was greatest when images negated the misconception, suggesting that some images can facilitate belief change when correction text is uninterpretable. The findings have implications for how pictures might aid in debunking campaigns when the audience does not have native-level proficiency (e.g., low literacy, non-native speakers).

Accurate political information processing is crucial for informed decisions, but many are overconfident in their political knowledge, a problem exacerbated by misinformation. While a less deliberative thinking style, often measured by the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), has been shown to predict increased belief in misinformation, research has not yet tested whether cognitive abilities (e.g., working memory) that underlie the ability to deliberate effectively explain political information processing (e.g., fake news discrimination, political knowledge, and metacognitive accuracy) better than cognitive style. A targeted sample of 89 participants completed the CRT and working memory tasks (Stroop, N-back, and task-switching), along with political knowledge and fake news discrimination tasks that included metacognitive judgments. We hypothesize that working memory will be a stronger predictor of political information processing than the CRT. Pending data analysis, if supported, the findings may prompt a shift from interventions targeting thinking style to overcoming general cognitive limitations.

Childhood is often associated with play. The amount of time that children play, however, is declining, with serious consequences for development, including reduction in problem-solving and social skills, and increases in violent crime among children and adolescents. In this poster, we report on two online studies with US parents, which compare effects of using nostalgia-evoking advertisements to cue autobiographical memories across lifetime period conditions (i.e., childhood vs. adolescence as compared to a present-day control condition), to market a toy (Study 1) and to encourage parent-child play (Study 2). Participants indicated how nostalgic they felt after seeing the ads, and whether they intended to purchase the toy or play with their children. Subsequently, participants completed individual differences of trait nostalgia and autobiographical memory. Finally, they recalled emotional play memories and rated them in several phenomenological characteristics. We discuss which lifetime period is more effective in evoking nostalgia and behavioural change.

Empathy (sharing another’s emotions) and Theory of Mind (ToM, taking another’s perspective) are thought to develop in tandem. To explore their relationship, we conducted a preregistered meta-analysis of children aged 3 to 13 years (N = 88,757; 94 studies; 246 effect sizes). A random-effects model revealed a moderate correlation (r = .35, 95% CI: 0.299 to 0.401), supported by a Correlated Hierarchical Effects (CHE) model (r = .35, 95% CI: 0.296 to 0.395). Subgroup analyses using a fixed-effects model showed stronger correlations for questionnaires than task-based measures, with further variation across empathy subconstructs. Despite these differences, substantial heterogeneity persisted. These findings reveal a moderate correlation between empathy and ToM, suggesting intertwined emotional and cognitive social cognition. They underscore the impact of measurement methods on this relationship and highlight the need to refine empathy assessments, creating space for future research to better understand how these social-cognitive abilities co-develop in childhood.

Negative emotional biases, for example, when judging facial expressions, are scientifically established concomitants in patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and can intensify social challenges and thus contribute to (perpetuation of) depressive symptoms. To disentangle state- and trait-dependent aspects of emotional biases we conducted a longitudinal study in n = 249 MDD patients and n = 491 healthy control subjects. Each experimental session consisted of an affective priming task in which neutral faces were masked with a happy, sad, mirrored, or no face below conscious perception threshold. After intervals of 2 years over a total period of 8 years, subjects were invited back to the lab and subjected to the same procedure. We found state-dependent effects of depression on emotional biases - with an increased affective priming effect as well as interpretation bias for negative stimuli in current depression, corroborating the state-nature of emotional biases in MDD.

Estimation statistics enhance the teaching of statistical concepts by prioritizing effect sizes, confidence intervals, and data visualization over traditional hypothesis testing. By shifting the focus from binary decision-making based on p-values to a more comprehensive understanding of effect magnitude and uncertainty, students and researchers develop a deeper and more nuanced comprehension of data and its implications. When applied to introductory courses in statistics and experimental design, this approach has been shown to significantly improve students’ conceptual understanding, practical competence, and academic performance. Furthermore, estimation statistics strengthen students' ability to interpret and effectively communicate statistical findings. Exploring practical strategies for integrating estimation techniques into the classroom, this approach emphasizes the use of open-access materials and software to facilitate implementation and promote statistical literacy.