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Examining the testing effect in university teaching: retrievability and question format matter
(2018)
Review of learned material is crucial for the learning process. One approach that promises to increase the effectiveness of reviewing during learning is to answer questions about the learning content rather than restudying the material (testing effect). This effect is well established in lab experiments. However, existing research in educational contexts has often combined testing with additional didactical measures that hampers the interpretation of testing effects. We aimed to examine the testing effect in its pure form by implementing a minimal intervention design in a university lecture (N = 92). The last 10 min of each lecture session were used for reviewing the lecture content by either answering short-answer questions, multiple-choice questions, or reading summarizing statements about core lecture content. Three unannounced criterial tests measured the retention of learning content at different times (1, 12, and 23 weeks after the last lecture). A positive testing effect emerged for short-answer questions that targeted information that participants could retrieve from memory. This effect was independent of the time of test. The results indicated no testing effect for multiple-choice testing. These results suggest that short-answer testing but not multiple-choice testing may benefit learning in higher education contexts.
Acrophobia is characterized by intense fear in height situations. Virtual reality (VR) can be used to trigger such phobic fear, and VR exposure therapy (VRET) has proven effective for treatment of phobias, although it remains important to further elucidate factors that modulate and mediate the fear responses triggered in VR. The present study assessed verbal and behavioral fear responses triggered by a height simulation in a 5-sided cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE) with visual and acoustic simulation and further investigated how fear responses are modulated by immersion, i.e., an additional wind simulation, and presence, i.e., the feeling to be present in the VE. Results revealed a high validity for the CAVE and VE in provoking height related self-reported fear and avoidance behavior in accordance with a trait measure of acrophobic fear. Increasing immersion significantly increased fear responses in high height anxious (HHA) participants, but did not affect presence. Nevertheless, presence was found to be an important predictor of fear responses. We conclude that a CAVE system can be used to elicit valid fear responses, which might be further enhanced by immersion manipulations independent from presence. These results may help to improve VRET efficacy and its transfer to real situations.
A negative mood-congruent attention bias has been consistently observed, for example, in clinical studies on major depression. This bias is assumed to be dysfunctional in that it supports maintaining a sad mood, whereas a potentially adaptive role has largely been neglected. Previous experiments involving sad mood induction techniques found a negative mood-congruent attention bias specifically for young individuals, explained by an adaptive need for information transfer in the service of mood regulation. In the present study we investigated the attentional bias in typically developing children (aged 6–12 years) when happy and sad moods were induced. Crucially, we manipulated the age (adult vs. child) of the displayed pairs of facial expressions depicting sadness, anger, fear and happiness. The results indicate that sad children indeed exhibited a mood specific attention bias toward sad facial expressions. Additionally, this bias was more pronounced for adult faces. Results are discussed in the context of an information gain which should be stronger when looking at adult faces due to their more expansive life experience. These findings bear implications for both research methods and future interventions.
Although questionable research practices (QRPs) and p-hacking have received attention in recent years, little research has focused on their prevalence and acceptance in students. Students are the researchers of the future and will represent the field in the future. Therefore, they should not be learning to use and accept QRPs, which would reduce their ability to produce and evaluate meaningful research. 207 psychology students and fresh graduates provided self-report data on the prevalence and predictors of QRPs. Attitudes towards QRPs, belief that significant results constitute better science or lead to better grades, motivation, and stress levels were predictors. Furthermore, we assessed perceived supervisor attitudes towards QRPs as an important predictive factor. The results were in line with estimates of QRP prevalence from academia. The best predictor of QRP use was students’ QRP attitudes. Perceived supervisor attitudes exerted both a direct and indirect effect via student attitudes. Motivation to write a good thesis was a protective factor, whereas stress had no effect. Students in this sample did not subscribe to beliefs that significant results were better for science or their grades. Such beliefs further did not impact QRP attitudes or use in this sample. Finally, students engaged in more QRPs pertaining to reporting and analysis than those pertaining to study design. We conclude that supervisors have an important function in shaping students’ attitudes towards QRPs and can improve their research practices by motivating them well. Furthermore, this research provides some impetus towards identifying predictors of QRP use in academia.
Pictorial stimuli can vary on many dimensions, several aspects of which are captured by the term ‘visual complexity.’ Visual complexity can be described as, “a picture of a few objects, colors, or structures would be less complex than a very colorful picture of many objects that is composed of several components.” Prior studies have reported a relationship between affect and visual complexity, where complex pictures are rated as more pleasant and arousing. However, a relationship in the opposite direction, an effect of affect on visual complexity, is also possible; emotional arousal and valence are known to influence selective attention and visual processing. In a series of experiments, we found that ratings of visual complexity correlated with affective ratings, and independently also with computational measures of visual complexity. These computational measures did not correlate with affect, suggesting that complexity ratings are separately related to distinct factors. We investigated the relationship between affect and ratings of visual complexity, finding an ‘arousal-complexity bias’ to be a robust phenomenon. Moreover, we found this bias could be attenuated when explicitly indicated but did not correlate with inter-individual difference measures of affective processing, and was largely unrelated to cognitive and eyetracking measures. Taken together, the arousal-complexity bias seems to be caused by a relationship between arousal and visual processing as it has been described for the greater vividness of arousing pictures. The described arousal-complexity bias is also of relevance from an experimental perspective because visual complexity is often considered a variable to control for when using pictorial stimuli.
Altruistic punishment is connected to trait anger, not trait altruism, if compensation is available
(2018)
Altruistic punishment and altruistic compensation are important concepts that are used to investigate altruism. However, altruistic punishment has been found to be correlated with anger. We were interested whether altruistic punishment and altruistic compensation are both driven by trait altruism and trait anger or whether the influence of those two traits is more specific to one of the behavioral options. We found that if the participants were able to apply altruistic compensation and altruistic punishment together in one paradigm, trait anger only predicts altruistic punishment and trait altruism only predicts altruistic compensation. Interestingly, these relations are disguised in classical altruistic punishment and altruistic compensation paradigms where participants can either only punish or compensate. Hence altruistic punishment and altruistic compensation paradigms should be merged together if one is interested in trait altruism without the confounding influence of trait anger.
The present article introduces a model based on cognitive consistency principles to predict how new identities become integrated into the self-concept, with consequences for intergroup attitudes. The model specifies four concepts (self-concept, stereotypes, identification, and group compatibility) as associative connections. The model builds on two cognitive principles, balance-congruity and imbalance-dissonance, to predict identification with social groups that people currently belong to, belonged to in the past, or newly belong to. More precisely, the model suggests that the relative strength of self-group associations (i.e., identification) depends in part on the (in)compatibility of the different social groups. Combining insights into cognitive representation of knowledge, intergroup bias, and explicit/implicit attitude change, we further derive predictions for intergroup attitudes. We suggest that intergroup attitudes alter depending on the relative associative strength between the social groups and the self, which in turn is determined by the (in)compatibility between social groups. This model unifies existing models on the integration of social identities into the self-concept by suggesting that basic cognitive mechanisms play an important role in facilitating or hindering identity integration and thus contribute to reducing or increasing intergroup bias.
Previous research has shown that low-level visual features (i.e., low-level visual saliency) as well as socially relevant information predict gaze allocation in free viewing conditions. However, these studies mainly used static and highly controlled stimulus material, thus revealing little about the robustness of attentional processes across diverging situations. Secondly, the influence of affective stimulus characteristics on visual exploration patterns remains poorly understood. Participants in the present study freely viewed a set of naturalistic, contextually rich video clips from a variety of settings that were capable of eliciting different moods. Using recordings of eye movements, we quantified to what degree social information, emotional valence and low-level visual features influenced gaze allocation using generalized linear mixed models. We found substantial and similarly large regression weights for low-level saliency and social information, affirming the importance of both predictor classes under ecologically more valid dynamic stimulation conditions. Differences in predictor strength between individuals were large and highly stable across videos. Additionally, low-level saliency was less important for fixation selection in videos containing persons than in videos not containing persons, and less important for videos perceived as negative. We discuss the generalizability of these findings and the feasibility of applying this research paradigm to patient groups.
Epigenetic mechanisms have been proposed to mediate fear extinction in animal models. Here, MAOA methylation was analyzed via direct sequencing of sodium bisulfite-treated DNA extracted from blood cells before and after a 2-week exposure therapy in a sample of n = 28 female patients with acrophobia as well as in n = 28 matched healthy female controls. Clinical response was measured using the Acrophobia Questionnaire and the Attitude Towards Heights Questionnaire. The functional relevance of altered MAOA methylation was investigated by luciferase-based reporter gene assays. MAOA methylation was found to be significantly decreased in patients with acrophobia compared with healthy controls. Furthermore, MAOA methylation levels were shown to significantly increase after treatment and correlate with treatment response as reflected by decreasing Acrophobia Questionnaire/Attitude Towards Heights Questionnaire scores. Functional analyses revealed decreased reporter gene activity in presence of methylated compared with unmethylated pCpGfree_MAOA reporter gene vector constructs. The present proof-of-concept psychotherapy-epigenetic study for the first time suggests functional MAOA methylation changes as a potential epigenetic correlate of treatment response in acrophobia and fosters further investigation into the notion of epigenetic mechanisms underlying fear extinction.