Children are often involved in the legal system as victims of maltreatment, and their disclosure of adult wrongdoing is necessary to initiate effective legal responses and protect them from continued abuse. However, external pressures and children's perceptions of the consequences of truth-telling (e.g., punishment, removal from the home) may result in the delay of disclosure or failure to disclose altogether. Research examining techniques for promoting children's truth-telling has almost exclusively relied on explicit requests to tell the truth (e.g., a promise, reassurance, assessments of conceptual knowledge and moral discussions), and the success of these techniques has varied. The present study examined the benefit of priming honesty (i.e., indirectly or non-consciously activating the goal of honesty) on children's disclosure of an adult's transgression. One-hundred fifteen 6- to 9-year-olds (M age = 7.47 years) participated in a first aid/safety event during which an adult (mother or stranger) engaged the child in play with a box of forbidden puppets, broke a puppet that was designed to break, and requested that the child keep it a secret. Before responding to questions about the puppets, children were either (1) primed for the goal of honesty (prime condition), (2) asked to promise to tell the truth (oath condition), or (3) not provided with any further instructions or information (control condition). Then, children were asked open-ended, direct, and suggestive questions about whether they or the adult touched, played with, or broke any puppets. Regression analyses revealed that children’s truthful disclosures to direct questions increased when children witnessed a stranger transgressing rather than their mother. However, children’s truthful disclosures across the question types did not differ by age or when a prime relative to a promise to tell the truth was used. Results advance our understanding of how children disclose negative events and the effectiveness of different techniques (including a novel technique) in encouraging children’s true disclosures of a parent or stranger’s transgression.

The event related potential (ERP) technique is enjoying widespread application in neurophysiological research due to its fine temporal resolution. Of relevance to this study are ERPs related to voluntary movements. The precision with which movement related processes could be recorded using the ERP technique was demonstrated by Gilden, Vaughan and Costa (1966) and Kutas and Donchin (1974, 1977, and 1980) who found that the readiness potential (RP) immediately preceding hand movement was larger over the hemisphere contralateral to the responding hand. Given that left hemisphere controls right hand movements and vice versa, their findings confirmed that the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) is an index of motor preparation. It has been well established that electrodes from the left precentral site (C3) and from the right precentral site (C4) can capture LRPs, and that the motor cortex is the major generator of this component. In the speech domain, researchers recording ERPs related to motor preparation have often considered pre-determined electrode sites (e.g., F3, F4, C3, C4, Cz) assuming that their proximity to motor areas on the cortex enables capturing of specific activity from those areas [F3 close to Broca’s area, Cz close to Supplementary motor area (SMA), C3 to left motor strip, C4 to right motor strip]. A consistent finding has been that the RP preceding speech is greatest at the central electrode sites, which has been attributed to SMA and motor cortex activity. Studying speech production related ERPs at predetermined set of electrodes might not suffice for two reasons: (1) unlike simple finger movement, speaking is a fine motor skill requiring coordination of multiple systems (e.g., respiratory system, phonatory system, articulatory system) and muscles, and (2) the far-field nature of the ERP recording technique often results in spatial and temporal overlap of components. To overcome these challenges, this study considered multichannel recordings and principal component analysis (PCA). Twenty three healthy participants completed a simple hand motor task (pressing a button with the right index finger and another button using the left index finger based on the color of a stimulus frame displayed on a computer screen), and a speech task (saying “pool” or withholding the response based on the color of the frame). The purpose of including a hand motor task was to verify that neural activity specific to motor preparation was detectable in participants when a well-established condition for the elicitation of LRPs was utilized. Both stimulus-locked and response-locked ERPs from 21 right handed participants (11 females and 10 males) were studied. Interhemispheric difference wave analysis and PCA revealed left hemisphere lateralization of the potential (i.e., the LRP) immediately preceding right hand movements, similar to previous studies. The LRP specific to left hand movements (non-dominant hand), however, showed bihemispheric distribution. Results from the speech motor task confirmed that overlapping components affect interpretation of ERPs related to speech production if just central electrode sites are considered. Two ERP components emerged from the multichannel PCA as distinguishing between the speaking and no speaking condition: a posterior negative component and a left lateralized positive component. The morphology of the posterior negative component and significant moderate correlation of its amplitude with the mean reaction time suggest that this component is a possible index of speech motor preparation. Further research is required to determine whether the left-lateralized component reflects a process mediated by the speech dominant hemisphere (left). In addition to demonstrating the usefulness of multichannel recordings and PCA in ERP investigations, the study provides several methodological guidelines for capturing ERPs related to speech production.

The recent global economic downturn has stimulated a growing interest among scholars in how employees interpret and respond to the circumstance of being overqualified. However, the overqualification literature has been hindered by uncertainty regarding the extent to which employees’ perceptions of being overqualified are based in reality. The present study sought to address this concern by proposing and testing a theoretical model of objective overqualification, perceived overqualification, job satisfaction, and well-being using a cross-sectional sample of full-time employees who had recently graduated from college. Additionally, the present study investigated cognitive ability, achievement striving, and trait negative affectivity as potential moderators of several relationships delineated in the proposed model. Results indicated that the data were consistent with the proposed model, which argues that objective overqualification predicts employees’ perceptions of being overqualified, which creates feelings of relative deprivation and ultimately manifests in poorer job satisfaction and reduced well-being. Importantly, however, the pattern of relationships among study variables suggested that strain outcomes were mostly driven by perceived overqualification. Furthermore, employees’ perceptions of being overqualified appeared to be influenced considerably by unmeasured factors besides objective overqualification, potentially including dissatisfaction with other aspects of the job. There was no support for the hypothesized individual moderators. Overall, the study highlights the importance of taking a more nuanced approach to studying overqualification phenomena and cautions against the assumption that being objectively overqualified is a necessarily undesirable circumstance for individuals and their employers.

In aviation safety incident reports, lack of situation awareness (SA) is often attributed as the cause of negative safety outcomes, such as accidents. While the predominant model of SA has identified three components of SA, perception, comprehension, and projection, assumptions of their relationships with each other and external criteria are yet tested empirically. Specifically, SA theory suggests comprehension SA fully mediates the relationship between perception and projection SA. Additionally, research on the relationships between individual differences and SA is lacking. The purpose of the current study is to test a comprehensive model of SA which simultaneously examines the described mediation, relationships with individual differences antecedents of SA, and its utility as a predictor of safety using structural equation modeling (SEM). A sample of 349 employees from a diverse background of occupational areas were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk to test the model. While self-report measurement of SA was an excellent predictor of safety, the current study did not find empirical support for the presumed mediation among the SA components, and found the relationships between individual differences and SA which contradict extant SA theory. The results suggest differentiating between typical versus maximal SA. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The present study examines the relationships between recognition and recall accuracy of faces, and recognition and recall accuracy of objects. Secondly, this study examines the influence of weapon presence on description and identification accuracy, and whether encoding time moderates the effect. 713 participants watched an image that was either displayed for five seconds or twenty seconds, and either included a weapon or no weapon. Subsequently, they were asked to give descriptions of what they saw before viewing a lineup that either included the perpetrator or was made up of innocent suspects. Results indicated that witnesses’ description accuracy of the crime scene had little or no predictive abilities with regards to their facial identification accuracy. Secondly, there was a weapon focus effect found for faces but not for objects. Furthermore, this effect was eliminated at long encoding times. Finally, increasing encoding time improved recognition of objects, but not faces. Results suggest that prior inaccuracy on one aspect of testimony is not necessarily indicative of subsequent inaccuracy on another aspect of testimony. This finding has implications for how jurors and judges should evaluate witness testimony when assessing credibility in the courtroom.

Researchers’ attempts at understanding the processes underlying witness choosing behavior have focused on applying models that predict that identifications will be primarily driven by memorial factors. However, research has shown that several non-memorial variables affect witness choosing behavior (e.g., administrator influence, clothing bias, co-witness information); thus a full understanding of the processes underlying witness choosing behavior needs to account for these effects. While the memory-based models do attempt to provide explanations for the effects of non-memorial based variables on choosing behavior they all do so within a memorial context. However, I will argue a lineup task is not simply a memory task but a task that allows both memorial and non-memorial variables to impact choosing behavior, with the latter affecting choosing through an inferential process. The purpose of the present study was to provide an initial test of a novel, inferential based framework (i.e., the Competition/Corroboration Conceptualization). In short, this framework predicts that the effect of non-memorial cues on choosing behavior will occur via leading witnesses to deliberatively infer who the suspect is, and that the extent to which a deliberative process is engaged is dependent upon the witnesses’ ecphoric experience. Study 1 (N = 146) had mock-witnesses view several lineups with non-memorial cues embedded in them; results showed that mock-witnesses engaged in an inferential process by using the cues in the lineup to help guide their choosing behavior. Study 2 (N = 376) had witnesses view either a target-present or target-absent lineup where a non-memorial cue suggested that witnesses should either identify the target, identify a specific filler, or was not included. Witnesses then made an identification decision. Results from study 2 showed that the presence of a non-memorial cue suggesting the suspect’s guilt increased suspect identifications compared to its absence, and importantly, that this effect was greater for witnesses who had a weak ecphoric experience. Findings across both studies suggest that an inferential based framework of witness choosing more fully encompasses the underlying nature of witnesses’ phenomenological experience. Practical implications and future directions are discussed.

In the current study, 226 international students attending Florida International University responded to an Web-based questionnaire that assessed self-reported scores for: acculturation, acculturative stress, alcohol use patterns, perceived peer alcohol use, and perceived injunctive social norms for alcohol use. The purpose of the study was to evaluate structural relations among this set of variables using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) via AMOS 17.0. The results of SEM analyses documented acceptable fit of a model which hypothesized that relations between acculturation and alcohol use variables are mediated partially by acculturative stress, perceived peer alcohol use, and perceived injunctive social norms. While significant path coefficients were documented for paths between (a) acculturation and acculturative stress and (b) acculturative stress and alcohol use, the coefficients had negative signs, contrary to existing studies investigating these relations among immigrant youth. While paths between (a) perceived peer alcohol use or (b) perceived injunctive social norms and participants’ alcohol use were significant, path coefficients between acculturation and either (a) perceived peer alcohol use or (b) perceived injunctive social norms were not statistically significant. In addition, multiple-group comparisons suggested that social support had a significant moderating influence on several significant paths in the structural model. Specifically, international students reporting higher social support reported lower scores for acculturative stress and alcohol use, in contrast to their counterparts who reported lower scores for social support.

Our jury system is predicated upon the expectation that jurors engage in systematic processing when considering evidence and making decisions. They are instructed to interpret facts and apply the appropriate law in a fair, dispassionate manner, free of all bias, including that of emotion. However, emotions containing an element of certainty (e.g., anger and happiness, which require little cognitive effort in determining their source) can often lead people to engage in superficial, heuristic-based processing. Compare this to uncertain emotions (e.g., hope and fear, which require people to seek out explanations for their emotional arousal), which instead has the potential to lead them to engage in deeper, more systematic processing. The purpose of the current research is in part to confirm past research (Tiedens & Linton, 2001; Semmler & Brewer, 2002) that uncertain emotions (like fear) can influence decision-making towards a more systematic style of processing, whereas more certain emotional states (like anger) will lead to a more heuristic style of processing. Studies One, Two, and Three build upon this prior research with the goal of improving methodological rigor through the use of film clips to reliably induce emotions, with awareness of testimonial details serving as measures of processing style. The ultimate objective of the current research was to explore this effect in Study Four by inducing either fear, anger, or neutral emotion in mock jurors, half of whom then followed along with a trial transcript featuring eight testimonial inconsistencies, while the other participants followed along with an error-free version of the same transcript. Overall rates of detection for these inconsistencies was expected to be higher for the uncertain/fearful participants due to their more effortful processing compared to certain/angry participants. These expectations were not fulfilled, with significant main effects only for the transcript version (with or without inconsistencies) on overall inconsistency detection rates. There are a number of plausible explanations for these results, so further investigation is needed.

Many studies have noted the detrimental impact adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can have on individuals’ developmental trajectories and, as a result, the utilization of trauma-informed practices has been of increasing interest within the field of education. Most research on trauma-informed pedagogy is derived from samples of children in grades K-12, whereas research on trauma-informed teaching practices within higher education is comparatively scarce. The specific aims of the current investigation are two-fold. The first aim is to explore the effect of postsecondary instructors’ disciplinary specialization (i.e., person-thing orientation) on their receptivity to compassionate teaching practices. The second aim is to implement a brief (i.e., one hour, single session), asynchronous intervention to inform instructors about ACEs, subsequent effects on learning, and evidence-based, trauma-informed teaching practices. Results indicated that participants’ thing-orientation scores negatively predicted their post-intervention receptivity scores and that there was a significant increase in knowledge about compassionate teaching practices from pre-assessment to post-assessment. Future studies should seek to replicate these findings and continue to identify factors that may influence one’s receptivity to compassionate teaching practices.

Sexism tends to be a culturally accepted form of prejudice. I propose the relatively strong trivialization of societal sexism stems from the unique benefits that men receive from the gender status hierarchy, compared to other types of group-based hierarchies. Three studies examined why people, men in particular, trivialize or justify gender bias in relation to other types of group-based biases. Study 1 was a correlational study that examined whether participants downplay the existence and social harm of gender bias in relation to racial, religious, and sexual orientation bias, moderated by participant gender. Participants reported stronger trivialization and denial of gender bias, compared to other three types of bias. Study 2 experimentally tested whether White men’s justifications for gender bias, in relation to racial bias, stems from the dyadic benefits men receive in interpersonal relationships with women. White men high in proximal benefits reported stronger essentialist justifications in the gender bias, compared to the racial bias condition. Study 3 examined whether heterosexual men, compared to heterosexual women and gay men, endorse stronger justifications for gender bias, compared to sexual orientation bias. Heterosexual men endorsed stronger essentialist justifications in the gender bias, compared to the sexual orientation bias condition. Implications of these findings are discussed.