Deception detection is a topic covered in many psychology and communication courses. We designed and implemented an engaging class activity to facilitate the students' learning of several key concepts related to sender and receiver variability in lie detection. The pedagogical effectiveness of the activity was measured. In line with previous…

From a theoretical perspective, most discussions of statistical learning (SL) have focused on the possible "statistical" properties that are the object of learning. Much less attention has been given to defining what "learning" is in the context of "statistical learning." One major difficulty is that SL research has…

It is known that, on average, people adapt their choice of memory strategy to the subjective utility of interaction. What is not known is whether an individual's choices are "boundedly optimal." Two experiments are reported that test the hypothesis that an individual's decisions about the distribution of remembering between internal and…

This experimental study extends conflict elaboration theory (1) by revealing social influence dynamics for a knowledge-rich computer-supported socio-cognitive conflict task not investigated in the context of this theory before and (2) by showing the impact of individual differences in social comparison orientation. Students in two conditions…

There is a renewed debate about whether educated adults solve simple addition problems (e.g., 2 + 3) by direct fact retrieval or by fast, automatic counting-based procedures. Recent research testing adults' simple addition and multiplication showed that a 150-ms preview of the operator (+ or ×) facilitated addition, but not multiplication,…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are becoming an increasingly popular choice for education but, to reach their full extent, they require the resolution of new issues like assessing students at scale. A feasible approach to tackle this problem is peer assessment, in which students also play the role of assessor for assignments submitted by…

The present study used the stimulus onset delay paradigm to investigate eye movement control in reading and in scene viewing in a within-participants design. Short onset delays (0, 25, 50, 200, and 350 ms) were chosen to simulate the type of natural processing difficulty encountered in reading and scene viewing. Fixation duration increased…

Current theories concerning individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) suggest that WMC reflects the ability to control the focus of attention and resist interference and distraction. The current set of experiments tested whether susceptibility to distraction is partially responsible for the established relationship between…

From very early in life, humans can approximate the number and surface area of objects in a scene. The ability to discriminate between 2 approximate quantities, whether number or area, critically depends on the ratio between the quantities, with the most difficult ratio that a participant can reliably discriminate known as the Weber fraction.…

Sender demeanor is an individual difference in the believability of message senders that is conceptually independent of actual honesty. Recent research suggests that sender demeanor may be the most influential source of variation in deception detection judgments. Sender demeanor was varied in five experiments (N = 30, 113, 182, 30, and 35) to…

In the present paper, we (1) study whether people differ in the equity models they use, and (2) test whether individual differences in equity models relate to individual differences in equity sensitivity. To achieve this goal, an Information Integration experiment was performed in which participants were given information on the performance of two…

In a number of psychological studies, answers to reasoning vignettes have been shown to result from both intuitive and deliberate response processes. This paper utilizes a psychometric model to separate these two response tendencies. An experimental application shows that the proposed model facilitates the analysis of dual-process item responses…

We discuss the limitations of hypothesis testing using (quasi-) experiments in the study of cognitive development and suggest latent variable modeling as a viable alternative to experimentation. Latent variable models allow testing a theory as a whole, incorporating individual differences with respect to developmental processes or abilities in the…

Recent research suggests that individuals with relatively weak global precedence (i.e., a smaller propensity to view visual stimuli in a configural manner) show a reduced face inversion effect (FIE). Coupled with such findings, a number of recent studies have demonstrated links between an advantage for feature-based processing and the presentation…

Experiments allow researchers to randomly vary the key manipulation, the instruments of measurement, and the sequences of the measurements and manipulations across participants. To date, however, the advantages of randomized experiments to manipulate both the aspects of interest and the aspects that threaten internal validity have been primarily…