Optimising the Use of Synaesthetic Metaphors in Advertising: The Roles of Metaphor Construction and Complexity
subject: Metaphors; Synaesthetic Metaphors; Advertising; Persuasiveness
description: Metaphors are commonly employed in advertising to increase its persuasive effects. Research suggests that metaphors are most effective when conveyed visually, however linguists believe that additionally providing a linguistic cue, designed to help metaphor interpretation, can increase their effectiveness. In addition, metaphors of medium complexity are believed to drive higher effectiveness than simpler or more complex metaphors. This research aims to investigate how these issues relate to synaesthetic metaphors, those that reference two sensory modalities. Participants were presented with print adverts, the visual and linguistic elements of which were adapted to contain literal messages or synaesthetic metaphors. Participants provided ratings of appreciation, purchase intentions, and perceived advert complexity. Synaesthetic metaphors were shown to produce significantly stronger persuasive effects, measured via appreciation and purchase intentions, when conveyed visually and when rated highly on complexity. Implications for advertisers, who wish to incorporate and optimise the use of synaesthetic metaphors in print advertising, are discussed.
creator: Emily Davenport
source: Participants This research recruited 122 participants via opportunistic sampling. Participants were native speakers of English aged 18 or over, with no history of disabilities in any of the sensory domains (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch). Twelve participants were excluded due to incomplete survey responses and/or ineligibility according to the inclusion criteria, resulting in a sample of 110 participants (88 female, 20 male, 2 other; age: M = 38.11, SD = 18.60) who were randomly assigned to complete one of four surveys (see Design). The demographics per survey are detailed in Table 1. Table 1 The Sample Size and Demographics Per Survey N Gender Age Male Female Other Mean SD Survey 1 28 4 24 - 43.68 18.94 Survey 2 29 7 21 1 32.90 17.77 Survey 3 28 5 22 1 35.07 17.09 Survey 4 25 4 21 - 41.32 19.48 Materials Advert Stimuli The advert stimuli used in this research were gathered and modified by previous researchers at Francesca Citron’s laboratory (Chen, 2019; Pan, 2019). The researchers obtained real adverts containing synaesthetic metaphors from the dataset of Bolognesi and Strik Lievers (2018). These base adverts were labelled 1-8 (see Appendix A). The researchers produced three modified versions of each base advert. They edited the visual and linguistic elements, of product images and slogans respectively, to contain, or not contain, a synaesthetic metaphor, in accordance with the ‘Metaphor Category’ they represented. One version of each base advert conveyed a synaesthetic metaphor in both the visual and linguistic advert elements (Visual-Linguistic SM; labelled “VL”). One version contained a synaesthetic metaphor in the visual, but not linguistic, advert elements (Visual SM Only; labelled “V). One version contained a synaesthetic metaphor in the linguistic, but not visual, advert elements (Linguistic SM Only; labelled “L”). The final version served as a control as a synaesthetic metaphor did not appear in the visual or linguistic advert elements (No SM; lab…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 06/09/2021
contributor: Malcolm Wong
rights: Open
relation: Follow up on previous research in Francesca Citron's lab
format: Data/Excel.xlsx
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Extending the Cortical Hyperexcitability Index
subject: Perceptual Aberrations, Cortical Hyperexcitability, Migraine, Aura, Tinnitus, Auditory Perception, Visual Perception, Hallucinations
description: Anomalous perceptual experiences are associated with underlying excitation of neural activity in the cerebral cortex, known as cortical hyperexcitability (Wilkins, 1995). This can be measured behaviourally by the pattern glare test, where migraineurs consistently show greater susceptibility to anomalous visual percepts in response to grating patterns than control participants (for review see Evans & Stevenson, 2008). Based on these findings, Fong, Takahashi and Braithwaite (2019) developed a screening measure of visual cortical hyperexcitability, the Cortical Hyperexcitability Index (CHi-II), through exploratory factor analysis. This project aims to create auditory-based items for the CHi-II. We know cortical hyperexcitability in the auditory cortex is also associated with a number of auditory symptoms in migraine such as heightened auditory sensitivity and a range of anomalous auditory percepts, ranging from tinnitus-like tones to multiple conversing voices (Vingen, Pareja & Støren et al., 1998; Miller, Grosberg, Crystal & Robbins, 2015). As such we created seven auditory items through adaptation of related questionnaire items and generating unique items based on phenomenology of patient descriptions; these refer to experiences of hearing voices or unexplained sounds under various circumstances, as well as sensitivity to noise. Exploratory Factor Analysis will be conducted on the CHi-II alongside auditory items to test which factor each item best loads onto, as well as using Cronbach's Alpha to assess internal validity. Results are discussed in terms of the debate on global versus localised effects of patterns of hyperexcitability, as well as implications for our understanding of multisensory anomalous perceptual experiences.
creator: Haydn Farrelly
source: Method Participants Forty-five participants age 18-24 (M = 19.24) took part either for research credits or without incentive. Of these, thirty-seven (82%) were female and thirty-seven (82%) were right-handed. Prior to the main questionnaire, a pre-screening survey asked participants to declare any history of neurosurgeries (8.22%), neurological conditions (2.22%), psychological conditions (17.78%), ocular conditions (15.56%), epilepsy (0%), migraine (24.44%), or tinnitus (15.56%). Auditory Item Creation As with the original CHi-II, items were based on previous questionnaires measuring anomalous perceptual experiences (Sierra & Berrios, 2000; Bell, Halligan & Ellis, 2006) alongside patient reports of auditory experiences in migraine (Miller, Grosberg, Crystal & Robbins, 2015; Vreeburg, Leijten, Sommer & Sommer, 2016). These items were split into two categories: voice-hearing, and noise-hearing. We distinguished between hearing a single voice in item one ‘Do you ever hear a single voice talking aloud in your head without a clear source?’, or multiple voices in item two ‘Do you ever hear 2 or more unexplained voices talking with each other?’, as these are delineated in patient reports (Miller et al., 2015; Vreebrug et al., 2016). We also distinguish between hearing instructing voices in item three ‘Do you ever hear voices telling you what to do?’, and hearing voices which comment on thoughts and actions in item four ‘Do you ever hear voices telling you what to do, or commenting on what you are thinking or doing?’, as suggested by the CAPS and CDS (Sierra & Berrios, 2000; Bell et al., 2006). The first noise item asked participants about the occurrence of anomalous sounds in item five ‘Do you ever notice sounds, such as ringing / buzzing , which other people around you cannot hear?’ as recommended by CAPS and CDS (Sierra & Berrios, 2000; Bell et al., 2006). The final noise items referred to volume of sounds in item six ‘Do you ever become annoyed or agitated by sounds th…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 27/05/2022
contributor: Haydn Farrelly
rights: Open
relation: Braithwaite, Marchant, Takahashi, Dewe & Watson (2015) Fong, Takahashi & Braithwaite (2019)
format: Data/Excel.csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Do trustworthiness judgements help people to recognise synthetic faces?
subject: StyleGAN, synthetic face, trustworthiness perception, facial trustworthiness
description: Recent advances in digital image generative models have allowed for artificial creation of fake imagery such as synthesising highly photorealistic human faces. Style-based Generative Adversarial Networks (StyleGAN) is one of the most state-of-the-art generative models in this field, and has been widely used on facial image generation. However, with the increasing ease of using such image generative models, the security in many domains, such as forensic, border control and mass media, is vulnerable in front of the potential threats resulted from the misuse of image generative technologies. To date there has only been limited empirical research into the facial characteristics of StyleGAN-generated faces to support the design of detection methods against such synthetic faces. This study used StyleGAN2 (an improved version of StyleGAN) to generate faces and invited people to complete two facial image evaluation tasks, 1) Discrimination task, 2) Trustworthiness rating task. The study results demonstrated that, in the discrimination task, subjects had trouble recognising synthetic faces by direct/explicit judgement; while in the trustworthiness rating task, subjects perceived the synthetic faces as significantly more trustworthy than real faces. The study further analysed gender bias and ethnicity bias on the perception of facial trustworthiness, with results showing some differences between different levels of gender and ethnicity. In conclusion, people’s ability to recognise synthetic faces is poor, but it is possible that people rely on the perception of facial trustworthiness to discriminate synthetic from real faces. The findings in this study have implications for the development of detection methods against digitally generated faces.
creator: Haisa Shan
source: Subjects and design Three hundred and fifty-seven subjects (114 males, mean age = 25.2, SD = 5.8; 227 females, mean age = 25.0, SD = 6.3; 10 non-binary, mean age = 23.6, SD = 8.93) were recruited to complete an online survey test delivered on www.qualtrics.com. The responses of subjects who started but did not complete the online survey were eliminated to avoid distorting the research results. We used computer-synthesised facial images in this research as fake faces, mixed with real faces to examine people’s ability to detect fake faces and perceptual differences of trustworthiness between real/fake faces. Subjects did not get rewards for their participation, though they could see the test score of their performances at the end of the survey. The Qualtrics survey was based on a within-subjects design in which all subjects viewed the same two sets of adult facial images and completed each of the two tasks. To eliminate the effect of between-sets difference, the use of each image sets was counterbalanced in the individual test for each subject. Before the survey started, all subjects provided informed consent and completed a demographic questionnaire about their age, gender, ethnicity. In terms of the experimental power of 0.8 and significance level of 0.05, with a small effect, the power calculation indicated that the study needed at least 198 subjects. Stimuli A total of thirty-two human facial images (1024×1024 resolution), including 16 real and 16 synthetic faces, were used as stimuli in the survey. All real faces were taken from a publicly available dataset for high-quality human facial images, Flickr-Faces-HQ (FFHQ), which is created as a benchmark for GAN (see https://github.com/NVlabs/ffhq-dataset), and all synthetic faces were gained from the dataset of the generative image modeling, StyleGAN2 (see https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2). To ensure a diverse dataset, in each of the two sets of faces, there were 4 Black, 4 East Asian, 4 South Asian, 4 White, and …
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 8 September 2021
contributor: Joanne Roe
rights: Open
relation: None
format: data/Excel.csv
language: English
type: Data
identifier: Cognitive, Perception Forensic
coverage: LA1 4YW

The impact of retribution on perception of transgressor by others
subject: Retribution, Transgression, Guilt, Vignette
description: Emotions play a key role in within society, behaviour and human life with moral emotions such as guilt, regret and shame being able to influence individuals’ judgments and actions. For example, a person who experiences guilt will want to fix their wrongdoing that has caused this. There are times where these efforts to repair ones transgression, can lead an individual to self-punish in order to repair bonds with others and reduce negative consequences of the situation. The present study experimentally investigated the effect of self-punishment intensity on perceptions of a transgressor. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions of self-punishment intensity (low, correct and high). Vignettes were manipulated for each condition and presented for participants to read for them to answer questions on their judgments of the transgressor (perceptions of guilt, shame, regret, moral character, and trustworthiness, their willingness to forgive the transgressor, how likely they thought they would reoffend in the future) and rated this on a Likert scale of 0-5. Participants allocated to low self-punishment had more negative perceptions towards the transgressor overall when compared to correct self-punishment. However, this was not found beyond this as no differences were seen for those within the high self-punishment condition
creator: Olivia Wilson
source: Participants. Participants were recruited through the use of LU Sona system as well as opportunity sampling through use of social media and network platforms accessible. A total of 174 responses were collected via Qualtrics, of those 158 have been successfully completed through to the end whilst 16 have only been started and answered few questions at most. Therefore, the decision has been made to exclude any incomplete attempts. This resulted in a final sample of 158 of which 54 are in the high punishment condition, 52 in low punishment condition and 52 in correct punishment. Design. This is a one-factor study with 3 levels (self-punishment: Low punishment, correct punishment, and high punishment) between-subjects design. Qualtrics randomly allocated participants to one of the three conditions. Materials. A short hypothetical vignette was used to describe an event between two individuals; ‘Simon’ the transgressor and his friend, who he steals money from. With each of the punishment conditions, the vignette introduced the scenario with the same starting sentences to create the scene of someone performing a transgression against their friend with feelings of self-directed negative affect presented by the transgressor: Simon is out with his friends when he noticed that a member of his group has left their wallet unattended. Simon helps himself to the £40 that was in the wallet. His friend eventually realises that the money has been stolen and seems distressed. The next day, Simon feels bad for his actions and confesses to his friend that he took the money. The final sentence of the vignettes was manipulated for each of the three conditions. The sentence stated the amount of money returned to Simon’s friend, which was either less than originally taken (low punishment, £20), same amount (correct punishment, £40) or more than originally taken (high punishment, £60). He gives his friend all the money he has in his wallet, which came to £20 (or £40, or £60). Hypothetical vi…
publisher: Lancaster University
contributor: Anastasija Jumatova & Annie Fountain
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/Excel.csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YW

The Paradox of Choice in fictitious COVID-19 vaccination scenario: the role of the number of options and the amount of information in decision-making.
description: Previous research evidence showed that when people face abundance of choices or too much information, they tend to experience the paradox of choice. This study investigates the role of the number of options and amount of information in decision-making, respectively, the paradox of choice in the fictitious COVID-19 vaccination scenario. Participants (N = 128) were randomly allocated to one of four experimental conditions. The conditions differed in the number of options (high – six options; low – two options) and the information (high – six pieces of information per option; low – two pieces of information per option). As a result, the four experimental conditions were: low options, low information; low options, high information; high options, low information; high options, high information. Participants were asked to choose one of the vaccines from a list presented separately from the experimental stimuli. The reaction time of choosing a vaccine was measured. Participants were asked to evaluate how satisfied they were with their choice, how confident they were about their choice and their anticipated regret. Participants were also asked to write the reason why they chose a particular option. The study did not find a significant effect of the number of options and the amount of information on the decision-making. Participants identified five main themes why they chose a particular option: features of the vaccine, scientific evidence, information, lawfulness, and personal preference. The study revealed positive relationships between choice satisfaction, confidence, and anticipated regret.
creator: Iveta Volna
source: Participants The participants’ pool was collected from the general public. In total, 191 participants took part in the study. However, 62 participants were excluded due to missing values. Another participant was further excluded because of stating being 0 years of age. Thus, the data of 128 participants (36 males, 90 females, 1 non-binary/third gender, and 1 prefer not to say) were used for the analysis. The participants were in the age group between 18 and 51 years of age (M = 23.1, SD = 6.02). Based on power analysis when effect size f = .25 (medium effect), p = .05, power (1 – β error probability) = .80, and the number of groups = 4, it was indicated that the sample size of 128 participants is necessary to ensure the study results have high statistical power. In terms of age, one participant was stated to be 22,5 years old. For the analysis, this was taken as 22 years of age. The participants were invited to the research via Facebook post, Instagram story, and direct messaging friends and family circles. From the overall sample, 103 participants (29 males, 72 females, 1 non-binary/third gender, 1 prefer not to say) also filled an additional qualitative question investigating the reasoning behind the participants’ choice. As drawn from the overall sample, the age of participants responding to the qualitative question ranged from 18 to 47 years of age (M = 22, SD = 5.76). Design Participants were presented with information about fictitious COVID-19 vaccines. The current study applied a 2x2 between-subject design. Participants were randomly split according to the number of options (high – six options; low – two options) and the amount of information they received (high – six pieces of information per option; low – two pieces of information per option). Consequently, the four experimental conditions were: a) Low options, low information b) Low options, high information c) High options, low information d) High options, high information The six vaccines in the high opt…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2021
contributor: Faye Summers Connie Jordan-Turner
rights: Open (unless stated otherwise)
relation: None (unless stated otherwise)
format: data/r.csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Do trustworthiness judgements help people to recognise synthetic faces?
subject: StyleGAN, synthetic face, trustworthiness perception, facial trustworthiness
description: Recent advances in digital image generative models have allowed for artificial creation of fake imagery such as synthesising highly photorealistic human faces. Style-based Generative Adversarial Networks (StyleGAN) is one of the most state-of-the-art generative models in this field, and has been widely used on facial image generation. However, with the increasing ease of using such image generative models, the security in many domains, such as forensic, border control and mass media, is vulnerable in front of the potential threats resulted from the misuse of image generative technologies. To date there has only been limited empirical research into the facial characteristics of StyleGAN-generated faces to support the design of detection methods against such synthetic faces. This study used StyleGAN2 (an improved version of StyleGAN) to generate faces and invited people to complete two facial image evaluation tasks, 1) Discrimination task, 2) Trustworthiness rating task. The study results demonstrated that, in the discrimination task, subjects had trouble recognising synthetic faces by direct/explicit judgement; while in the trustworthiness rating task, subjects perceived the synthetic faces as significantly more trustworthy than real faces. The study further analysed gender bias and ethnicity bias on the perception of facial trustworthiness, with results showing some differences between different levels of gender and ethnicity. In conclusion, people’s ability to recognise synthetic faces is poor, but it is possible that people rely on the perception of facial trustworthiness to discriminate synthetic from real faces. The findings in this study have implications for the development of detection methods against digitally generated faces.
creator: Haisa Shan
source: Three hundred and fifty-seven subjects (114 males, mean age = 25.2, SD = 5.8; 227 females, mean age = 25.0, SD = 6.3; 10 non-binary, mean age = 23.6, SD = 8.93) were recruited to complete an online survey test delivered on www.qualtrics.com. The responses of subjects who started but did not complete the online survey were eliminated to avoid distorting the research results. We used computer-synthesised facial images in this research as fake faces, mixed with real faces to examine people’s ability to detect fake faces and perceptual differences of trustworthiness between real/fake faces. Subjects did not get rewards for their participation, though they could see the test score of their performances at the end of the survey. The Qualtrics survey was based on a within-subjects design in which all subjects viewed the same two sets of adult facial images and completed each of the two tasks. To eliminate the effect of between-sets difference, the use of each image sets was counterbalanced in the individual test for each subject. Before the survey started, all subjects provided informed consent and completed a demographic questionnaire about their age, gender, ethnicity. In terms of the experimental power of 0.8 and significance level of 0.05, with a small effect, the power calculation indicated that the study needed at least 198 subjects. Stimuli A total of thirty-two human facial images (1024×1024 resolution), including 16 real and 16 synthetic faces, were used as stimuli in the survey. All real faces were taken from a publicly available dataset for high-quality human facial images, Flickr-Faces-HQ (FFHQ), which is created as a benchmark for GAN (see https://github.com/NVlabs/ffhq-dataset), and all synthetic faces were gained from the dataset of the generative image modeling, StyleGAN2 (see https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan2). To ensure a diverse dataset, in each of the two sets of faces, there were 4 Black, 4 East Asian, 4 South Asian, 4 White, and 2 males and 2 female…
date: 8 September 2021
contributor: Joanne Roe
rights: Open
relation: None
format: data/Excel.csv
language: English
type: Data
identifier: Cognitive, Perception Forensic

Examining the Effect of Anxiety on the Development of False Memory
subject: memory, generalized anxiety disorder, confidence-accuracy calibration
description: Up till the late 70s, people believed their memory worked in similar to a video-recorder, accurately collecting and storing every information seen and heard. This belief was brought to question after researchers started thorough investigation on memory, and found that in actuality memory is highly impressionable and prone to numerous errors such as the formation of false memories. There now appears to have been found many causes for the formation of false memories. However, limited to no research exists on the effect of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) on formation of false memories. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of GAD on the development of false memories by using the misinformation effect paradigm. Confidence-accuracy calibration (CAC) was assessed as a secondary analysis. Participants (N = 100) were recruited through online means and took part in a 15-45-minute-long experiment involving neutral stimuli. The experiment consisted of a video of an event and were subsequently asked to read a text description with misinformation after partaking in filler tasks. Afterwards their memory of the original event was tested. Results demonstrate that GAD and false memory are not significantly associated. CAC analysis revealed that participants were relatively aware of when their memory had been distorted by providing low confidence ratings to more inaccurate items and higher confidence ratings to accurately recalled answers. Additionally, false memories created due to misinformation was significantly observed, though GAD did have any influence over this. To conclude, GAD does not contribute to the formation of false memories.
creator: Mariyam Malsha Muneer
source: A total of 100 participants were recruited and provided with an online link through social media sites, ages ranging from 18-50. Out of the recruited participants, 66 identified as females, 31 as males, two as non-binary and, one preferred not to say. The link begins with the consent sheet, and once the participants click to agree, they were then redirected to the start of the experiment. Participant’s anxiety was tested by administering a standardized and validated tool, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire (GAD-7) (Spitzer et al., 2006), (see Appendix B). GAD7 has seven rating scale questions, and the participant’s anxiety was calculated by assigning scores of zero (not at all), one (several days), two (more than half the days), and three (nearly every day). Samples questions include “worrying too much about different things?” and “becoming easily annoyed or irritable?”. For scores ten and above, GAD-7 has a specificity of 82% and sensitivity of 89% (Kroenke et al., 2007). Cut-off points for the scores are a score of five for mild anxiety, ten for moderate anxiety, and 15 for severe anxiety. For the present study, participants who scored nine and below were grouped under “low” anxiety, and participants who scored ten and above were grouped under “high” anxiety. The stimulus set developed by Okado and Start (2005) were used for this study. Two neutral stimuli were obtained, and each stimulus consisted of 50 coloured digital images. These were compiled into a short video, with each image displayed for 300ms, and the whole video lasting 150s. Out of the 50 slides, 12 of them were critical, meaning these slides consisted of an item that would later be altered in the text description of the event, hence providing the misinformation. The two stimuli are summarized below. Stimulus One is about a female named Rachel who was doing her work at home, then feels hungry and checks her refrigerator for food, sees that there is not much at hand, and so goes grocery sho…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 8 September 2021
contributor: Ellen Dimeck, Cati Oates
rights: Open
relation: Open
format: Excel/csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YZ

Comparison of Ethical Decision-Making in Emergency Service Workers and Laypeople
subject: Trolley Problem, ethical dilemmas, time pressure, emergency service workers, decision-making.
description: The Trolley Problem is a theoretical ethical dilemma in which it is asked whether it is morally acceptable to actively kill one person to save five (Thomson, 1976). Emergency service workers (ESW) are often presented with ethical dilemmas, such as whether to resuscitate someone who does not want to be resuscitated (Guru et al., 1999). The present study investigated the differences in decisions made when faced with variations of the Trolley Problem between laypeople (non-ESW) and ESW. The effect of time pressure on making these decisions was also investigated, measured through response time. 99 participants were tested, 47 laypeople and 52 ESW. Participants were presented with five different Trolley Problem dilemmas wherein they could passively allow five people to die, or to make an active decision to sacrifice one person to save the others. These dilemmas had distinct variations, such as the one person being a co-worker, or where participants had to physically push and kill a large man. Half the participants were placed into a time pressure condition, and were told that they had a time limit in which to respond, when no time limit existed. Results showed that neither occupation nor time pressure significantly affected response time or participant choice. Further analysis suggested some interaction effects between occupation, time pressure, and specific dilemma types. Implications such as suggested training practices for ESW will be discussed. Criticisms of the methodology and recommendations for future research will also be discussed.
creator: James Wright
source: Method Sample This project aimed to use a total of 112 participants, with 56 of these being ESW, and 56 being laypeople. This number was calculated using the G*Power software, using an alpha of .05, power of .8, and a medium expected effect size of .35, using five levels of measurement. In total, 99 participants were gathered for the present study. 47 of the sample were laypeople, whilst the other 52 were ESW. Of these, 22 were police officers, and 30 were ambulance crewmembers. Overall, ESW had an average of 7.7 years of experience (SD = 8.29), with ambulance staff having an average of 10.14 years (SD = 9.89), and police having an average of 4.52 years (SD = 4.17). Unfortunately, no other emergency service branches such as coast guard or firefighters completed the study. A gender split of 47 males to 48 females was gathered, along with an average age of 35.65 years old (SD = 12.98). Three participants declined to disclose their gender, and one participant identified as agender. Ethical Approval and Pre-Registration This study gained ethical approval on 13/04/2021, from members of the Psychology department at Lancaster University. This study was also pre-registered on the Open Science Frameworks website on 17/05/2021. This can be found at the following link: https://osf.io/4ecjg/?view_only=95615bd16f2c4a9db88dd77543780ec2 Materials Survey The present study was delivered through a Qualtrics survey file, created fully by the researcher. The survey contains standard psychological research documents, such as an information page, consent form, demographic information page, and debriefing. The survey also contains two sets of five vignettes describing ethical dilemmas for each condition of the experiment. Demographics Participants are asked to provide some demographic information: age, gender, and occupation. Participants are given options for occupation, including police, fire, or ambulance, as well as an option for ‘other’ emergency services, where a free typing box is …
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 08/09/2021
contributor: Paige Givin & Chloe Crawshaw
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Main Data_35645845/Excel.csv , 35645845 Occupation Response Time Sum Scores/Excel.csv , 35645845 Time Pressure Response Time Sum Scores/Excel.csv, 35645845_RStudio Code/RStudio.R
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YW

The effects of screen exposure on developmental skills among children at two and three years of age.
subject: Developmental Psychology
description: Previous research into the topic of children’s development has tended to take place in Western nations (Kuta, 2017; Martinot, 2021). One aspect of development is language development, and one aspect of research on that matter is the use of electronic devices, with the potential for consequent effects on children’s language abilities. This paper reviews and builds upon the scope of the available research, with its disparate findings, by offering research from the context of Kuwait, a non-western nation where parents tend to be in favour of their children having access to new technologies regardless of their age (Dashti & Yateem, 2018). The increasing number of children being exposed to electronic devices of various descriptions raises concerns regarding the possible adverse effects of screen exposure on their development, particularly through displacement of educationally enriching activities, which provides the motivation here (Haughton, Aiken & Cheevers 2015). Based on a review of the existing literature, the present research starts from the hypothesis that language development will be negatively correlated with media exposure. Valid data relating to 96 children of 24 to 36 months of age were collected using two questionnaires, one relating to the child’s knowledge of Arabic words on various topics (voices of animals, names of animals, vehicles, toys, food and drink, etc.) and the other quantifying the child’s daily screen time. Ordinary least squares analysis was performed using SPSS, version 26. While a statistically significant positive moderate correlation between language expression score and age was found – an increase in age was associated with an increase in language expression or the number of words understood and expressed – no significant effect of screen time on language expression was found after adjusting for age. This indicates, therefore, the value of employing non-western populations in research into cognitive development, and suggests the need for…
creator: Afrah Alazemi
source: The parents of a total of 100 participant children) took part in a questionnaire survey. The reports of 4 parents were excluded because their child’s age exceeded 36 months and the inclusion criteria for the study were set at 24 to 36 months. Participants were selected by means of opportunity sampling. An announcement was sent via WhatsApp to those of my contacts who had children of an age appropriate for inclusion in the study. Parents were recruited by sending a link to the survey through WhatsApp. Family and friends were then asked to deliver the WhatsApp number to those who they knew who had children within the set age range. Parents read information about the study and their informed consent to participate in the questionnaire survey was obtained via Qualtrics. The Lancaster University Psychology Department gave ethical approval for the present study. Procedure The data for the present work were gathered by means of an online questionnaire via Qualtrics between 7 June 2021 and 22 June 2021. During this time, participants submitted answers to two questionnaires: a) the Arabic CDI, which measures Arabic words arranged according to groups (for example voices of animals, names of animals, vehicles, toys, food and drink, etc.) to measure the child’s knowledge of the Arabic language (Abdel Wahab, 2020) and b) a questionnaire related to the number of hours the child spent in front of the screen , and their opinion of the appropriate amount of screen time which children can spend at their screens, as well as their control over their children’s viewing of the screens, and whether or not they are allowed to watch while sleeping and eating. The survey instruments were designed to measure the extent to which screen viewing is related to the language development of Kuwaiti children aged between two and three years. Materials CDI: The Arabic CDI language scale developed by Abdel Wahab (2020) is a questionnaire comprising a set of categories containing checklists for identify…
date: 2015
type: Data

Do foetuses have the ability to retrieve and retain information presented by both the mother-to-be and partner?
subject: language, foetus, mother-to-be, partner, retention
description: The complex phenomenon of language development is a vital criterion for communication and for the strengthening of the attachment bond between caregiver and baby (Chew & Ng, 2021). The period in which humans begin to process speech is difficult to define; previous research has identified that foetuses that have the capacity to retain linguistic information presented to them over six weeks by their mother-to-be show a preference for this information postnatally (DeCasper and Spence, 1986). However, the language environment of the foetus also likely incorporates that of the secondary carer role and very little research has investigated the role of the partner in influencing language retention. This study aims to investigate the extent to which foetuses have the ability to retrieve and retain linguistic input presented to them by both their mother-to-be and their partner. A within-measures design with two participant pairs who were recruited via opportunistic sampling through Lancaster University’s Babylab was conducted. Participants were asked to record themselves reading “The Cat in the Hat” and play both of the recordings to the foetus every day for two weeks. During these sessions, the mother-to-be was required to count the frequency of kicks and the movement intensity per session. The findings concluded that foetuses can retrieve and retain language that is presented over a two-week period at only 32 weeks’ gestation. Foetal kicking decreased significantly as exposure to recordings increased. This provides evidence of online processing of linguistics at 32 weeks’ gestation, implying that the full six-week exposure, as previous research indicated, is not necessary thus providing evidence of an innate processing of language. Although there is scope of environmental influence on this. No significant impact of parent recording on foetal ability to process language was found. This suggests that humans have an innate ability to process linguistic information which is de…
creator: Hope Butler
source: Methods: Ethics Statement: Ethical approval was granted by Lancaster University Psychology Department on the 12th of April 2021 before any data collection was completed. Participants were provided with information for review and asked to complete an informed consent form online before participating within this experiment and were given the option to withdraw at any point of the study. Participants: Three mothers-to-be and their partners were recruited via opportunistic sampling through Lancaster University BabyLab social media (http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/babylab/) and word of mouth in exchange for a £5 book voucher from Waterstones. In order to take part in this research mothers-to-be must live with a partner and also have a foetal gestation age of between 32-34 weeks. If any participants were bilingual, they were asked to record the story in English to ensure reliability. Materials and Measures: Due to current restrictions because of COVID-19, this experiment took place online. Participants were sent an email containing a link to a Qualtrics survey. Qualtrics is a software that allows participants to access surveys and questionnaires on all digital devices at any point of time to help aid easy distribution. Qualtrics Survey: To complete this survey, participants were required to have access to a mobile device or computer. The Survey contained the information sheet, consent form, instructions, and demographic questions. The questionnaire consisted of questions asking the mother-to-be to rate the intensity of movements and state the frequency of kicking per session (see Appendix A). The intensity of kicks were recorded using a scale bar where mothers-to-be could rate the intensity of the kicking per session (0-100). Recording “The Cat in the Hat”: Participants were given a copy of an extract from “The Cat in the Hat” and both the mother- to-be and their Partner were asked to record themselves reading the story aloud using a device that they were then able to play the reco…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 08/09/2021
contributor: Rebecca James and Livvi Taylor
rights: Open
relation: No Relation
format: data/r.csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF