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

Film language affecting behaviour: A psycholinguistic approach
subject: Pearson’s correlation
description: Films are a popular form of art and entertainment that enable people to enjoy a story through multiple stimuli perception and stimulation of emotions. Plenty are the film elements that impact the audience’s attitude towards the film, yet language style has rarely been taken in consideration for research. This study focused on examining whether there exists a relationship between the audience’s favouritism for films and the linguistic style present in them, predominantly concentrating on emotional factors of language in films. A dataset containing the widest public ratings of films was obtained from the Internet Movie Database platform and paired with respective transcribed film dialogues provided by OpenSubtitles.org. The corpora’s transcripts (n=88,573) were analysed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software and all the variables produced were then correlated with IMDb’s weighted film ratings. The project found that all types of emotions present in transcripts of film language were significantly, negatively associated with the IMDb rating outcomes, while the effect sizes were small. This finding suggests there might be an inclination for emotions to be felt in other areas of stimuli perception, rather than verbal language, when it comes to films. Additional exploratory analyses showed how other variables correlated with film rating scores and practical application of study findings within the advertising industry were identified.
creator: Aleksandra Tuneski
source: Dataset The dataset used for the study is purely secondary and consists of transcribed film dialogues (N=88,573) complemented with each film’s respective Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rating, which at the time of collection had a minimum of 100 user ratings per film. IMDb is an online film rating platform where the wider audience must register for an account and is then able to rate and review the films they have watched. Registered IMDb members rate films on a 10-point scale, with 1 indicating “terrible” and 10 indicating “excellent” (Boyd et al., 2020). IMDb’s rating algorithms produce ratings that are weighted by metrics associated with users, rather than average ratings. Although the algorithms are unavailable to the public, IMDb’s rating system has shown consistency across all films because the weighted ratings constantly provide reliability by reducing the possibilities of a small group of users to take advantage of the rating system (IMDb, 2021). IMDb is one of the most popular and authoritative film rating websites, where the total ratings of a film are anonymous and voluntarily provided (Sawers, 2015). The transcribed film dialogues data was provided by OpenSubtitles.org and the corpora was previously organised and used in a study by Boyd et al. (2020); it was generally provided by the authors for the purpose of this project. OpenSubtitles.org is an online website that provides transcribed and translated captions of motion pictures, audio files and various other audio-visual files (OpenSubtitles.org, 2021). The corpora used by Boyd et al. (2020) contains purely English-language film subtitles, corresponding to films originally released in English, or foreign films whose dialogues have been translated to English. Boyd et al. (2020) combined the transcribed film dialogues provided by OpenSubtitles.org with the IMDb ratings, along with other IMDb categories such as film genre, year of release, country of production, et cetera. Almost 90% of the IMDb categorie…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2021
contributor: Amy Austin and Lesley wu
rights: Open
language: English
type: Secondary Data
identifier: Tuneski (2021)
coverage: LA1 4YF

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

Age-related Changes to the Attentional Modulation of Temporal Binding
subject: Ageing, attention, TBW, multisensory integration, stream-bounce illusion
description: In multisensory integration, the time range within which visual and auditory information can be perceived as synchronous and bound together is known as the temporal binding window (TBW). With increasing age, the TBW becomes wider, such that older adults erroneously, and often dangerously, integrate sensory inputs that are asynchronous. Recent research suggests that attentional cues can narrow the width of the TBW in younger adults, sharpening temporal perception and increasing the accuracy of integration. However, due to their age-related declines in attentional control, it is not yet known whether older adults can deploy attentional resources to narrow the TBW in the same way as younger adults. This study investigated the age-related changes to the attentional modulation of the TBW. 30 younger and 30 older adults completed a cued-spatial-attention version of the stream-bounce illusion, assessing the extent to which the visual and auditory stimuli were integrated when presented at three different stimulus onset asynchronies, and when attending to a validly-cued or invalidly-cued location. A 2x2x3 mixed ANOVA revealed that when participants attended to the validly-cued location (i.e. when attention was present), susceptibility to the stream-bounce illusion decreased. However, crucially, this attentional manipulation affected audiovisual integration in younger adults but not in older adults. Whilst no definitive conclusions could be drawn about the width of the TBW, the findings suggest that older adults have multisensory integration-related attentional deficits. Directions for future research and practical applications surrounding treatments to improve the safety of older adults’ perception and navigation through the environment are discussed.
creator: Jessica Pepper
source: Pre-screening tools Participants were asked to complete two pre-screening questionnaires using Qualtrics survey software (www.qualtrics.com), to assess their eligibility for the study. Speech, Spatial and Quality of Hearing Questionnaire (SSQ; Appendix A; Gatehouse & Noble, 2004). Participants rated their hearing ability in different acoustic scenarios using a sliding scale from 0-10 (0=“Not at all”, 10=“Perfectly”). Whilst, at present, no defined cut-off score on the SSQ is available as a parameter to inform decision-making, previous studies have indicated that a mean score of 5.5 is indicative of moderate hearing loss (Gatehouse & Noble, 2004). As a result, people whose average score on the SSQ was lower than 5.5 were not eligible to participate in the experiment. Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQ-CODE; Appendix B; Jorm, 2004). Participants rated how their performance in certain tasks now has changed compared to 10 years ago, answering on a 5-point Likert scale (1=“Much Improved”, 5=“Much worse”). An average score of approximately 3.3 is the usual cut-off point when evaluating cognitive impairment and dementia (Jorm, 2004), therefore people whose average score was higher than 3.3 were not eligible to participate in the experiment. The mean scores of each pre-screening questionnaire are displayed in Table 1. An independent t-test revealed that there was no significant difference between age groups on the SSQ questionnaire [t(58) = -1.15, p=.253]; however, there was a significant difference between age groups on the IQ-CODE questionnaire [t(58) = -13.29, p<.001]. Experimental Design This research implemented a 2(Age: Younger vs Older) x 2(Cue: Valid vs Invalid) x 4(Stimulus Onset Asynchrony [SOA]: Visual Only [VO] vs 0 milliseconds vs 150 milliseconds vs 300 milliseconds) mixed design, with Age as a between-subjects factor and Cue and SOA as within-subjects factors. The experiment consisted of 16 different trial conditions (Table 2), ra…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 08.09.2021
contributor: Hamish Bromley
rights: Open
relation: Open
format: xlsx file
language: English
type: Data
identifier: Pepper 2021
coverage: Lancaster University, LA1 4YW.

How the correlation of Istagram tweets readability and brand hedoism affect audiecne engagment
subject: Readability, Brand hedonism, readbility formula, audience engagment
description: Social media marketing is increasing in importance and more and more brands are embracing social media to increase their brand reach and communicate with their audience. However, there is still little empirical research on how brand message features affect consumer engagement. This study focuses on the impact of readability as an influence on consumer engagement while also noting that the effect of hedonic value of a brand may potentially moderate the level of audience engagement. An experiment based on a sample of 20 of the 100 brands covered by Forbes Media was conducted for this study. In total, a sample of 400 Instagram tweets were collected and analysed for their text readability and audience engagement. Still, the results did not indicate a significant interaction between readability and engagement. A careful analysis of the difficulties and shortcomings encountered in this experiment provides some insights for any subsequent research on the readability of short-form communication by brands.
creator: Jiehong Wu
source: Research Question & Hypotheses The research question for this study is: can the readability of tweets influence the level of audience engagement? As readability increases the perception associated with processing fluency (Rennekamp, 2012), the ability to process information fluently makes the target message more appealing to the audience, and visual fluency in processing information can also increase people's perception of the processing target (Novemsky et al., 2007). Language that can be processed fluently also enhances consumer perceptions (Lee & Aaker, 2004; Lee & Labroo, 2004). Thus, for most brands with low levels of hedonism, higher tweet readability means higher processing fluency which can reduce audience metacognitive difficulties and thus increase tweet engagement levels. At the same time, for products with high hedonic demand, lower familiarity and uniqueness may provide consumers with greater signals of value, with metacognitive difficulties increasing the appeal of the product by making it appear unique or unusual. More easily processed messages reduce the appeal of the product, possibly because they appear too familiar and therefore less consistent with the perception of uniqueness (Pocheptsova, Labroo, 2004；Pocheptsova, Labroo, and Dhar 2010). It is therefore hypothesised that text features associated with greater readability will be positively associated with consumer engagement with the message. However, given the presence of brand hedonistic features, it can be argued that low readability of messages may increase consumer engagement in brand tweets with higher levels of hedonism instead. Data collection for the experiment From the above, whether the readability of the tweet text and the level of brand hedonism of the brand to which the tweet belongs combine to influence consumer engagement with the brand's social tweets must be determined. Instagram was chosen because it is one of the world's most popular social networks, with around one billion a…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: Sep 8th 2021
contributor: Chloe Keung, Elena Ball
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/Excel.xlsx
language: English
type: Word
identifier: Wu 2021
coverage: LA1 4YZ

Effect of Attention and Noise on Echoic Memory as Indexed by the N1-Adaptation.
subject: Attention, Noise, N1-adaptation, auditory sensory memory
description: There are numerous studies that support the notion that echoic memory is indexed by the adaptation of the N1 peak in auditory event related potentials (ERPs). Although the number research on the effects of parameters like noise and attention on the amplitude of the N1 is immense, to date there are no studies on the effect of these parameters on the adaptation of the N1. Here, I investigated the effect of noise and attention on the adaptation of N1, P2 and N1-P2. Secondary analysis was conducted on data collected from 33 participants in three conditions: passive recording condition (participant listen passively to stimulus while staring at a fixation cross); attention/oddball conditions (participant were task with counting the deviating tones); and noise condition where the tones are presented in white noise. Within each condition, two Stimulus onset intervals (SOI): 1.7 s and 3.5 were used in separate stimulus blocks and the ratio R = M1.7s / M3.5s was used as a dimensionless measure of adaptation. My results found no significant effect of noise an attention on the amplitudes and adaption of the N1, P2 and N1-P2. I propose that the lack of effect on the adaption of the ERPS might be due to noise and attention having a scaling effect on all of the amplitudes equally so that adaption lifetime is not affected. As this is the first study of its kind, further research will be needed to gain a better understanding of how adaptation is affected by these two factors.
creator: Ekenedilichukwu Tonia Osakwe
source: Participants This project carries out secondary analysis on data from an EEG experiment with 33 human participants. The data was received from supervisor, Patrick May. The participants were all adult undergraduate and post graduate students at Lancaster University, with no self-reported hearing loss or neurological disorder. The experiment was approved by the research ethics procedures of the Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, and the participants provided written consent before the experiment began. Equipment and Procedure for EEG measurements Three dry electrodes were attached at locations: Fpz, Fz, Cz. Reference and ground electrodes were attached to the right ear lobe. For this report, only the data acquired from the Fz location was used as this is the channel that recorded the best ERPs for all the participants. The participants were directed to passively listen to stimuli while staring at a fixation cross and moving and blinking as little as possible. The stimuli comprised of 500-Hz pure tones with a duration of 100ms, including 10-ms linear onset and offset ramps. The stimuli were presented in blocks of 100 isochronous stimuli. The stimuli were presented binaurally via Sennheiser headphones using laboratory laptop and MATLAB interfaced with the Enobio EEG device in a soundproof chamber. Data was collected in three conditions: baseline passive recording condition (participant listen passively to stimulus while staring at a fixation cross); attention/oddball conditions (participant were task with counting the deviating tones); and noise condition where the tones are presented in white noise. Withing each condition, two Stimulus onset interval (SOI): 1.7 s and 3.5 were used in separate stimulus blocks. The order of experiments were randomised across the participants. Data Analysis The data was passband filtered at 1-30 Hz and sectioned into epochs of single trial data. To remove artefacts (e.g., due to blinking) 15% of epochs with the largest absolu…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 08.09.2021
contributor: Emily Dreyer Paige Durnall
rights: Open
relation: None
format: data/r.csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Infants' Awareness of Number: Innate Ability or Perceptual Bias?
subject: Addition, subtraction, Number, Object Tracking, object files, Infant perception
description: In order to identify the origin of our understanding of numerosity and arithmetic abilities, it is essential that such abilities are measured in infants. In Wynn’s (1992) study, a case was made for an innate ability to perform arithmetic operation on small number sets as it was demonstrated that infants would look longer at displays that violated their expectations of number. However, research in the years following this seminal study cast doubt on this interpretation of infants’ behaviour. Other research has suggested that perceptual biases are at play, rather than infants possessing a symbolic understanding of number. To address the contrasting finding in this area of developmental research, this study set out to analyse preexisting data to investigate the factors that influence infants’ abilities to track objects over occlusion and to identify the most appropriate level of interpretation of this ability The present study recruited a sample of 32 infants across two experiments. Adapting the methodology from Wynn (1992), Experiment 1 measured looking time when an object was revealed to be missing from the display, violating infants’ expectation of presence. Experiment 2 measured looking time when an object was revealed to be in the incorrect position on the stage, violating infants’ expectation of position. It was found that infants violation trial had a significant effect on looking time and whether the object missing was the first or last to be placed had a significant effect on looking time in violation of presence conditions
creator: Jessica Sparks
source: Participants: In this study, participants were 32 infants aged 5- to 7-months, (M = 188.38 days, SD = 10.51, range = 175 – 218). Infants were 15 males and 17 females. 16 participants were used in each experiment. In Experiment 1, participants were 7 males and 9. In Experiment 2, participants were 8 males and 8 females. Participants in each experiment were matched based on age. Apparatus & Stimuli: The experiment took place in a dimly lit test room, with displays presented on a grey stage measuring 64cm wide by 40cm high and 31cm deep. An 8.5cm high black screen located 31.5cm behind the front of the stage was used to occlude the display by being rotated upwards. The display also consisted of a 30cm rotating platform that allowed different configurations of objects to be rotated rapidly. The objects used in this study were two 12.5cm high by 9.5cm wide toy hedgehogs that squeaked when squeezed. These toys were magnetic at the bottom. Procedure: Infants were sat in either a high seat or on a caregiver’s lap, 60cm from the front edge of the stage. In cases where infants were sat on a caregiver’s lap, the caregiver’s eyes were above the stage as to avoid them seeing the display and possibly influencing the infant’s behaviour. After gaze calibration to ensure the accuracy of eye-tracking measures, the procedure closely followed that of Wynn (1992) and Bremner et al (2017). Three pre-test (baseline) trials were presented initially. These resulted in the correct outcome of the operation as well as the two incorrect outcomes in counterbalanced order. The screen was lowered to reveal either one or two toys, depending on the trial, and the observer recorded where the infant looked on the stage. In terms of the location of the toys in trials, when one was presented, it was placed 7.5cm to the right of the stage’s centre. When two toys were presented, the second toy was placed 7.5cm to the left of the stage’s centre. Pre-test trials continued until the infant accumulated at lea…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 07.09.2021
contributor: Julonna Peterson and Rebecca Mitchell
rights: open
relation: Wynn's 1992 study
format: .csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: Developmental

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

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

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