Testing The Validity of Videogame Modifications for Psychological Research
An experiment consisting of 40 participants sampled from both Lancaster University and the Sefton area investigated the validity of using video game modifications (Mods) to construct more reliable testing methods for video game research. Mods are additions to video game code that allow the manipulation of various otherwise unattainable features. It is typical of research in this area to use two different games when attempting to manipulate one variable, this often results in a failure to compare like for like leaving various extraneous variables unaccounted for. Building upon the work of Böche (2009), this present research uses a program Garry’s Mod to construct identical variations that were relatable to popular current games while attempting to manipulate a single variable, violence. Participants played both an antisocial and prosocial variation of the same game and were asked to fill out a survey documenting their opinions on the game and its traits. It was predicted that while features such as graphics, maps, difficulty and the player’s performance in the game would not differ, the self reported violence participants experienced between variations would significantly differ. Predicted trends were observed in ratings of violence t(39) = -22.06, p < .001 and whether the player character’s actions were perceived as prosocial t(39) = -14.64, p < .001. Contrary to predictions, participant’s reported enjoyment t(39) = -4.55, p< 0.001 and the similarity of the game mission to the current game market t(39) = -6.37, p < 0.001 also differed significantly between variations. The implications are discussed throughout the paper.
Participants were randomly allocated into two groups. The first group (“antisocial first”) played and answered questions concerning the antisocial version before then playing and answering questions concerning the prosocial version. The order was reversed for participants in the second group (“prosocial first”). Antisocial first. The group that played as soldiers first consisted of 14 males and 6 females. The ages of this sample ranged from 18 to 31 years with a mean of 22.25 and a standard deviation of 2.49. Prosocial first. A group of 14 males, 5 females and one individual who abstained from recording gender played the medic scenario first. The ages ranged from 19 to 26 years, with a mean of 22.3 standard deviation of 1.87. Task, Materials and Apparatus Several specialized items were required to set up and conduct this research. In order to attract participants, an email was sent to the Psychology students of Lancaster University as well as several flyers positioned around the department (See Appendix). These adverts offered a chance to win a £20 Amazon gift card for participation and provided individuals with the e-mail of researchers in order to set up meetings. Hardware. Data was collected using a Macbook Pro with a 13 inch screen. The laptop had a 2.5 GHz (Gigahertz) dual core processor, 4 GB (Gigabytes) of RAM (Random Access Memory), 500 GB Hard Drive memory space and an Intel HD Graphics 4000 graphics card. As well as the Macbook, an apple MagSafe power adapter, a wired optical mouse, a mouse mat and a USB powered laptop cooling pad were used (See Appendix). Software. The Macbook Pro operated the Mountain Lion operating system by Apple and several programs were required to run this experiment. Questionnaires concerning demographic information and perceptions of video games were created using an online research suite, Qualtrics. The questionnaire consisted of three sections (See Appendix). Firstly, participants were asked to input their demographic information such as age and gender, and information relating to their video game playing habits (“If you play video games, please tell us the name of your favourite video game?”, “Please tell us approximately how many hours per week you spend playing your favourite game?”). Some questions had pre-written responses, for example, the question regarding a participant’s gender could be answered as ‘☻ Male’, ‘☻ Female’ or ‘☻ Prefer not to say’. However, some questions were purposefully left open to response (e.g. How many hours a week do you spend playing video games?). The second and third section of the survey asked each individual to give responses to questions about the game they had previously played. These two sections were identical but the order of each item had been randomised in an attempt to reduce demand characteristics. The questions of most importance to the current study regarded how violent the participant felt the game they played was, as well as whether the actions of the video game character they controlled could be considered as prosocial or antisocial. Each question measured responses using a 7-point Likert scale beginning at 0 (“not at all”) and ending with 6 (“completely”). The first exception to this rule was that the question ‘To what extent was your virtual character behaving in a prosocial or antisocial manner?’ by using a scale beginning at -3 and ending with 3. The second exception to this rule was an item asking participants to read the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) definitions for age ratings of video games while asking them to estimate an age rating for the game they had previously played, the scale for this question was a 6-point Likert scale with the options 3+, 7+, 12+, 16+, 18+. To both construct and run the video game, the first program required was ‘Steam’ a digital video game client created by the company Valve to sell and store video games. Using Steam, Garry’s Mod was purchased to create and edit virtual environments and video game levels through a user-friendly interface featuring weapons, characters, miscellaneous objects and commands. A second game, Counter-Strike, was downloaded using Steam and provided the virtual environments that participants played in. Using Garry’s Mod, two versions of a game were created. In each version, there were 20 non-player characters (NPCs) scattered around the map for the player to locate and interact with; both variations had NPCs in the same starting location and a limited area in which they were allowed to move. When playing as a soldier, participants were told they had been sent to an enemy base and were tasked to eliminate all forces inside using the SMG. Whereas the medic scenario began under the pretence that the player character was a doctor sent to a quarantined facility to treat contaminated patients using a medikit. Players were informed to expect hostility during the antisocial variation, but were also made aware that 20 health vials scattered around the map to prevent the death of their virtual character. For the medic scenario, participants were informed that quarantined individuals purposefully avoid contact with their character, meaning they would often have to pursue the patient to administer treatment. Participants received no indication from the game as to whether an NPC had previously been treated; however, there was no penalty for giving the same NPC treatment twice. Design The study consists of a 2 level within-subject design whereby the independent variable is the version of the video game being played by: the soldier version or the medic version. Though both game environments have been designed to be identical, when individuals play as a solider they are asked to find and kill 20 enemy targets, whereas in while playing as a medic they are required to find and treat 20 contaminated patients. Procedure Having displayed interest in taking part in the study, participants were contacted by researchers to arrange a time and location to meet. Once a quiet area that would support the use of a computer with a Wi-Fi connection was found, participants were seated at a desk 20 cm from the MacBook. Before proceeding, participants were given a Participant Information Sheet (Appendix), which informed them that their participation was voluntary, that they could withdraw at any time and that their data was both anonymous and confidential. Participants were then provided with and asked to sign a consent form (see Appendix). Participants were given a 5-minute tutorial on the video game controls and mission aims. Participants then completed the demographic questionnaire, which was presented to them on the laptop. Participants indicated their name, gender, age and video game playing habits (see Appendix). Once the demographic questionnaire had been completed, participants played the first version of the video game. Participants in the soldier-first condition played the antisocial version requiring them to shoot other virtual characters. Participants explored using only the keyboard buttons ‘A’, ‘W’, ‘S’, ‘D’ and the mouse, each individual navigated an unfamiliar map searching for 20 NPCs and interacted with them using the left mouse button. A time limit of ten minutes was given for both play throughs while the researcher monitored the amount of soldiers killed or patients saved. After each variation was completed, participants answered a questionnaire on their experience playing the game, such as how similar was the mission given to them compared to games they usually play or how violent they felt the game was. Both questionnaires asked the same 9 questions, however the order in which these were presented was randomised in an attempt to reduce demand characteristics. After completing both games and their corresponding questionnaires, participants received a debriefing sheet outlining the expected findings and participants were given the chance to ask any questions they had about the study. Lastly, each individual was thanked for taking part and asked to provide a method of contact so that they might be informed if they won the Amazon gift card. Every participant agreed to have his or her data statistically analysed. Raw data was collected from Qualtrics and exported into an excel file, observations taken on video game performance (e.g number of patients saved) was added manually by the researchers. The dataset was then exported as a .csv file to be investigated using R Studio.
The Effect of Systematic Variance in Action Capabilities on Grasp Ability Perception.
Embodied perception Grasp ability Affordance perception Virtual Reality
The ecological approach to visual perception asserts that individuals perceive environments relative to the possibility of action within their environment. Hence, to successfully interact with one’s environment, individuals must be able to accurately perceive the extent over which actions can be performed, widely referred to as action boundaries. Furthermore, as the world in which we inhabit is continually changing and subsequently placing various constraints upon ones action boundaries, it is necessary for individuals to be able to update their perceived action boundaries to accommodate for such variance. While research has displayed that individuals can update their perceptions to accommodate for variance, what is unclear in these circumstances is which action boundary does the perceptual system calibrate to. This study investigated this by analysing the effect of systematic variance on perceived grasp ability in virtual reality. Participants provided estimates of grasp ability following motor experience grasping with either a small, normal, large or a varied size hand. In the variance condition, participants experienced the small hand 25% of the time, the normal hand 25% of the time, and the large hand 50% of the time. The results indicated that participants’ perception of grasp ability reflected the artificial manipulation such that grasp ability was largest in the large hand condition. In addition, regarding the variable condition participants took all visual information into consideration however erred on the side of caution. However, it may be that factors such as age and personality influenced the results.
Open Science Framework (OSF) This study has been pre-registered with the OSF; See https://osf.io/zkjdt/ for the main OSF project page. The following study deviated from the pre-registration in that data collection occurred for 12 days longer than initially intended as participant uptake was not as high as initially assumed it would be. Participants 30 Lancaster University Students (5 males and 25 females) aged between 18-26 (Mage = 21.07, SDage = 1.17), naïve to the purpose of this study, participated. All participants were recruited via opportunity sampling, utilising the Lancaster University Sona research participation system, advertisements and the researcher’s social network, and were paid £5 for their participation. Of these participants 29 were right-handed, and one was mixed-handed. The one mixed-handed participant elected to complete the study with their right hand, therefore, the following conclusions and data should be treated as all right-handed participants. In addition, all participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and had no known medical history of visual atypicalties, beyond being long or short-sighted, motoric or rheumatologic difficulties. All participants provided informed consent. Lancaster University Research Ethics Committee granted ethical approval for this study. Stimuli and apparatus A virtual environment was developed in Unity 3D© Gaming Engine with the Leap Motion plugin. The 3D VR colour display comprised a 3D model of a room in which a table was located in the centre. Upon this table were either two grey dots (in the calibration trials; See Panel A of Figure 2) or a grey block (block size manipulation trials; See Panel B Figure 2). The participant’s viewed the VR from a first-person perspective reflecting their natural eye-height. The environment was presented to participants through an Oculus Rift CV1 HMD, which displayed the stereoscopic reality at 2160×1200 at 90Hz split over both displays (Binstock, 2015). The movement of the head was tracked by the head mounted display (HMD) and updated in real-time as the participant looked around the environment. Furthermore, the location of the hand was tracked in real-time, using the Leap Motion hand-tracking sensor mounted on to the Oculus Rift CV1 HMD, and was mapped onto the virtual hand thereby causing the virtual hand to move in correspondence with the natural hand. Procedure Each participant was required to attend one testing session, which lasted approximately 30 minutes in duration. Prior to the commencement of the study, full information regarding the requirements of the study was provided by means of a written information sheet. This information sheet was supplemented with a verbal explanation and an opportunity to ask questions. Once full understanding of the study requirements was established, participants provided informed consent and were reminded of their right to withdraw. Following the attainment of consent, participants were required to complete a simple demographic questionnaire notably detailing the participant’s age, sex, hand dominance, and the presence of ocular atypicalities and motoric or rheumatologic difficulties. Critically, at this time the grasp that the participants are required to visualise employing during the perceptual task was defined and demonstrated. This grasp was defined as the ability to place their thumb on one edge of the block and extend their hand over the surface of the block and place one of their fingers on the parallel edge of the block. Following this participants were required to don the oculus rift HMD with attached Leap Motion Sensor and complete four experimental conditions, the order of completion was randomly counterbalanced across participants. The four experimental conditions were the constricted grasp condition, the normal grasp condition, the extended grasp condition and the systematically varied grasp condition. In the constricted grasp condition participants gained motor experience with a virtual hand that was 50% of the size of their actual hand, therefore constricting the grasp to 50% of the normal grasp ability. In the normal grasp condition participants gained motor experience with a virtual hand reflecting the true size of their actual hand, therefore grasp ability was 100% of their normal grasp ability. In the extended grasp condition participants gained motor experience with a hand that was 150 % of the size of their actual hand thereby extending their grasp ability 50% beyond normal grasp ability. Whilst in the systematically varied grasp ability condition the participants experienced the constricted hand size 25% of the time, the normal hand size 25% of the time and the extended hand size 50% of the time. Each experiential condition consisted of two phases: the calibration phase and the block size manipulation phase. The calibration phase consisted of 30 trials in which participants viewed the virtual display comprising of a table upon which two grey dots, one to the left and one to the right, were located (See Panel A Figure 2). The inclusion of a calibration phase occurred to provide the participants with the necessary amount of synchronous visual motor information to subsequently induce the illusion that the virtual hand is the participant’s hand (Kilteni et al., 2012). The engagement of this illusion is critical because if the participants do not employ this illusion, the subsequent results will not accurately reflect the study manipulations. In addition, the calibration phase provided participants with visual and motor experience regarding the action boundary associated with the virtual hand. Completion of the calibration phase required participants to touch the leftmost dot with the leftmost digit of their dominant hand and the rightmost dot with the rightmost digit again of their dominant hand. Participants were informed that it was ok if they could not reach the dot so long as they performed the action. After the participants had performed the action touching both dots, the two dots disappeared and reappeared in a different location on the table. The location of the dots and the distance between the dots was randomly varied across all 30 trials. However, the distance away from the participants that the dots appeared was maintained throughout as dictated by the Z coordinate in the study script. On completion of the calibration phase participants were instructed to place both their hands on their lap, this occurred so that the hand was out of range of the Leap Motion Sensor and hence the virtual hand was not visible in the virtual reality. At this time the virtual reality display was altered so that that the participant viewed the display of the table upon which there was a white block located (See Panel B Figure 2). Once the new display was presented the researcher placed the participant’s hand, they had just completed the calibration phase with on the right and left arrow keys of a standardised QWERTY keyboard. Participants were then instructed to imagine that they were going to grasp the block, employing the previously demonstrated grasp, and manipulate the size of the block to reflect the maximum size they believe they would be able to grasp with their dominant hand using the right and left keys. Each button press altered the size of the block by 1cm. Once the participant was happy that the block reflected the maximum size they could grasp with their dominant hand the researcher saved the final size and presented another block. This phase consisted of eight trials, in four of which the block started small at 3cm and the remaining four the block started large at 20cm. This occurred in order to control for the potential influence previous perception has on later judgements, a phenomenon commonly known as hysteresis (Poltoratski & Tong, 2014) On completion of both the calibration and block size manipulation phases for each four conditions participants were given a short verbal debrief regarding the true aims and theoretical underpinning of the study and an opportunity to ask any questions. To supplement this verbal debrief participants were also provided with a written debrief again documenting the aims and theory of the study and contact details for the lead researcher. The subsequent raw data obtained included eight maximum grasp block size estimates, four relating to the block that started at 3cm and four relating to the block that started at 20cm, for each experimental condition; small hand size, normal hand size, large hand size and variable hand size. Therefore 32 estimates were obtained from each participant.
Sketch Mental Reinstatement of Context: A Comparison of Autistic and Typically Able Children’s Drawings
The increasing number of children coming into contact with the criminal justice system is prompting further research into interviewing children. There is a lack of research in the area of children with developmental disorders such as autism (Mcrory, Henry & Happe, 2007). As sketching is one of the domains in which children develop favourably in comparison to their age matched peers it could be utilised in order to gain the most information. Sketch MRC has been used on typically developing individuals and has been very beneficial for a variety of reasons such as; gives structure to narrative, lessens cognitive demand of interviewer and also lessens social demand of interview. This study aims to see whether content and style of the drawings of typically developing and autistic group are similar. Also correlating data in the sketch to data from the interview recall would give insight into how the act of drawing may be beneficial. A group of 30 children who were either typically developing or autistic were split into 3 groups depending on the results of BPVS 3 and RPM. All children watched a film stimulus and were then asked to recall as much information as possible in a sketch MRC condition. The drawings were then analysed. Autistic children’s sketches when compared with mental ability matched children showed similarities in; number of salient items, number of items drawn, representational detail, detail in human figure drawings, number of correct, incorrect and confabulation as well as accuracy. A regression model indicated correct number of items recalled in verbal transcript significantly predicted the correct number of items in the sketch. By presenting a significant relationship between number of correct items sketched and recalled it can be said the act of drawing is useful in the sketch MRC condition. This indicates that the sketch MRC condition is just as useful for the autistic individuals as it is for the TD individuals.
A between subject’s experimental design was employed with two independent variables: Group, with two levels: (i) autistic, (ii) typically developed, and Mental ability: low, intermediate, and high. The dependent variable was the drawings which were produced during the interview and were coded using a top down coding scheme measuring the number of correct, incorrect, confabulated items of recall and accuracy. Content including representational detail of human figure drawing and what the individual focuses whether it is on people or the environment. Qualitative analysis attempts to uncover a range of issues such as; is structure used in the sketch, whether the sketches depict movement or a still image, the detail with which the items are drawn, and if the sketch demand interaction. Materials Film stimulus – Each child individually viewed a non-violent crime film exactly one minute in duration. The stimulus film was one which had been previously used in police training sessions. Keeping in mind ethical guidelines the clip shown had no abuse or violence. The film depicted a busy road with a roundabout, two people walk from around the corner and into a shop. Moments later the two individuals run out of the shop with another individual chasing after them. The clip then ends. The British Picture Vocabulary Scale: Third Edition (BPVS3) is used in order to act as a distracter task but also determine the child’s mental ability. The BPVS3 plays an important role in assessing a child’s receptive vocabulary, from 3 years up to 16 years of age. Ravens Progressive Matrices (RPM) is also required not only to act as a distracter task but also determine the child’s mental ability. The RPM is a nonverbal group test ranging from 5 year olds to the elderly. It consists of 60 multiple choice questions listed in order of difficulty. iPad was used to show children the film stimulus with approximately a 8-inch screen. The child was able to hold the iPad themselves to watch the film stimulus. Procedure Each child was individually taken from their class and shown the film stimulus by an assistant teacher. The researcher did not show the clip to the child, as the child was led to believe that the researcher has never seen the clip before. This was done to make sure the child recalled as much information as possible, and did not presume the researcher already knew it all. Once they had watched the entire film stimulus, the child was brought into a different room by the researcher. The researcher then began to carry out the BPVS3. When this was completed the child was asked to work through the RPM and complete the 60 questions. This allowed the child and researcher to build a rapport and also acted as a distracter task from the film stimulus. The researcher then explained to the child that for the next part of the experiment the child’s voice would be recorded. The child was asked for their permission and if the child agreed the researcher explained that recording was about to begin. The child was then asked to recall as much information about the video clip as possible, and asked to draw what they remember. Once they had began drawing they were then asked about their drawing with questions such as ‘what is it that you are drawing there?’ They were given as much time as required to complete the drawing. Once the drawing was completed, the child was asked to tell the researcher about everything they remembered, and told they were free to use the drawing to help them in the explanation. After the child had told the researcher about everything they remembered in a free recall phase, the child was questioned on what they remembered. For example, if the child said there were two people, the researcher would try and gain some in depth information about these people. The child was then thanked for taking part in the experiment and told that their parent or guardian will be given a gift voucher for them to spend. Scoring The drawings produced by autistic and typically developed children were coded alongside the transcripts from the interview to aid the understanding of the drawings. A similar approach was successfully adopted in Campbell, Sicovdal, Mupambireyi and Greyson (2010) as it minimised the analysts’ subjective interpretation of the drawings. However, the transcripts themselves were not analysed as they form the dataset of another PhD project. The rationale for using the transcripts is to aid understanding of the drawing is offered by Each drawing was analysed using a three-step framework (see Fig.1) which started by analysing to what extent sketches represented the event that was witnessed. This was done to determine whether the sketch was successful in depicting the TBR event. The second step involved further analysing the items in the drawing, focusing on correctness. The final step examined representational detail and differences in what groups focussed upon, as well as qualitative analysis. The first step of analysis shed light on the overarching aim of the study and to gain an idea about how the sketches depicted an illustration of the film stimulus. A gross measure of the sketches was taken, which took into consideration the total number of attributes, to give an understanding of how detailed these sketches were. To determine whether the sketches successfully depicted what was shown in the film stimulus, the five most salient aspects of the TBR event were defined as follows: a road, cars, two individuals, shop, and another individual (the victim). One mark was awarded for each aspect depicted in the sketch, giving a possible total completeness score of 5. The following step in analysis was to bring to attention correctness scores. Every item drawn in the sketch was determined as correct, incorrect (sketching one person going into the shop instead of two) or a confabulation (sketching a detail that was not present in the film stimulus). Accuracy was calculated by dividing total number of correct items sketched by total number of items. The items were then divided into three groups whether they illustrated people or environment. Using the PhD projects data a correlation is carried out to see whether total number of items and total number of correct items depicted in the sketch correlates with total number of items and total number of correct items recalled in the transcript. This would help understand how useful the act of sketching rather than focusing on the sketches content. As it was of essence to capture representational details human figure drawings were recognised on their complexity according to Cox and Parkins (1986) classification system of human figure drawings. In this stage data will be analysed qualitatively in order to gain a better understanding of the sketches. Figure 1. Concepts guiding analysis of drawings.
The effects of ambient temperature on aggressive cognitions
Ambient, temperature, aggression Linear mixed effects modelling, regression, correlation
The world is getting warmer and it is of interest to researchers to explore how changes in temperature experience affect human behaviour. The heat hypothesis suggests that an increase in heat is associated with an increase in antisocial behaviour (e.g. violence, aggression). However social embodiment studies have also demonstrated hotter temperatures to be associated with less antisocial behaviour (e.g. greater gift giving). This study investigated whether higher ambient temperatures are associated with more or less antisocial responding using a controlled laboratory approach. Participants were placed into either a cold room or a hot room whilst they completed two tasks that implicitly measured the accessibility of aggressive cognitions. Using a combination of linear mixed effects analyses and regression analyses, the results demonstrated that there was no significant difference between the two temperature conditions concerning the accessibility of aggressive cognitions in a lexical decision go/no-go task and a word fragment completion task. Consequently the heat hypothesis and theories based upon a social embodiment framework were not supported in this case. Possible alternative explanations and limitations of the study are discussed regarding the inconsistent results to that proposed by particular theoretical frameworks and illustrated in previous research. Directions for future research are suggested in light of the present findings.
Participants In total, 65 participants took part in this study. Unfortunately the preregistered sample size figure of 120 participants was unable to be reached due to recruitment limitations. Participants were recruited via Lancaster University’s SONA system, via adverts, were friends of the researcher or were recruited on an opportunistic basis around the Lancaster University campus. As a reward for participating, participants were entered into a prize draw to win one of 12 £10 Amazon vouchers. Participants were excluded if they met any of several a priori agreed upon rules for exclusion: (a) non-native English speaker, or (b) made a connection in the debrief section between the room temperature and aggression measurements. Three participants were excluded from the analyses on this basis. Therefore 62 participants data remained in the analyses. Demographic information was obtained using questions on the Qualtrics survey (Qualtrics, Provo, UT). The mean age of participants was 25.29 years (SD = 8.83; 43 female, 19 male). It was preregistered that participants must be between 18 and 55 years of age however due to the prospect of increasing the sample size, the age range was increased to 18 to 60 years of age. Participants were randomly assigned to the cold condition (n = 31) or the hot condition (n = 31). Materials Lexical decision go/no-go task. A lexical decision go/no-go task was used to gauge the accessibility of aggressive cognitions. The standard lexical decision task (LDT) is an indirect measure of semantic activation of specific constructs (e.g. aggression) and is an excellent method to assess the activation of such semantic networks (Marsh & Landau, 1995; see Parrott, Zeichner & Evces, 2005). Advantageously, as the task does not require conscious expression, it is not easily affected by demand characteristics (see Greitemeyer & Osswald, 2011). The LDT task was used in conjunction with a go/no-go response whereby participants are instructed to respond as quickly as possible to a word (alike to the LDT) but to withhold any response if the presented stimulus is a nonword. The lexical decision go/no-go task has been demonstrated to be an excellent alternative to the standard LDT but also measures performance in a similar manner (Perea, Rosa & Gomez, 2002). Essentially, network activation is measured by the response latency with which participants respond to particular stimulus words, with faster reaction times (RTs) demonstrating more accessibility of the target construct (i.e. aggression) (Forster & Davis, 1984; Johnson & Hasher, 1987; Schacter, 1987; Morton, 1970). Specifically, faster RTs to aggressive words by participants in the hot condition, compared to the cold condition, would suggest that the construct of aggression is more accessible in hotter conditions. The lexical decision go/no-go task included the presentation of one hundred letter strings; 25 of which were aggressive-related words (e.g., gun), 25 of which were nonaggressive words (e.g., leaf) and 50 of which were nonword letter strings (e.g., breaff). The aggressive-related words were taken from Anderson, Carnagey & Eubanks (2003) and Johnson (2012). The non-aggressive items were extracted from Anderson et al. (2003) or chosen by the experimenter. Three independent raters who were blind to the study aims assessed the nonaggressive and aggressive words to determine if they were appropriately determined as nonaggressive or aggressive respectively. Fleiss Kappa demonstrated perfect agreement between the three individuals judgments, κ = 1, p < .0001, indicating that the raters agreed that all items coded as aggressive or nonaggressive were appropriately coded as such. Nonword letter strings took the form of pseudowords to prevent the possibility of participants classifying the words by a simple surface analysis of substrings. To illustrate this, a letter string consisting of “xx” can be quickly and easily recognised as a nonword without in-depth processing because no valid English words contain “xx” (see Bösche, 2010). Furthermore, research has demonstrated that more frequent words (e.g. Perea et al., 2002) and shorter words are responded to quicker (e.g. Spieler & Balota, 2000). Given this, the word frequency of each real word (i.e., aggressive-related words and nonaggressive words) was obtained using the SUBLECT database (Van Heuven, Mandera, Keuleers, & Brysbaert, 2014) and the word type categories were matched on word length. According to Welch's t-test, there was no significant difference between the aggressive related words and nonaggressive words in terms of word frequency, (t (40) = 1.64, p = .12), and word length, (t (48) = 0, p = 1). Together this reduces the effect that word length and frequency might have on response latencies. In the lexical decision go/no-go task, participants were instructed to respond by pressing the ‘spacebar’ key on the keyboard when presented with a valid English word (i.e. go response) however to withhold any response if presented with a nonword (i.e. no-go response). The experimental trials consisted of 50 real word letter strings and 50 nonword letter string trials. The onset of each trial was marked by a plus sign (+), which acted as a fixation point for the participant. After a 1000ms latency, the fixation point was replaced by a letter string. This stimulus item disappeared after a latency of 3000ms and was followed by the next fixation point and then the next letter string was presented automatically in the same aforementioned fashion. The presentation and randomization of letter strings, and the recording of response latencies were controlled by JavaScript code running on Qualtrics. Word Fragment Completion (WFC) Task. To measure the activation of aggressive thoughts participants also completed a WFC task consisting of 50 word fragments (adapted from Anderson et al., 2003). Using Qualtrics, participants filled the blanks with letters to form a valid English word within a five-minute timeframe. Of the 50 word fragments, 25 could be completed to form either a nonaggressive word or aggressive word (e.g., “ki__” could be completed with “kill” or “kite”). The other 25 word fragments could be completed with only nonaggressive words. Only the word fragments with possible aggressive-completions were used in the analyses. The remaining 25 fragments were used as a decoy to ensure that participants would not guess that aggression was being measured. If a word could not be completed, participants were required to leave the answer box blank. This task is a valid measure of aggressive cognitions (Anderson et al., 2003). The outcome variable of aggressive cognitions was calculated by dividing the number of word fragments that were completed as aggressive words by the total number of word-fragment completions that could be completed as aggressive. Fragments were presented in a randomized fashion for each participant controlled by Qualtrics. Baseline Temperature Comfort. A measure of baseline temperature comfort level was also included in the Qualtrics survey, which measured how cold or hot the participant generally feels. A rating scale of -50 to +50 measured this, where a higher score indicates a feeling of generally hotter. Many aspects can affect an individual’s thermal perception and comfort ranging from physical to cultural aspects (Laskari, et al., 2017; see for e.g. Djamila, 2017). For example, body temperature deviations can have their roots in physiology such as age (Castle, Norman, Yeh, Miller & Yoshikawa, 1991). These factors vary across individuals, raising the possibility that individuals have baseline temperatures or comfort levels that differ systematically from the average population (Obermeyer, Samra, & Mullainathan, 2017). In other words, the same temperature that is normal for one person might be cold for another. Given this, variations in an individuals subjective measure of baseline temperature comfort will be explored to see whether this moderates temperature effects on aggressive cognitions. Outside Temperature. A measure of outside temperature was not originally planned and its inclusion was not preregistered. However data from the local weather station was used to calculate outside temperature during each testing session. Overall, the mean outside temperature was 18.6°C (SD = 2.91) and ranged from 12.6 to 22.9°. Procedure and Design Participants were welcomed into either the cold or hot room depending on their random allocation. The room temperature reading before each testing session began was recorded, which demonstrated that the range of temperatures for all sessions was at 15.5-16.9°C (M = 16.14, SD = 0.39) and 27.8–29.8°C (M = 28.56, SD = 0.60) for the cold and hot condition respectively. The heat-controlled room consisted of five workplaces equipped with conventional PCs allowing for simultaneous data collection from five participants at one time. Participants were separated from each other by partitions between the workstations. Whilst at a workstation, participants received the study information and gave their consent to participate. They then completed four decision making tasks using the Qualtrics survey software, two of which measured the accessibility of aggressive thoughts (i.e. lexical decision go/no-go task and WFC task) and two of which measured cognitive ability (as part of another students MSc project). All instructions concerning the tasks were given via the computer. The four tasks were presented in a randomised order between participants by Qualtrics to reduce order effects (e.g. participants may be tired for tasks at the end) and carryover effects (e.g. earlier tasks may influence behaviour on subsequent tasks) (see Shaughnessy, Zechmeister & Zechmeister, 2006).
Infant Gesture and Parent Knowledge of Development
Background: Before children can communicate verbally, they use gesture to tell us what they want. Our understanding of the importance of gesture in language development has expanded greatly over the past few decades. Furthermore, the methods used to measure gesture and language development have also progressed. Gesture and language assessment rely heavily on parent reports. It has been suggested that what parents know about development has also consequences for their child’s developmental outcomes. Aims: To validate the gesture section of the UK-CDI Words and Gestures (Alcock, Meints, & Rowland, 2017). And to explore parent knowledge of language and gesture milestones Methods & Procedure: Twenty-seven children and their parents participated in the first experiment. The parents completed the UK-CDI W&G and the children participated in an in- person gesture validation task. Thirty parents with a child 8-18 months participated in the second experiment. They completed the UK-CDI W&G as well as our new parent knowledge questionnaire. Results: In Experiment one, children’s score from the gesture task correlated significantly with parent-reported scores on the UK-CDI W&G. In experiment two, parents were more accurate at ordering and estimating the age of language milestones than they were gesture milestones. Conclusions: The findings for experiment one provides more support and confidence for the UK-CDI W&G as a language assessment tool. This will provide and benefit researchers and clinicians with a standardised tool and method for assessing language norms and delays. The findings for experiment two inform us that parents are not that knowledgeable within the developmental domain of gesture. This provides us with information on where parents need to be educated to benefit the developmental outcomes of their children.
Experiment 1 Method In this experiment we attempted to validate the gesture section of the UK-CDI Words and Gestures questionnaire through responses to the questionnaire and with an in-person gesture task procedure. Participants Twenty-seven children and their parent participated in this study. Participants included 10 girls and 17 boys between eight and eighteen months (M= 12.5 months, SD= 2.3 months) who were recruited from the Lancaster University Babylab and through social media (e.g. Facebook). The parents who participated in this study were 26 mothers and one father. To be eligible for this study all participants had to be native British English speakers. All participants were self-selected and received a children’s book for participant payment. Apparatus and Materials UK-CDI Words and Gestures The UK-CDI Words and Gestures (Alcock et al. 2013) is a parent-report questionnaire used to assess the language development of children aged eight to 18 months old. This questionnaire offers a checklist of words from several different categories (e.g., animals, toys, household items), with a total of 395 words. Parents are asked to indicate whether their child can say and understand, just understand, or does not know a word. The child obtains a score for total comprehension (sum of the words they understand) and a total score for production (sum of the words they say and understand). There is also a gesture section consisting of 57 gestures. The gesture section is divided into subsections (e.g., first communicative gestures, games, actions, pretending to be a parent, and imitating other adult actions). In the First Communicative Gesture section, parents are asked to indicate whether their child does a gesture often (two points), sometimes (one point), or not yet (zero points). For the remaining sections parents are asked to tick yes or no if their child does a gesture. A total gesture score is calculated by taking 0.5* the First Communicative Gesture section score and is then summed with the total number of Yes scores from the remaining sections. See Appendix D for full UK-CDI W&G questionnaire. Gesture Task The gesture task used in this study was constructed by (Alcock et al. 2013) to establish content validity of the gesture scale on the UK-CDI W&G. The gesture task consists of 10 gesture items taken from the gesture section of the UK-CDI Words and gestures. The items range from low frequency items (e.g., ‘can you give me a high five?’), medium frequency items (e.g., ‘can you put on a hat?’), and high frequency items, (e.g., ‘Can you feed the teddy/dolly?’). The stimuli were nine children’s toys required for the items on the gesture task. See Appendix B. Procedure Participants were asked to complete the UK-CDI Words and Gestures (Alcock et al. 2016) prior to the home visit. Participants were sent the UK-CDI Words and Gestures via an electronic link. Upon completion of the UK-CDI a home visit was scheduled and took place in each participants home. The task was administered by the researcher in a quiet room with the child and parent. Prior to the gesture task being administered, parents were pre-warned of the procedure and were told to not repeat instructions during the gesture task until cued by the researcher. Participants were asked each item first without any demonstration or cueing. If there was no response the researcher would demonstrate the gesture and say, ‘Can you show me the (x)?’. If there was still no response the parent was asked to demonstrate the gesture. (See Appendix B and C for gesture task procedure and list of stimuli). Each participant was recorded for approximately 45 minutes. Scoring For the gesture task, participants were scored for 30 minutes. Any time the participant was out of the cameras view or was not cooperating was not included in the video analysis. For each item on the gesture task participants scored two points for completing a gesture on their own, one point for completing a gesture after a demonstration, or zero points for not completing the gesture. Participants were also observed and scored for any spontaneous gestures exhibited during the scored time. Spontaneous gestures included any gestures exhibited by the participant that are on the UK-CDI W&G questionnaire but weren’t on the gesture task. Spontaneous gestures observed during the home-visit were given a score of one if they did it or zero if they did not. Inter-rater Reliability Each video was scored twice by the researcher and scored a third time by another masters student at Lancaster University. The second scorer was briefed on the nature of the videos, the UK-CDI W&G questionnaire, the gesture task, and was familiar with the content of the study. The agreement level was calculated using, Percent agreement= (agreements/ (agreements + disagreements)) x100. The two scorers reached an agreement level of 94%. Experiment 2 Methods This experiment was investigating what parents know about language and gesture development using two online questionnaires. Participants Thirty parents with a child between the ages of eight and 18 months participated in this study. All participants who participated were mothers. Participants were recruited through the Lancaster University Babylab and through social media advertisements for the study. To be eligible for this study participants had to be native British English speakers. All participants who completed the study were entered in a draw to win a £20 Amazon gift voucher. Apparatus and Materials UK-CDI Words and Gestures The same version of the UK-CDI Words and Gestures (Alcock et al. 2016) was used in the second experiment. Parent Knowledge Questionnaire The researcher constructed a questionnaire to investigate what parents know about language and gesture development. The format of the questionnaire was based on a previous study investigating what mothers know about play and language development (Tamis- LeMonda et al. 1998). The questionnaire consisted of 11 language items and 11 gesture items. The researcher used a paired-comparisons procedure to match each item in the respective domain (language or gesture) with the remaining items, resulting in 55 pairs for language and 55 pairs for gesture. All pairs were randomized and presented in a left-right alignment. Participants were asked to select the item they believed to be more difficult and to occur at a later age. Following the paired-comparisons task, the same 11 language and gesture items were used on an age checklist and randomized. Participants were then asked to estimate the age each milestone emerged. See Appendix E for full questionnaire. Language and Gesture Scales The language and gesture items were chosen based on empirical findings about language and gesture development in the literature, and the previous work of Tamis-Lemonda et al. (1998). The language items gradually increased in sophistication from level one to level 11. Levels one through four represented prelinguistic communication from nondiscriminant cooing to requesting a target object. Level five through seven represented single-word utterances, from imitation to expressing possession. Levels eight to 11 represented multi-word utterances, from expressing concrete desires to then expressing memories and emotions. The gesture items were taken from the UK-CDI W&G (Alcock et al. 2016) gesture section. Items were selected to ensure the full age range of eight to 18 months was represented. Procedure Participants were sent two links to complete the UK-CDI W&G questionnaire and the Parent Knowledge questionnaire. For the UK-CDI W&G questionnaire, participants were instructed to indicate whether their child could understand and say, just understand, or could not understand a word. Participants were also instructed to indicate if their child could complete a gesture or not. Upon completion of the UK-CDI W&G participants were then instructed to complete the Parent Knowledge Questionnaire. The first task on the parent knowledge questionnaire included 11 language and 11 gesture items which rendered 55 paired comparisons (in each domain). Participants were asked to select the item in each pair they believed to be more difficult, that is, to occur later in development. Following the paired comparisons task, participants were then given the 11 language and 11 gesture items individually (and randomized) and were asked to estimate the age they believe each milestone first occurs. From these procedures, the researcher calculated the parents’ accuracy at judging the difficulty of language and gesture items by correlating their ordering of items with the empirical scales using Spearman rho. Four accuracy scores were calculated for each participant: those obtained from paired-comparisons tasks for language and gesture separately and two age estimation accuracy scores from the language and gesture age checklists. The researcher also calculated two discrepancy scores for each participant, one for language and one for gesture. Each score estimated how discrepant parents’ judgements of age onsets were; These values were computed by summing the absolute differences between parents age estimates and the empirical ages of onsets as stated in the literature. Ethics After reading information about the study, parents ticked a box to give their consent to participate in this study. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Lancaster University Research Ethics Committee.
Guilt appeals are commonly used in charity advertising as a means of persuading a consumer to donate. This qualitative study uses an Indian sample to understand if there exists any differences in how they are perceived by individuals in a society that is not guilt based. Participants were exposed to 5 advertising campaigns in a focus group interview. The research also seeks to understand other factors that persuade a consumer to donate. It was found that guilt was only a supplementary factor in persuasion and factors of personal relevance and focus of action played a larger role in persuading with the sample used in this research. Guilt was effective in changing the attitude and beliefs of a consumer, but it was the factors of personal relevance and ease and convenience that were influential in changing donation intention into charitable behaviour. However, the small sample is also a limitation in generalising the responses to an entire culture.
The purpose of this research was to understand the effectiveness of charity advertisements using guilt appeals in an Indian sample. Content analysis was then used to find patterns and themes in the responses of the participants. Research Design Focus Group Interviews Since the research aimed to create a narrative of the participants opinions and views, focus groups were employed. Focus groups also enable for understanding and exploring a topic in depth and understanding the nuances of the thoughts and opinions of the participants and thus understand how they respond to guilt appeals. Interviewer The primary researcher was used as the interviewer on the basis of being well versed with the material and thus the quality of establishing rapport and guiding the focus group discussion. Discussion Guide The primary aim of this research was to understand the perception of guilt appeals in charity adverts and the factors used in the adverts that contribute to donation intention. A discussion guide was formulated in line with the aim of the research and to provide a structure to the direction of the interview. Some of the questions included: ‘How do you feel when you look at this advertisement’, ‘The advertisements intend to use guilt. Do you think that was effective’ and ‘Did you feel guilty when you were exposed to the advertisements?’ (See Appendix A). However the questions were not asked in order and were chosen based on the responses chosen by the participants. Participants A focus group with 7 participants was organised. All the participants were Indian by nationality and graduate students of Lancaster University. Of the 7 participants. There were 5 males and 2 females. The only criteria for choosing the sample was that they had to have lived in India for at least 10 years or identify as an Indian national The age of the participants ranged from 20 to 25 years old. There was no difference by gender and gender was not considered as a variable in this research. Materials Five advertisements were used in this research to understand guilt appeals. The advertisements chosen for this study were for causes ranging from child labour, poverty and housing for the poor. To bring some diversity into the advertisements, both online and billboard poster advertisements were used. The people in the advertisements also belonged to different race and age groups to understand if these factors played a role in the effectiveness of the advertisements to both groups. The last advertisement (Shelter) also alluded to shame and I was interested in understanding how this added variable would influence the participants evaluation. The advertisements were chosen from the internet and have been used as part of ad campaigns. The basis for choosing the advertisements was the framework used by Huhmann and Brotherton (1997): • The presence of comparison between the well-being of the consumer and the other • Placement of responsibility in the consumer • A call to action to the consumer which will aid the cause, failing which the affected group’s misfortune will prolong • Existence of violation of personal moral standards of the consumer The five advertisements below were used in the research can be found in Appendix A, B, C, D and E. Procedure Participants were recruited for the interviews through messages on Social Networking Sites such as Facebook and WhatsApp. A remuneration of 7 pounds was promised for participation and the interview was conducted in the library of Lancaster University. Participants then signed consent forms and were shown the adverts. The advertisements were shown consecutively, with participants providing their opinion on each advertisement before proceeding to the next. Questions were then asked regarding the advertisements and discussed. Finally, participants were debriefed about the nature of the research and paid. Ethical Standards The research conformed to the Market Research Society’s guidelines. Participation was voluntary and participants were asked to sign consent forms prior the interview. Participants were made aware that their voice would be recorded prior to the start of the interviews. However, for the purpose of anonymity, their names were not used in the study. The participants were also provided with the choice to opt out of the interviews at any given point should they wish to. Results Section: This research sought to understand the effectiveness of guilt appeal adverts in Indians and to understand their perceptions of the advertisements and campaigns. The factors in guilt appeals that contribute to a successful advert was also studied. The following results section has been organised in order of the five adverts shown in the interviews to participants and the responses are accounted. Some common themes found in the responses are also discussed following the responses. Responses to the first advert by People in Need (Appendix A) ranged from a participant feeling that the advert was a “sarcastic attempt” and trying to “make a parody of the poor living situation” of the model and his surroundings to claiming that “They are trying to sell the aftershave” “They are trying to show that the product is efficient and works well”. A participant also said that the advert was trying to “enter larger markets” and thus make the product more approachable. Most participants except two misinterpreted the advert into viewing it as an advert for the aftershave and not as a charity advertisement. Even after explanation for the advert was provided, the participants maintained that they felt no sense of guilt. Only one participant understood the mechanism of the guilt appeal used in the advertisement, identifying the underlying message of disparity the advertisement was trying to highlight, saying that the advert showed that “You are spending so much on yourself, (but) with a very little amount, you can help improve the lives of others and make an impact for those people” and said that the advert was simply asking the consumer to care about others. Participants also mentioned that the sparse and bare background “shows poverty and amplifies the situation of the person”. However, the themes the participants identified related to the efficiency of the product as the opinion was that the product worked well because it could be used by different people and the brand’s intention to show people across different nationalities and income levels. Participants were also provided the background of the campaign and a participant then said that she felt a deeper sense of guilt with this knowledge as she was not using her purchasing power to help others and instead for her own self. The impact of the advert on the participants was also varied with one claiming it had no impact and having a great impact on another. When presented with the second advert by Unicef against child labour (Appendix B), participants pointed out that the advert targeted Nike, saying that “It mocks Nike by making a direct comparison” and also that “Use of Nike makes it easy to understand to target the industry as a whole”. A participant also claimed that the obvious dig at Nike left him unable to focus on the intention of the advert that many brands are contributing to child labour because “All I am seeing is Nike and child labour”. Participants who had knowledge about the background about the advert said that they were able to understand the advert better since they could understand why the advert used Nike. The boy in the picture seemed to evoke some emotion, as participants said that the advertisement was basically the fight by “A small boy against a big corporation” and that he is “Helpless and poor” because he cannot fight the situation. They also maintained that the advert sends the message of “restriction and no freedom” as well as “children forced to do it” and children who need money being misused”. The participants also claimed that while they did feel bad for the child, their attention is drawn more towards Nike than cause of child labour. The participants also felt that the campaign should use more brands as the advertisement sends the message of targeting only Nike and not the overall problem with a participant even saying that “Maybe it would have been better not to mention Nike at all” With regard to the third advert by Feed SA (Appendix C), participants felt that the “language is strong”, “message is crisp and clear” and that it was “powerful because it shows an African child”. Conversation centred around the race of the child with participants saying that the advertisement would not have been as effective had the child not been Black and that “I would not have taken the advert seriously if it was an Asian kid”. The participants also said that had the advert emphasised on the race of the child and not the cause, they would have felt offended. Participants however said that they would donate if they saw this advert because the ad, which was stuck on shopping trolleys explicitly shows he process thereby making the job easier for the consumers. The participants said that the advert is effective in “making people aware of the ease of helping people” as it targets the ease of donation. The advert was seen as “direct, easy, fast, convenient”. On showing the fourth advert by Shelter (Appendix D), participants said that they would most likely not pause to read the entire advert due to it being word heavy. “That’s a big ad” said a participant, continuing that the advert “could have funnelled it down”. However, other participants disagreed saying that one could just read the highlighted text and understand the ad and that it does not demand too much attention. Some participants claimed that despite the size of the advertisement, the process of helping the cause was unclear and ambiguous. Others said that the advert would be effective should they want to donate because the problem is clearly highlighted, and the crux is conveyed with details of what they can do to help and the opinions on the effectiveness of the advert seemed divided. There appeared to be consensus with regard to the child in the picture as participants said that “emotion is instant when you see the girl” and the child would make them pause and read the advert. For the last advert by Amnesty (Appendix E), participants said that the advert makes a strong and powerful statement, immediately catching one’s eyes but felt directionless. A participant said that the advert “hits the emotions but I do not know what to do about it”. Another participant commented that their eyes were immediately drawn towards the word “deserve”. The advert, while impactful, was stated to be vague because it does not inform the viewer what they might be able to do except go on a website, which the participants said was forgettable. A participant said that “Other ads are more about the action; this ad asks for interest and energy” and that one would not bother to do so unless they had time or was personally invested in the cause. Discussion of race again came to the forefront as participants said that the advert resonated more with them given the ethnic unambiguity of the child in that the child could have belonged to an Indian or even Latino background just as easily as American and that “crying face, torn clothes, messy hair make an impact to which race is second”. Not clearly defining the child’s ethnicity was seen as a clever marketing strategy but participants said that they had difficulty relating to a cause from a developed nation. A participant also said that “I would rather pick an Indian child and help that child” in response to helping a cause in America. Participants were then told that all the adverts worked by using guilt appeals and were asked if they did feel guilty when they viewed the adverts. Some participants identified the Shelter and Amnesty advertisements to evoke emotion in them, whereas others maintained that while they did feel bad and also sad when they viewed the adverts, they could not identify their emotions specifically to say that it was guilt and a couple also admitted that the adverts did not evoke much feelings of guilt. “Unless I feel strongly about a cause, I would not donate to the cause regardless of how much the ad tries to guilt me or how powerful an ad is” maintained a participant who said that he would donate to the advert for poverty not only because the advert caught his attention, but also because he was more sensitive towards poverty, having grown up in a poor household. Another participant was of the opinion that he was more likely to donate to causes with adverts with a call for action. Participants also viewed adverts as a “reminder” or “trigger” to take action and that they were most likely to participate in a cause that is the easiest or most convenient to them. A different view was provided by another participant who said that unless he was personally invested to a cause, he would not feel guilt towards an advert for other causes due to the neutral perspective he maintained. Thus, there would be no response in any form towards the advert. A participant was also of the view that she would rather help other developing nations than a developed nation. She maintained that because she had seen so much poverty on the streets of India and that because of frequent donations to beggars, the child poverty advert did not evoke any guilt. Another participant revealed that his support only for causes that provided individuals with skills, regardless of the guilt the advert evoked, saying that “I will participate if I think the ad could solve the problem.” The participants were also asked if pictures or words had a greater impact on them and while the consensus was that pictures evoked more emotion, having only pictures could be detrimental and lead to not understanding the purpose of the advert and the greater risk of misinterpretation. Participants were finally asked if them being Indian or their culture had an effect on how they viewed the adverts. Growing up in a country with lots of poverty seemed to have had a great impact on the participants who said that they were more likely to help children in poverty. Religion also played a role for a participant who practised Islam who was of the opinion that he would have donated to any of the causes in the adverts had he seen them in the month of Ramzan. There were several themes that were identified through the analysis of the responses from the interviews. Firstly, while the adverts did elicit negative emotions in participants that persuaded donation intention and to undertake advocated behaviour, that emotion was not immediately identified as guilt by the participants. The general responses to the adverts were that they made one feel “bad” or that they were “hard hitting” and “powerful”. Verbal enunciation of guilty feelings was difficult and indirect. Additionally, while some advertisements did elicit feelings of guilt, the factors that persuaded an individual to support were different from those discussed below. “Unless I feel strongly about a cause, I would not donate to the cause regardless of how much the ad tries to guilt me or how powerful an ad is” An important factor that persuaded charitable behaviour was the personal relevance of the cause for the individual. Personal relevance is largely influenced by life experiences of an individual. Prior knowledge and circumstances had a significant impact on the perception of adverts. The Unicef campaign appealing against child poverty through Nike had a greater impact on individuals who were aware of the case against Nike in reinforcing their perception of the brand than it did on those who were unaware. In such cases where a brand is targeted, the inclusion of facts and background might have resulted in an increase of interest. Individuals who did not have an opinion on a particular cause or had a neutral perspective did experience negative emotions upon exposure to an advertisement, however, the strength of the emotions were not enough for them to consider acting on them. Religion also seemed to play a role in charity behaviour. Religions practises such as ‘zakat’ in Islam which requires one to donate a small share of their wealth to the poor and needy with the belief that such donation frees one from excessive greed and desires influenced those who practised the religion to donate during the time of Ramzan. “An advertisement to me is only a reminder” The role of an advertisement was seen as a trigger or a reminder of the cause an individual supports and did not create a new belief or attitude towards a cause. Rather, they seemed to reinforce prevailing ideas and strengthened them. For instance, a participant felt more strongly about the Unicef child labour advertisement because he was informed about the cause and aware of the controversy Nike found itself embroiled it. The advert remined the participant about the cause and his interest in the advert was more a product of personal research than because of the guilt appeal used. However, advertisements time and again seem to be very persuasive in shaping attitudes as well as changing behaviour and it is to be further researched if the opinions in this research are because of the advertisements used or due to individual differences in beliefs of participants. “I would rather support an African child than an American child” The willingness to help a cause also depended on the country the cause was addressed towards. There was a greater hesitancy and reluctance in supporting a cause from a “developed” country such America in comparison to developing countries or countries that had the same or lower level of economic growth as India. However, this seemed to be a key factor only when the country the advertisement originated from was explicitly stated. The Shelter advert was an advertising campaign from the United Kingdom, however, it was very persuasive and one of the most effective advertisements according to the participants. The advertisement made no mention of any location. There is a strong commitment in Indians to help extended family and friends or members of the same community, owing to the collectivistic nature of the society (Cantegreil, Chanana, & Kattumuri, 2013) and this is reflected in the responses from participants. This is an important factor to account for with an Indian population, where consumers might be reluctant to support causes from another state of India that is not their own.
The Complexity of Language Used by Parents of Children with Down Syndrome in Shared Reading Tasks
Down Syndrome shared reading cognitive complexity prompts
Shared reading is a vital part of language development for children, and this is no less true for the development of language in children with Down Syndrome. Previous research has been concerned that parents use less complicated language when a child has Down Syndrome, and that parents should encourage their child to contribute more to the reading experience. This experiment attempted to evaluate the cognitive complexity of the language used by parents of children with Down Syndrome compared to the parents with typically developing children when reading aloud with their child, and whether including prompts inside a book could alter the complexity of the language used by parents. It was found that including prompts in a book appeared to make the experience more of a shared reading experience with turn-taking between parents and children increasing in the prompted condition. This means that prompted books should be considered as a tool to train parents to use dialogic reading techniques.
Mothers of typically developing children and mothers of children with Down Syndrome were recorded whilst reading aloud with their child in both a business as usual condition where they would read together as they usually would at home, and a prompted condition where pre-determined questions were inserted into the book which the mothers were required to ask their child when the book indicated that they should. The recordings were then written into transcripts of speech and behaviour during the task. Two books were used in this experiment ‘Mooncake’ and ‘Skyfire’. The prompted condition and the business as usual condition were counterbalanced so that half of the participants read the unprompted book first, and half read the prompted book first, and half of the participants received ‘Mooncake’ as the prompted book, and the other half received ‘Skyfire’ as the prompted book. This was done to eliminate the chance that more was said during read due to a preference for one book over the other. However, both of the books were written by the same author, so the chance of a participant having a preference should have been minimal, and the books were similarly matched on difficulty and length to ensure that language would not be affected due to any differences in these criteria. The prompted book included 12 questions to scaffold the mothers into asking questions related to the book. The parent would read the text in black ink, which was the actual story, and then ask the question in blue ink inserted into the bottom of the page. These questions related to picture labelling (e.g. ‘What is that object’), vocabulary questions (e.g. ‘What does terrible mean?’), making inferences about the text (e.g. ‘Why did that character fall asleep?’), and questions which required general knowledge (e.g. ‘What else could be used in this situation?’). The language skills required to answer these questions ranged from a simpler understanding which asked a child to label objects and about simple vocabulary, both of which require a concrete, definite answer, as well as requiring a more in depth understanding of the story and a higher level of general knowledge and language skills to answer questions which require inference. Measures To compare the level of complexity between the prompted condition and the business as usual condition, certain aspects of a reading session were measured. These measures included the total word count of the session, the total amount of words spoken by the parent during the session, the total amount of words spoken by the child, the length of the session in seconds, the number of questions asked by the parent, the mean amount of turn-taking in each session, and the totalled score based on a coding system by Tompkins et al. (2013) which measures the syntactic complexity of the parent’s language throughout the session. A breakdown of the word count of the session, and the length of the reading session are able to demonstrate how prompting a parent with pre-determined questions influences the language of a parent compared to when the parent is reading as they usually would because using more words, and reading the book over a longer period of time is exposing a child to more language, and therefore may be an important factor to consider during shared reading. Furthermore, the number of questions asked by a parent is an important consideration because of previous research highlighting the need for children to be able to answer literal and inferential questions (van Kleeck, Vander Woude & Baue 2003). Turn-taking was measured by adding up the amount of utterances that included a back and forth conversation between a parent and their child and taking the mean of this amount. The word counts, the questions asked, the turn-taking episodes, and the score provided by the coding system did not include when the parent spoke the prompt aloud, any non-words such as ‘ummm’ or ‘ermmm’, or when the parent read aloud from the book itself. This ensured that language during shared reading was what was being measured or coded, and not irrelevant discussions such as the language used by a parent when managing the behaviour of their child during the task. However, sign language used by parents and children in the Down Syndrome group was included as a word or a question due to the fact that sign language is a vital method of language production for those with a language impairment. Coding System The coding system adapted from Tompkins et al. (2013) examines the clausal structure of a sentence to highlight the syntactic complexity used by the speaker. Originally this coding system was used as a measure of children’s language when they are reading aloud with a teacher, but it has been adapted for the use of parent’s language for this experiment. Syntactic complexity of the language was measured by having each utterance spoken by a parent examined and coded as either having no verb code with no clauses or sentence structure (e.g. bear there), a simple code with one clause and verb in the utterance (e.g. the bear walked quickly), or as having a complex code with two or more verb structures in the utterance (e.g. he ate the cake and fired the rocket). An utterance with no verb code was given 0 points, a sentence with simple code was given one point, and an utterance labelled as complex code was awarded two points. The points were added up for each parent and divided by the number of utterances by the parent to provide each individual with a ‘complexity score’ for each condition based on the syntactic complexity of the language used during shared reading. The points total was divided by the number of utterances to ensure that a high complexity score was due to a genuine higher complexity of language rather than the fact that the parent had spoken more and could therefore potentially be awarded more points. The coding was completed by one person, and therefore inter-rater reliability is not a concern for this experiment. Research Design A 2(condition: typically developing vs. Down Syndrome) x 2(book type: business as usual vs. prompted) mixed groups ANOVA was used in this experiment with the condition being the between subjects group with half of the participants being in the typically developing group and half of the participants being in the Down Syndrome group, and the book type being the within subjects group with all participants reading one business as usual book, and one prompted book. This was used to observe the effect of group type and the effect of book type on complexity score, the number of questions asked, the total number of words spoken by parents and children and the length of session in both the typically developing group and the Down Syndrome group to examine whether these shared reading factors changed within each group between the prompted and business as usual books. This design allowed for the study of whether parents with typically children or parents of children with Down Syndrome use more complex language, and whether a prompted book or business as usual reading can influence the use of language by a parent during the experience of shared reading.
The Effect of Ambient Temperature on Cognitive Processing
Ambient temperature Cognitive reflection Syllogistic reasoning Logistic mixed effects modelling.
Over recent decades, climate change has caused the world to get warmer and this trend is set to continue into the future. Relationships between increased temperature and changes in human behaviour, such as increased aggression, have been identified and it is therefore important to consider the impact it may have on other aspects of behaviour. At present, there are limited amounts of research on the effect of temperature on cognitive performance. Within the framework of dual-process theories of cognition and using a Cognitive Reflection Task (CRT) and a Syllogisms Task, the current report researches whether increased ambient temperature (artificially manipulated in a temperature lab) encourages the use of System 1 (i.e. fast, unconscious) processing as opposed to System 2 (i.e. slow, deliberate) processing. The paper asks whether increased temperature leads to more heuristic answers on the CRT and more belief bias on the Syllogisms task. We observed no effect of temperature on performance on the CRT or the Syllogisms task. Similarly, we observed no effect of ambient temperature on belief bias or confidence in answers to the Syllogisms task. However, an effect of ambient temperature was found on how many heuristic responses were given to the CRT, with those in the cold condition giving more heuristic answers than those in the hot condition. We conclude that these findings do not provide support for increased temperature impairing certain aspects of cognitive performance, but also explore unexpected results and discuss potential reasons for these
Participants 65 individuals participated in this research study. Three were excluded for not meeting the pre-decided eligibility criteria of being a native English speaker aged between 18 and 65. This left 62 participants, 19 male and 43 female (Mage = 25.29 SDage = 8.83). Prior to the study, 1.61% had attained a PhD, 9.68% a Master’s degree, 40.32% a Bachelor’s degree, 33.87% A-Levels, 3.23% GSCEs, 9.68% a Certificate or Diploma and 1.61% had no qualifications. All participants completed the whole study, and none indicated awareness of the true aims of the study, thus, following pre-agreed exclusion criteria all participants were retained for analysis. Materials Cognitive Reflection Task. To test participants’ cognitive reflection, a form of the CRT (Frederick, 2005) was utilised. The CRT consists of a series of problem solving questions, with four multiple choice answers. For example, the question, ‘A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?’ is presented alongside the following four options; ‘10p’, ‘5p’, ‘15p’ and ‘90p’. In this case the gut instinct is usually to respond with ‘10p’ however this is incorrect, and the correct response is, ‘5p’. Frederick’s (2005) original version of the task only consisted of three items and has since been criticised for being too short; about 44% of participants who are given the task have previously seen the questions and this leads to the inflation of their scores on subsequent testing sessions (Stieger & Reips, 2016). Consequently, both Primi, Morsanyi, Chiesi, Donati and Hamilton (2016) and Travers, Rolison and Feeney (2016) have since developed longer versions of the tasks; Primi et al.’s (2016) consisted of 6 items, whilst Travers, Rolison and Feeney’s (2016) consisted of 8. The present study combined items from both papers, taking 6 critical items from Primi et al. (2016) and 4 items, used as fillers, (adapted) from Travers, Rolison and Feeney (2016). The filler questions are included to reduce the chance of participants identifying the aims of the study. These questions differ from the critical questions in that the most obvious answer is the correct one. See Table A1 for a full list of the items used in the CRT. Syllogisms Task. In order to test participants’ syllogistic reasoning 10 Syllogisms were presented to the participant. Six critical Syllogisms (where the answer was invalid) were taken from Morley, Evans and Handley (2004) and used in the present study. Half of these Syllogisms had believable conclusions, whilst half had unbelievable ones. The believable Syllogisms, concluded with a statement that was believable in the real world (e.g. ‘Some addictive things are not cigarettes’), but remained invalid given the two premises, whilst the unbelievable ones concluded with a statement that was both unbelievable in the real world (e.g. ‘Some millionaires are not rich people’), and illogical given the two premises. The task also consisted of four filler Syllogisms. Again, half of the filler items had believable conclusions and half had unbelievable conclusions, however all of the conclusions were valid. See Table A2 for a full list of the items used in the Syllogisms task. Procedure Participants were either recruited through the University’s recruitment portal (SONA), or through individual volunteer sampling. Each testing session was pre-designated as either a hot or cold session and each session consisted of multiple testing slots which were advertised to participants. Participants were unaware of this temperature manipulation and blindly signed up to a testing slot under the pretence of completing a study which investigated behaviour in decision making tasks. As varying numbers of participants signed up to each session, the researchers updated the pre-designated condition of each session accordingly, to ensure there were the same number of participants, 31, within each condition overall. The study was conducted in a temperature control lab at Lancaster University. This room contains a temperature control panel, which was used to set the ambient temperature of the room to either 16˚C in the cold condition, or 28˚C in the hot condition. A KTJ TA318 Thermometer (with precision of 0.1˚C) was used to record the exact temperature at which each participant completed the study. In the cold condition, the temperature ranged from 15.5˚C to 16.9˚C (M = 16.14) and in the hot condition the temperature ranged from 27.8˚C to 29.8˚C (M = 28.56). The room consisted of five workstations, separated by partitions, meaning it was possible to test up to five participants at once. Each participant completed the study independently at one of the workstations, which contained a computer monitor, keyboard and mouse, stood on an individual sized table. When participants arrived at the study, they were seated at an adjustable chair facing the computer, within easy reach of the keyboard and mouse. If participants commented on the temperature of the room, the researcher responded with short statements of agreement, such as ‘yes, it is isn’t it’, but did not elaborate further to ensure that researcher influence was kept to a minimum. Each participant was given time to read the information sheet and provide consent (both digitally presented). Participants then entered demographic information such as their age, nationality and education level. Following this, the main section of the study began, and participants completed both the CRT and the Syllogisms task along with two other short tasks administered on behalf of a separate researcher. These two other tasks were not part of this research study. As part of the Syllogisms task, participants were asked to rate how confident they were in their response to each item, on a sliding scale from 0 (completely unconfident) to 100 (extremely confident). The order in which all four tasks were presented was randomised and counterbalanced across participants to negate any potential order effects. Additionally, the order of items within a task was also randomised for the same reason. Participants were given 5 minutes to complete the CRT, as this is consistent with previous administrations of a CRT (e.g. Primi, et al., 2016) and 30 seconds to complete each of the items on the Syllogisms task. These time limits were utilised to encourage participants to keep focus and to mimic the kind of time pressure associated with examinations. After these tasks, participants were asked 3 debriefing questions (see Appendix B) to assess whether they had identified the aims of the study. Answers to these questions were reviewed independently by two members of the research team and if participants demonstrated a link between temperature and cognitive performance their data would have been removed from the analysis, as their results may have been influenced by their awareness. Both assessors agreed that there was no cause to remove any participant on this basis. Finally, participants provided information about how comfortable they felt in the lab, on a 6-point scale, and then also how hot or cold they feel on average, on a sliding scale from -50 (extremely cold) to +50 (extremely hot). This second measure was taken to account for individual differences, as many people generally feel warmer or colder for reasons such as illness or medical condition, and this may influence how hot or cold they felt in the lab. At the end of the study participants were offered the chance to enter a prize draw to win one of twelve £10 Amazon vouchers. This rumination method was chosen above the option of paying every participant, to mimic the uncertainty of reward which is common in many settings such as examinations. Pre-registration This project was verified and registered on the Open Science Framework on the 21st May 2018 (https://osf.io/p6879/). The present study deviated from the initial plans in the followings ways. Firstly, the initial plan to recruit 120 participants proved unachievable within the time constraints and therefore 62 participants were tested. Secondly, logistic mixed effects models were used for most analyses instead of linear mixed effects models. This was a consequence of reformatting the data to be able to take into account the random effect of items on each task, resulting in the dependent variable being binary. Thirdly, the random effect of items and participants were not always included. This was because models with and without these factors were compared and random factors were only included if they helped the model to better fit the variation in the data. Finally, the initial plan was to investigate the effect of mood as an exploratory factor. The data on mood was collected, however further investigation was not possible due to project constraints. Analyses Strategy The aim of this paper was to determine whether increased temperature impairs cognitive performance as measured by a CRT and Syllogisms task. To facilitate assessment of results, the data was analysed using R (R Core Team, 2017). The numerical variables used as predictors in analysis were then scaled using the ‘scale’ function from the ‘standardization’ package (Eager, 2017). To conduct the desired analysis, the data was transformed from wide to long format using the ‘gather’ function from the ‘tidyr’ package (Wickham & Henry, 2018). To assess whether the data collected supported the hypotheses and therefore the extent to which temperature condition predicted test performance, several logistic mixed effects (LME) models were computed, using the ‘glmer’ function from the ‘lme4’ package (Bates, Maechler, Bolker & Walker, 2015). This was the most appropriate method of analysis to use as both the dependent and key independent variables were binary and it allowed the random effects of participants’ individual differences, as well as the random effect of items within each task, to be taken into account, which is necessary in a repeated measures design. The models contained the fixed effects of condition (Hot vs. Cold), baseline temperature and comfort level and the interaction effects of condition with comfort level and with baseline temperature. They also included the random effects of participants and/or items, depending on which random factors (if any) were found to aid the model to fit the variation in data best. To evaluate whether the inclusion of the random effects was required in each model, comparisons were made between the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) of the final model and identical models with (a) the random effects removed, (b) only the random effect of items, and (c) only the random effect of participants, see Table C1. When reporting logistic models, we give estimated coefficients (ß), standard errors (SE), z-values (z) and p-values (p) of predicting variables. We also report the conditional R2 value (R2_c) for each model; a ratio which gives the variance explained by the fixed and random effects as a proportion of the total variance explained by the fixed effects, random effects and residuals. This is calculated using the ‘r.squaredGLMM’ function of the ‘MuMIn’ package (Barton, 2018). Where significant effects are found, estimated log odds are transformed into odds ratios by exponentiating the coefficients, to aid the interpretation of the effect. Cognitive Reflection Task. To investigate whether there was a difference in performance on the CRT between individuals in the hot condition and individuals in the cold condition, the data was coded such that a correct answer was given the value of ‘1’ whilst incorrect answers were given the value of ‘0’. To address whether there was a difference in the number of heuristic responses given on the CRT, the data was recoded (‘1’ = Heuristic response, ‘0’ = Other response). Syllogisms Task. To investigate whether there was a difference in performance on the Syllogisms task between individuals in the hot condition and individuals in the cold condition, the data was coded such that a correct answer (‘Invalid’) to a critical item was given the value of ‘1’ whilst incorrect answers (‘Valid’) were given the value of ‘0’. In order to investigate whether participants in the hot condition showed more belief bias than those in the cold condition, we extracted the three invalid believable Syllogisms and the two valid unbelievable Syllogisms. The data was recoded such that when a ‘valid’ answer was given to an invalid but believable syllogism or when an ’invalid’ answer was given to a valid but unbelievable syllogism, responses were given a value of ‘1’, to signify belief bias. Other responses were given a value of ‘0’. To analyse the ratings of confidence in participants’ answers to the Syllogisms task a linear mixed effects models was used, as the dependent variable was continuous. Exploratory Analysis. Data collection was conducted during the summer months, partly whilst Britain was experiencing a period of unusually hot weather. It is therefore possible that participants may not have been fully affected by the temperature manipulation. For example, those in the cold condition may have still suffered the negative effects of heat as a result of spending time prior to the study, outside in the heat. To address this, actual environmental temperature at a local weather station, for the times of participation were taken from ‘WeatherOnline.co.uk’ and added to the data set. The LME models included the outside temperature along with condition and the interaction between outside temperature and temperature condition as the fixed factors, and the random effects of items and participants.
The effect of different question types during shared book reading on children’s narrative comprehension
This study investigated the effect of different question types on narrative comprehension in young children. Forty one five year olds participated in this study. One group (N=14) received three sessions of shared storybook reading in which they practised answering questions about literal information in the story, during the course of the storybook reading. A second group (N=13) practiced answering questions about information that had to be inferred. A third group of controls (N=14), did not receive any intervention. All groups completed two comprehension assessments before and after the intervention: one was a measure of general listening comprehension, the other included measures of both literal and inferential comprehension. Children’s engagement during the storybook reading was also assessed. Contrary to predictions, neither intervention benefitted post-test comprehension significantly. In addition engagement levels did not change over the course of the study. However, a consistent pattern was found for each comprehension measure: the group who received practice with answering inferential questions made the greatest gains. Implications for early literacy experiences are discussed.
Design The study was an intervention design with three phases: a pre-test, training phase and post-test. There were three groups: two experimental groups who participated in all phases and a control group who only completed the pre and post tests. The design is shown in Table One. In the pre and post test sessions, participants completed a general measure of listening comprehension (adapted from the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability II, Neale, 1997) and a bespoke measure of listening comprehension with questions to tap literal and inferential comprehension. Participants were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores in the pre-test so that the three groups (two intervention and one control) did not differ in their performance on these measures (see Table Five). Children in the intervention conditions listened to three stories in separate sessions and either received practice at answering literal or inferential questions throughout the stories. In the post test all children were again assessed on alternate forms of the same measures used in the pre-test. Table 1. Intervention design used. Group Pre Test 1 Training 2 3 Post test Control General + Bespoke Listening Comprehension. x x x General + Bespoke Listening Comprehension. Literal General + Bespoke Listening Comprehension. Literal Literal Literal General + Bespoke Listening Comprehension. Inferential General + Bespoke Listening Comprehension. Inferential Inferential Inferential General + Bespoke Listening Comprehension. Materials: Pre and Post test. General Measure of Listening Comprehension. The following stories taken from the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA, Neale, 1997) were read to each participant in either the pre or post test: Toys, Tree house, Lost and Found, Road Safety. Toys or Lost and Found were used as practice tasks at the beginning of the pre/post test to help develop rapport. The stories were chosen so that the level of difficulty was consistent pre and post test. Comprehension questions that went with each story were asked at the end of the story to obtain the general measure of listening comprehension score. Table Two shows an example of a story and some of the questions given. Table 2. Example of general listening comprehension story used. General Comprehension Example Sample of Questions asked My friend and I made a tree house. We like to hide in it. We climb up the rope and pull it up after us. Then no-one knows where we are. We play space-ships. At tea time we slide down fast and we are always first for tea. What would you say was the best name for that story? Who built the tree house? How did the children always manage to be first for tea? Bespoke Measure of Listening Comprehension. The stories used in this study were a series of books about a dog named ‘Harry’ written by Gene Zion. These stories were chosen as they were first published between 1956 and 1965 and so were suitable for this age group but the children were not likely to be familiar with them. The pictures from the stories were scanned then printed on A4 sheets and laminated to make a set of wordless picture books. The original text was retained for each story, however, small sections of some of the stories were omitted to try and keep each story the same length. Two different types of questions were used in the bespoke measure of listening comprehension: literal and inferential questions. In the pre and post tests each child received eight literal questions and eight inferential questions after each story reading. The literal questions required the participants to recall facts from the text. The inferential questions tapped children’s ability to make inferences about information that was not stated explicitly in the text. These questions were designed to address: causality (why an event happened), emotions (how a character was feeling) and future events (what might happen next in the story). The Inferential questions in the pre and post test, however, consisted of four emotion and four causality questions as prediction questions could not be used at the end of the story. Table Three gives examples of literal and inferential questions used. Table 3. Examples of literal and inferential questions used. Extract Question 1. Harry was a white dog with black spots who liked everything except having a bath. So one day when he heard the water running in the tub he took the scrubbing brush and buried it in the back garden. Literal: What did Harry bury in the back garden? Forced choice: the scrubbing brush/a sponge. Causal Inferential: Why do you think Harry buried the scrubbing brush in the back garden? Forced choice: Because the family told him to/Because he did not want a bath. 2. That night Harry slept in the dog house – again. Literal Question: Where was Harry made to sleep again? In the Kitchen/in the dog house. Emotion Inference Question: How do you think Harry felt about sleeping in the dog house? Forced choice: happy/sad. 3. (After a sequence of events that lead to Harry being covered in seaweed and thinking the hot dog man was calling his name.) Harry still thought the man was calling his name. He barked and jumped with joy. He jumped so much that suddenly… Literal Question: (before - he jumped so much…) What was the hot dog man really shouting? Hurry/Harry Prediction Inferential question*: What do you think happened next? Forced choice: Everyone ran away/ the seaweed fell off him. *Please note. These were only used during the intervention sessions. Materials: Intervention Three of the stories were used for the intervention sessions. Scripts were produced that incorporated the questions for the intervention sessions during the stories. In the inferential intervention group there were four of each question type: causal, emotion and prediction. The inferential and literal questions were always placed at the same point in the story. Procedure Phase One: Pre-test. Children in all groups completed the general listening comprehension measure and the bespoke measure of literal and inferential comprehension. Each child was tested individually in a quiet space away from the classroom. The pre-test session was audio and video recorded. The video recorder was set in front of the participant to capture their direction of eye gaze. The experimenter explained the task to the child and obtained verbal consent. In the pre-test the experimenter asked the child if they had heard any stories about Harry the dog while showing them the front cover. One child reported recognising the story, but could not remember any details. General Listening Comprehension Measure. Each participant was read two stories, the first acted as a practice task to help develop rapport. Immediately after each story the children were asked the comprehension questions for that story. If a child could not answer a question then the experimenter offered the correct response and moved onto the next question. If the child gave the incorrect answer then the experimenter did not highlight that this was incorrect but simply moved onto the next question. The decision to respond to answers in this way was based on the pilot of the procedure. This age group seemed to become easily disengaged if they supplied no answer on a number of occasions or incorrect answers and it was felt that this way of responding helped to maintain their confidence and interest in the task. Responses were scored as correct or incorrect. Acceptable answers were provided in the NARA manual. Bespoke Listening Comprehension Measure. After the assessment of general listening comprehension each child completed the bespoke listening comprehension task. The experimenter read out the story whilst the child followed the pictures in a wordless picture book version. At the end of the story sixteen questions were asked: 8 literal and 8 inferential, of which four were causal and four were emotion related. If the child could not answer a question or gave the wrong answer then s/he was offered a forced choice of two possible answers (examples in Table Three). One option was the correct target answer and one was incorrect. The forced choices were included in the pre/post test as they were also used during the intervention; however, answers based on a forced choice were not included in the analysis. In the pre and post-test if the child chose the correct response then the experimenter agreed with the child and moved onto the next question. If the child selected the incorrect option, the experimenter also continued with the next question. The decision was taken not to correct the child at this stage as if the child was still getting the answer incorrect despite assistance then giving them the correct answer may change the representation they had created of the story and also have an effect on their confidence as mentioned earlier. The forced choices were alternated so that the correct answer occurred equally in first and second positions across items. When scoring the responses if the child gave the correct answer unaided (i.e. without the forced choice option) then they were given one point. All other responses were scored zero. Phase two: Intervention (Intervention groups only). The intervention sessions took place the week after the selection phase, on three consecutive days. On each day, each child in the intervention groups was tested individually in a quiet space away from the classroom and the session was audio-recorded. Different stories were used in each session. As the stories were read to the participant they were asked questions (either literal or inferential depending on group assignment) about the story content. Children in the control group were not read to by the experimenter during this phase. Literal Questions Intervention Group. Children in this condition were read one story in each of the three intervention sessions and asked twelve questions that assessed their understanding of explicit details in the story, e.g., ‘What did the lady next door sing louder than?’ The questions were positioned throughout the text and related directly to information that had just been given in the story. If the children gave no response or an incorrect response they were offered the forced choice. If a child still gave an incorrect answer after being given the forced choices then the experimenter corrected them and offered the correct answer. This was to try and ensure that the children were building accurate representations as they listened to the stories. Inferential Questions Intervention Group. The same stories and question-response technique were used as outlined in the literal questions condition. Questions were also placed at the same position in the text, however, children in this condition were asked twelve inferential questions throughout each story that required them to think beyond the facts present in the text. In each story there were four causal inferential questions, e.g., ‘Why were Harry’s ears hurting?’ four prediction questions, e.g., ‘What do you think Harry did next?’ and four questions assessing understanding of the emotions of the characters. e.g., ‘How do you think Harry felt when the old lady told him to go away?’ Phase three: Post-test. This session took place between five and seven days after the final intervention session and followed the same format as the pre-test. Children in all three groups completed the general listening comprehension story and the bespoke listening comprehension story with literal and inferential questions asked at the end of the story. Measure of Engagement. The video recordings from the pre and post-test were analysed for the children’s level of engagement. This was only based on the child’s behaviour during the reading of the bespoke listening comprehension story. The coding scheme used for this analysis is shown in Table Four. A second rater scored 20% of the pre-test videos. There was 100% agreement between raters. Table 4. Coding scheme used to analyse level of engagement while listening to the bespoke story. Code Description of Behaviour 1 Limited Engagement. The child appears off-task and makes a large number of unrelated comments or is distracted and looking away for a large part of the story reading. 2 Engaged- Quiet. The child looks at the pictures and listens well throughout the story but does not make any independent comments. 3 Engaged – Interactive. The child looks at the pictures and listens well throughout the story. They also make independent comments relating the events in the story to their lives/elaborate on the text/ ask questions about the text. Group Assignment. Scores on the pre-test measures were used to assign the children to groups to ensure an equal range of scores in each. One-way Analysis of Variance was carried out on the general comprehension scores, literal and inferential scores. All F<1.0 and all p>0.1. In addition, where possible, an equal number of boys and girls were assigned to each group. Table Five shows the ages, number of boys and girls and pre-test scores for each group. Table 5. Distribution of gender, age and pre-test scores across groups. Variable Control Literal Inferential Gender Male Female 8 6 7 7 7 6 Age (years; months) 5;5 5;5 5;4 General Comprehension (proportion) 0.43 0.46 0.46 Bespoke Literal (max=8) 3.79 3.79 4.15 Bespoke Inferential (max=8) 5.0 4.50 4.77
Cortical Hyper Excitability correlating with Visual Distortions and Hallucinations
visual distortions cortical hyper excitability Pattern Glare Task
Background: The primary focus of our study is how the abnormalities in the visual experiences such as the visual distortions or hallucinations result in the increase in the cortical hyper excitability. The aberrant neural activity causes visual distortions. Susceptibility to such visual distortions reflects elevated levels of cortical hyper excitability. Methods: Forty-eight individuals completed the "Pattern Glare Task" (where they viewed certain striped grating patterns with different spatial frequencies). Participants also completed the Cortical Hyperexcitability Index (Chi) and the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale (CDS). Results: Pattern glare task showed that individuals experienced more visual distortions in the Medium Frequency (3 cpd). A very small sample of the population showed effects of depersonalisation disorder. Based on our results, we can say that individuals did show an elevated level of cortical hyperexcitability. Conclusion: The study suggests that non-clinical population also experiences a certain level of increase in cortical hyper excitability. It only establishes the utility of pattern glare with regards to CHi and CDS to add to our existing knowledge.
Pattern Glare Test The pattern glare task includes stripy patterns on three separate cards each with different spatial frequencies; low spatial frequency baseline grating (approx. 0.5 cycles per degree), high spatial frequency baseline grating (approx. 12 cpd), and the crucial medium spatial frequency grating (approx. 3 cpd). The computerised version of the pattern glare task was modified for this experiment, as we were using a paper-based version (Wilkins, 1995; Wilkins et al., 1984) for the same. The stimuli used in the experiment are given in FIGURE 1. The individuals are asked to stare at the white dot in the center of each pattern for approximately 10-15 seconds, while holding each pattern at arm's length. Following, a series of questions are asked to the participant i.e. if they experienced any blurring of lines, bending of lines, fading, shimmering, flickering or shadowy shapes. The participants on the basis of their experience on viewing each pattern, rate the above questions from a score of 0-7 where, 0-minimum and 7-maximum (Wilkins et al., 1984; Conlon et al., 1999). The score is obtained for each pattern and the difference between Pattern 2 and Pattern 3 is recorded, which is called as the '3-12 difference'; in other words, the difference between high frequency and the medium frequency (3cpd – 12cpd). Cambridge Depersonalisation Scale The CDS is a self-reporting questionnaire and is used to measure the duration and frequency of any depersonalisation symptoms that individual experiences in the time frame of the past six months. (Sierra and Berrios, 1999). The CDS is an instrument containing 29 items. Each of the items in the scale are rated on the basis of Likert-scale both for frequency (0-4; where, 0=never, 1=rarely, 2=often, 3=very often, and 4=all the time) and duration based on its average on how much the experiences last (1-6; where 1=few seconds, 2=few minutes, 3=few hours, 4=about a day, 5=more than a day, and 6=more than a week). Its global score is the sum of all items (0-290). Sierra et al., (2005) established four well determined factors to dictate the different symptoms of depersonalisation as single or underlying dimensions they were, ‘Anomalous Body Experience’, ‘Emotional Numbing’, ‘Anomalous Subjective Recall’, and ‘Alienation from Surroundings.’ This questionnaire addresses the complexity of depersonalisation and uncovers its symptoms, which can be directed towards distinct psychopathological domains. Cortical Hyperexcitability Index The CHi was designed to provide an index that discovers the visual irritability, discomfort and the associated visual distortions that individual’s experience (Braithwaite, Merchant, Dewe and Takahashi, 2015). The above-mentioned experiences are well linked to the increase of cortical hyperexcitability. A major advantage of the CHi’s design is that it unveils three broad factors which are (1) heightened visual sensitivity and discomfort, (2) negative aura-type visual aberrations, and (3) positive aura-type visual aberrations. The items present in the questionnaire picture a vast selection of visual experiences that have been previously reported through hallucinations based experimental studies on patients, control groups, non-clinical populations; aura and its underlying dimensions. The CHi uses a fine-grained 7-point Likert response scales, where in the test each question has two response scales i.e. frequency (1-7; where 1=not at all frequent and 7=very frequent) and intensity (1-7; where 1=not at all intense and 7=extremely intense). In terms of scoring, both the scales are summed to provide an overall CHi index for each question. However, a value of 1 is subtracted from each response on frequency and intensity, as the scale was transformed from 1-7 to a 0-6 Likert-scale. This was done for individuals who responded with 1 in every question would still have a score of 54. Design and Procedure All the participants were forwarded a brief explanation about the purpose of the study and how they can contribute to it. If the participants agree, later schedule a time for the voluntary study. The experiment was conducted in the Social Hub of the Graduate College, Lancaster University. The participants were seated comfortably on the right side of the researcher. The individuals were asked to read the Participant Information sheet carefully, later if they agree; they may sign their respective consent form. It was made clear to the participants that the confidentiality of their personal information will be ensured and that they could at any point (1) can ask questions during the experiment, (2) stop the experiment, if they are uncomfortable at any point during the conduction (3) participants have the right to withdraw themselves from the study with no further adverse consequences however, they need to inform the researcher about this via email. Participants were again asked if they suffered from any neurological disorder specially migraine, migraine (aura), or photo sensory epilepsy and if they had any severe incidences of alcohol and drug abuse. The first phase of the experiment included the pattern glare task. Individuals were handed over with the first pattern with low frequency (LF) and were asked to stare at the white dot in the centre of the pattern for 10-15 seconds. After this, they were asked to rate the questions based on their experience on a scale of 0-7 (0-minimun, 7-maximum). The questions included if they experienced any blurring of lines, bending of lines, shimmering or flickering, fading or if they could see any shadowy shapes. Before handing over the second pattern, it was made sure that the participant is comfortable with proceeding further with the experiment and is not experiencing any kind of visual stress. The same steps were repeated for both the other two patterns with medium frequency (MF) and high frequency (HF). The order in which the participants viewed the patterns was randomised for each one of them. Individuals who are prone to pattern glare can be quantified for such a criterion based on their sum of distortions in 3cpd (MF) or as the difference between 3 and 12 cpd, also called the '3-12 cpd difference'. After a two-minute break, the second phase of the experiment included participants to answer 29 questions on the Cambridge Depersonalisation Scale, which are based on the frequency and duration of any 'strange or funny experiences' that they felt in the past six months. Lastly, the third phase, the second questionnaire was introduced to the participants. The Cortical Hyper Excitability Index. Similar to the patterns, the questionnaires presented to the participants were also randomised in order to obtain a variety in the responses of the participants. The total time taken to conduct the experiment was about 20 minutes or less. Post conduction the individuals were thanked for their time and effort.