Does Advertising Truly Represent the LGBTQ+ Community? An Analysis of Intersectionality and Consumer Responses to LGBTQ+ Advertising
LGBTQ+ advertising, prosocial advertising, intersectionality, consumer attitudes
Depictions of sexual and gender minorities in advertising are becoming increasingly common and diverse. Yet, numerous intersections within these portrayals are still invisible. Previous research has found mixed results regarding consumer responses to LGBTQ+ identities in advertising. The current study aimed to obtain a further understanding into how a diverse range of consumers respond to heteronormative versus LGBTQ+ imagery in ads. This was assessed using semi-structured interviews to examine sexual and gender minority consumer (n = 13) and non-LGBTQ+ consumer (n = 6) reactions to three distinct IKEA ads. In addition to this, LGBTQ+ character depictions in 286 worldwide mainstream ads from 2016-2020 were analysed for measures of intersectionality across the dimensions of race, age and specific LGBTQ+ membership, extending the previous findings of Nölke (2018). Results indicated that non-LGBTQ+ participants showed similar responses and subsequent brand evaluation regardless of ad theme. Sexual and gender minority participants were found to show preference towards the ad featuring LGBTQ+ identities, though were often found to be sceptical of such portrayals. Intersectionality analysis uncovered that 47 out of a possible 96 intersections were completely invisible from 2016-2020, although representation of minorities within the community has increased substantially since the original findings. Results demonstrate the importance of character depictions in advertising, highlighting why intersectionality of such portrayals needs to increase in the future. Findings further denote how and why different consumers react to specific ad imagery, making recommendations to marketers regarding their inclusion of LGBTQ+ identities in advertising.
Participants The sample consisted of 19 participants aged between 18-53 at their time of interview; Mage = 23.5 years, SDage = 7.6. Of this sample, 13 participants stated that they identified as LGBTQ+ (2 White lesbian females, 1 Mixed-Race lesbian female, 2 White gay males, 1 Asian gay male, 2 White bisexual females, 1 Black bisexual female, 1 Asian bisexual male, 1 White transgender female, 1 White transgender male and 1 White transgender non-binary individual). A further 6 participants stated that they did not identify as LGBTQ+ (3 White males and 3 White females). Participants were recruited in a purposive manner through social media sites such as Instagram and WhatsApp and comprised mainly of acquaintances of the researcher. A high proportion of LGBTQ+ participants were utilised in an effort to ensure intersectionality of responses, which has been shown to provide a strong methodological framework within which to investigate underrepresented groups (Rodriguez, 2018). Design The study consisted of two distinct elements; semi-structured interviews and a content analysis of existing global advertisements that feature LGBTQ+ characters from 2016-2020. Semi-structured interviews were the chosen method of qualitative data gathering, as the style allows for analysis according to the basis of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) and gives scope for probing questions to supplement the richness of answers given. The combination of quantitative (quantified content analysis) and qualitative research employed in the study through separate investigations was undertaken in attempt to provide a rigorous understanding of LGBTQ+ diversity in advertising and its effects upon observers. Interviews All participants individually took part in an in-depth semi-structured interview with the researcher over Microsoft Teams. Due to the inductive nature of the exploration, no independent and dependent variables were implemented. The research broadly assessed the following measures across populations in the sample: the importance of character depictions, prosociality views, representation significance, brand attitudes, and purchasing likelihood succeeding exposure to three IKEA advertisements. The same brand was used for all ads in order to eliminate brand biases. The order in which advertisements were shown to participants was random in an effort to counterbalance order effects. Each interview lasted for approximately 45 minutes. Ad Intersectionality This additional component of the study involved conducting a content analysis of all global advertisements that feature LGBTQ+ identities from 2016-2020. This design mirrored that initially used by Nölke (2018), continuing their longitudinal analysis of intersectionality in LGBTQ+ advertising depictions which scoped the years 2009-2015. Identical to the original study, the source for these ads was AdRespect (http://adrespect.org), a website which comprehensively includes any advertisement featuring LGBTQ+ inclusion from around the world. The independent variable was time, as adverts which aired within each individual year were grouped together. Dependent measures included counts of different intersectionality measures, an approach first used by Gopaldas & DeRoy (2015) in their intersectional analysis of Gentlemen’s Quarterly covers, and were further investigated by Nölke (2018). In the present study these measures consisted of age, race and specific LGBTQ+ membership. Measures Interviews The semi-structured interview completed by each participant was devised entirely by the researcher and involved seven different sections which addressed questions surrounding the significance of character portrayals in advertising. The interview primarily consisted of open-ended questions, though some close-ended questions were also asked where definitive answers were required. Questions often had multiple sub-questions within them in order to probe more detailed responses from participants. In total the interview asked 31 unique questions, with nine of these questions repeated three times (in sections four, five and six). The first section was an overview which told participants what the interview would entail whilst it also asked general ad watching questions to prime the interviewee for more detailed questions to follow. An example question from section one includes “would you say in general that you watch many ads?”. Section two was focused on the participant’s views towards representation in advertising, particularly focusing on LGBTQ+ representation and its significance to them. Example questions include: “if you are to view an advertisement that openly features LGBTQ+ identities, how would it make you feel?” and “do the character depictions in adverts matter to you? What characteristic(s) are most significant to you? Why is this?”. The third section addressed identity formation, asking interviewees questions about advertising from when they were growing up in an attempt to investigate the impact of negligible LGBTQ+ depictions in the past. It asked questions including: “Do you ever remember seeing LGBTQ+ identities in advertising when you were younger? How did this make you feel?”. In addition to this, it attempted to gain an understanding of how characters in advertising impact the formation of identity from a retrospective viewpoint. The subsequent three sections all asked the same set of questions to participants after showing them three different IKEA adverts in a random order (https://bit.ly/2VkBCQs), (https://bit.ly/3yHXouV) and (https://bit.ly/2WVyElD). All ads were published to mainstream audiences on television by IKEA within the past two years and were matched closely in terms of length. The first ad (Ads of Brands, 2020) titled ‘next generation’ featured only heteronormative White characters, within a nuclear family unit. It was selected as it acted as a non-representative example which showcased very little intersectionality and no LGBTQ+ identities. The second ad ‘change a bit for good’ (IKEA UK, 2021) displayed identity neutral robots who attempt to tackle climate change. This ad acted as a control for participants, as it still addresses a prosocial topic whilst portraying no identifying elements of its characters. The final ad ‘be someone’s home’ (IKEA USA, 2020) showed a wide variety of diversity across intersections within the LGBTQ+ community, which functioned as an inclusive example to interviewees. Questions asked after exposure to each ad included items assessing the participant’s attitude towards the brand, their subsequent purchasing intentions and the believed importance of the identities portrayed. Example items include: “after watching this ad, would you feel more or less inclined to spend money with IKEA? Why is this?” and “do you believe the identities shown in the ad are important to others? Why do you think this?”. The last component of the interview asked participants about their general spending behaviour, brand evaluation and concluding questions about how LGBTQ+ visibility in advertising makes them feel. Sample items include: “would seeing an ad that positively depicts someone similar to you make you value the brand more? How come? Would this also make you more likely to buy?” and “is there anything that you would like to change in modern advertising? Less of something? More of something? Why?”. Ad Intersectionality Coding Scheme. The present study followed the coding scheme of Nölke (2018), but chose to exclude class as a coding dimension, due to an absence of representation in this area. The coding dimensions analysed within the study were LGBTQ+ membership, age and race. Each portrayal was coded across all three dimensions. LGBTQ+ Membership. Items within this dimension were coded accordingly: ‘lesbian female’, ‘gay male’, ‘bisexual’, ‘trans-female’ (MtF) which included drag queens, ‘trans-male’ (FtM) and ‘gender neutral/non-binary’. Nölke (2018) did not code gender neutral or non-binary identities due to the absence of such portrayals. The current study implemented this additional measure as it saw the need to recognise the additional membership which is becoming increasingly prevalent in modern depictions. Transgender depictions were either explicitly labelled as such within the ad, overtly presented (for example, in terms of top-surgery scarring) or for celebrity depictions, publicly accessible data on their identity was used. Gender neutral/non-binary coded characters were either stated as such within the ad, their gender was indiscernible, or in celebrity cases, publicly available information on their identity was again utilised. Age. Based upon Gopaldas & DeRoy’s (2015) scheme, age was determined by estimations to the nearest multiple of five based upon observation. The following codes were used: “teen” (aged 13+), “young adult” (20+), “middle-aged” (35+) and “mature” (50+). Race. The race of characters was coded according to visual appearance, language and ad text. Codes included “White”, “Black”, “Asian” and “Latinx”. It is important to note that these terms differ from those used by Nölke (2018), in accordance to APA’s guidance on inclusive language regarding racial and ethnic identity (American Psychological Association, 2019). Procedure Ethical approval for this study was acquired through the project supervisor and ethics partner at Lancaster University, as the proposed research was deemed low risk. Interviews Participants were each given an electronic information sheet, consent form and short demographic questionnaire which included LGBTQ+ membership status questions to complete through Qualtrics (https://www.qualtrics.com). To ensure participants were comfortable, all questions in this form were optional to answer. After consent was obtained, participants were contacted to arrange a suitable interview date and time, which was conducted via Microsoft Teams. During each interview, the researcher asked questions according to the interview schedule in a semi-structured manner. These interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis. Throughout the interviews, participants were reminded that they did not need to answer any questions that they did not want to and that they were free to leave at any point should they wish. Any identifying data was removed during transcription to maintain participant confidentiality. After interviews had finished, all participants were sent a debriefing form via email. Ad Intersectionality Ad Selection. Ads published between 2016-2020 on AdRespect were selected according to the same principles utilised by Nölke (2018). To begin, the 531 ads submitted to AdRespect during the years 2016-2020 were evaluated. AdRespect states the audience in which each ad was published to and those that were exclusively published to LGBTQ+ audiences were excluded from analysis. Additionally rejected from analysis were ads where the character’s LGBTQ+ status was not evident, ads that showed no explicit depiction of people and ads for non-profit organisations. This exclusion criteria left 284 ads. As AdRespect is a crowdsourced platform, a further search for ads that met the inclusion criteria was conducted across the internet in case any were left out by the online database. This search found a further two ads, producing a total of 286 ads within the final dataset. These ads were then coded according to the dimensions of age, race and LGBTQ+ membership. Ads were coded for every LGBTQ+ portrayal shown, thus often multiple characters were displayed within each ad and were analysed per individual depiction. Analysis Qualitative Analysis of Interviews After transcription, all interviews were analysed through inductive thematic analysis due to the exploratory nature of the research (Braun & Clarke, 2006). This process adhered to their six phases of analysis: familiarization of the data, initial code generation, theme search, theme review, defining and naming themes and report production, which allowed the researcher to identify the themes that underpin consumer responses and attitudes towards LGBTQ+ portrayals. This analysis was conducted through NVivo 12 qualitative data analysis software. Quantitative Analysis of ad Intersectionality Quantitative analyses of the dataset were conducted through collation of codes ascribed to portrayals across time. The depictions were summarised across intersectional and unidimensional measures according to which year they belonged to. This was analysed as a singular project as well as comparatively against the original findings from Nölke (2018), which allowed to researcher to demonstrate how portrayals of the LGBTQ+ community in advertising have transformed from 2009-2020. In addition to the researcher, a secondary coder was randomly assigned 25 ads from the dataset in order to test inter-rater reliability, which stood at 100% across all coding dimensions.
Qualitative analysis has no relation. Content analysis extends the work of Nölke (2018). Nölke, A. I. (2018). Making diversity conform? An intersectional, longitudinal analysis of LGBT-specific mainstream media advertisements. Journal of Homosexuality, 65(2), 224-255.
Understanding the Role of Academic Self-Efficacy, Social Support, and Anxiety in University Students’ Academic Resilience
academic reselience, self-efficacy, social support, anxiety, university students, multiple linear regression
Academic resilience can refer to a student’s response when they are faced with academic hinderances, such as lower than expected grades. Those with a high ability to bounce back from hinderances have previously been shown to perform well during exams and have more positive mental health outcomes. Whilst a number of research studies have attempted to explain the academic resilience of primary and secondary school students, the factors that underpin university students’ academic resilience remain unclear. Therefore, the present study attempts to investigate the extent to which both protective and risk factors underpin university students’ academic resilience. The variables explored include academic self-efficacy; social support; and anxiety. Participants (N = 246) were all university students in the United Kingdom and they completed four self-report measures online via Qualtrics. In line with the hypotheses, a series of zero-order correlations showed a negative association between anxiety and academic resilience, while both academic self-efficacy and social support positively correlated with academic resilience. A multiple linear regression showed that the three predictor variables significantly predicted academic resilience and accounted for 41% of the variance. The findings lend support to a number of other recent studies that have explored characteristics of students’ resilience. Furthermore, the current study applied a context-specific resilience and despite the use of just three predictor variables, the most variance was explained in the present study. Whilst the study does have useful directions for both educators and future research, the use of self-report scales to measure a range of psychological concepts, that individuals tend to see themselves in a favourable manner in, does limit the study’s validity.
Method Participants The sample consisted of 246 participants who were all students at universities in the U.K. After the exclusion of incomplete responses (N = 5); invalid responses to demographic questions (N = 1); and invalid ratings on scales (N = 7), the final sample consisted of 233 participants. There was 165 females and 68 males with ages ranging from 17 to 52 and the mean age was 24.3 years (SD = 4.8). Participants were primarily recruited through Facebook dissertation exchange groups and online participant recruiting software SONA was also used, thus a simple random sample was employed. To ensure the desired number of participants was reached, the chance to opt-in to a raffle draw for five £10 Amazon vouchers was offered to participants. Measures Academic Resilience. Consisting of 30 items and a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree), the Academic Resilience Scale (ARS-30; Cassidy, 2016) was used to measure academic resilience. On this measure, individuals read a short vignette and were asked to imagine themselves in the situation described. The vignette details how a student has recently received a number of poor grades and one fail and has subsequently received critical feedback. The items are presented as statements and these are grouped into three sub-scales (i.e., perseverance, reflecting and adaptive help-seeking, and negative affect), and consist of both positively (e.g., I would try to think of new solutions) and negatively phrased statements (e.g., I would just give up). A summed score of the three sub-scales was used as a measure of academic resilience in the present study and the scores can range from 30 to 150, with a high score reflecting a highly academically resilient individual. Academic Self-Efficacy. Owen and Froman’s (1988) College Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (CASES) was used to measure academic self-efficacy. This measure comprises of 33 items and individuals used a five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (very little) to 5 (quite a lot), to indicate how confident they feel when engaging in a range of behaviours at university (e.g., challenging a lecturer’s opinion in class). As this measure was originally intended for use with American students, certain words and phrases were altered to suit the present study’s sample who were all students in the U.K. For example, ‘professor’ became ‘lecturer’ and ‘math course’ was changed to ‘statistic module’. The scores on the CASES can range from 33 to 165, with a high score being indicative of those who are confident when completing academic tasks. Anxiety. To measure the extent to which individuals worry about their academic performance, the anxiety sub-scale from the Motivation and Engagement Scale (MES; Martin, 2020) was used. This measure consists of four statements (e.g., when exams and assignments are coming up, I worry a lot) and individuals used a seven-point Likert scale to specify how much they agree with each statement, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Scores can range from 4 to 28 and a higher score is indicative of those who tend to worry about their academic performance. Variations of this measure are available for populations in primary, secondary, and higher education from the author. Social Support. The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS; Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farley, 1988) was used to measure individuals’ perceptions of their social support. This measure consists of 12 items (e.g., I can talk about my problems with my friends) and a seven-point Likert scale is used, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The items can be divided into three sources of social support (family, friends, and significant other) and scores are produced for each grouping factor. However, in the present study an overall score of perceived social support was used and scores can range from 12 to 84 – with higher scores indicating greater perceived social support. Procedure A total of four self-report measures was used in the present study and these were presented online using the Qualtrics software. Participants were initially presented with the participant information sheet and consent form – for participants’ ease, both of these were presented on the same page so that when participants were completing the consent form, they could refer to the information sheet to read what their participation would entail. On the following page, demographic questions were collated regarding the participants’ age and sex. Next, the self-report measures were completed by participants. The anxiety, academic resilience, academic self-efficacy, and social support scales were presented in a fixed order and each scale was presented on separate screens. Once participants had completed all four measures, they were directed to the debrief sheet which provided some background to the present study and also included a link to a separate survey, whereby participants could enter the raffle draw by providing their personal details. Although each scale differed in terms of the number of items used, it generally took participants between seven and ten minutes to complete the study. Design and Analysis A correlational design was employed in the present study. A series of zero-order correlations between the dependent variable and each of the predictor variables were initially carried out, followed by a multiple regression analysis. The dependent variable was academic resilience and the predictor variables include academic self-efficacy, social support, and anxiety.
RK Dissertation_August 8, 2020_07.57 inc. res reversed.csv
An Exploratory Analysis of Cortical Hyperexcitability, Anxious Tendencies, and Sleep
Cortical hyperexcitability, Anxiety, Problematic Sleep
Cortical hyperexcitability reflects abnormal or aberrant neural processes and has been associated with visual distortions, discomfort, and hallucinations. Abnormal visual behaviors have previously been found to exist within non-clinical populations. The present study explored the previously implied relationship between anxiety, sleep patterns, and cortical hyperexcitability. Three inventories were used to gather data; the General Anxiety Disorder inventory (GAD-7; Löwe et al., 2008) measured anxiety, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI: Buysse, Reynolds, Monk, Berman, & Kupfer, 1989) measured problematic sleep behaviors, and the Cortical Hyperexcitability index version two (CHi-II; Braithwaite, Marchant, Takahashi, Dewe, & Watson, 2015; Fong, Takahashi, & Braithwaite, 2019) measured cortical hyperexcitability, which is composed of three separate dimensions, or ‘factors’. In order to analyse the three factors, this study utilised three separate multiple regression models (n = 97), and a correlation analysis was used to analyse the relationship between anxiety symptoms and problematic sleep behaviors. Some significant results were found in support of the relationship between anxiety and cortical hyperexcitability. No significant results were found for the relationship between sleep and cortical hyperexcitability. A significant correlation analysis found that there is a significant positive relationship between anxiety and sleep. Collectively, these findings provide additional external validation for the CHi-II as an indirect proxy measure for symptoms of cortical hyperexcitability.
Participants Due to the ongoing pandemic, 34 participants were gathered from Lancaster University student-based Facebook groups. This was an attempt to gather students in a similar manner to common recruitment without the use of in-person interaction. In addition to the gathered 34, 63 additional participants were used from previously collected data, gathered in-person also from Lancaster University students. Overall, 97 participants were gathered for this study. The mean age of participants was 21 (age range 18-33 years), of which 65 (67%) were female. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. Materials Due to the remote nature of the study, each of the surveys used was a digital variant made on Qualtrics. The Cortical Hyperexcitability II (CHi-II) is one of the first verified measures of cortical hyperexcitability. The CHi-II consists of 30 items and takes 20 to 25 minutes to complete. Each item focuses on a specific experience followed by two 7-point Likert scales, to measure participant’s frequency and intensity of each experience (Fong et al., 2019). The CHi-II can be broken down into three separate factors. Factor one, “Heightened Visual Sensitivity and Discomfort”, which consists of 11 items. Factor two, “Aura-Like Visual Hallucinatory Experiences”, which consists of nine items. Factor three, “Distorted Visual Perception,” which consists of six items (see Fong et al., 2019). For each of the three factors, intensity and frequency scores were added for a global score of each factor, for each participant. These global factor scores were then divided by the number of items in each factor, respectively, to provide an average for each participant for each factor. There are four items that are not part of any factor. Although these items were recorded in data collection, they are not used in this analysis. The General Anxiety Disorder assessment (GAD-7) measures anxious tendencies and has been established as conceptually valid and reliable in measuring anxiety in non-clinical populations (Löwe et al., 2008). The GAD7 consists of seven items with a 4-point Likert scale of frequency for responses. All items will be scored (never – 0, almost always – 3) and be added together to form a global anxiety score. A higher score indicates a greater level of anxiety. Total scoring will have a range of 0-21, with set cut offs for mild (5-10), moderate (10-15), and severe anxiety (15+). This inventory should only take about 5 to 10 minutes to complete. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) is a measure of sleep quality and sleep disturbances over the past month, and has demonstrated good psychometric properties with various populations, including non-clinical subjects (Buysse et al., 1989; Grandner et al., 2006; Mollayeva et al., 2015). The PSQI has been found to have high internal validity, high test-retest consistency, and is one of the most direct methods of measuring sleep quality (Mollayeva et al., 2015). The PSQI consists of 19 items measuring: subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, habitual sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, use of sleeping medication, and daytime dysfunction. All 19 items are scored and added to form a conclusory global score (range 0 to 21), a higher score indicating an increased presence of sleep disturbances (Buysse et al., 1989). This inventory should only take about 10 to 15 minutes. Overall, these three surveys should take 35 to 50 minutes to complete. Once each score is coded from the digital surveys, researchers used R Studio to find various predicted relationships or significance between scores. Each participant was given an anonymous participant ID, and a randomised order to complete the three surveys, in order to avoid order effects. Procedure Participants were contacted through email, where they were given participant IDs, in order to anonymise their results, and the order in which they were to complete the three surveys. One link was sent to each participant which contained separate links for each survey. The main link also contained a participant information form, which informed participants about what the study consisted of and what was expected of them, and a consent form. Participants were advised to complete the surveys in an isolated area, free from distractions, and all in one sitting. After the three main surveys were completed the participants received a debrief form. Analysis To uncover significant positive relationships between the two variables, sleep and anxiety, and cortical excitability, three separate multiple regression models were conducted. Three regression models were conducted separately by the “visreg,” “tidyverse,” “pwr,” and “gvlma” packages installed under the R statistical program (version 3.6.1, R Development Core Team, 2019; see Champely, 2020; Breheny & Burchett, 2017; Pena & Slate, 2019; Wickham et al., 2019). For the multiple regressions, the independent variables, or ‘predictor variables’, used for each were the universal sleep (PSQI) and anxiety (GAD-7) scores. For the dependent variables, each of the three factors of the CHi-II were used, respectively. In addition, a correlation analysis was used to determine if there was a significant relationship between the GAD-7 and PSQI scores in order to validate the use of this particular sample. Particularly, this relationship should be significant as found by previous studies, a non-significant result would show that this particular sample is problematic. Finally, to ensure no major deviations occurred between the two separately-collected groups of participants, descriptive statistics of both groups were gathered and a T-test analysis of all variables were conducted.
The Impact of Sleep Patterns on Emotion Regulation in Taiwanese Adolescents
sleep patterns, circadian types, morningness-eveningness, on/off-peak time, emotion regulation, cognitive control, adolescents
Emotion regulation has been shown in a number of studies to be related to sleep, which often suggested that good sleep quality leads to better emotion regulation. However, research which has empirically documented the link between individuals’ specific sleep patterns/circadian types and emotion regulation among adolescents is scant. Therefore, the aim of this study attempts to explore whether there is an interaction between circadian types and the corresponding peak time on emotion regulation. Participants were 204 boys and 148 girls, who were from 13 to 16 years of age. The present study involved three questionnaires and two modified emotional Stroop tasks, including Facial-Emotional Stroop task and Lexical-Emotional Stroop task, as the assessment of emotion regulation. The analysis of the questionnaires and experiments was conducted through a series of multivariate ANOVA analyses in order to indicate whether there is a main effect of two independent variables or interactions on two emotion regulation. The results showed three main findings. Firstly, ‘morning people’ committed more error on facial tasks than ‘evening people’. Secondly, participants who attended the tasks in the afternoon had faster reaction times on Lexical task than who were tested in the morning. Thirdly, the interaction between circadian types and the corresponding peak time only showed in the evening group. To sum up, this study might be of importance in explaining the relationship between sleep patterns and emotion regulation in adolescents. Nevertheless, further studies for adolescents in investigating circadian types in relation to emotion regulation are needed.
Materials Each participant was asked to complete three online questionnaires about sleep and mood as well as two experimental tasks about emotion regulation. Three questionnaires had been translated into a Chinese version and inspected by a native Chinese-speaking professor in the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University. Sleep Measures. Circadian Types Questionnaire. Participants were given a Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) (Horne & Östberg, 1976) to assess when their biological clock can achieve peak alertness, which indicates the better timing for people to behave more efficiently in their work and cognitive, behavioural and emotional functioning (see Appendix A). Three groups were be categorized based on the MEQ score: score > 58 for the morning type, 42 < score < 58 for the Intermediate type and score < 42 for the evening type. Sleep Quality Questionnaire. To assess whether participants have sleep dysfunction, participants were also asked to fill out the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) (Buysse, Reynolds, Monk, Berman & Kupfer, 1989), which elicited information concerning their sleep quality (see Appendix B). The higher score the participants gain, the poorer sleep quality they have. This score can be used to examine whether people's sleep quality can influence their emotion regulation ability. Mood Measurements. Emotional Problems Questionnaire. Participants needed to fill out the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) (Antony, Bieling, Cox, Enns & Swinson, 1998), which is a self-reported measure to record their mood during over one recent week (see Appendix C). There were three dimensions of negative mood in this questionnaire, including depression, anxiety and stress. Each dimension had an independent score, with a higher score indicating more emotional problems. In this study, three sub-scores were added together to produce a composite measure of emotional difficulties. Emotion Regulation. In addition to the questionnaires, participants were requested to complete two modified “Emotional Stroop Tasks”, including the Lexical-Emotional Stroop Task and the Facial-Emotional Stroop Task, as the assessment of their cognitive control in response to emotional stimuli (Isaac, Vrijsen, Eling, van Oostrom, Speckens & Becker, 2012). Lexical-Emotional Stroop Task. The experiment stimuli consisted of three kinds of emotional words, namely positive, negative and neutral words, each of which had five presentative words (see Table 1), and each word was printed in four colours (blue, green, red and yellow). In order to assess the emotion regulation ability, participants were asked to classify the colour by pressing a different button as fast as they can. For example, when participants see a blue or green word they have to press “Q”, whereas when they see a red or yellow word they have to press “P”. Before presenting the stimulus, a fixpoint lasted 200 ms and was followed by the presented stimulus, which lasted 2000ms to make sure that participants had enough time to react. All emotional-colour words were randomly presented during this task. After participants press the key, feedback showed whether the response was correct, which lasted 500 ms (see Figure 1). Before the 30 real trials, there was a clear instruction about this task and then each participant had six trials for practise to ensure that they indeed understood how to operate this task. All stimuli were translated into Chinese and appeared in font DFKai_SB and in font size 96. The projected stimuli came out on the computer screen and colour words appeared against a black background. Facial-Emotional Stroop Task. A total number of stimulus was 160 emotional faces which were composed of 10 different identities (5 males and 5 females) x 4 emotions (happy, neutral, angry and sad) x 4 Stroop colours (blue, green, red and yellow) (see Figure 2). Emotional faces were selected from Taiwan Corpora of Chinese emotions and relevant psychophysiological data (Chen, Zhou & Zeng, 2013). It could reduce the cultural difference effectively when Taiwanese participants took the Facial-Emotional Stroop task. As the same as the execution in the Lexical-Emotional Stroop task, participants were also requested to do colour classification by pressing different buttons as fast as they can. For instance, when participants see a blue or green facial expression, they have to press “A”, whereas when they see a red or yellow emotional face they have to press “L”. Before stimulus appeared, a fixpoint showed and lasted 200 ms, which was then followed by the presented stimulus, which lasted 2000ms, to ensure that participants had enough time to respond the stimuli. The Stroop trials consisted of 30 real trials and were randomized per participant. Participants had six extra trials to practice as well before the real trials. Within the trials, participants saw feedback to tell them whether the response was correct for the last trial, which lasted 500 ms (see Figure 3). All facial stimuli were cropped, free from hair or other external accessories that could prevent any distractions during the task. The projected stimuli showed on the computer screen and the coloured facial expression appeared against a black background. Both Lexical and Facial stimulus presentation and response collection were programmed by using PsyToolkit on the website (Stoet, 2010) (see Appendix D and E) and run on Windows computers. Table 1 Stimuli from the Lexical-Emotional Stroop Task Positive Neutral Negative 快樂 (Happy) 被愛 (Beloved) 滿足 (Satisfaction) 自豪 (Pride) 舒服 (Comfort) 無聊 (Boredom) 平靜 (Calmness) 驚訝 (Surprise) 疑惑 (Confusion) 害羞 (Shyness) 生氣 (Anger) 焦慮 (Anxiety) 厭惡 (Disgust) 恐懼 (Fear) 悲傷 (Sadness) Figure 1. The diagram of Lexical-Emotional Stroop Task. In this example, the stimulus is a word of Blue Happy. Figure 2. Sample happy male stimuli used from the Facial-Emotional Stroop Task. Figure 3. The diagram of Facial-Emotional Stroop Task. In this example, the stimulus is a male’s face of Blue Happy. Procedure This study was approved by the director of the Counselling Department in Mingder High school and combined with the counselling curriculum. All students’ parents were provided with the information sheets (see Appendix F) about this study and an opt-out consent form (see Appendix G) one week prior to it. Only parents who did not want their child to participate in this study needed to sign and return the opt-out consent form. However, no opt-out consent form was returned. Participants were tested in a computer lab, with the researcher and their counselling teacher present. In order to balance the number of classes with the time of test, half of the classes per grade were tested in the morning (8 a.m. to 9 a.m. or 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.), and the others were tested in the afternoon (2 p.m. to 3 p.m. or 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.) (see Table 2). The duration of participation lasted around 45 minutes. Before the beginning of the study, the research topic and aims were presented on each computer screen. Participants were provided an opportunity to ask questions, and then the researcher asked whether anyone was not willing to attend this study. None of the participants were blind as to the aim of this study. Then, participants were given the links to the experiments and questionnaires; they needed to key the links onto the browser and start the study. In order to effectively use their time, participants were requested firstly to complete two Emotional Stroop tasks. Following the experiments, participants were instructed to fill out three questionnaires.
The Construction of Female Sexual Agency in Contemporary Advertising: Empowerment or Objectification?
media, advertising, psychology, sociology, psycho-social, sexualisation, objectification, empowerment, sexual empowerment gender, me too, feminism, post feminism, neoliberalism
Building on the work of Gill (2008) on postfeminist female gender representation in advertising, more specifically the shift from representing women as sexual objects to representing women as active sexual subjects, this work presents an exploration of young adults’ constructions and depictions of contemporary sexualised representations of women; of whether the new construction of female sexual agency is seen as empowering as opposed to objectifying. Furthermore, this analysis is concerned with the susceptibility of young audiences to advertising’s attempts to integrate neoliberal/postfeminist ideas in their communication strategies. A tangent question to this research is an exploration of contemporary audiences’ awareness of recent movements against sexual harassment (MeToo); of potential implications these may have in the construction of the new femininity. The study consisted of both same-sex (male, female) focus groups and mixed-gender focus groups in order to ensure complementarity of insights. Findings suggest thatthere is no simple negotiation between empowerment and objectification. Female sexual agency cannot be denied, nor can women be understood as completely free agents, living independent of any external influence or constraint. Female empowerment in advertising must not limit female gender representation/empowerment to women’s sexuality and should distance itself from its constant rapport with the male as female empowerment, also femininity, must be understood and represented much more broadly.
advertising must not limit female gender representation/empowerment to women’s sexuality and should distance itself from its constant rapport with the male as female empowerment, also femininity, must be understood and represented much more broadly. Methods Section:This study investigates the construction of female sexual agency in advertising. More specifically, it contributes to existing feminist post-structuralist literature, critique and debates around representations of gender in media culture as it explores young adults’ perceptions of female gender representations in advertisements that depict women sexually. Research DesignA phenomenological approach was adopted in this research as participants were invited to express their views on specific advertising stimuli, to discover and ascribe meaning to cultural depictions of female sexuality. Focus groups were conducted with five (male), six (mixed) and seven (female) participants who engaged in a semi-structured discussion. Participants expressed their thoughts in relation to the topic of research as consisting of various pre-established themes. SamplingThe sample consisted of 18 participants of which nine were females and nine were males. All participants identify as undergraduate or postgraduate students at Lancaster University, aged 20-27 years old. Participants were recruited through convenience sampling. Despite being current residents of Lancaster, they originate from different countries (England, Bulgaria, Lithuania, U.S., China, France, Andorra, and Greece). Research ProceduresMaterialsParticipants were provided with an information sheet and consent form before the focus group. The information sheet provided participants with information about the study, the scope of research, their confidentiality and anonymity, and also the opportunityto further enquire about the study. Focus groups discussion were recorded via Iphone Voice Memo recorder. The recordings were removed from the researcher’s Iphone and stored on the researcher’s password protected laptop. Participants were given a debrief sheet as soon as the focus group and recording ended. AdvertisementsA wide range of contemporary advertisements (See Appendix E) were spontaneously selected from targeted advertising in the UK, used as stimuli and shown chronologically to participants during the focus groups so they could discuss their opinions of how female sexual agency has been depicted for the past decade. Specific advertisements were selected based on the way they depict women sexually –as a means of empowerment of women as independent sexual agents. 1.Coco Mademoiselle (2011)was selected for this discussion as it depicts a new form of female sexual agency where the woman is presented as playful and sensual and not overtly sexual. During the focus groups, I sought to understandwhether the protagonist wasperceivedas strong and independent; as playful and sensual as opposed to overtly sexual. Advertisement URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRV-2_Un-kk2.Dior Poison Girl (2016) was selected as discussion stimuli becauseit received numerous complaints for being misogynist, objectifying and denigrating of women as the protagonist is seen as a sexual object of male gaze and desire. The brand defended themselves by stating that instead of acting promiscuously, the girl rejected the man which can be viewed as empowering to women. In the focus group discussion, I sought to establish whether this ‘midriff’ discourse of sexuality is seen as empowering or objectifying.Advertisement URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re4icu2NXO83.Dior J’adore (2016) presents Charlize Theron as the ‘absolute femininity icon’ as she is celebrating her union with the water, the earth, the sun, and herself; basking in water and sunlight while posing sensually. This ‘absolute femininity’ is ultimately promised through the divine Dior fragrance which elevates the female to the status of goddess. In my focus groups, I soughtto understand whether this wasperceived as a relevant depiction of the sexually empowered woman; whether the absolute femininity wascaptured by the brand in their advertisement or it takes more than a sparkly dress and shots of an actress caressing herself in anoasis.Advertisement URL:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaJ-TE1xZVA4.The Calvin Klein Fall campaign (2016)-edgy, sexual, youth and celebrity charged–was also selected. Many expressed their outrage as they considered it offensive, exploitative, objectifying and sexist while highly targeting young audiences. While objectors may look at it as another case of women being sexualised against their will, internet generations could embrace the hashtag language, therawstyleofthe photos and videos, the celebrities featured and their non-conformist styles. In the focus groups, I explored participants’ perceptions of this sexually charged campaign, its construction of female sexuality, and whether it is authentic and empowering. Advertisement URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMRbSI6QAWs 5.Another short advertisement from the same campaign was shown in order to explore participants’ perceptions of the way model Kate Moss was depicted in the Calvin Klein Campaign (2016) -through highly explicit, vulgar, yet censored, claims she makes aboutmen and romantic love.Advertisement URL:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C-ea6J9YdY6.After discussing recent international movements against sexual harassment, the last and most recent adverts were shown with the scope of exploring participants’ understanding of ‘the new femininity’ as depicted in advertising. Shimmer in the Dark by Jimmy Choo (2017) was selected as it showed model Cara Delevingne, walking the streets at night, scantily clad, being catcalled. Unlike usual catcalling, consisting of offensive sexual remarks, the protagonist received compliments on her shoes. While this was considered highly idealistic by many, it was primarily considered ‘tone-deaf’ to the uncomfortable reality of sexual harassment experienced by many. I sought to ask participants whether they see this as empowering, whether they consider it idealistic or rather insensitive to the women’s general sentiment; whether a woman can dress herself that way and feel safe and empowered.Advertisement URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPrRRgagQg87.The focus groups ended with a discussion of the most recent Coco Mademoiselle (2018)advert, another potential example of the new femininity. After previously watching Coco Mademoiselle (2011), it was worth looking at their most recent portrayal of the same female —Kiera Knightley —as playfully seductive but even more youthful, enigmatic and unapologetic. She parties, flirts and despite a lot being left to the imagination, she eventually leaves the man. In focus group discussions, I sought to explore whether this carefree, adventurous persona wasperceived as the new femininity; asempowering or not. Advertisement URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkKROkzYdXsInterview ScheduleA discussion guide (See Appendix D) was created in order to guide and time the focus group discussions. The discussion guide consisted of several pre-established themes and related questions so that the discussion, despite being informal, maintained its intended focus. Additional questions were asked by both the researcher and the participants in order to clarify or lead the discussion. Snacks and refreshments were used as incentives and provided to all groups. There were three focus groups: a male group with five males, a mixed one with four males and two females, and a female group with 7 females. Each focus group, lasting approximately 120-minute-long, was conducted at Lancaster University. Due to the influence of gender composition of a group on the nature of participants'interaction and thequality of the data, this study has incorporated both same-sex (male, female) groups and onemixed-gender group(male and female) in order to obtaincomplementaryinsights (Stewart, Shamdasani & Rook, 2007).Ethical ConsiderationsThis research was designed to align with by the Lancaster University Ethics Committee/departmental ethical standards. Participants gave informed consent and were reassured confidentiality and anonymity. Their data was anonymised by replacing their names with initials representative of their gender and orderly numeration. They were informed of their permanent right to withdraw from the study and provided with all the necessary documents (information sheet, consent form, debrief). Research data and findings were only be accessed by the researcher and the supervisor. Data Analysis ProcedureA six-stage thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to identify, analyse, and report reoccurring patterns (themes) within the data. The analysis can be described as an orderly process consisting of the following stages: familiarisation with the data, generating initial codes, discovering themes within the codes, reviewing and defining them, and the eventual writing of the analysis and study findings (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
The Relationship Between Perspective-taking, Lie Detection and Self-construal Among Taiwanese
“Theory of Mind” (ToM) refers to an ability, which allows us to understand what other people may believe, think, know, feel. Also, ToM is considered to play an essential role in social interaction. Evidence suggests that improved ability to understand others’ mental states through training can also improve our ability to generate lies and understand what kind of situations people may lie. In addition, previous studies point that there are differences in lie-telling and perspective-taking between individualistic and collectivist cultures. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate whether there is a relationship between the perspective-taking, lie detection and self-construal (individualism and collectivism). Data were collected from 40 typically developed adults in Taiwan (M = 23.98, SD = 2.99). Each participant was asked to complete three computer-based tasks, namely a perspective-taking task; a lie detection task, and a questionnaire of Auckland Individualism and Collectivism scale (AICS). The result showed that there is no relationship between the ability of perspective-taking and lie detection. Also, the people scored higher individualism will show better performance on pointing out truths, but worse on detecting lies. It might relate to the “truth bias”, which means that people will typically assume or believe others are telling truths rather than lies, especially distinguishing on individualists. However, because cultural effects such as language differences and self-construal might affect individuals’ performances on instances of ToM use, the current study suggests that people might need to use different cues to detect lies in a truth-versus-lie judgment between different cultures.
Participants Data were collected from 40 typically developing adults from an opportunity sample in Taiwan. The entire group was composed of 20 males and 20 females between the ages of 18 and 30 (M = 23.98, SD = 2.99). All participants stated that they were Taiwanese, speaking Chinese/Taiwanese Mandarin as their first language, with normal vision or vision which had been corrected to normal. All of the participants had not been diagnosed with any neurological or developmental disorders. The data of participant No.40 was excluded from analyses because the participant only responded with the same positive answer to each question in the lie detection task. The original minimum required sample size was 44, which was determined a priori by using G*Power software. This number was calculated based on assuming a medium effect size of 0.4 and a reasonable power of 0.8. However, 40 was considered as a more suitable sample size, as the experiment consisted of two orders for the perspective-taking task, four sub-sets of the lie detection task and a questionnaire. In order to counterbalance stimuli presentation, the target sample was set to 40, as it is a multiple of eight (two times four times one); it is also the closest number to 44. All participants had been given the consent form and the information sheet to understand the contents of the project before the tests began. Furthermore, this project was approved by the ethics process from the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University. Design and Procedure Each participant was asked to complete three computer-based tasks, namely, the perspective taking task, the lie detection task, and a questionnaire of the Auckland Individualism and Collectivism Scale (AICS). All of the tasks were translated or designed in the participants’ first language, in this case, Chinese/Taiwanese Mandarin. All of the tasks were presented on a laptop and participants responded by using the computer mouse. The full session took around an hour in total. Perspective-taking Task The original perspective-taking task was called the “director task”, which can be traced back to the studies from Keysar et al. (2000) and Apperly et al. (2010). The present study employed a similar version of the director task which was presented in the study from Wang et al. (2016). In the instruction of the perspective-taking task, participants were given a demonstration of how to use a computer mouse to select and move the object. Later, the experimenter explained to participants that the speaker/director was standing behind the shelf and would not be able to see the objects in the blocked slots. It was impossible for the speaker/director to ask participants to move the object which was in the blocked slot (see Figure 1). Participants were asked to consider the speaker/director’s perspective and respond as quickly and accurately as possible. Participants had a chance to practice (6 trials) and ask questions before the start of the task. The task was divided into four blocks, and participants were allowed to take breaks between each block. There were a total 128 trials in the task, 16 of which corresponded to the experimental trials; the other 16 corresponded to the control trials and the rest were fillers. The fillers were regarded as a baseline measure for the non-perspective taking aspect of the task, such as understanding and identifying the speaker/director’s instructions. In 16 of the experimental trials, there were differences between the speaker/director’s description and the participants’ point of view. In contrast, the control trials provided a close match in terms of visual and audio stimuli, but the control trials did not impose the demand to perspective-taking. For example, as can be seen in the right-hand picture in Figure 1, if the speaker/director ask participants to move the “bigger” balloon to take the speaker/director’s perspective, participants should move the yellow balloon rather than the pink one, which was the bigger balloon from the participants’ own perspective. By the end of the task, only the number of egocentric errors committed on experimental trials were counted; the errors reflect failure to account for the director’s perspective. Figure 1. Left: An example of the control trials. Right: An example of the experimental trials. Lie Detection Task Participants were asked to watch 16 videos (each video lasting around 15~45 seconds). The videos were recorded by four volunteer models from Lancaster University. All models were Taiwanese and spoke Chinese/Taiwanese Mandarin as their first language. Each model recorded 16 videos in total which comprised four stories. Each story contained to two truths and two lies, from a first person and a third person perspective for each story (there are four versions of each story). For the story contents, there were several elements that storytellers were required to include in their stories (see Appendix A). In addition, the storytellers were given two designated elements to lie about in the lie stories. There was a total of 64 videos. The videos were evenly and pseudo-randomly divided into four lists. For example, participants never watched two videos of the same storylines containing lies and told from a same perspective by different storytellers in one list. Therefore, each list contained 16 unique videos. Participants watched videos from one of the lists, and at the end of each video, they were asked to identify whether they thought that the storytellers were telling a truth or a lie. To make sure the participants would concentrate on watching videos rather than just guess the answers, participants were asked a question about an aspect of each video. The questions were used as inclusion criteria, whereby only correct responses of the aspects were included in the data analysis. Auckland Individualism and Collectivism Scale (AICS) The third test used was the Auckland Individualism and Collectivism scale (AICS), which was developed by Shulruf, Hattie and Dixon (2007) and was used to measure individuals’ self-construal, namely, individualism and collectivism. The questionnaire consists of 30 questions (see Appendix B and C), which includes three dimensions of individualism and two dimensions of collectivism. For individualism, the scale consists of 12 items and is divided into three dimensions, namely, responsibility, uniqueness, and competitiveness. For collectivism, the scale consists of 8 items, and two dimensions are referred to: advice and harmony. Each of the dimensions was composed of four items. The questionnaire was presented in an online form, and participants were asked to complete it after they had finished the lie detection task. The response to each question was scored using a six-point likert scale from 0 (Never) to 5 (Always). The maximum score in the individualism trial was 60, and the maximum score in the collectivism trial was 40. A higher score on each of the trials indicated that an individual was more inclined to individualism or collectivism. The AICS questionnaire has been shown to work in different cultures such as the United Kingdom, China, Romania and Italy (Bradford et al., 2018; Ewerlin, 2013). This means that this questionnaire can be used as a feasible measure in both individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Previous studies have mentioned that an individual can simultaneously show tendencies towards both individualism and collectivism; in other words, an individual may be able to achieve a high or low score on both subscales (Bradford et al., 2018; Shulruf et al., 2011). With this in mind, the analysis of the current study did not divide participants into two groups for individualism and collectivism. Instead, this study used the AICS questionnaire to obtain participants’ scores in individualism and collectivism, and to observe the relationship between individuals' self-construal and their ability to detect lies.
An Investigation into the Effects of Temporary Visual Deprivation on Cortical Hyperexcitability, and Links with Multisensory Integration
Cortical hyperexcitability, pattern glare, sensory hallucinations, temporary visual deprivation, migraine with aura
Cortical hyperexcitability is a state of highly increased neuronal activity in the brain. The current research is a novel investigation into the effects of short term temporary visual deprivation on cortical hyperexcitability and resultant aberrant visual experiences in non-migraineurs, migraine with aura, and migraine only participants. This research also assesses the link between cortical hyperexcitability and its effects on aberrant experiences across all senses; vision, audition, gustation, olfaction, and bodily sensations. Forty-three participants, including three migraine aura sufferers and three migraine only sufferers, completed the pattern glare test to induce and measure state-based cortical hyperexcitability under normal and temporary visual deprivation conditions, along with two questionnaire measures; the Cortical Hyperexcitability Index (version II; CHi-II), measuring trait-based cortical hyperexcitability; and the Multi-Modality Unusual Sensory Experiences Questionnaire, assessing aberrant experiences across senses. Results indicated no effect of temporary visual deprivation on cortical hyperexcitability, although migraine aura participants reported higher cortical hyperexcitability levels overall compared to migraine only and non-migraineurs. State-based pattern glare was not associated with unusual experiences in senses aside from olfactory, however the trait-based CHi-II was strongly correlated with unusual auditory, gustatory, and bodily sensations. Potential methodological and theoretical reasons for these results are discussed, alongside improvements and new directions for future research.
Participants Forty-three participants took part in this study, consisting of 28 females and 15 males. All participants were students at Lancaster University with a mean age of 22.5 years, ranging from 19 to 36 years (SD=2.92, SE=0.45). Twenty-two participants were native English speakers, and 21 spoke English as their second language. Of these participants, three self-reported suffering with migraine only (MO) and three with migraine with aura (MA). Participants were recruited using opportunity sampling, and all gave fully informed consent before completing the experiment. Prior to participation, all participants were screened to ensure they did not suffer with any form of epilepsy, seizures of an unknown origin, and that they had not recently undergone brain or eye surgery. As no subjects reported these experiences, no participants were excluded on this basis. One participant reported suffering with micropsia; a visual impairment causing distortion of object size, so was removed from future analyses. All remaining participants reported normal or corrected to normal vision (i.e. through aid of glasses or contact lenses). Two participants were later removed from analysis for unusual scores on the baseline pattern glare task measure, explained in the results section. As such, the final sample size was 40 (age: M=22.53, SD=3.02, SE=0.48). Materials and Procedure Pattern glare task. Participants completed the pattern glare task under two conditions; blindfold or non-blindfold, creating a within-subjects design. Half completed the blindfold condition first, followed by the non-blindfold condition, with the other half completing the non-blindfold condition followed by the blindfold condition. The pattern glare task utilised three black and white striped grating patterns. The low frequency grating, calculated to have a spatial frequency of 0.5 cycles per degree (cpd; Figure 1), and the high frequency grating of 5.8cpd (Figure 2) acted as baseline measures. The medium frequency was the critical triggering stimuli, with a grating of 2.5cpd (Figure 3). Stimuli measured 17.5cm by 13.5cm each and were presented on paper. They were placed on the wall at eye level 50cm from the participant, resulting in a visual angle of 15.4°. Participants completed two trials; blindfold and non-blindfold. In the non-blindfold trial, participants were presented the three striped gratings, one at a time. Participants were asked to look at the grating for fifteen seconds, focusing on a central fixation point. If they found stimuli too aversive to view for the full time, they could inform the researcher, who would promptly remove the stimuli. There were 10 second intervals between presentations of gratings to allow the researcher to prepare the next stimulus. All stimuli were presented in a randomised order, to avoid order and carryover effects confounding results. After viewing each grating, participants completed a questionnaire consisting of seventeen items (Appendix A) asking about any visual distortions and discomforts experienced whilst viewing the stimuli, such as “shadowy shapes”, “colour distortions”, and “illusory stripes”. These are termed Associated Visual Distortions (AVDs). Each question was answered using a 7-point Likert scale assessing the intensity of each AVD experienced (0 = “not at all”, 6 = “extremely”). Responses were used to calculate a pattern glare score; a measure of state-based cortical hyperexcitability triggered by the stimuli. The blindfold condition followed a similar procedure, the only difference being that participants were required to wear a blackout blindfold for five minutes at the start of the trial before viewing only the medium and high frequency stimuli and answering the questionnaire as in the non-blindfold condition. Whilst conducting the experiment, laboratory light conditions were controlled with blackout blinds covering all windows and relying on internal lighting controlled by the researcher. This prevented differences in intensity of light affecting how participants responded to the stimuli, particularly after removing the blindfold. Each pattern glare trial took approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. Additional questionnaire measures were carried out between the two pattern glare task trials, allowing a washout period for participants’ eyes to recover between viewings of uncomfortable stimuli, and excitability levels to return to normal. The full experiment took approximately 40 minutes to complete. Figure 1. Stimuli with low frequency grating (0.5 cycles per degree) for pattern glare task. Figure 2. Stimuli with high frequency grating (5.8 cycles per degree) for pattern glare task. Figure 3. Stimuli with medium frequency grating (2.5 cycles per degree) for pattern glare task. Questionnaire measures. Participants were asked to complete two different questionnaire measures; the Cortical Hyperexcitability Index version II (CHi-II; Fong et al., under review), and the Multi-Modality Unusual Sensory Experiences Questionnaire (MUSEQ; Mitchell et al., 2017). Cortical Hyperexcitability Index version II (CHi-II). The CHi-II (Appendix B) is a trait-based proxy measure for assessing experiences thought to reflect cortical hyperexcitability. Measurements from the original CHi questionnaire (Braithwaite, Marchant, Takahashi, Dewe, & Watson, 2015) correlate with neurological measures of cortical hyperexcitability (Braithwaite, Mevorach, & Takahashi, 2015), suggesting CHi accurately and reliably measures cortical hyperexcitability. The updated version (CHi-II) consists of 30 questions. Each item used a seven-point Likert response scale to rate participants’ unusual visual experiences in terms of frequency (0 = “never”, 6 = “all the time”) and intensity (0 = “not at all”, 6 = “extremely intense”). Experiences examined fall under three factors; Heightened Visual Sensitivity and Discomfort (HVSD), for example “irritation from indoor lights”; Aura-Like Hallucinatory Experiences (AHE), such as “flashes of moving shapes”; and Distorted Visual Perception, including “everyday objects look different”. Frequency and intensity scores for each question were added, making a maximum of twelve. The totals for each of the 30 items were summed to give a score of cortical hyperexcitability for each participant, with a maximum score of 360. Multi-Modality Unusual Sensory Experiences Questionnaire (MUSEQ). The recently devised MUSEQ (Appendix C) measures unusual sensory experiences across six human senses: auditory, visual, olfactory, gustatory, bodily sensations, and sensed presence of others. Within each factor, questions range from broad sensory tricks (i.e. “my eyes have played tricks on me”) to hallucinatory experiences (i.e. “I have heard a person’s voice and found that no-one was there”), encompassing a range of more common to more unusual perceptual experiences. Questions used five-point Likert scales (0 = “never; never happened”, 4 = “frequently; at least monthly”). As one item in the original MUSEQ was highly similar to an item in CHi-II, this was removed from the present version of MUSEQ used in the current study, in order to avoid conflation of results when comparing the two questionnaires. Ethics statement This research was ethically approved by the Departmental Ethics Committee at Lancaster University’s Department of Psychology on 11/05/2018.
School Dropout in Developing Countries: The Case of Indigenous Communities in Guatemala
Qualitative Semi-structured interviews Thematic Analyses
Education is a basic right which any person should have the opportunity to access. However, around 120 million children worldwide are as yet uneducated. A qualitative study was conducted in an indigenous community in rural Guatemala in order to identify the key factors that discourage students to continue from primary to secondary school education. The participants of the study were divided into two groups depending on whether they were students, parents of students or teachers at the rural school. Results suggested that factors of different natures (structural, political and cultural) overlap each other. The factors related to school dropout were related to demography, health, lack of economic resources and Government support, lack of social support and lack of intrinsic motivation to graduate from formal education. In contrast, protection factors to remain at school were related to future aspirations and social mobility, parental support and economic support.
Data Collection Data was collected using qualitative, semi-structured interviews to facilitate the discovery of new conceptual and theoretical knowledge (Power & Alison, 2017) about the factors that take place in the process regarding the decision of remaining or disengaging from education. This method has been used regularly by researchers who seek to generate an understanding of real-world psychology (Crandall, Klein, & Hoffman, 2006; Klein & Militello, 2004). The interview sought to achieve a better understanding of the reality that the people interviewed are living through analysing their personal experience. The researcher who conducted these interviews spent 2 weeks prior to data collection immersing herself in the work environment of the school in the rural area of Guatemala, reading previous literature on the topic, attending school and classes with the children and interacting with teachers, students and families in order to establish a working relationship with each group. Procedure Each interview lasted approximately half an hour, depending on the participants will, in order to prevent participant exhaustion (M = 35). The interview stopped if the participant was perceived to be uncomfortable. Participants were sat in a quiet location and interviewed on a mobile phone. Interviews were semi-structured and included topics such as the characteristic of the educational system, the practices and processes that appear as determinants of the decision for permanently remaining or disengaging from the formal educational process, and personal situations or of the people that the participants knew. Interviews were transferred to a computer and anonymously transcribed, with all identifiable details (e.g., names, locations) removed, for its analysis. Thematic analysis was conducted in order to understand the subjective experience of the participants as the paramount object of the study throughout the organization and reach description of the data set. Data Analyses Analyses conducted in the interpretation of the results were thematic analysis, as through its theoretical freedom, it provides a flexible and useful research tool, which can potentially provide a rich and detailed, yet complex, account of data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Preliminary analyses were conducted of the notes that were taken during the interview immediately following each one of them. This was to develop an early understanding of the types of challenges identified by participants (Power & Alison, 2017). Analyses continued during interview transcription by keeping notes on the key themes that emerged during transcription. After the transcription of the interviews, thematic analyses were conducted on the data using NVIVO. Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data, minimally organising and describing the data set in (rich) detail (Braun & Clarke, 2006). According to Braun and Clarke (2006), thematic analyses involved six phases: (a) familiarization with the data through transcription and rereading of the text; (b) generation of initial codes across the data set; (c) collation of codes into themes that captured something important of the data in relation of the research question, and represents some level of patterned within the data set; (d) revision of themes and refinement of categories; (e) definition and naming of themes of the overall story that the data tells; and (f) production of a detailed scholarly report of analyses. Following the example of Power and Alison (2017), it is important to mention that the themes were not quantified. The reasons for this was that the interview style was semi-structured, meaning that not all participants were asked the same questions as prompts were used to probe discussion rather than lead it (i.e., just because the participant did not perceive lack of parental support as an issue in their description of the situations that may lead to students to disengage school, it does not mean that they do not perceive it as a helping factor to remain. Analyses were conducted by the primary researcher, who discussed coding with her supervisor to reach mutual agreement and consensus.
Perception of sounds sequences: predictions for behavioural measurements generated with a computational model of auditory cortex
Cartesian state space difference calculations
Behavioural and neuroscientific research into sound perception shows that our auditory system is able to represent the temporal structure of sounds over a wide range of time windows – a process labelled as temporal binding. Recent computational modelling work suggests that synaptic depression in auditory cortex, responsible for adaptation of neural responses to repeated stimuli, is also the memory mechanism which allows for temporal structure of sounds to be represented. This project aimed to generate behavioural predictions of this explanation of temporal binding. Simulations examined how the cortex is able to discriminate between sound sequences differing from each other in terms of the timing, amplitude, and frequency of the sequence elements. Along with the temporal length of the sequences, the lifetime of neural adaptation was manipulated. The results predict that the thresholds for discriminating sound sequences should be tuned to a given sequence duration. These findings are discussed in light of the previous research on how the dynamics and anatomical structures within the auditory cortex may facilitate neural adaptation.
The current project investigated the processing of sound sequences by applying a computational model of the auditory cortex described in more detail in the study by May and Tiitinen (2013). The coding of the experiment, including stimulus design and experimental design, along with data analysis all took place in MATLAB. Model structure and dynamics Structure. The model is made up of 14 brain areas, with 13 cortical areas that include three core, eight belt and two parabelt areas of the auditory cortex, and one sub-cortical area simulating the thalamus. Each area is made up of 16 computational units representing cortical columns, with each column comprising one excitatory (pyramidal) and one inhibitory population of neurons. Altogether, this meant that there are 224 columns within the model. There are three levels of structural connections, namely interaction within columns, interaction between columns and interactions between the different cortical areas. Structural connections are expressed through connection matrices that describe synaptic connections between the excitatory populations (Wee), from inhibitory to excitatory populations (Wei), and from excitatory to inhibitory populations (Wie). Intra-column connections are assumed to be the strongest, with the synaptic weight for the within-column excitatory feedback (i.e., the diagonal values of Wee ) being set to 6, and the within-column weight values of Wei and Wie (inter-neuron connections targeting excitatory and inhibitory cells respectively) being set to 3.5. The excitatory population of each column made lateral connections to the excitatory populations of neighboring columns within the area. These connections extended to a distance of two columns on either side. Similarly, the excitatory population connected to neighboring inhibitory populations across a distance of five columns, with these connections accounting for lateral inhibition (see Figure 1). In both cases, there was a Gaussian drop off of the weight strength. Also, there was a stochastic element to the weights, with a 10% random jitter added to them. These procedures represent modifications in relation to the original model of May & Tiitinen (2013) and are described in Hajizadeh, Matysiak, May, König (in preparation). Connections made by the inhibitory population were assumed to be local, and so targeted only the excitatory population in the same column (see Figure 1). Inter-area connections were modelled from anatomical research in primates (Kaas and Hackett, 2000) and were contained entirely in Wee. The tonotopically organized afferent input Iaff targeted the thalamus, where each column functioned as a frequency channel to spectrally organize the input. The thalamus was connected to the three core areas. These were interconnected with the eight belt areas, and the eight belt areas were subsequently interconnected with two parabelt areas. The model had a serial structure, with no direct connections between the core and the parabelt (see Figure 2). Core and belt connections only occurred between neighboring areas, resulting in multiple core-belt-parabelt streams that had roughly a rostral and caudal subdivision (De la Moethe, Blumell, Kajikawa & Hackett, 2006). Connections between the areas were topographic, with each inter-area sub-division of Wee being characterized by most connections occurring near the diagonal, with a Gaussian drop-off in weight strength (as explained in Hajizadeh et al., in preparation). Dynamics. The dynamical unit of the model was the cortical microcolumn, which was made up of a population of excitatory and inhibitory cells, characterized by a single state variable u and v, respectively, expressing the mean activity of the population. For each excitatory population, its mean firing rate g depended on the state variable u through a non-linear monotonically increasing function g(u) = tanh (2/3) (u - ) for u > , g(u) = 0 otherwise, where  = 0.1 was a threshold constant. The mean firing rate of the inhibitory population was similarly determined as g(v). Collecting the states of the excitatory and inhibitory cell populations into vectors u = [u1….uN] and v = [v1…vN], the dynamic equation of the neural interactions were where m = 30ms is the membrane time constant and Iaff describes the afferent input targeting the thalamus. Adaptation. The underlying mechanism for neural adaptation operating on the time scale of seconds is short-term synaptic depression (Wehr & Zador, 2005). To simulate this, all excitatory connections in cortex (i.e., the elements ij of Wee and Wie) were modulated by a time dependent depression term aij(t), where i and j are the index of the post- and presynaptic population, respectively. This term depended on the pre-synaptic spiking rate through the equation. Here, on = 100ms is the onset time constant and rec is the time constant for the adaptation recovery from depression and thus expresses the lifetime of adaptation. In the current experiments, rec was varied in the 800-2000ms range in seven steps of 200ms. This range reflects electrophysiological findings whereby the adaptation of the N1m response (the MEG equivalent of the N1) can be encapsulated in a time constant that varies across participants in the range of 1-4 seconds (Lu, Williamson & Kaufman, 1992). Stimuli and Procedures Stimuli sets comprised sequences of three consecutively presented tones (50ms duration, 5ms linear onset & offset ramps), with the sequence being characterized by its total duration, measured as the onset from first tone to onset of third tone. For each measurement, two sequences of the same duration were presented to the model. While the third tone in each sequence was always the same (amplitude = 1; input via thalamic frequency channel 7, middle of tonotopic map), the two sequences differed in terms of the first two tones, that is, in terms of the stimulation history of the final tone (see Figure 3). Simulations were carried out in three experiments where the difference across the sequences was either in the timing, amplitude, or frequency of the first tones. In each experiment, all other aspects of the sequences were kept constant. This eliminated any counter-effects, with distinctions between sequences depending solely on the manipulation made (independent variable). In each experiment, the total duration of the sequence was varied in the range of 500-4000ms in steps of 200ms, creating a total of 18 different sequence durations. As explained above, the lifetime of adaptation was also varied (from 800-2000ms) to simulate a population of participants. For a diagram of the Stimuli sets, see Figure 3. Experiment 1: variations in timing. This looked at the model’s ability to discriminate temporal patterns represented by two sequences of three identical tones (amplitude = 1; frequency channel 7). These sequences were identical, except for the presentation time of the middle tone. In the first sequence, the SOI of the middle tone was jittered away from regular presentation by an amount representing 5% of the total duration of the sequence away (see Figure 3). The second sequence was a reversed version of the first. Experiment 2: variations in amplitude. Here, the two sequences varied in terms of the amplitude of the first two tones. In the first sequence, the amplitude of the first and second tone was 1.05 and 0.95, respectively. In the second sequence, these values were reversed. The final third tone had a fixed amplitude of 1. The three tones were presented at regular intervals, and their frequency was 7 on the tonotopic map of the thalamus. Experiment 3: variations in frequency. Here, the frequency history preceding the third tone was varied. In the first sequence, the first tone had a frequency of 6 and the second tone had frequency 8. Reversed frequencies were used in the second sequence. The three tones were presented at regular SOIs. Analysis The third tone was kept constant both within the two-sequence stimuli sets and across the experiments to ensure that the variations in the response to this final tone reflected changes in the stimulation history only. Thus, the ability of the model to discriminate between the temporal structure of two sequences could be analyzed by examining the activity elicited by the third tone of each sequence. As such, the firing rates of the excitatory populations in the cortical areas were treated as coding the previous stimulation history. The response to the third tone was quantified by averaging the firing rate of each excitatory population in a 200-ms time window following the onset of the third tone (see Figure 3). This resulted in a 208-dimensional vector, that is, a point in 208-dimensional state space where each axis represents the activity of one cortical column. The difference in the responses to two sequences was then quantified as the Cartesian distance (using the norm.m function in MATLAB) between the two respective points in state space. This distance measure, denoted by Dstate, was taken to represent the ability of cortex to discriminate between tone sequences. For each experiment, the analysis determined how Dstate changed as a function of the total duration of the sequence. Also, this dependence of Dstate on duration was examined in the case of different adaptation lifetimes
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.