Neutral Questions Research Articles

Children Change Their Answers in Response to Neutral Follow-Up Questions by a Knowledgeable Asker.

Burgeoning evidence suggests that when children observe data, they use knowledge of the demonstrator's intent to augment learning. We propose that the effects of social learning may go beyond cases where children observe data, to cases where they receive no new information at all. We present a model of how simply asking a question a second time may lead to belief revision, when the questioner is expected to know the correct answer. We provide an analysis of the CHILDES corpus to show that these neutral follow‐up questions are used in parent–child conversations. We then present three experiments investigating 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children's reactions to neutral follow‐up questions posed by ignorant or knowledgeable questioners. Children were more likely to change their answers in response to a neutral follow‐up question from a knowledgeable questioner than an ignorant one. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of common practices in legal, educational, and experimental psychological settings.

Encoding actions and verbs: Tracking the time-course of relational encoding during message and sentence formulation.

Two experiments tracked the encoding of relational information (actions at the level of the prelinguistic message and verbs at the level of the sentence) during formulation of transitive event descriptions (e.g., The tiger is scratching the photographer). At what point during message and sentence formulation do speakers encode actions and verbs? Participants described pictures of transitive events in response to neutral questions ("What is happening?"), agent questions ("What is [the agent] doing?"), and patient questions ("What is happening with [the patient]?"). The agent and patient questions were intended to change the message-level focus of speakers' responses and to induce priority encoding of the event action and the sentence verb. The questions had a nearly categorical effect on speakers' choice of sentence form in their responses (characters mentioned in the questions were produced in subject position, as expected) and a strong effect on the time-course of sentence formulation: Speakers rapidly directed their gaze to the part of the event needed to encode contextually new, task-relevant information-first the event action and the sentence verb, then the sentence object. The distribution of fixations during the "verb-encoding" window showed that speakers encode relational information by fixating both event characters. Comparing formulation of sentences describing events with action-informative agents and action-informative patients showed a small preference for fixating the more informative character both immediately after picture onset (message-level encoding) and during the verb-encoding window (sentence-level encoding). The results identify action-specific and verb-specific eye movement signatures in message and sentence formulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Eventos tonais pré-nucleares de declarativas e interrogativas neutras do português do Libolo em fala semiespontânea

Neste estudo, investigamos os eventos tonais do contorno pré-nuclear de declarativas e interrogativas neutras do português angolano do Libolo em dados de fala semiespontânea. A partir de uma análise autossegmental-métrica da entoação (LADD, 2008), conjuntamente a pressupostos da Fonologia Prosódica (NESPOR; VOGEL, 1986), observamos uma frequente associação de acentos tonais às palavras fonológicas pré-nucleares das sentenças. Além disso, a fronteira entre os dois sintagmas prosódicos finais em declarativas e interrogativas parciais pode ser marcada por um aparente acento frasal baixo. Concluímos, assim, que os aspectos tonais pré-nucleares do português libolense são, no geral, similares aos já descritos para outras variedades de português europeu, brasileiro, guineense e santomense, embora haja maior similaridade com as três últimas.

Perbedaan Jenis Pertanyaan Netral dengan Jenis Pertanyaan Misleading terhadap Munculnya False Memory pada Anak Usia Prasekolah

False memory refers to the experience of thinking when we remember something that actually did not really happen. The major problem with false memory is the possibility to make someone may easily be led through misinformation. The current research assessed the difference between two types of question on preschoolers' false memory. This study used an experimental design with 76 participants of preschoolers (53.9% male and 46.1% female, 5-6 years old) who divided into two experimental groups. First group was given a neutral question, while the second group was given a misleading question. In this experiment, the participants were instructed to watch a video, then, one recognition test will be held immediately. In recognition test, participants were showed some pictures and questions about one event. The chi-square analysis shows that there is a significant difference between two types of question (0.04<0.05) the value of Chi-Square was 11.647. Based on these results, it implies that misleading questions might raise more false memory than neutral questions.

Conservation of adaptive potential and functional diversity

The conservation of adaptive potential to enable populations and species to respond to environmental change is one of the cornerstones of conservation genetics. To date, however, most work has by necessity focused on neutral markers and demographic questions. Now, with the rapid development of genomic technologies, we have new tools with which to address this essential but poorly understood aspect of conservation strategy. This was the motivation for a meeting on this subject held at Durham University in November 2017 that generated papers for this special issue. In this brief introduction we summarise the presentations and discussions that took place over the course of the meeting, and provide some initial conclusions together with ideas about the way forward.

Interview expectancies: awareness of potential biases influences behaviour in interviewees

Expectancy effects are known to influence behaviour so that what is expected appears to be true. In this study, expectancy was induced using (fabricated) information about honesty and specific group membership. Targets were tested in a non-accusatory interview environment using neutral and information-gathering questions. It was hypothesized that those exposed to the negative information (the expectancy) would demonstrate behaviour consistent with an increased cognitive load, and evidence was found to support this prediction. Due to the investigative nature of the information-gathering questions, it was also expected that the targets exposed to the expectancy would exhibit more of these behaviours in the investigative portion of the interview. Some behaviour was found to support this prediction (i.e. shorter responses and increased speech disturbances); however, indicators of performance altering load were not observed during this phase of the interview. These findings support the hypothesis that expectancy effects can noticeably alter interviewee behaviour.

“Is it worth my time and effort?”: How children selectively gather information from experts when faced with different kinds of costs

Gathering good-quality information is important for effective learning, but children may often need to expend time or energy (i.e., costs) in order to do so. In this study, we examined how 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 91) gather information from others when one source of information comes at a cost. Children were given three types of question cards (doctor-related, mechanic-related, and neutral questions) and could assign each question to either a doctor or car mechanic puppet. One puppet (either the doctor or the car mechanic, counterbalanced) could be accessed immediately, but the other puppet required either waiting 30 s or completing a tedious sorting task first. Children’s verbal intelligence and executive function skills were also assessed. Results showed that cost influenced how children sought information from each of the expert puppets; children selected the costly expert for domain-relevant questions at chance levels and otherwise strongly preferred to question the non-costly puppet. In addition, executive function skills (but not verbal intelligence) related to how frequently children were willing to direct questions to the costly puppet. Overall, these results indicate that children are influenced by costs when gathering information from others and that their ability to expend a cost to gather good-quality information may relate to their inhibition skills. Implications for encouraging effective learning are discussed.

Social learning and partisan bias in the interpretation of climate trends

Vital scientific communications are frequently misinterpreted by the lay public as a result of motivated reasoning, where people misconstrue data to fit their political and psychological biases. In the case of climate change, some people have been found to systematically misinterpret climate data in ways that conflict with the intended message of climate scientists. While prior studies have attempted to reduce motivated reasoning through bipartisan communication networks, these networks have also been found to exacerbate bias. Popular theories hold that bipartisan networks amplify bias by exposing people to opposing beliefs. These theories are in tension with collective intelligence research, which shows that exchanging beliefs in social networks can facilitate social learning, thereby improving individual and group judgments. However, prior experiments in collective intelligence have relied almost exclusively on neutral questions that do not engage motivated reasoning. Using Amazon's Mechanical Turk, we conducted an online experiment to test how bipartisan social networks can influence subjects' interpretation of climate communications from NASA. Here, we show that exposure to opposing beliefs in structured bipartisan social networks substantially improved the accuracy of judgments among both conservatives and liberals, eliminating belief polarization. However, we also find that social learning can be reduced, and belief polarization maintained, as a result of partisan priming. We find that increasing the salience of partisanship during communication, both through exposure to the logos of political parties and through exposure to the political identities of network peers, can significantly reduce social learning.

The language of lies: Behavioral and autonomic costs of lying in a native compared to a foreign language.

Research on trustworthiness indicates that non-native speakers are perceived as less trustworthy than native speakers. Research investigating whether people do indeed lie less well in a non-native language is, however, scarce and yielded inconsistent results. Two opposing predictions are possible. Based on the idea that lying is more demanding than truth telling, the cognitive load account predicts that speaking a foreign language imposes additional cognitive load and thereby hampers lying. Based on the idea that lying is emotionally arousing and that communication in a non-native language is perceived as less emotional, the emotional distance account predicts that speaking a foreign language facilitates lying. In three experiments, participants were asked neutral and emotional questions both in their mother tongue (German) and in a foreign language (English). Depending on a color cue, questions had to be answered sometimes truthfully and sometimes deceptively. Results across all experiments consistently revealed smaller reaction time (RT) differences between lying and truth telling in the foreign compared to the native language condition, which was mostly driven by prolonged truth responses. There were neither differences in this language modulation between emotional and neutral questions nor in autonomic responses. Results could be explained by the antagonistic effects of cognitive load and emotional distance on lying, and suggestions are made how further research may disentangle those effects. Importantly, the observation that foreign language use hampers truth telling could explain the perceived lower trustworthiness of foreign language speakers and education about this effect may help to reduce such a bias. (PsycINFO Database Record

Description of Mexican Cleft Surgeons' Experience With Foreign Surgical Volunteer Missions in Mexico.

Mexican cleft surgeons provide multidisciplinary comprehensive cleft lip and palate care to children in Mexico. Many Mexican cleft surgeons have extensive experience with foreign, visiting surgeons. The purpose of this study was to characterize Mexican cleft surgeons' domestic and volunteer practice and to learn more about Mexican cleft surgeons' experience with visiting surgeons. A cross-sectional validated e-mail survey tool was sent to Mexican cleft surgeons through 2 Mexican plastic surgery societies and the Asociación Mexicana de Labio y Paladar Hendido y Anomalías Craneofaciales, the national cleft palate society that includes plastic and maxillofacial surgeons who specialize in cleft surgery. We utilized validated survey methodology, including neutral fact-based questions and repeated e-mails to survey nonresponders to maximize validity of statistical data; response rate was 30.6% (n = 81). Mexican cleft surgeons performed, on average, 37.7 primary palate repairs per year with an overall complication rate of 2.5%; 34.6% (n = 28) of respondents had direct experience with patients operated on by visiting surgeons; 53.6% of these respondents performed corrective surgery because of complications from visiting surgeons. Respondents rated 48% of the functional outcomes of visiting surgeons as "acceptable," whereas 43% rated aesthetic outcomes of visiting surgeons as "poor"; 73.3% of respondents were never paid for the corrective surgeries they performed. Thirty-three percent of Mexican cleft surgeons believe that there is a role for educational collaboration with visiting surgeons. Mexican cleft surgeons have a high volume of primary cleft palate repairs in their domestic practice with good outcomes. Visiting surgeons may play an important role in Mexican cleft care through educational collaborations that complement the strengths of Mexican cleft surgeons.

Syntactic Typology in Chinese (Part ii.1) (漢語句法類型學（第二部分之一）)

Recapturing the outline given in Part i of this article on syntactic typology in Chinese, the entire article “is divided into three parts: two pertaining to the neutral question forms and one to the attributive and the nominalized construction. Part 1 deals with the V-not-V questions, Part 2 the VP-neg and the Adv-VP questions and it also provides a general typological discussion of the neutral questions, while Part 3 discusses the attributive and the nominalized patterns, with a conclusion on dialectology in typology.” Since the VP-neg form is being gradually replaced by the popular V-not-V form in more than one major group of dialects or better termed as more than one major Sinitic languages, it is necessary to trace such a change wherever possible, so as to affirm whether VP-neg is the native form for the languages and dialects involved. The present paper focuses on the case of Min. 論文分三章，本文是第二章，論述三種中性問句之一的謂語＋否定詞式在閩語裏共時歷時的類型布局。從觀察十六世紀以來的文獻以及十九世紀以至現代方言的發展模式，認爲閩語的本土型是謂語＋否定詞式。他如正反問及各種混合型乃是不同時地語言接觸後累積在不同層次的產物。

#Engagement: use of Twitter chats to construct nominal participatory spaces during health crises

ABSTRACTAlthough Twitter chats and other forms of social media engagement events are idealized in the literature as opportunities for dialogic communication between organizations and individuals, less is known about how engagement is operationalized within these spaces. Using textual and content analysis, we conducted two studies to explore how health organizations engage with the public via Twitter chats during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks. In official records of Ebola chats, the organization addressed both hostile and neutral public questions that pressed for specification of disease characteristics and protocol. However, in a content analysis of all public tweets sent during a later Zika chat, we found that questions were privileged, and other tweet forms and themes were excluded from the participatory space. Specifically, public comments demonstrating expertise or extending the topic of the chat were not addressed by the organization. Our analysis provides insight into the implicit rules governing how organizations engage with the public online during a rapidly evolving health crisis. We argue that the question–response dyad is a form of ideal communication that suggests engagement but maintains organizational expertise.

Cognitive Reflection, Decision Biases, and Response Times

We present novel evidence on response times and personality traits in standard questions from the decision-making literature where responses are relatively slow (medians around half a minute or above). To this end, we measured response times in a number of incentivized, framed items (decisions from description) including the Cognitive Reflection Test, two additional questions following the same logic, and a number of classic questions used to study decision biases in probability judgments (base-rate neglect, the conjunction fallacy, and the ratio bias). All questions create a conflict between an intuitive process and more deliberative thinking. For each item, we then created a non-conflict version by either making the intuitive impulse correct (resulting in an alignment question), shutting it down (creating a neutral question), or making it dominant (creating a heuristic question). For CRT questions, the differences in response times are as predicted by dual-process theories, with alignment and heuristic variants leading to faster responses and neutral questions to slower responses than the original, conflict questions. For decision biases (where responses are slower), evidence is mixed. To explore the possible influence of personality factors on both choices and response times, we used standard personality scales including the Rational-Experiential Inventory and the Big Five, and used them as controls in regression analysis.

The optimist within? Selective sampling and self-deception

The nature and existence of self-deception is controversial. On a classic conception, self-deceived individuals carry two conflicting representations of reality. Proponents of an alternative, deflationary account dispute this, arguing that putative cases of self-deception simply reflect distorted information processing. To investigate these alternatives, we adapted a paradigm from the "crowd-within" literature. Participants provided two different estimates for each of a series of incentivized questions. Half of the questions were neutral in content, while half referred to undesirable future events. Whereas the first and second estimates for neutral questions did not differ systematically, second estimates for undesirable questions were more optimistic than first estimates. This result suggests that participants were sampling selectively from an internal probability distribution when providing estimates for undesirable events, implying they had access to a less rosy representation of their future prospects than their individual estimates conveyed. In short, self-deception is real.

The Diagnostic Value of Children's Responses to Cross-Examination Questioning.

In response to a widespread belief within the legal system that cross-examination is instrumental in uncovering the truth, we examined the effect of cross-examination questioning on the reports of children who had-and had not-been coached to lie. A group of children, aged 6-11years (N=65), played three computer games with one of their parents. For half of the pairs, the parents-who acted as confederates-coached their children to make lies of commission concerning the occurrence of two target activities. For the remaining pairs, these two target activities actually occurred, and there was no coaching. Immediately afterwards, children were interviewed about the two activities. Those who-correctly or incorrectly-reported that both activities occurred were retained for the final sample (n=56); these children were then interviewed again with both neutral questions and cross-examination-style challenges. Neither style of questioning elicited responses that discriminated between liars and truth-tellers: although the accuracy of children who were lying increased in response to cross-examination questions, the accuracy of truth-telling children saw a corresponding decrease. When asked neutral questions, children's responses tended to be consistent with their earlier responses, whether or not those responses were lies. These findings raise important questions about the function that cross-examination might serve in trials involving child witnesses. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Validity of Energy Intake Estimated by Digital Photography Plus Recall in Overweight and Obese Young Adults

BackgroundRecent reports have questioned the adequacy of self-report measures of dietary intake as the basis for scientific conclusions regarding the associations of dietary intake and health, and reports have recommended the development and evaluation of better methods for the assessment of dietary intake in free-living individuals. We developed a procedure that used pre- and post-meal digital photographs in combination with dietary recalls (DP+R) to assess energy intake during ad libitum eating in a cafeteria setting. ObjectiveTo compare mean daily energy intake of overweight and obese young adults assessed by a DP+R method with mean total daily energy expenditure assessed by doubly labeled water (TDEEDLW). MethodsEnergy intake was assessed using the DP+R method in 91 overweight and obese young adults (age = 22.9±3.2 years, body mass index [BMI; calculated as kg/m2]=31.2±5.6, female=49%) over 7 days of ad libitum eating in a university cafeteria. Foods consumed outside the cafeteria (ie, snacks, non-cafeteria meals) were assessed using multiple-pass recall procedures, using food models and standardized, neutral probing questions. TDEEDLW was assessed in all participants over the 14-day period. ResultsThe mean energy intakes estimated by DP+R and TDEEDLW were not significantly different (DP+R=2912±661 kcal/d; TDEEDLW=2849±748 kcal/d, P=0.42). The DP+R method overestimated TDEEDLW by 63±750 kcal/d (6.8±28%). ConclusionResults suggest that the DP+R method provides estimates of energy intake comparable to those obtained by TDEEDLW.

Affect-Loaded Questions in Japanese Storytelling: An Analysis of Grammar, Prosody, and Body Movements of Story Recipients’ Questions

The present study explores affective stance in conversational storytelling by investigating the ways in which unknowing story recipients display affective stances toward a teller’s story through questions that deploy multimodal resources. The data are based on videotaped natural face-to-face conversations between native Japanese speakers. While unknowing story recipients ask questions of the storyteller only to elicit factual information (“neutral questions”), they also ask questions layered with affect (“affect-loaded questions”). Building on studies on affect and stance, assessment, questions, and alignment and affiliation in storytelling, I demonstrate how unknowing story recipients ask affect-loaded questions to elicit and display affective stances toward story contents by exploiting linguistic and non-linguistic resources. First, I explicate how unknowing story recipients employ not only linguistic devices (e.g., emotion words, wh-questions, and deictic expressions such as sonna “like that”), but also prosody, facial expressions, body movements, and pre-/concurrent-laughter in order to load questions with affective stance that display, for example, disgust, humor, sarcasm, criticism, or surprise. Secondly, I show how unknowing story recipients use rhetorical questions to express their affect (rather than to elicit information from the storyteller). Thirdly, I demonstrate how affiliation of affective stance between storyteller and unknowing story recipients influences the trajectory of storytelling and how the participants negotiate their affective stances. This study sheds light on the interactional process of how participants in talk-in-interaction display affective stance through a range of multimodal resources, by examining how unknowing story recipients ask affect-loaded questions of the storyteller. It illuminates the social practice of story recipients’ active participation in storytelling activity that is embedded in social interaction, through their use of questions that dynamically co-construct and negotiate affective stance.

Provider Communication Behaviors that Predict Motivation to Change in Black Adolescents with Obesity

The goal of this research was to identify communication behaviors used by weight loss counselors that mostly strongly predicted black adolescents' motivational statements. Three types of motivational statements were of interest: change talk (CT; statements describing their own desires, abilities, reasons, and need for adhering to weight loss recommendations), commitment language (CML; statements about their intentions or plans for adhering), and counterchange talk (CCT; amotivational statements against change and commitment). Thirty-seven black adolescents with obesity received a single motivational interviewing session targeting weight-related behaviors. The video-recorded transcribed sessions were coded using the Minority Youth Sequential Coding for Observing Process Exchanges generating a sequential chain of communication. Data were then subjected to sequential analysis to determine causal relationships between counselor and adolescent communication. Asking open-ended questions to elicit adolescent CT and emphasizing adolescents' autonomy most often led to CT. Open-ended questions to elicit CML, reflecting adolescent CML, and emphasizing autonomy most often led to CML. In contrast, open-ended questions to elicit CCT, reflecting CCT, reflecting ambivalence, and neutral open-ended questions about the target behavior led to CCT. This study provides clinicians with insight into the most effective way to communicate with black adolescents with obesity about weight loss. Specifically, reflective statements and open questions focusing on their own desires, abilities, reasons, need, and commitment to weight loss recommendations are more likely to increase motivational statements, whereas other types of reflections and questions may be counterproductive. Finally, because adolescents have a strong need for autonomous decision making, emphasizing their autonomy may be particularly effective in evoking motivational statements.

Can You Catch a Liar? How Negative Emotions Affect Brain Responses when Lying or Telling the Truth

The capacity to deceive others is a complex mental skill that requires the ability to suppress truthful information. The polygraph is widely used in countries such as the USA to detect deception. However, little is known about the effects of emotional processes (such as the fear of being found guilty despite being innocent) on the physiological responses that are used to detect lies. The aim of this study was to investigate the time course and neural correlates of untruthful behavior by analyzing electrocortical indexes in response to visually presented neutral and affective questions. Affective questions included sexual, shameful or disgusting topics. A total of 296 questions that were inherently true or false were presented to 25 subjects while ERPs were recorded from 128 scalp sites. Subjects were asked to lie on half of the questions and to answer truthfully on the remaining half. Behavioral and ERP responses indicated an increased need for executive control functions, namely working memory, inhibition and task switching processes, during deceptive responses. Deceptive responses also elicited a more negative N400 over the prefrontal areas and a smaller late positivity (LP 550–750 ms) over the prefrontal and frontal areas. However, a reduction in LP amplitude was also elicited by truthful affective responses. The failure to observe a difference in LP responses across conditions likely results from emotional interference. A swLORETA inverse solution was computed on the N400 amplitude (300–400 ms) for the dishonest – honest contrast. These results showed the activation of the superior, medial, middle and inferior frontal gyri (BA9, 11, 47) and the anterior cingulate cortex during deceptive responses. Our results conclude that the N400 amplitude is a reliable neural marker of deception.

Detecting false intent using eye blink measures

Eye blink measures have been shown to be diagnostic in detecting deception regarding past acts. Here we examined—across two experiments with increasing degrees of ecological validity—whether changes in eye blinking can be used to determine false intent regarding future actions. In both experiments, half of the participants engaged in a mock crime and then transported an explosive device with the intent of delivering it to a “contact” that would use it to cause a disturbance. Eye blinking was measured for all participants when presented with three types of questions: relevant to intent to transport an explosive device, relevant to intent to engage in an unrelated illegal act, and neutral questions. Experiment 1 involved standing participants watching a video interviewer with audio presented ambiently. Experiment 2 involved standing participants questioned by a live interviewer. Across both experiments, changes in blink count during and immediately following individual questions, total number of blinks, and maximum blink time length differentiated those with false intent from truthful intent participants. In response to questions relevant to intent to deliver an explosive device vs. questions relevant to intent to deliver illegal drugs, those with false intent showed a suppression of blinking during the questions when compared to the 10 s period after the end of the questions, a lower number of blinks, and shorter maximum blink duration. The results are discussed in relation to detecting deception about past activities as well as to the similarities and differences to detecting false intent as described by prospective memory and arousal.