Articles

ROC curve analyses of eyewitness identification decisions: An analysis of the recent debate

How should the accuracy of eyewitness identification decisions be measured, so that best practices for identification can be determined? This fundamental question is under intense debate. One side advocates fo...

Authors: Caren M. Rotello and Tina Chen

Visual completion from 2D cross-sections: Implications for visual theory and STEM education and practice

Accurately inferring three-dimensional (3D) structure from only a cross-section through that structure is not possible. However, many observers seem to be unaware of this fact. We present evidence for a 3D amo...

Authors: Kristin Michod Gagnier and Thomas F. Shipley

Men’s perceptions of women’s sexual interest: Effects of environmental context, sexual attitudes, and women’s characteristics

Men’s perceptions of women’s sexual interest were studied in a sample of 250 male undergraduates, who rated 173 full-body photos of women differing in expressed cues of sexual interest, attractiveness, provoca...

Authors: Teresa A. Treat, Hannah Hinkel, Jodi R. Smith and Richard J. Viken

Seeing the unseen? Illusory causal filling in FIFA referees, players, and novices

Humans often falsely report having seen a causal link between two dynamic scenes if the second scene depicts a valid logical consequence of the initial scene. As an example, a video clip shows someone kicking ...

Authors: Alisa Brockhoff, Markus Huff, Annika Maurer and Frank Papenmeier

How to optimize switch virtual keyboards to trade off speed and accuracy

In some circumstances, people interact with a virtual keyboard by triggering a binary switch to guide a moving cursor to target characters or items. Such switch keyboards are commonly used by patients with sev...

Authors: Xiao Zhang, Kan Fang and Gregory Francis

From hands to minds: Gestures promote understanding

Gestures serve many roles in communication, learning and understanding both for those who view them and those who create them. Gestures are especially effective when they bear resemblance to the thought they r...

Authors: Seokmin Kang and Barbara Tversky

On the learning benefits of confidence-weighted testing

Taking multiple-choice practice tests with competitive incorrect alternatives can enhance performance on related but different questions appearing on a later cued-recall test (Little et al., Psychol Sci 23:133...

Authors: Erin M. Sparck, Elizabeth Ligon Bjork and Robert A. Bjork

Learning to interpret topographic maps: Understanding layered spatial information

Novices struggle to interpret maps that show information about continuous dimensions (typically latitude and longitude) layered with information that is inherently continuous but segmented categorically. An ex...

Authors: Kinnari Atit, Steven M. Weisberg, Nora S. Newcombe and Thomas F. Shipley

Rethinking the basic-applied dichotomy

Authors: Jeremy M. Wolfe