Dept.of Psychology - Master's degree

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https://hdl.handle.net/11693/13922

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Open Access
Social, cognitive, and social cognitive influences on children’s lie-telling
(Bilkent University, 2023-08) Dönmez, Ferhan Kübra; Allen, Jedediah W.P.
Lie-telling as a verbal form of deception may involve intentionally implanting false information in the mind of others. Lie-telling and the subsequent ability to maintain them (i.e., semantic leakage control) were examined to understand their developmental trajectory and the influences behind these capacities. One hundred twenty-one parent-child dyads (aged 3-to-6-year-olds) participated. Children were tested on inhibitory control, false belief, and a lie-telling task. Parents were measured on their use of lying to their children to control behavior, explicit socialization of lie-telling, and more general parenting practices. To test children's lie-telling abilities, they were instructed not to peek at a toy in the experimenter's absence; later, they were asked: whether they peeked (initial lie-telling), the toy's identity, and how they knew the identity if they answered correctly. Children's initial lie-telling behavior did not change with age; however, older children showed significantly higher semantic leakage control. Inhibitory control was not associated with lie-telling. Additionally, false belief understanding was not related to lie-telling behavior, but children with higher levels of semantic leakage control had greater false belief understanding. However, when controlled for age, this relation became nonsignificant. Finally, none of the parenting variables predicted semantic leakage control. However, aspects of parental socialization (i.e., encouragement and modeling of lie-telling, problematic lying, and consequences for lying) predicted lie-telling behavior. These findings suggest that children might be influenced by parental socialization of lie-telling for their decision to lie; however, their ability to maintain these lies may rely more heavily on their cognitive and social cognitive capacities.
Open Access
“Because she is a know-it-all”: school-aged children’s understanding of calibration for hesitant informants
(Bilkent University, 2023-07) Sunay, Onur; Allen, Jedediah W.P.
Calibration refers to the extent to which one’s confidence predicts their accuracy. Accordingly; someone accurate and confident, and someone inaccurate and hesitant are well-calibrated; and someone inaccurate and confident, and someone accurate but hesitant are poorly calibrated. Although there is evidence of adults’ calibration understanding, children do not have a complete understanding of calibration. The current study aimed to investigate children’s calibration understanding better. To that end, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children were tested on three calibration tasks with informants that included the inaccurate and hesitant informant. The tasks included explicit and implicit measures of calibration. The results showed that children performed similarly across all ages, but there were differences in how children performed between different tasks. Also, accuracy had more influence on children’s judgments for who was a reliable informant than confidence. Third, more children passed the implicit calibration task but failed the explicit one than vice versa. Lastly, children’s calibration understanding was not related to their executive function (EF) abilities. These results suggest that calibration is a complex ability influenced by social situations. The role situations play and how they might be used as a broader framework to explain calibration are highlighted in the discussion. EF and other cognitive abilities that might be related to calibration understanding are also discussed.
Open Access
The effect of reality-distancing on children’s false belief understanding
(Bilkent University, 2023-07) Tuğlacı, Ece; Ilgaz, Hande
The socio-cultural theory has emphasized the effect of the co-constitutive nature of the narrative discourse on FB understanding, whereas simulation theory asserted that imagination is a cognitive ability that scaffolds perspective-taking which underlies children’s developing abilities to understand FBs. Elements of fantasy have been indiscriminately used in correlational and intervention studies that examined the factors that affect children’s understanding of FBs. However, there are two evidence-based reasons to expect that children would benefit from fantasy elements (i.e., increased levels of engagement and reality-distancing inherent in fantastical media contexts). The current project aims to examine the effects of varying degrees of fantasy on false belief (FB) tasks. To do so, the present studies utilize FB tasks (i.e., contents FB and change of location) in which children are presented with FB tasks that include fantastical and realistic characters as protagonists within fantastical and realistic settings, respectively. Study 1 tested the effects of the degree of fantasy and the order of receiving manipulations. The increasing degree of fantasy increased preschoolers' performance on FB tasks. Study 2 explored the same effects with a more targeted sample using an additional fantasy-orientation measure. The results replicate the effect of the degree of fantasy and suggest encountering fantastical content before realistic content selectively scaffolds younger children's performance on FB tasks. This is despite their lack of orientation toward enjoying fantastical content. Thus, the discussion of the findings and future studies emphasizes the significance of reality-distancing provided by the fantastical content included in FB tasks.
Open Access
Pupil dilation in time perception
(Bilkent University, 2023-07) İnan, Cansel; Farooqui, Ausaf
Time perception corresponds to how we perceive and understand the duration, sequence, and pacing of incidents in our surroundings and is the subjective expe- rience of the course of time. The integration of data from various sensory inputs as well as higher-order cognitive processes like attention, recall, and decision-making are all part of this intricate and multidimensional process. Pupil size is known to increase in response to all kinds of demands like attention, working memory, decision-making, difficult perception, memory recall, etc. In fact, studies show increased pupil size to any kind of task demands. A recent study suggested a dichotomy of task demands based on their distinct neural responses (Farooqui and Manly, 2018). The commonly recognized type of task demand (i.e., type I demand) pertains to issues like increased attention, working memory, the complexity of decisions, etc. For what is being done at that moment. This kind of demand increases activity in the control-related fronto- parietal regions and is well-known to increase pupil size. Farooqui and Manly suggested a different kind of demand (or type II demand) that is related to the length and complexity of the episode of cognition being organized as one unit. They argued that this demand comes about because we execute long tasks as one entity. We, e.g., write emails, shop and not individually execute their very- many component acts. Longer tasks require a longer period of cognition to be organized and controlled as one unit. They evidenced that this demand leads to a deactivation of the control-related fronto-parietal regions and suggested that this demand may psychophysiologically be the opposite of type I demands. The current study investigates this thesis. We used a time-interval replication task. Time-interval replication involves cre- ating an extended cognitive episode. Longer intervals will require creating longer episodes and hence involve higher type II cognitive demands. If type II demands indeed generate the opposite psychophysiological response compared to type I de- mands, we can expect longer time-interval replications to lead to a decreased pupil size. Participants were given various time intervals, e.g., 11 seconds, to replicate by pressing a button at the beginning and at the end of the interval. We used a set of short (8-12 seconds) intervals and a set of long (14-18 seconds) intervals. Long intervals were expectedly more demanding and led to a more erroneous performance. We tested 30 participants (22 females, ages 18-27). If, as is popularly thought, pupil size increases during any kind of demand, then it should be larger when participants replicated longer durations. In contrast, if type II demands of creating longer cognitive episodes were psychophysiologically opposite, then pupil size may be smaller during longer durations. We found this was indeed the case. We show that task demands related to organizing longer cognitive episodes may indeed be distinct from the commonly recognized task demands related to increased attention and working memory.
Open Access
Emotional prosody and accent processing: a bilingual perspective
(Bilkent University, 2023-05) Akkaya, Asena; Ürgen, Burcu Ayşen
People use different kinds of cues to process and understand spoken language in their daily lives. Understanding language is not solely based on the process-ing of grammar and words but also the processing of paralinguistic (non-verbal aspects of spoken language) cues, which have an important role in the ultimate comprehension of spoken language. Emotional prosody is one of the crucial par-alinguistic cues and is the focus of the present thesis. It refers to verbal cues that convey different types of emotions based on changing pitch, timbre and tone of voice during speech. Different theories attempt to explain how emotional prosody and its related cues are cognitively processed during speech comprehension, such as the Universality Hypothesis, the In-group Advantage hypothesis and Dialect Theory. This thesis examined the processing of two different paralinguistic cues (emotional prosody and accent) and were discussed within the perspective of these theories. This study had 3 main research questions: (1) how do bilingual individuals differently process emotional prosody and different accents in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages? (2) How do different accents affect the emotional comprehension of L1 and L2 speakers? and (3) is the processing of vocal emotions universal or does it include culturally-specific aspects? Bilingual Turkish-English participants were tasked with listening to sentences in either their L1 (Turkish) or L2 (English) that varied in their emotional prosody (happy, sad, neutral tones of voice) and their accent (accented Turkish; accented English). Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings were taken to measure the P200 event-related potential response, which indexes automatic emotional processing and has been shown to vary between first and second languages. The results showed that Turkish-English bilingual individuals showed higher P200 amplitudes when they heard emotionally vocalized sentences in their L1 compared to sentences vocal-ized with neutral tone of voice, regardless of the accent. However, in their L2, they showed higher P200 amplitudes for neutral sentences compared to emotion-ally vocalized sentences. Overall, these results propose that the nativelikeness of the stimuli is crucial to emotional prosody processing (in line with the In-Group Advantage hypothesis), such that we process emotional information more auto-matically in our L1, regardless of the speaker.
Open Access
Autonomy and robotonomy: The role of gender
(Bilkent University, 2023-06) Aşkın, Gaye; Ürgen, Ayşe Burcu
This study examines how gender affects people's perception of autonomy in social robots. It investigates whether an agent's name (masculine/feminine/neutral/ technical/no-name) and type (human/robot) can impact agency, personification, competency, and gender evaluations and whether these evaluations are at an unconscious level. The study consists of a pre-study and a main study with 150 participants. Participants watched 4-second 18 videos in the main study and answered autonomy-related questions. They also completed three implicit association tasks, adapted according to the study's themes, autonomy, agents, and gender. ANOVA analysis was conducted to analyze the agent, naming, and gender effects for the explicit part. The d-score was calculated for all participants in the implicit part, and an ANOVA analysis was conducted. Regression analysis was conducted to determine gender attribution in the pre-study and main studies. Correlation analyses were also conducted to determine if explicit-implicit parts were correlated. Lastly, a thematic analysis was conducted for qualitative inputs in the explicit part and categorized into nine themes. The study found the main effect of action and agent in agency-level attribution. In competency and gender attribution, agents had no main effect in none of the name conditions. In the implicit part, women and men participants differed in men-independent/women-dependent association IAT-1. The other two IATs, women and men participants, responded similarly. The study suggests that name manipulation does not affect people's autonomy perception, but rather agent types and actions characteristics affect them. Furthermore, people's implicit and explicit answers do not predict each other.
Open Access
Epistemic or interpersonal? Children’s selective trust decisions in others
(Bilkent University, 2023-03) Başaran, Busenur; Allen, Jedediah W.P.
Much of children’s learning about the world, particularly early in life, depends on what others say to them. Despite the clear benefits of learning from others, people sometimes may offer inaccurate information either due to the lack of competence or the motivation to deceive. Fortunately, an amassing body of research shows that children are not completely credulous in their learning decisions. Instead, children are selective in whom they prefer to learn from (e.g., preferring accurate over inaccurate or nice over mean informants). Although there is ample evidence that children engage in selective learning strategies that enable them to distinguish reliable sources from unreliable ones, the cognitive basis for this selectivity is still a puzzle. The mechanisms behind selective trust are primarily couched in terms of accepting testimony as inductive evidence and children’s trust as a rational inference from the evidence. However, there are relevant interpersonal considerations that affect whom children prefer to learn from as well as whom they choose to play with. For example, children may sometimes attribute more knowledge to one informant but still choose to share, play, or affiliate with the other. The current study, therefore, was designed to investigate whether particular conditions (e.g., an informant who is smart but mean) affect children’s trust preferences differently depending on the task. In the familiarization trials, 5- to 7-year-olds (N = 134) were shown a pair of competent informants but in different domains (i.e., nice but inaccurate vs. mean but inaccurate informant). In the test trials, children were asked to choose between the informants for two tasks that either demanded epistemic or interpersonal considerations. The results suggest that 7-year-olds’ decisions to learn from and practical decisions to share with an informant changed as a function of an informant’s characteristics relevant to the given tasks. However, 5-year-olds’ epistemic trust was weakened by interpersonal faults (i.e., whether the agent was nice or mean). This indicates that interpersonal violations of trust may constitute a more serious type of agent failure that is prone to be generalized by children across different domains.
Open Access
Detailed investigation of Turkish children’s diverse belief task performance
(Bilkent University, 2022-12) Öztürk Mıhcı, İrem; Ilgaz, Hande
This study investigated Turkish children’s Diverse Belief (DB) task performance, which is one of the tasks in Theory of Mind (ToM) battery. Previous literature found that Turkish children underperformed on the DB task when compared to children from other cultures. In addition, Turkish children did not show the expected age-related increase in the DB task performance, and Turkish children’s DB performance was not related to the other ToM tasks and cognitive variables such as EF. Therefore, the aim was to examine whether the difficulty in the DB task is related to the task structure for Turkish children. The DB task performances and the EF skills of 45 Turkish-speaking children aged between 3 and 5 were assessed. The DB task was manipulated in terms of mental state verbs (e.g., think, guess, and no mental states) and the number of characters in the story (e.g., single, and double seekers). Results showed that Turkish children were not affected by the differences in mental state verbs, but the number of characters in the story affected performance. Children were more successful in the double-seeker conditions when the task was presented with the verb “think” (düşün- in Turkish). In the light of these results, it is possible to infer that the problems regarding Turkish children’s DB performance may be related to the curse of belief rather than Turkish children’s conceptual deficiency in belief understanding.
Open Access
Hierarchical instantiation of attention
(Bilkent University, 2022-10) Giray, İrem; Farooqui, Ausaf Ahmed
Extended task executions involve goal-directed programs that control the execution of component steps. While the presence of such programs is widely accepted, their nature remains unclear. Prior studies saw them as controlling the identity and sequence of individual steps much like how a recipe controls and organizes cooking. However, this can happen only in predictable tasks where the identity and sequence of steps are known beforehand. Programs, on the other hand, are also evident in unpredictable tasks where the identity and sequence of steps are not foreknown. What is the role of these programs in such tasks? It has been suggested that, contrary to existing view, these programs may not be about specifying the identity and sequence of component steps. Perhaps they are the means of instantiating all kinds of goal-related control processes during extended tasks. We tested this thesis in relation to attention. If attention during extended tasks is instantiated via these programs, then attentional focus may be poorer on the initial steps of such tasks, especially if these steps are fast-paced. This is because when a new task starts a new program is needed. If attention can only be instantiated via these programs, then the initial steps cannot be attended unless the new program is in place. However, in fast-paced tasks the initial steps may be at hand before these programs have been assembled. Consequently, these steps may suffer from a lack of attention. We show that attention-dependent inhibitory control is indeed poorer on the initial steps of extended tasks, suggesting that attention may indeed be instantiated via these programs.
Open Access
The effect of repeated exposure, picture presence and context reinstatement on truth judgments
(Bilkent University, 2022-09) Kurt, Elif Hilal; Besken, Miri
With the spread of fake news on social media platforms, it becomes critical to unveil the factors that might influence our truth judgments. Previous research showed that repeated exposure and picture presence can bias individuals to believe that the information is true. However, when frequent social media postings are taken into consideration, there are three issues that need to be specified further in order to understand the underlying mechanisms of our truth judgments. The first is to investigate whether repeated exposure of pictures increases truth ratings or not. Second, it is important to uncover the joint effects of repetition and picture presence on truth judgments as it can be frequently seen in social media postings. Third, little is known about how a detail change (e.g., accompanying picture) in repeated information is reflected on truth judgments. In a series of three experiments, we aimed to find an answer for the abovementioned questions. In Experiment 1, we tested whether prior exposure to pictures would increase truth ratings for the associated statements. The repetition of pictures did not increase truth ratings but their mere presence did. In Experiment 2, we explored the simultaneous effect of repetition and picture presence on truth judgments. Contrary to Experiment 1, repetition of statements increased truth ratings but the presence of pictures did not produce a significant change. Finally, Experiment 3 aimed to understand whether a context change (e.g., picture details) in the repeated information would affect truth ratings or not. As a manipulation, either a detail was changed in the accompanying picture (changed context) or it was repeatedly exposed with the same picture (reinstated context). The results showed that statements with reinstating context were given higher truth ratings than statements with changed context. The results and the future research are discussed in the context of the truthiness effect, the illusory truth effect and the context reinstatement.
Open Access
Effect of Covid-19 infection on the developing brain: psychosis proneness and working memory activation
(Bilkent University, 2022-08) Sozan, Sara Sinem; Toulopoulou, Timothea
Researchers have been investigating the effects of Covid-19 infection since late 2019. Symptoms caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus varied from respiratory system failure to fatigue, brain fog and headaches. Studies showed that the infection leads to cognitive impairment and psychotic-like symptoms even after recovery. Literature has focused on hospitalized adult patients, and there is less information on how the developing brain exposed to the virus is affected. To address these gaps in the literature we investigated whether Covid-19 can be a risk factor for psychosis in adolescents and young adults. Forty individuals who were infected with Covid-19 and recovered at least two and at most four months before and 36 demographically matched controls were recruited in the study. Positive PCR test results confirmed the infection status of the participants. Subclinical psychosis was assessed using the Community Assessment of Psychic Experience (CAPE-42) questionnaire and the Structured Interview of Schizotypy - Revised (SIS-R) was used to assess psychotic-like symptoms. A functional magnetic resonance imaging was conducted during a well-known working memory task to investigate activation patterns. The working memory task involved seven tasks and a control motor task. Verbal fluency performance was assessed in both phonetic and semantic categories. In order to control for the confounding effects of additional environmental risk factors for psychosis, paternal age, years of urban upbringing, cannabis exposure, and ethnicity were also considered. The findings revealed that although the two groups did not differ across different dimensions of the CAPE-42, the infected group had higher restricted affect and referential thoughts of being watched. Individuals infected with SARS-Cov-2 performed worse in both categories of the verbal fluency task. fMRI analysis revealed that individuals infected with the SARS-Cov-2 virus showed activation differences in the prefrontal cortex, medial temporal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, and inferior parietal gyrus. Higher performance in the verbal fluency task predicted greater activation during the working memory task. These results suggest that exposure to the Covid-19 infection during brain development can be an environmental risk factor for psychosis.
Open Access
Go green but why? The dynamic interplay between motivational reasons and pro-environmental behaviors displayed in private and public spheres
(Bilkent University, 2022-08) Candar, İlke; Besken, Miri
Grounded in Self-determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), this thesis investigated through two studies the reasons for which individuals engage in pro-environmental behaviors. Study 1 with N = 375 Turkish young adults (Mage = 22.35; SD = 2.38), showed that after controlling for connectedness to nature and perceived environmental threat, autonomous reasons but not controlling reasons had unique associations with both private- and public-sphere behaviors and intentions. Building on Study 1, Study 2 employed a more dynamic approach to examine the week-to-week relations of autonomous and controlling reasons to pro-environmental behaviors. With the aid of a sample of young adults (total N = 160; Mage = 23.55; SD = 7.17) who completed two sets of online surveys, a pre-diary part and a series of short questionnaires for six consecutive weeks, it was found, again, that weekly variation in autonomous reasons (but not in controlling reasons) related positively to weekly fluctuation in private- and public-sphere pro-environmental behaviors. Further, perceived environmental threat predicted between-person differences in such behaviors exhibited in both realms. The findings and their implications were discussed within the framework of Self-determination Theory.
Open Access
Detailed investigation of the relation between mothers’ mental state language and children's theory of mind abilities
(Bilkent University, 2022-07) Evsen, Setenay; Ilgaz, Hande
This study investigated the relation between maternal mental state language (MSL) in a storytelling context and preschoolers’ Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities. Seventy-four Turkish-speaking mothers’ mental state discourse was examined with a comprehensive coding of mental content (i.e., perception, physiological, desire, motivation, emotion, and cognition) at both lexical and morphological levels by marking the referents of each mental use (i.e., child-mother vs. story character). In addition, to distinguish the uses of perception terms as attention getters or genuine mental state references, a coding for perception words in terms of function was included. The results revealed that only certain functions of mothers’ perception MSL was related to children’s ToM performance. In particular, mothers’ use of perception MSL to give the literal meaning of the terms predicted children’s ToM performance concurrently when children’s cognitive abilities and age was controlled for. Results were discussed from a socio-cultural perspective to emphasize the importance of coding the pragmatic aspects of maternal MSL for a better understanding of ToM development in relation to language.
Open Access
Turkish mothers’ use of complement clauses in storytelling in relation to children’s comprehension of complement clauses and theory of mind abilities
(Bilkent University, 2022-04) Bodur, Esin; Ilgaz, Hande
This study investigates mothers’ use of complement clauses in relation to children’s comprehension of complement clauses and theory of mind among 3-to 5-year-old Turkish speaking children. 114 children were given comprehension of complement clauses task, expressive and receptive language tasks, and three ToM tasks. Wordless storybook was used to collect maternal language data during storytelling. Three forms of complement clause structures (nonfinite, finite, and bare finite) were analyzed. Three complement clause structures were analyzed in two main categories. The categories were classified according to their inclusion of mental state verbs (i.e., physiological, desire, motivation, emotion, and cognitive) and nonmental state verbs. Three mental state combinations (MSCs) were also classified according to their use of mental state verb as main verb or complement verb in three complement clause structures. In first MSC, the complement verb is mental state verb. In second MSC, main verb and complement verb are mental state verbs. In third MSC, main verb is mental state verb. The results showed that the frequency of complement clause structures was not significantly related to children’s comprehension of complement clauses. Mothers’ use of third MSC in nonfinite complement clauses was significantly related to children’s comprehension of double complement clauses and their receptive language. The frequency of complement clauses that include mental state verbs was not significantly related to ToM. Children’s comprehension of double complement clauses was significantly related to ToM whereas the correlation was not significant after controlling for children’s expressive and receptive language.
Open Access
Turkish as a grammaticalized language: the effect of factivity alternation and certainty on theory of mind understanding
(Bilkent University, 2021-07) Balcı, Amine Serra; Ilgaz, Hande
The majority of studies investigating the relation between language and socio-cognitive understanding have been designed for and carried out with participants from Western cultures (Milligan et al., 2007). Recently, there is emerging interest in studying the relation between cultural-linguistic nuances and social understanding (Choi, 2006; Matsui, Yamamoto & McCagg, 2006). Many linguistic features found in languages such as Japanese, Korean, or Turkish are integral to the syntactic complexity of these languages and express epistemic stances towards reality or others’ propositions. The current thesis included two studies investigating adult native Turkish speakers’ sensitivity to the certainty of propositions based on grammatical structure and whether their sensitivity is related to their theory of mind abilities. The results showed that Turkish speakers are sensitive to (a) factivity alternation, meaning they display different levels of epistemic certainty based on the grammatical framing of the verb to know (Studies 1 & 2) (b) morphological certainty markers (Study 2). However, participants’ sensitivity to epistemic certainty was unrelated to ToM abilities as assessed by the Faux Pas task (Study 1 & 2), and epistemic bias as assessed by the Contamination Task (Study 1). The results are discussed with their implications, especially for future work with younger samples.
Open Access
Self/other differentiation based on present VS past tense cues in Turkish culture
(Bilkent University, 2021-07) Çelik, Salih Bartuğ; Allen, Jedediah W. P.
The literature provides various studies that showed human beings’ implicit awareness of their own and others’ mental states (i.e., implicit Theory of Mind, ToM abilities). However, how much these implicit processes are qualitatively different from the explicit ToM abilities is an open question to investigate. To explore this issue, Bradford et al. (2015; 2018) conducted a study that showed it was easier for adults to adopt “self” perspectives than “other” perspectives. Importantly, participants found shifting from other- to self-oriented perspectives easier than shifting from self- to other. Bradford et al. concluded that self-oriented mental states might be automatically processed when thinking about others but that other-oriented mental state attribution requires consciously controlled processes. In the current study, we explored whether the task demands from Bradford et al.’s study affect participants’ performances across shifting conditions. Self-oriented perspectives might be always processed faster than other-oriented perspectives because they might include more concrete cues (e.g., past and personal experiences). To provide more concrete cues for the other-oriented perspective questions, participants were presented with Bradford et al.’s paradigm using the Turkish past-tense with the direct evidential marker, -DI. This manipulation allowed investigating whether other-oriented perspectives could be processed as fast as self-oriented perspectives. In order to also investigate the impact of cultural factors on the participants’ performances, an Individuals-Collectivism survey was included. The results of the study showed similar findings with Bradford et al. (2015; 2018) in that participants more easily shifted from other- to self-oriented perspectives compared to self- to other-oriented perspectives. The results were discussed based on the current approaches (i.e., lean, middle-ground, and rich accounts) to social cognition.
Open Access
Effect of prior knowledge on the illusory truth effect and memory and metacognitive processes underlying this illusion
(Bilkent University, 2021-07) Gizem, Filiz; Besken, Miri
Repeated information typically produces higher truth ratings than novel information. This is called the illusory truth effect. Since this illusion can be obtained with various research materials, the repetition of the information is considered as the driving force of the illusion rather than the content, but whether the effect depends on familiarity or recollection is controversial. The present study aimed to investigate how the novelty of the content may also contribute to this effect through familiarity versus recollection. In a series of three experiments, participants were presented with categorical information about novel pseudowords in an initial phase. Then, they were presented with either congruent or incongruent details about the category of the items. It was hypothesized that if familiarity drives the effect, just the mere repetition should increase truth ratings for all old items. Experiment 1 showed that the mere repetition of some cues from previously studied category statements did not produce the illusory truth effect. In Experiment 2, an additional phase of retrieval practice to teach the categorical information about the pseudowords produced a robust illusory truth effect. The results of Experiment 2 showed that when participants learned new information effectively, they made truth assessments by considering the congruence of the semantic details they remembered with existing statements. Experiment 3 aimed to understand how the time interval affects familiarity and recollection processes within the framework of the current research. Contrary to the results of previous studies, Experiment 3 did not find a pattern in which recollection turned into familiarity over time, but the illusory truth effect persisted over time. The results and future work are discussed in the context of referential theory and the illusory truth effect literature.
Open Access
The development of trust judgements about lie-tellers during middle childhood
(Bilkent University, 2021-06) Bahar, Aslı Yasemin; Allen, Jedediah Wilfred Papas
This thesis investigates children's trust evaluations for lie-tellers across three ages (7-,9-, and 11-year-olds) and a number of social situations. A total of 145 primary school children were tested on a Lie-Telling Evaluation Task (LET), created by the researchers, and classical interpretive ToM tasks. Lie-Telling Evaluation Task (LET) included eight short stories in which the protagonist lied. Half of the stories involved a culturally-appropriate lie, whereas the other half showcased a self-oriented lie: The participants were asked to rate their reliability and emotional trust towards the protagonist. Parents' general parenting styles and lie-telling behavior towards their children for instrumental purposes during preschool was investigated. The analysis focused on children's trust evaluations on three lie scenarios: avoiding punishment, avoiding shame, and being polite. Results indicated that children reported all lie-tellers as untrustworthy, yet lie scenario had a significant effect on trust judgements. There was also an interaction of lie scenario and age such that children's trust evaluations for a protagonist lying to avoid punishment and to be polite decreased with age while children's trust evaluations for a protagonist lying to avoid shame increased. Children' s total ToM abilities, parenting styles and parents' instrumental use of threat lies were not related to children's trust for the above three scenarios. However, parents' instrumental use of threat lies towards their children indirectly affected the influence of children's overall ToM performance on their trust evaluations for lie-tellers lying to avoid punishment.
Open Access
Towards a better understanding of morally responsible agency
(Bilkent University, 2021-05) Haghshenas, Roohollah; Wringe, William Giles
In this thesis, I defend P. F. Strawson’s distinction of internal-external problems to our ideas of moral responsibility practices. Then, I introduce the problems of superbad people as some serious internal problems. What I call Moral Personality Disorders, like narcissism, and deep-seated racism can be some instances of being superbad. I argue that just being superbad may make blame unintelligible for the blamed person, may make reactions like sadness appropriate to him, and may make blame an obstacle to finding deep roots of his problem and some effective solutions for it. I conclude that these problems prove the need for some substantial modifications in our ideas of moral responsibility. I ground a new account of responsibility based on what I introduce as one’s quality of valuing (QV) and a historical condition of responsibility. The historical condition, I argue, is met through a Responsibility Chain: 1) We are responsible for our actions/choices as much as they are up to our QV at the time of doing them. 2) We are responsible for our QV at any given time as much as it is up to our previous actions/choices. As its negative force, the Responsibility Chain shows that the credit and discredit of our actions/choices cannot go to a self over than, and beyond to, the Responsibility Chain of our lives. The Responsibility Chain also shows why superbad (and supergood) people are some natural results of human nature and how we should react to them.
Open Access
The effects of type of retrieval on predicted and actual memory performance for an episodic lie-generation paradigm
(Bilkent University, 2020-08) Eroğlu, Gamze Nur; Besken, Miri
Intentional generation of lies is a widely studied topic that has attracted attention over the last two decades. However, the memory for one’s intentional lies has not been studied thoroughly. Some studies suggest that deceptive answers intrude into one’s memory as false memories, however, most of the time, the results come from different types of paradigms with different types of retrieval tests. Theoretically, one factor that can potentially change memory of one’s lies might be the type of retrieval that they have to engage in. The current study investigated how using different types of retrieval such as free-recall, cued-recall as well as source and destination recognition may change both actual and predicted memory for lies and the truth. In a set of 3 experiments, participants were asked to tell the truth or tell a lie in the encoding phase, followed by their confidence rate in remembering the items in a subsequent memory test. At test, participants had to recall the answers to the questions through cued-recall (Experiment 1), free-recall (Experiment 2) or source and destination recognition (Experiment 3). Experiments 1 and 2 showed that according to response latencies, lying was more difficult than telling the truth. This difficulty was not reflected in participants’ predictions, truthful and deceptive answers were predicted to be remembered equally well. Actual memory performance differed across experiments: truthful answers were remembered more in Experiment 1, and deceptive answers were remembered more in Experiment 2. The results imply that the type of retrieval may change the pattern of actual memory performance between truth and lies, even though this is not reflected in memory predictions during encoding. Experiment 3 investigated whether lying would be influenced by the contextual information, associated with retrieval type by using a source and destination retrieval task. Participants were asked to tell truthful or deceptive information to the people on the screen, or receive truthful or deceptive information from the people on the screen. Results revealed that participants were able to recognize the faces from whom they received information more than the faces they told information to, regardless of the accuracy of the information. The results are discussed with processing fluency hypothesis and source monitoring framework.