Identifying the mechanisms underpinning recognition of structured sequences of action

© 2012 The Experimental Psychology SocietyWe present three experiments to identify the specific information sources that skilled participants use to make recognition judgements when presented with dynamic, structured stimuli. A group of less skilled participants acted as controls. In all experiments, participants were presented with filmed stimuli containing structured action sequences. In a subsequent recognition phase, participants were presented with new and previously seen stimuli and were required to make judgements as to whether or not each sequence had been presented earlier (or were edited versions of earlier sequences). In Experiment 1, skilled participants demonstrated superior sensitivity in recognition when viewing dynamic clips compared with static images and clips where the frames were presented in a nonsequential, randomized manner, implicating the importance of motion information when identifying familiar or unfamiliar sequences. In Experiment 2, we presented normal and mirror-reversed sequences in order to distort access to absolute motion information. Skilled participants demonstrated superior recognition sensitivity, but no significant differences were observed across viewing conditions, leading to the suggestion that skilled participants are more likely to extract relative rather than absolute motion when making such judgements. In Experiment 3, we manipulated relative motion information by occluding several display features for the duration of each film sequence. A significant decrement in performance was reported when centrally located features were occluded compared to those located in more peripheral positions. Findings indicate that skilled participants are particularly sensitive to relative motion information when attempting to identify familiarity in dynamic, visual displays involving interaction between numerous features

A 680,000-person megastudy of nudges to encourage vaccination in pharmacies

Encouraging vaccination is a pressing policy problem. To assess whether text-based reminders can encourage pharmacy vaccination and what kinds of messages work best, we conducted a megastudy. We randomly assigned 689,693 Walmart pharmacy patients to receive one of 22 different text reminders using a variety of different behavioral science principles to nudge flu vaccination or to a business-as-usual control condition that received no messages. We found that the reminder texts that we tested increased pharmacy vaccination rates by an average of 2.0 percentage points, or 6.8%, over a 3-mo follow-up period. The most-effective messages reminded patients that a flu shot was waiting for them and delivered reminders on multiple days. The top-performing intervention included two texts delivered 3 d apart and communicated to patients that a vaccine was “waiting for you.” Neither experts nor lay people anticipated that this would be the best-performing treatment, underscoring the value of simultaneously testing many different nudges in a highly powered megastudy.https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/119/6/e2115126119.full.pd

Replicability and robustness of genome-wide-association for behavioral traits

A recent genome-wide-association study of educational attainment identified three single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) whose associations, despite their small effect sizes (each R 2 ≈ 0.02%), reached genome-wide significance (p < 5 × 10−8) in a large discovery sample and were replicated in an independent sample (p < .05). The study also reported associations between educational attainment and indices of SNPs called "polygenic scores." In three studies, we evaluated the robustness of these findings. Study 1 showed that the associations with all three SNPs were replicated in another large (N = 34,428) independent sample. We also found that the scores remained predictive (R 2 ≈ 2%) in regressions with stringent controls for stratification (Study 2) and in new within-family analyses (Study 3). Our results show that large and therefore well-powered genome-wide-association studies can identify replicable genetic associations with behavioral traits. The small effect sizes of individual SNPs are likely to be a major contributing factor explaining the striking contrast between our results and the disappointing replication record of most candidate-gene studies