An investigation of the influence of individual differences on susceptibility to product placement.
subject: Product placement, individual differences, cognitive capabilities, inhibitory control, age, familiarity, gender, timepoint, purchase intentions
description: Product placement increased in popularity in 1982 when Reese’s Pieces Chocolate was included in E.T. the film, which led to a 65% increase in sales. Still to this day product placement is omnipresent within our cultural climate and research has supported that it enhances our purchase intentions. However, what remains unknown is how individual differences may influence product placement susceptibility. To address this gap, the current study investigated whether individual differences in cognitive capabilities, inhibitory control, age, familiarity, gender and timepoint enhance/reduce the likelihood of individuals' purchasing intentions being influenced by product placement. To do this, 55 participants (23 younger adults (Mage = 61.62(8.70)) and 22 older adults (Mage = 21.75(0.68)) were presented with images of four cups of coffee and asked to rank their purchase intentions/familiarity with the products. Following this, participants watched three scenes from Coronation Street, with the second clip including a product placement (Costa Coffee). Approximately 48 hours later, participants completed another purchase intentions questionnaire on the same four cups of coffee. The results highlighted that purchase intentions increased immediately post-clip; however they decreased 48 hours post-clip. Therefore, advertisers may use this information to discover ways in which the consumer can easily purchase the product immediately post-clip e.g. through QR codes. In regard to all other variables, no other significant relationships were found. Thus, it cannot be suggested to advertising agencies that product placement targeted to individuals who fulfil a given criteria (e.g. older adults, etc) will achieve optimal results when compared to non-targeted product placement.
creator: Ellen Dimeck
source: Design The present quantitative study adopted a repeated measures design. There were several predictor variables: overall cognitive capabilities (including executive functioning; as assessed by the ACE-III; Hsieh et al., 2013), inhibitory control (as assessed by the Stroop effect), age, familiarity, gender, and timepoint. The dependent variable was susceptibility to product placement as measured by change in purchase intention. Participants At the time of the current studies design no published studies had investigated the influence of individual differences on product placement susceptibility, therefore the required sample size was modelled on the most comparable study the authors could source. Specifically, Hoek et al. (2022) investigated the influence of inhibitory control on advertising literacy activation and advertising susceptibility. Hoek et al. (2022) recruited 57 participants. Given the time restraints of data collection, the authors elected to recruit 55 participants. A total of 55 participants volunteered to participate in part one of the study. All participants were recruited via opportunity sampling through word of mouth and through advertisements placed on various Lancaster University Facebook pages (e.g. the Perception and Action Lab group). Participants were either aged between 18-25 (younger adults) or aged 50 and over (older adults). Out of the 55 participants, there were 27 younger adults (19 women; Mage = 60.93; SDage = 8.26) and 28 older adults (18 women; Mage = 21.78; SDage = 0.85). No participant had a known diagnosis of a psychiatric, neurological, or visual impairment, thus psychiatric, neurological, and visual impairments were not included in the analysis. All participants were White British/Irish. Therefore, there was no variation between ethnicities, thus ethnicity was not included in the analysis either. Given that cognitive capabilities was a key predictor variable within this study, it was necessary to ensure that participants with a …
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2022
contributor: Alex Myroshnychenko
rights: Open
relation: N/A
format: Data/RStudio.csv
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Can better linguistic fluency improve the memorability and credibility of a sentence?
subject: Linguistic Fluency, Alliteration, Advertising,Memory,Credibility
description: Processing fluency is often defined as how easy information is to comprehend based on a range of characteristics. One form of processing fluency is linguistic fluency, which refers to how easy a sentence is to interpret, regardless of the information within it. Some research suggests that disfluency can increase the recall of material, but this is contested. Previous studies have also shown that the linguistic fluency of a sentence can be improved with literary devices, such as rhyme, and that this can result in better perceptions of credibility. Research has yet to investigate how alliteration, as an example of linguistic fluency, could improve perceptions of credibility and the memorability of a sentence. This research investigated this by operationalising lists of alliterating and non-alliterating aphorisms, alongside measures of self-reported credibility and memorability, in a between-subjects study. Results of two independent t-tests provided two significant results, suggesting that better linguistic fluency improves the credibility and memorability of a sentence. Implications for researchers, the legal system and advertising are discussed.
creator: Hamish Bromley
source: Materials The preliminary five aphorisms were provided by Astroten with five further aphorisms being added to increase the power of the study. Aphorisms that were selected came from various literary examples, such as quotes from English Literature (Williams, 2011). Alternatively, some aphorisms were created using the definition “a short clever saying that is intended to express a general truth” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2022). The most common alliterating aphorisms, such as “All roads lead to Rome”, were purposefully avoided so that the effect of familiarity had a reduced effect on the memorability self-report. When creating the non-alliterating aphorisms, alliterating words were exchanged for non-alliterating words using a thesaurus so that the change in alliterative properties did not affect the overall meaning. The alliterating and non-alliterating aphorisms were kept divided into two different lists and were counterbalanced in a random order for each participant (Appendix C). Participants were asked to rate the credibility of the aphorisms based on a Likert scale of 1-9, in parallel with the scale used by McGlone and Tofighbakhsh (1999). Participants were asked to complete two games of Sudoku as a filler task (Appendix D). The grids were designed so that participants would begin with the easier version and move on to a more challenging version to ensure that the task occupied the full amount of time. Instructions were provided so that those who were unfamiliar with the game were still able to attempt the task. 18 Additionally, participants were given a piece of paper with 10 individual sections to write down as many of the aphorisms as they could remember at the end of the study. They were also provided with a pen, and time was kept using a watch. Design This study used a between-subjects design. This was chosen because there was a strong chance that order effects would impact the results of the memory test in a repeated measures design, due to the similarity betwe…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 07.09.2022
contributor: Cyrus
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Excel/xlsx.
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Advertising, Behavioural Science and Ethics: perspectives on the commercialisation of cognitive biases.
subject: Advertising, Behavioural Science, Behavioural economics, Ethics
description: Increasingly, behavioural science in the form of behavioural economics is being utilised to increase the effectiveness of advertising communications. The practice of using known cognitive biases and lapses in rational thinking to help sell products and services prompts ethical considerations. Whilst sparking some passionate, albeit small debate, research has not included the voice of the intended target, the general public. The aim of this research was to provide an open and sensitive forum in which the public could share their ideas surrounding the use of behavioural economics with the intention of detecting the perceived ethical boundaries, fairness in their implementation, and ultimately possible resolutions. In exploration of this topic, five interviews and two focus groups were conducted to discuss these increasingly pressing issues. Despite judged as unfair in advertising, behavioural economics was seen as an unavoidable reality in the fabric of the advertising landscape, although the public seek increased transparency and information regarding the specific techniques being utilised, while requesting little from advertisers themselves. The public also take special consideration of vulnerable groups of individuals who might be particularly susceptible to such tactics, a conversation which whilst incredibly important, hitherto has not been discussed, consequently contributing valuable insight into the literature concerning consumer protection. Future avenues for research may seek to address professionals in the industry, as personal insight may lead to richer, nuanced ideas that could lead to realistic and actionable solutions. Additionally, research could involve discussion of other potentially invasive techniques, such as data tracking, and how these techniques may combine to construct a psychological and technological sphere of influence and what sort of provisions can be made to empower the consumer.
creator: Rebecca Mitchell
source: Participants Overall, 14 participants took part, encompassing a wide range of ages to collect a broad set of opinions (range 21-62, mean 34 years, five males, eight females, one non-binary). Five participants were individually interviewed, with two focus groups taking place afterward. A breakdown of the participants can be found in Table 1, in Appendix A. All were residing within Britain and were therefore familiar with British advertising. Due to the nature of the research, recruitment was achieved via opportunity and snowball sampling, to ensure those participating would be comfortable in sharing their private thoughts and their time. Materials A discussion guide was developed in order to assess the public’s views on the issues considered in this research’s objectives, comprising of open-ended questions that can be seen in Appendix C. Although following an inductive framework for analysis, this was not strictly adhered to in the formation of the discussion guide, a brief literature search was conducted prior to its development, as to provide some direction for rich and useful prompts. 15 The first section sought to break the ice, probe for ideas and assess the awareness that participants may have in relation to psychology in advertising. Then, they were informed through a short paragraph what behavioural economics in advertising would look like, in order that they understand the concept, parameters and focus of the research. The resulting feelings were explored. Sources for this explanatory paragraph encompassed academic journals (Kovic & Laissue, 2016) and quotes lifted from the website of ‘The Behavioural Architects’ (2022) (a leading behavioural science consultancy agency) in order to represent an accurate and unbiased picture of what behavioural economics is considered to encompass. Example ads were also included and shown to participants in order to foster understanding. There are 108 cognitive biases listed by Wikipedia, (Wikipedia, 2022) and this list is gr…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 2022
contributor: Leah Murphy
rights: Open
relation: N/A
format: Text/Word.doc
language: English
type: English Text
coverage: LA1 4YF

An exploration of the psychological mechanism and effectiveness behind the co-creation process in advertising, based on the ‘Co-create by Sharp’ method.
subject: Keywords: Co-creation, advertising, psychology, behaviour
description: Scholars have referred to co-creation as the interaction between firms and stakeholders to create value. Co-creation for product innovation and campaign delivery is a growing trend in today’s competitive market due to a demand for consumer-centric communication and product development strategies. Even when traditional research techniques are relevant for evaluating brand messaging, they are considered backwards looking. Traditional research techniques (e.g., interviews, questionnaires, focus groups) rely on companies’ terms rather than the customer’s domain, limiting stakeholders to only react to market offers instead of cooperating to build them. The application of co-creation techniques does not replace reactive research but is the new next step to building brand and campaign strategies. The Sharp Agency developed ‘Co-create by Sharp’, a co-creation methodology that aims to build campaign and brand strategies with a higher value of insight than other approaches. According to The Sharp Agency, their unique approach to co-creating ideas with stakeholders has demonstrated effectiveness in their clients’ performance (i.e., 400% of revenue increase, 33% growth speed, and 19% spending increase). However, the method lacks information that supports its efficacy, more specifically, an exploration of the perceptions of people involved in their co-creation methodology (i.e., co-creation participants, Sharp team members, and Sharp’s commissioning clients). This report aims to identify the presence of plausible psychological theories that could support the ‘Co-create by Sharp’ methodology. Accordingly, this study intends to explore the dynamics, perceived effectiveness, and limitations of the ‘Co-create by Sharp’ methodology through a series of individual interviews with the people involved in the process. The researcher worked as an intern in the Sharp Agency, and a qualitative experimental design was used to investigate the research objective. Three types of interviews were …
creator: Maria Gabriela Vivero Donoso
source: The researcher worked as an intern in the Sharp Agency to better understand the company’s way of work and the ‘Co-create by Sharp’ method. The internship allowed the researcher to be involved in various steps of the co-creation method: 1) Attend co-create sessions and observe participant behaviour (see Appendix K and Appendix L). 2) Develop post-co-create decks of information, including sessions’ outputs. 3) Participate in strategic brainstorming sessions. 4) Collate evidence of the final results of messaging and visuals for campaign delivery. A qualitative experimental design was used to investigate the research objectives and provide answers to research questions. Three types of interviews were conducted with different participant profiles, including co-creation participants, Sharp team members and Sharp clients. Interview sessions lasted between twenty and thirty minutes, using a pre-determined discussion guide for each interview and received ethical approval. Interviews were designed to gather insights about co-creation perceptions from every person involved in the process. A qualitative design allowed interviewees to express freely their co-creation experience with The Sharp Agency. Considering the research aimed to explore people’s attitudes, it would not have been appropriate to use a quantitative method. Instead, a qualitative design allowed for gathering a spectrum of people’s observations and feedback. Sampling Representative sampling was used to obtain results that reflect each participant’s profile perspective. Interviewing involved five participants from the latest co-creation sessions moderated by Sharp, seven Sharp team members with roles involved in different stages of the co-creation process (including founders of the ‘Co-create by Sharp’ method), and three company commissioning clients that represent market leader companies (i.e., Medical Protection Service, Barbour ABI, and Lonza). Considering that Medical Protection Service (MPS) and Lonza are pa…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 06/09/2022
contributor: Madie Lulek
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Word.doc
language: English
type: Qualitative Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

The roles of reading motivation and reading strategies in secondary school students’ reading comprehension
subject: reading comprehension; reading inference; reading motivation; expository and narrative texts; secondary school
description: The aim of the study was to investigate comprehension and inference ability in relation to text genre, reading strategies, intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation, and gender in mainstream secondary school UK students. Data were collected from a sample of 27 participants; retained data of 9 secondary school students (5 males, 4 females) data were used for the study analysis. These responses were used to inform a simulated dataset for the analysis. The participants completed an online study, which measured their intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation The Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ; Wang & Guthrie, 2004), comprehension and inference ability of narrative and expository texts (Currie et al., 2021), and reading strategies (Denton, Wolters, et al., 2015). Due to sample size limitations the decision was made to simulate individual datasets for reading strategies, intrinsic reading motivation, extrinsic reading motivation, narrative texts, and expository texts by gender, following the simulation methods proposed by Muldoon (2019). The results of the study revealed that female participants scored lower on reading strategies and demonstrated poorer performance for narrative and expository texts. There was no gender difference found for reading motivation. These findings will be discussed in relation to our understanding of gender differences in inferential reading comprehension, reading motivation and practical implications for the classroom.
creator: Anastasija Jumatova
source: Participants The intention was to collect original data from UK Year 7, 8, 9, and 10 mainstream secondary school students. This was through schools and word of mouth. Unfortunately, schools who were approached were not able distribute the study information in time for data collection before the summer break. In total 27 students started the study and completed data was collected from 9 (5 males, 4 females; M age = 13.83 years, SD = 2.45). These data were used to inform a simulated dataset to test the study predictions.
source: Materials Reading Motivation To assess students’ reading motivation 7 out of 8 domains from “The Motivation for Reading Questionnaire” (MRQ): A Revised Version (Wang & Guthrie, 2004) were used (grades domain from extrinsic scale was removed). The forty-one-question scale measured extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation consisted of three domains: curiosity (7 items), involvement (7 items), and preference for challenge (5 items). Seven scales (curiosity, involvement, challenge, recognition, social and competition) reported good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha ˃ .70; Wang and Guthrie, 2004). An example of intrinsic motivation item: “I enjoy a long, involved story or fiction book”. Extrinsic motivation measured the following four domains: recognition (5 items), social (7 items), competition (6 items), and compliance (4 items). An example of extrinsic motivation item: “I like having my friends sometimes tell me I am a good reader”. Each statement had four possible answers, which were assigned values from 0 to 3 (very different from me = 0, a little different from me = 1, a little like me = 2, a lot like me = 3), and participants were asked to select the most appropriate for them. Scoring for negative item 40 was reversed before assigning the values. Text Genre Participants were asked to read 12 narrative, and 12 expository texts. Narrative texts focussed on human characteristics and activities, based on interactions with different social groups, as families, friends, peers at schools and youth clubs. Expository texts, were science-based, underpinned by chemistry, physics, biology, and geology. Each text consisted of 7 sentences, with 2 critical sentences that required an inference in order to integrate their meanings. The distance between two critical sentences was varied – either adjacent or separated by up to 3 sentences of filler text to minimise the detection of any pattern by readers, which might result in a focus on just the critical senten…
source: Procedure The study was hosted on Qualtrics platform. First, the parents/ guardians accessed the study via a link, then they provided their consent. The child saw the next screen, where they read the information about the study and provided their assent. Participants were asked to complete the task at home in their own time, outside of their school commitment time. Participants were asked to provide information about their gender, age - month and year only. Task order was: (1) reading strategies, (2) narrative texts with yes/no questions about the texts, (3) expository texts with yes/no questions about the texts, and (4) intrinsic and extrinsic reading questionnaire. For the reading strategies questionnaire, participants were asked to read 3 scenarios, as described above. They read each scenario and then indicated on a 4-point Likert scale how frequently they used each strategy. To assess inference making, participants read 12 short narrative texts, and also 12 short expository texts. Each text was shown on 1 screen with the inference-tapping question on a separate screen. They pressed a button next to YES or NO to provide their answer. The final task required participants to complete a reading motivation questionnaire. They read 19 statements for intrinsic and 22 statements for extrinsic reading motivation, and then indicated on the 4-point Likert scale how likely of them it was, as described above. The whole procedure took approximately 30 minutes. Collected data was stored in password-protected file, on password-protected Master student’s Lancaster University’s Office 360, accessed through password-protected laptop.
source: Ethical Considerations The research was approved by the University Department Ethics Committee, and conducted in line with the Lancaster University ethics guidelines: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sci-tech/research/ethics/, and the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct (2018). Measures were taken to maintain the participants’ anonymity: identifiable information as participant’s name, school name, participant’s full date of birth were not collected; with references to data collection in England. To investigate the study purposes of age and gender related differences, participant’s month and year of birth were obtained, and the student’s gender as reported by participant were collected.
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 28/09/2022
contributor: Wai Man Ko, Charlotte Graham
rights: Open
relation: N/A
format: Data/csv.
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA14YF

Can better linguistic fluency improve the memorability and credibility of a sentence?
subject: Linguistic Fluency, Alliteration, Advertising,Memory,Credibility
description: Processing fluency is often defined as how easy information is to comprehend based on a range of characteristics. One form of processing fluency is linguistic fluency, which refers to how easy a sentence is to interpret, regardless of the information within it. Some research suggests that disfluency can increase the recall of material, but this is contested. Previous studies have also shown that the linguistic fluency of a sentence can be improved with literary devices, such as rhyme, and that this can result in better perceptions of credibility. Research has yet to investigate how alliteration, as an example of linguistic fluency, could improve perceptions of credibility and the memorability of a sentence. This research investigated this by operationalising lists of alliterating and non-alliterating aphorisms, alongside measures of self-reported credibility and memorability, in a between-subjects study. Results of two independent t-tests provided two significant results, suggesting that better linguistic fluency improves the credibility and memorability of a sentence. Implications for researchers, the legal system and advertising are discussed.
creator: Hamish Bromley
source: Materials The preliminary five aphorisms were provided by Astroten with five further aphorisms being added to increase the power of the study. Aphorisms that were selected came from various literary examples, such as quotes from English Literature (Williams, 2011). Alternatively, some aphorisms were created using the definition “a short clever saying that is intended to express a general truth” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2022). The most common alliterating aphorisms, such as “All roads lead to Rome”, were purposefully avoided so that the effect of familiarity had a reduced effect on the memorability self-report. When creating the non-alliterating aphorisms, alliterating words were exchanged for non-alliterating words using a thesaurus so that the change in alliterative properties did not affect the overall meaning. The alliterating and non-alliterating aphorisms were kept divided into two different lists and were counterbalanced in a random order for each participant (Appendix C). Participants were asked to rate the credibility of the aphorisms based on a Likert scale of 1-9, in parallel with the scale used by McGlone and Tofighbakhsh (1999). Participants were asked to complete two games of Sudoku as a filler task (Appendix D). The grids were designed so that participants would begin with the easier version and move on to a more challenging version to ensure that the task occupied the full amount of time. Instructions were provided so that those who were unfamiliar with the game were still able to attempt the task. 18 Additionally, participants were given a piece of paper with 10 individual sections to write down as many of the aphorisms as they could remember at the end of the study. They were also provided with a pen, and time was kept using a watch. Design This study used a between-subjects design. This was chosen because there was a strong chance that order effects would impact the results of the memory test in a repeated measures design, due to the similarity betwe…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 07.09.2022
contributor: Coco
rights: Open
relation: Dissertation
format: Excel/xlsx.
language: English
type: Data
coverage: Marketing

The effects of code switching in the level of persuasiveness of advertising and marketing messages on bilingual consumers.
subject: Bilingualism Code-switching Language Manipulation Advertising Communication Language Comprehension/Cognition
description: Bilingualism and advertising are two concepts which are not commonly related, but based on recent statistics they definitely should be. Recent numbers show that more than 50% of the world’s population is bilingual (Grosjean, 2010). However, there has been minimal research concerning bilingual consumers and how bilinguals may differently encounter advertising messages, based on their ability to speak two languages. The research that has been done, is primarily based on code switching; the practice of switching between languages during speech. It is a very common practice between bilinguals, which they use to better communicate and better express themselves during a conversation in a specific social context. This study will attempt to analyse the effects of language manipulation upon bilingual individuals, by implementing the concept of advertising and more specifically bilingual advertising. participants will firstly encounter a manipulation of attitude towards language, before encountering a set of advertising slogans of certain products, in a code-switched format. They will then have to rate the products, based on the persuasiveness of the advertising slogans.
creator: Stephanos Mosfiliotis
source: Firstly, a manipulation of attitude towards the language took place. Participants were presented with a random mock article, either in Greek or English. Participants were then presented with four audio recordings of advertising messages/slogans of four different products. Slogans were either all in Greek or English and they were presented in the same code-switching direction; from primary to Secondary or from Secondary to primary. A single word was chosen from each slogan and was code-switched to the opposite language appropriately. Participants were then asked to evaluate the featured products based on the advertising message they heard. Evaluations were obtained through a series of six questions, asking the participant to rate the featured product on a Likert type scale, varying from one to six. These included: “poor/high quality”, “level of appeal”, “odds of recommending the product to others”, “odds of buying the product”, “mediocre/exceptional” and “bad/good”.
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 14/08/2022
contributor: Katie Alcock
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/.CSV
language: English and Greek
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Facts May Care About Your Feelings: The Effects of Empirical and Anecdotal Evidence in the Perception of Climate Change
subject: Climate change, communication, perception, emotion, evidence
description: Although the effects of humanmade climate change become ever more potent, the consensus gap between climate scientists and the public is as wide as ever. It is critical that climate change communication is improved to try and close this gap. There are several strategies that can be implemented, including using anecdotes alongside or instead of empirical evidence to elicit emotions. In this study, 74 members of the public completed a survey. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions which dictated the type of evidence they received: no evidence, empirical evidence, anecdotal evidence, or both empirical and anecdotal evidence. Results suggest that, in general, there was no effect of evidence on participants’ perceptions of climate change. This result held even after controlling for worldview and ideology. These findings have implications for the theory of inserting emotion into climate change communication.
creator: Constance Jordan-Turner
source: This study gained ethical approval from the Faculty of Science and Technology Research Ethics Committee. Participants and design There were 74 participants (26 male; 46 female; one non-binary; one preferred not to say). The mean age of the participants was 37.99 (SD = 16.93). Participants were recruited via advertising the study on the researcher’s social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram) using a standardised advertisement (see Appendix A) and through word of mouth. Participants were all members of the general public. The study manipulated two independent variables in a between-participants design: anecdotal evidence (without-anecdotal vs. with-anecdotal) and empirical evidence (without-empirical vs. with empirical), resulting in four conditions. Participants were randomly allocated to one of the four conditions, subject to the constraint of equal cell numbers. Evidence Passages Empirical Evidence The empirical evidence vignette included a statement explaining that human-induced carbon dioxide emissions and global average temperature have synchronously increased since pre-industrial times, accompanied with graphs demonstrating these upward trends. The vignette also highlighted the scientific consensus that humanmade climate change is occurring and will have adverse consequences. Finally, the vignette explained that these adverse consequences had already begun to materialise. The increase of extreme weather events was highlighted in a graph that showed the tripling of weather-related disasters between 1980 and 2010. Finally, the vignette finished with references for the information it contained (see Appendix B). Anecdotal Evidence The anecdotal evidence vignette contained information about Storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin which all made landfall in Britain in quick succession in 2022. The storms were a weather-related event that some scientists have linked to climate change (Barrett, 2022); Specifically, the vignette included information about the storms’ des…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 21/09/2022
contributor: Abigail Travis
rights: Open
relation: None
format: Data/SPSS.sav
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA1 4YF

Exploring the impact of rewards on contextual cueing effect
subject: contextual cueing effect, reward, selective attention
description: There is a huge amount of complex information about visual stimuli in the environment and the individual's visual processing system has a limited capacity to process this information, so selective attentional mechanisms prioritise the most valuable information. Fixed contextual cues in the environment help us to allocate attentional resources efficiently. In their study of context, Chun and Jiang proposed a contextual cueing effect (CC effect). This effect is likely to be an implicit learning resulting from selective attention. Specifically, subjects searched for the target faster in the repeated configuration than in the random configuration, as fixed contextual cues would help locate the target. It was found that this effect could be moderated by manipulating external motivation, i.e., reward. However, there is so far considerable debate as to whether high rewards can contribute to the cc effect, and whether rewards act on the cc effect or on the positional probability learning effect. The present experiment used a classical situational cueing task and a mixed between-*within group experimental design to explore the effect of reward on the contextual cueing effect. The experimental results show that high rewards did not contribute more significantly to the cc effect than low rewards, but high rewards did facilitate the target probability learning effect.
creator: Wen Fan
source: Participants Fifty-two Lancaster University students (20 identified as male and 32 as female; age M=23.9, SD=2.55 years, range: 19-33 years) participated in the experiment. Two participants were excluded from the final analysis (see below for details). All participants had normal or corrected normal vision. Participants were informed that the three participants with the highest scores in the experiment would receive a £20 Amazon voucher as a reward. At the end of the experiment, the three participants with the highest scores had received their £20 Amazon vouchers by e-mail. The experiment passed ethical review by the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University. All participants were shown a participant information sheet and signed a consent form to participate in this study prior to the start of the experiment. The Participant Debrief Sheet was presented to participants at the end of the experiment. Materials The materials were created and presented with the Psychophysics Toolbox Version 3 (Brainard, 1997) MATLAB (MathWorks, Sherborn, MA) toolbox. The stimuli were displayed on an MS-Windows machine on a screen with 1920 × 1080 pixels resolution and 60 Hz refreshing rate. Each display consists of 11 L-shaped and one T-shaped black 1.25° x 1.25° items, presented on a white background. The only T-shaped item in each display is the target, which has a 90° rotation clockwise (called left) or counterclockwise (called right). There were an equal number of times that the target was rotated to the left as it was rotated to the right across the experiment. The L-shaped distractors were randomly rotated by 0°, 90°, 180° or 270°. To increase the difficulty of the task (Jiang & Chun, 2001), the L-shaped items had a 4-pixel offset at the junction of the lines to make them similar to the T-shaped targets. In each display, all items were balanced within the quadrant of the display. This randomisation was carried out for each subject individually. Experiment design This experim…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 07/09/2022
contributor: Jessica Andrew Jack Ho
rights: Open
relation: none
format: Excel.csv r_file.R jasp_file.jasp
language: English
type: Data
coverage: LA14YW

Assessing comprehension of health-related texts in non-native and native English speakers
subject: reading comprehension, health literacy, individual differences, language groups.
description: Background — Health written materials are more often complex to comprehend if they mismatch the reading ability of people in the target audience. We need to consider how to make text accessible, by considering individual differences that affect comprehension of written health materials. Surprisingly, there are very few studies that indicate how non-native English speakers and native English speakers differ in comprehension of written health texts. Methods — A total of 557 participants were studied in the present study. In the study, participants were asked to respond to multiple-choice questions that were designed to examine understanding of 25 health texts with different text properties. Each participant responded to tests measuring individual differences in demographics, reading strategy, vocabulary, and health literacy. Findings — Using mixed effects logistic regression analysis, we found that non-native English speakers and native English speakers have different accuracy of responses for written health texts. Effects of vocabulary skills and text readability were significant. These effects were different for different language groups. Native speakers of English with higher scores on vocabulary were more likely to make correct responses to written health texts. Native speakers of English were more likely to make correct responses to written health texts as text readability increased. Conclusion — In future, experimental studies should look at the effects of training to improve vocabulary on reading comprehension for different language groups. Alongside consider sources of variances due to individual differences and text properties for different language groups.
creator: Khushboo Anup Agarwal
source: Design We conducted experimental research on factors that influence the response to written health information, aiming to answer the research question: RQ.1 How does the reader’s attributes such as age, vocabulary skills, health literacy, reading strategy skills, along with text features, interact to predict the comprehension of health information in written texts for native language English speaker and non-native English speaker? We conducted the study to test the hypotheses: 1. Comprehension will be better for people with higher scores on reading skill, vocabulary and health literacy. Comprehension will be lower as age increases. 2. Comprehension will be better for responses to texts which are higher on measures of readability, cohesion, word frequency, referential cohesion, and passive sentences. 3. There will be differences between native and non-native speakers. Comprehension will be better for native speakers. The effect of age, reading strategy, vocabulary skills, and health literacy will be different for different language groups. The effect of cohesion, readability, word frequency, referential cohesion, and passive sentences will be different for different language groups. Ethical approval. The data collection plan and study design were reviewed and approved by a member of the Psychology Department Research Ethics Committee. Pre-registration. The study has not been pre-registered. Participants Participants were recruited using primarily opportunity and snowball sampling. Participants were invited using social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. We aimed at recruiting Bilingual/Multilingual Indian Residents (18+) who have access to the internet. We collected 201 responses, but only 112 participants were included in our analysis due to incomplete forms by other respondents. Our criterion for including participant data in analyses was that they had to complete 80 percent or more of the survey. We had 112 responses, but we did not test any of the r…
publisher: Lancaster University
date: 13/09/2022
contributor: Huzaifah Adam, Coco, Alex Myroshnychenko
rights: Open
relation: This work is based on Kintsch, W. (1994). Text Comprehension, Memory, and Learning. American Psychologist, 10. White, S., Happé, F.M., Hill, E., & Frith, U. (2009). Revisiting the Strange Stories: Revealing McNamara, D., & Magliano, J. (2009). Chapter 9 Toward a Comprehensive Model of Comprehension. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 51, 297–384. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-7421(09)51009-2 O’reilly, T., & Mcnamara, D. S. (2007). Reversing the Reverse Cohesion Effect: Good Texts Can Be Better for Strategic, High-Knowledge Readers. Discourse Processes, 43(2), 121–152. https://doi.org/10.1080/01638530709336895
format: Excel spreadsheets - .csv R Script - .r
language: English
type: Data
coverage: Developmental, Other