Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Video is often regarded as a complete, objective account of events, and therefore we rarely question its validity. However, our interpretation of video can be biased by many factors. Therefore, we...Show moreVideo is often regarded as a complete, objective account of events, and therefore we rarely question its validity. However, our interpretation of video can be biased by many factors. Therefore, we investigated whether we could reduce the overestimating of the objectivity of visual evidence used in police cases. To do that, we showed participants either camera footage of a possible crime, or a textual description of this video. Half of the participants were given a bias warning which asked them to explicitly generate an alternative explanation to their first impression of the evidence (‘consider-the-opposite’ strategy); the other half did not. We compared these four groups on how likely they thought it was that the suspects were guilty, their verdict (guilty/not guilty), and the confidence they had in their judgment. We expected that participants who saw the video would judge the probability of guilt of the suspects as higher than people who read the text, but found the opposite. This could be due to certain aspects of the evidence being more salient in visual or textual form. We explored this using qualitative analysis of participants’ first impressions and alternative explanations of the evidence. Contrary to our expectations, the bias warning did not effectively reduce this difference in guilt judgments between people who saw the video and people who read the text. We did not find that individual differences moderated the effectiveness of the warning, but differences in perspective taking and the perceived objectivity of video did predict the estimated likelihood of guilt. We also did not find that confidence in judgment differed between the four groups. We discuss implications of these findings and give recommendations for future research to further explore how we regard certain visual and textual elements in evidence, and how individual differences play a role in our interpretation of evidence.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
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Individuals with sex chromosome trisomies (SCT’s) have an increased risk for psychopathologies and behavioral problems. Cognitive factors during development could underly the development of...Show moreIndividuals with sex chromosome trisomies (SCT’s) have an increased risk for psychopathologies and behavioral problems. Cognitive factors during development could underly the development of psychopathologies. Adults with an extra X chromosome (Klinefelter) showed impaired emotional arousal and emotion regulation. However, not much is known about the manifestation of these impairments in children with SCT’s. Therefore, the current study focused on emotional arousal and emotion regulation strategies in children with SCT’s. It was also investigated if age moderated the differences in emotional arousal and emotion regulation strategies. One hundred-seven children with SCT’s and 102 nonclinical controls participated in this study. A frustration inducing task (locked-box task) was used to induce heightened emotional arousal, which was measured continuously using heart rate measures. The emotion regulation strategies were coded during the task as well. Results showed lower emotional arousability in the children with SCT’s as well as less frequent use of constructive and venting emotion regulation strategies. The difference in avoidance strategy use was moderated by age. As the current study found evidence for the manifestation of emotion regulation problems in the childhood of individuals with SCT’s, it could be that these impairments are part of the underlying mechanism of the development of psychopathologies as well as possible targets for intervention.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Daylight Saving Time (DST) is at its height of controversy in Europe and around the world, as many countries are considering abolishing it. However, little is known about how DST impacts...Show moreDaylight Saving Time (DST) is at its height of controversy in Europe and around the world, as many countries are considering abolishing it. However, little is known about how DST impacts individuals in naturalistic, cognitively-engaging tasks. By using smartphone touchscreen timestamp data from 336 participants in combination with a system identification and impulse response fitting approach, we measured changes in smartphone interactions for 15 days before and 15 days after spring and autumn DST transitions recorded from 2018 to 2021. Our aim was to explore the effect of DST smartphone interactions, including how long DST transitions impact individuals, whether individuals show similarities in their DST responses, and whether age and gender explain differences in DST responses. We found that most individuals were impacted by DST transitions, with a median recovery period of 26 days, almost twice as long as prior estimates. Additionally, hierarchical clustering revealed that some individuals show similarities in their responses to DST, in addition to large inter-individual differences. We also found that differences in the DST response are not explained by age or gender. We propose that large inter-individual differences in responses to DST might be explained by the ability for individuals to self-select their sleep-wake patterns independently of day-night cycles. Additionally, these large inter-individual differences could partly explain the controversy behind DST, as further investigation needs to be made into what causes individuals to respond differently to DST.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
open access
Previous research has shown that subjective cognitive performance can be enhanced, and that sense of agency can be lowered via verbal suggestion of brain stimulation. Mixed results have been found...Show morePrevious research has shown that subjective cognitive performance can be enhanced, and that sense of agency can be lowered via verbal suggestion of brain stimulation. Mixed results have been found on the effect of placebo stimulation on error-related negativity (ERN) amplitude, which is an implicit outcome measure. This EEG study focused on the role of verbal suggestion and associative learning in eliciting placebo effects in subjective performance, sense of agency, and ERN amplitude. Using a within-subject design, we recorded EEG while participants (n = 19) performed in a simple cognitive task. Participants were told that a sham brain stimulation device would either enhance (placebo condition) or impair (nocebo condition) their cognitive performance. Next, we used a conditioning phase in which we altered the task difficulty according to the experimental block in order to induce the association between task difficulty and proposed stimulation. After this conditioning phase, the task difficulty was equal across conditions. We found increased subjective performance in the nocebo condition, but not the placebo condition, compared to control. We found a lower sense of agency in the placebo condition, but not the nocebo condition, compared to control. Finally, we found no difference in ERN amplitude throughout conditions. These results are not in line with previous research. Our conditioning phase did not work as intended and therefor the results are difficult to interpret. In addition, based on the results of our post-test questionnaire, our verbal suggestion might have been too weak. Future research should try to replicate the earlier results and continue investigating possible (other) implicit outcome measures.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Previous research indicates that the way how video evidence is presented can affect how much intent viewers ascribe suspects. With this between-subjects online study, I investigated whether pausing...Show morePrevious research indicates that the way how video evidence is presented can affect how much intent viewers ascribe suspects. With this between-subjects online study, I investigated whether pausing video evidence leads viewers to ascribe greater premeditated intent to the suspect. Further, I assessed whether this effect may arise because viewers perceive that the suspect had more time to deliberate and/or because the pause makes the deliberation moment more readily available in memory. All participants (N = 169, Mage = 21.95) were shown video evidence of a crime. The video paused either immediately before the crime, far before the crime, or did not pause. Subsequently, they judged the intent of the suspect, and suggested a charge and sentence length that the suspect should serve in detention. Results indicated that pausing video evidence did not lead viewers to ascribe greater intent to the suspect nor to demand a more severe charge. Moreover, pausing video evidence did not lead viewers to perceive that the suspect had more time to deliberate about the crime. However, the pause made the moment of deliberation more readily available in memory. Further, participants who ascribed greater intent to the suspect also demanded longer imprisonment of the suspect. This study provided preliminary insights for policymaking on how to present evidence unbiased for factfinding in court and to ensure fairer legal processes.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
open access
The recent trend towards gamification could lead to an increase of the number of learning problems that need to be solved through reinforcement learning. It is therefore important that people learn...Show moreThe recent trend towards gamification could lead to an increase of the number of learning problems that need to be solved through reinforcement learning. It is therefore important that people learn how to solve reinforcement learning problems. Understanding which learning strategies people use, the processes behind them, and identifying sub-optimal learning strategies could prove very beneficial for teaching people the best reinforcement learning strategies. This study examines the processes behind reinforcement learning strategies through cognitive modeling. A reinforcement learning model was fitted on human behavior on a reinforcement learning problem. Some people were able to fully solve the problem and others were not. The temporal parameter trajectories of these two groups were compared to each other. The group that solved the problem showed expected results with a lot of learning and exploration at the start and less learning and more exploitation towards the end of the task. The other group started similarly but then started to learn less while exploration remained high. This could indicate that these people would benefit from short learning sessions after which they are able to focus on something else.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
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Individual differences in behavior are best explained through a multisystem approach by integrating neurobiological, neurocognitive, and social environmental factors. This longitudinal study...Show moreIndividual differences in behavior are best explained through a multisystem approach by integrating neurobiological, neurocognitive, and social environmental factors. This longitudinal study examined whether early physical aggression could be predicted by stress regulation, inhibitory control, risk background, and sex. In addition, this study is among the first to investigate whether the four stress response patterns of the Adaptive Calibration Model (Del Giudice et al., 2011) could be generalized to 12-month-old children by studying: autonomic nervous system (ANS), sympathetic nervous system (SNS), parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), and hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis. ANS was indexed by heart rate, SNS by salivary alpha-amylase and pre-ejection period, PNS by respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and HPA axis by salivary cortisol. The sample consisted of 214 mother-child dyads (116 boys) with an equal number of high- and low-risk backgrounds. Physical aggression was assessed through maternal reports at 12, 20, and 30 months of age. At 12 months, children performed an inhibitory control task and the fear task (robot paradigm) was used to measure baseline, response, and recovery levels of the stress systems. Latent profile analysis revealed three profiles: (1) ANS Responders, (2) Moderate Arousal, and (3) Hormonal Responders. No significant differences were found between the profiles with regard to inhibitory control, average age of mother and child, number of boys and girls, and number of high- and low-risk children. Results showed that higher physical aggression scores were associated at 12 months with ANS Responders and lower inhibitory control, at 20 months with Hormonal Responders, boys and high-risk, and at 30 months with boys and high-risk. In addition, an interaction effect was found at 20 months: higher inhibitory control in girls was associated with lower physical aggression scores, but not in the Hormonal Responders. The discussion highlights the importance of using a multisystem approach to explain individual differences in early physical aggression.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Rules regulate society as they help to predict social interactions. Groups, however, do not always abide by rules. Instead, they break them when the conditions are right. Here we hypothesized that...Show moreRules regulate society as they help to predict social interactions. Groups, however, do not always abide by rules. Instead, they break them when the conditions are right. Here we hypothesized that rule abidance behavior is determined by a) an individual choosing another for mutual benefit based on their reputation and b) the social-environmental incentives like fairness and dishonesty. We had three participants building a reputation for their willingness to abide by or break rules. A fourth participant used that information to choose one to three participants, then played several rounds of a dictator game and a die-roll task. Participants were chosen more often when their reputation was in line with environmental incentives, where merely transitioning from one environment to another strengthened that effect. Regulators should therefore ensure the consistency and kinds of environmental incentives that individuals in power positions face across environments for controlling resulting rule abidance behavior.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Previous research investigating the factors that shape a person’s degree of intergroup prejudice has focused primarily on relatively high level ideological and personality traits. In a largely...Show morePrevious research investigating the factors that shape a person’s degree of intergroup prejudice has focused primarily on relatively high level ideological and personality traits. In a largely separate body of work, psychophysiological predispositions towards threat sensitivity have been linked to ideological constructs. The current work integrates these two bodies of work by introducing a novel approach to measure implicit threat sensitivity and (theoretically) linking it to intergroup prejudice. Specifically, it was investigated whether individual differences in cognitively assessed sensitivity to threatening information were associated with a greater degree of implicit bias and explicit prejudice towards a stereotypically threatening minority-group (i.e., Muslims). While results did not support a relationship between threat sensitivity and intergroup prejudice, exploratory data, as well as limitations and implications of the current work, encourage future research.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
closed access
Background: Theoretical models propose that parenting practices play a role in the development and maintenance of child depression. However, previous meta-analytic findings indicated that parenting...Show moreBackground: Theoretical models propose that parenting practices play a role in the development and maintenance of child depression. However, previous meta-analytic findings indicated that parenting accounted for only 5-11% of the variance in childhood depression, with varying effects for different types of parenting behaviors. Research Question: The current study aimed to investigate the association between observed negative/positive parenting behavior, childhood depression, and child gender, while controlling for the confounding effects of type of informant and assessment approach for childhood depression. Method: Two meta-analysis were conducted for the negative parenting – childhood depression and positive parenting – childhood depression association, while including moderating and confounding variables. The current study included thirty articles in total, with nineteen examining negative parenting behaviors and twenty-three examining positive parenting behaviors. Results: Observed negative parenting behavior was positively and observed positive parenting behavior was negatively related to childhood depression, with overall small effect sizes. Type of parenting behavior, child gender, and assessment approach for childhood depression did not moderate the associations. Type of informant for childhood depression explained some variance in the positive parenting – childhood depression association. Conclusions: Parenting interventions for childhood depression might aim to improve a broader range of parental behaviors. Future research is advised to compare actual to perceived parenting behaviors and investigate the direction of the parenting – childhood depression association, while adopting a multiple levels of analysis perspective. This could possibly contribute towards developing most effective personalized interventions for childhood depression, while lowering the high burden of depression.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Having an extra sex chromosome is known as sex chromosome trisomy (SCT). This may result in 47,XXY, 47,XXX, or 47,XYY. Previous research suggested that social attention to the eyes is reduced in ...Show moreHaving an extra sex chromosome is known as sex chromosome trisomy (SCT). This may result in 47,XXY, 47,XXX, or 47,XYY. Previous research suggested that social attention to the eyes is reduced in (young) adults with SCT and that individuals with SCT have more autistic characteristics compared to typically developing (TD) controls. It was unknown whether the group differences were also present in early childhood. The current study aimed to explore social attention, autistic traits, and their relation in three subgroups of children with SCT (47,XXY, 47,XXX, and 47,XYY; N = 70), aged 3 to 7 years, in comparison to TD peers (N = 62). Social attention to the eyes was measured using three eye-tracking video paradigms: A single-face condition, a multiple-face condition and a social interaction condition. Autistic traits were measured using the Social Responsiveness Scale-Second Edition. Results showed a difference in social attention between children with SCT and TD children during the social interaction condition. There was no difference in social attention between the SCT subgroups. The SCT group showed more autistic traits than the TD group and the 47,XXX subgroup had more autistic traits than the 47,XXY subgroup. There was a significant relation between social attention during the single-face condition and autistic traits in the 47,XYY subgroup only. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the importance of monitoring socio-cognitive challenges related to SCT in early childhood.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Social anxiety in non-western children and adolescents has not been well studied in the Netherlands, so the purpose of this study was to investigate social anxiety in this group. This study tested...Show moreSocial anxiety in non-western children and adolescents has not been well studied in the Netherlands, so the purpose of this study was to investigate social anxiety in this group. This study tested whether a high score on perceived discrimination is associated with a high score on social anxiety, whether there are gender differences in the non-western group in social anxiety and whether loneliness strengthens the relationship between perceived discrimination and social anxiety. Three classes from three different schools participated, there was a total of 22 participants. To test the hypotheses, the Social Anxiety Scale for Children (SASC-A), Adolescent Discrimination Distress Index (ADDI) and the Asher Loneliness Scale (ALS) have been used as measurements. The results show that there was only a significant difference in gender in social anxiety, girls scored higher in social anxiety than boys. However, this should be interpreted carefully. The other hypotheses were all not significant. Due to the sample size the reliability and validity of this study was not great, so the results are not a good reflection. It is advised to perform this study in a bigger sample size since this is an important matter to the non-western community.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
closed access
The optimal strategy in a semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task is to focus on one semantic subcategory at a time and adaptively switch from one subcategory to another. This task has therefore been...Show moreThe optimal strategy in a semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task is to focus on one semantic subcategory at a time and adaptively switch from one subcategory to another. This task has therefore been used as a measure of self-directed executive functioning. Previous studies have found that SVF performance improves through childhood and adolescence. This developmentalimprovement has been observed both in the total number of words produced during the task and in switching between subcategories. The present online study tested the hypothesis that the agerelated improvement in SVF performance is partly driven by an improved ability to select between competing word representations. The study included three age groups: 8–10-year-olds (n=26), 12–14-year-olds (n=17), and young adults (n=31). The semantic blocking effect in the blocked cycling naming task was used as a measure of selection abilities. Measures of vocabulary and general processing speed were included as control variables. Age-related differences in SVF performance were only partly replicated: there were signs of age-related differences in the total word count but not in switching. The semantic blocking effect was replicated across age groups. However, there were no signs of age-related differences in the magnitude of this effect, suggesting that word selection abilities did not differ between age groups. Moreover, the magnitude of the semantic blocking effect did not predict SVF performance. Thus, although further research is needed, the present study does not support the hypothesis that the age-related improvement in SVF would be driven by an improvement in selection abilities.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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BACKGROUND: Childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) has been identified as a considerable threat to adaptive child development. Emotion regulation is commonly impaired in victims of CEM, which can...Show moreBACKGROUND: Childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) has been identified as a considerable threat to adaptive child development. Emotion regulation is commonly impaired in victims of CEM, which can adversely impact broader socio-emotional functioning, such as the quality of child-parent interactions in adolescence. The current study examines to what extent maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (i.e., catastrophizing and rumination) mediate the association between experienced CEM and the quality of child-parent interactions as perceived by the adolescent. METHOD: The healthy control group of the larger RE-PAIR study (‘Unravelling the Impact of Emotional Maltreatment on the Developing Brain’) was included, incorporating adolescents (N = 80, age 11 to17) and their parents (N (Mothers) = 80, N (Fathers) = 76). Adolescent participants performed a reminiscence task with each parent and consecutively filled in a questionnaire to assess perceived parental interaction and communication behaviors during the task. CEM and emotion regulation were assessed through online versions of a Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and a Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. RESULTS: Two underlying factors were formulated after performing Principal Component Analyses (PCAs) on the perceived behavior per parent, namely ‘perceived general satisfaction with the interaction’ and ‘perceived criticism’. CEM did not predict either formulated outcome, for parents together and mothers separately. However, CEM had a negative effect on perceived general satisfaction, (F(1,64) = 6.175, b = -.502, p = .016) and a positive effect on perceived criticism, (F(1,64) = 6.612, b = .127, p = .012) by the adolescent during the interaction with their father. No mediation effects were found for either catastrophizing or rumination. DISCUSSION: Suggestions for future research include comparisons between different childhood maltreatment and to assess emotion dysregulation on multiple levels of functioning.Show less
Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Using a wide variety of clinical questionnaires might hamper the communication between clinicians and researchers in Routine outcome monitoring (ROM). Linking test scores to T scores as a common...Show moreUsing a wide variety of clinical questionnaires might hamper the communication between clinicians and researchers in Routine outcome monitoring (ROM). Linking test scores to T scores as a common metric might be a solution. Item response theory (IRT) is the preferred way to estimate T-scores. However, required software and a large dataset is needed for that. In this thesis, two methods were used to arrive at a common metric for often used questionnaires and their subversions: the BSI, BSI-18, the DASS-42 and the DASS-21. As one method, we used an IRT approach to estimate theta-based T-scores, leading to crosswalk tables. For the second approach, conversion formulas were estimated for raw scores to calculated T-scores based on the best-fitting regression equation between the raw scores and the previously estimated theta-based T-scores. Crosswalk tables and conversion formulas are both alternative ways to link individual scores to a common metric. It was investigated if conversion formulas are valid by comparing calculated T-scores with theta-based T-scores. The agreement between calculated T-scores and theta-based T-scores were high for all questionnaires except the DASS-42. The agreement was also lower at the extreme ends of the questionnaires (T= < 50 and T= >75). All in all, conversion formulas seem to be a good alternative for estimating a common metric. Offering different options to calculate common metrics can help in improving the communication between professionals in the clinical field. Increased involvement and better communication in ROM is able to increase the quality of mental health care.Show less
