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People who learn the outcome to a situation or problem tend to overestimate what was known in the past-this is hindsight bias. Whereas previous research has revealed robust hindsight bias in the visual domain, little is known about how outcome information affects our memory of others' emotional expressions. The goal of the current work was to test whether participants exhibited hindsight bias for emotional faces and whether this varied as a function of emotion. Across five experiments, participants saw images of faces displaying different emotions. In the foresight phase, participants watched several emotional faces gradually clarify from blurry to clear. Once participants believed they knew what emotion the face was exhibiting, they identified the emotion from several options (e.g., angry, disgusted, happy, scared, surprised). In the hindsight phase, participants saw clear versions of each face before stopping the clarification at the point at which they previously identified the emotional expression. On average, participants exhibited hindsight bias for all emotions except happy faces (i.e., they indicated that they identified the emotional expressions at a blurrier point in hindsight than they had in foresight). A multinomial processing tree model of our data revealed that this was not due to participants' better recollection of foresight judgments for happy faces compared to the other emotions. Additionally, participants showed a smaller reconstruction bias for happy faces than the other emotions. We discuss the social implications of these findings as well as the potential for this paradigm to be used across cultures and ages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The sunk-cost effect (SCE) is the tendency to continue investing in something that is not working out because of previous investments that cannot be recovered. In three experiments, we examine the SCE when continued investment violates the ethic of care by harming others. In Experiment 1, the SCE was smaller if the sunk-cost decision resulted in harmful consequences towards others (an interaction between sunk cost and the ethic of care). In Experiment 2, participants considered vignettes from their own or another person's perspective. We observed an interpersonal SCE – people showed the SCE when taking the perspective of others. We did not replicate the interaction found in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, we used statistically more powerful analyses – Bayesian sequential hypothesis testing – to examine the interaction between sunk cost and the ethic of care. We found evidence in favor of the interaction; the SCE was smaller if the sunk-cost decision harmed others. We suggest that violating one’s ethic of care de-biases decision-making by overshadowing sunk costs. These findings may help explain decision-making in real-world situations involving large investments.

Prospective memory (PM) involves remembering to execute future intentions. Pairs played a word game (Taboo) with an embedded PM task. In Taboo, one player (clue giver) must get their partner (clue guesser) to say aloud a target word (e.g., ROOF) by offering clues such as “home” without saying certain taboo words (e.g., fiddler, house). The PM task required clue givers to remember to say specific clue words if any predesignated PM targets appeared during the game (e.g., “If ROOF is a target, use ‘home’ as a clue”). Before playing Taboo, participants learned that half the PM targets did not have to be executed (cancelled intention) and half did (active intention). One day after playing, participants rated how clearly they remembered executing PM task and targets that had never appeared in the Taboo game. Memory ratings were higher for words from active intentions relative to cancelled intentions, evidencing false prospective memory.

When semantically-related photos appear with true-or-false trivia claims, people more often rate the claims as true compared to when photos are absent

Participants ranging in age from 3 to 98 years (N = 708; approximately 60% female; 49% Caucasian, 38% Asian; 12% Other ethnicities, 1% Indigenous; modal household income > $80,000) completed a battery of tasks involving verbal ability, executive function, and perspective-taking. Wherever possible, all participants completed the same version of a task. The current study tested hindsight bias and false-belief reasoning to determine how these constructs relate to each other across the child-to-adult life span. Participants of all ages showed robust hindsight bias and false-belief reasoning errors. Hindsight bias followed a U-shaped function, wherein preschoolers and older adults showed more hindsight bias than older children and younger adults. False-belief reasoning, conversely, was relatively constant from preschool to older adulthood. Hindsight bias did not correlate with false-belief reasoning. We conclude that hindsight bias and false-belief reasoning errors are robust but unrelated cognitive biases across the life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Hindsight bias (HB) is the tendency to see known information as obvious. We studied metacognitive hindsight bias (MC-HB)-a shift away from one's original confidence regarding answers provided before learning the actual facts. In two experiments, participants answered general-knowledge questions in social scenarios and provided their confidence in each answer. Subsequently, they learned answers to half the questions and then recalled their initial answers and confidence. Finally, they reanswered, as a learning check. We measured confidence accuracy by calibration (over/underconfidence) and resolution (discrimination between incorrect and correct answers), expecting them to improve in hindsight. In both experiments, participants displayed robust HB and MC-HB for resolution despite attempts to recall the initial confidence in one's answer. In Experiment 2, promising anonymity to participants eliminated MC-HB, while social scenarios produced MC-HB for both resolution and calibration-indicative of overconfidence. Overall, our findings highlight that in social contexts, recall of confidence in hindsight is more consistent with answers' accuracy than confidence initially was. Social scenarios differently affect HB and MC-HB, thus dissociating these two biases.

We investigated the tendency of children and adults to rely on the most intense and final moments when judging positive experiences, a heuristic known as the peak-end rule. This rule allows us to judge experiences quickly, but it can bias judgments. In three experiments involving various age groups (N = 988, ages 2–97), we attempted to replicate prior findings of a peak-end rule for small and simple positive experiences (e.g., receiving small gifts; Do, Rupert, & Wolford, 2008). Based on the original study and peak-end rule predictions, we hypothesized that individuals of all ages would be less satisfied with a highly desirable gift followed by a less desirable gift than with a highly desirable gift alone. We failed to observe the peak-end rule in preschoolers, school-aged children, younger adults, or older adults in any of the contexts we investigated. Our results show little support for positive peak-end rule effects and mark boundary conditions for the rule.

Cross-examination is detrimental to the consistency and accuracy of children's reports and a re-direct interview may rehabilitate accuracy. We compared the effects of cross-examination on reports provided by single-event and repeated-event children. Children participated in one or five magic shows. One week later they were interviewed in a supportive manner (Interview 1). Next, a different interviewer cross-examined half the children or asked the other children all questions again (Interview 2). Finally, the initial interviewer re-directed the children by re-asking questions in a supportive manner (Interview 3). When defined narrowly (the instance children were asked to describe), cross-examination was more detrimental to single-event children and the re-direct interview rehabilitated correct responses for all children. When defined broadly (experienced details), cross-examination was more detrimental to repeated-event children and the re-direct did not rehabilitate correct responses for repeated-event children. Therefore when performance was off the floor, cross-examination was more detrimental to repeated-event children. The changes that repeated-event children make under cross-examination are explained by cognitive factors and social influences Ost et al., [2016]. Recall, verbatim memory and remembered narratives. In G. Oxburgh (Ed.), Communication in investigative and legal contexts: Integrated approaches from forensic psychology, linguistics and law enforcement (pp. 39-54). Wiley Blackwell).

We conducted three experiments to test the fluency-misattribution account of auditory hindsight bias. According to this account, prior exposure to a clearly presented auditory stimulus produces fluent (improved) processing of a distorted version of that stimulus, which results in participants mistakenly rating that item as easy to identify. In all experiments, participants in an exposure phase heard clearly spoken words zero, one, three, or six times. In the test phase, we examined auditory hindsight bias by manipulating whether participants heard a clear version of a target word just prior to hearing the distorted version of that word. Participants then estimated the ability of naïve peers to identify the distorted word. Auditory hindsight bias and the number of priming presentations during the exposure phase interacted underadditively in their prediction of participants' estimates: When no clear version of the target word appeared prior to the distorted version of that word in the test phase, participants identified target words more often the more frequently they heard the clear word in the exposure phase. Conversely, hearing a clear version of the target word at test produced similar estimates, regardless of the number of times participants heard clear versions of those words during the exposure phase. As per Roberts and Sternberg's (Attention and Performance XIV, pp. 611-653, 1993) additive factors logic, this finding suggests that both auditory hindsight bias and repetition priming contribute to a common process, which we propose involves a misattribution of processing fluency. We conclude that misattribution of fluency accounts for auditory hindsight bias.

Abstract. We conducted a systematic review of longitudinal theory of mind (ToM) studies, focusing on the precursors to and functional outcomes of ToM in typically-developing samples. Our search yielded 87 longitudinal studies, all of which involved children and adolescents. Early attention skills, executive function development, and the use of language are precursors to ToM development. Additionally, quality interaction with parents and older siblings can foster early improvements in ToM. Healthy ToM development improves social relationships with peers and produces greater desire to engage in prosocial behaviors. However, victimized individuals with highly-developed ToM may engage in increased aggression. Future longitudinal research is needed to investigate the functional outcomes resulting from ToM changes in adulthood.

Background: Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS) is an important part of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) management but may even be useful for tumors that cannot be cleared in an office setting. There are sparse reports of MMS for peripheral margin control in the dermatology literature but various techniques have been reported.Case 1: 58-year-old male with morpheaform basal cell carcinoma of the left midface treated with MMS peripheral margin control followed by facial plastic surgery central tumor extirpation and defect repair.Case 2: 56-year-old female with recurrent morpheaform BCC of the scalp treated with MMS peripheral margin control followed by facial plastic surgery central tumor extirpation and defect repair.Case 3: 73-year-old male with multiply recurrent SCC of the right lower extremity treated with MMS peripheral margin control followed by above the knee amputation.Conclusions: MMS peripheral margin control followed by central tumor extirpation and defect reconstruction at a later date in the operating room is an option for deeply invasive, large and aggressive NMSC. Benefits include decreased time under general anesthesia and superior rates of tumor clearance. In the interim, the peripheral defect between the central tumor and healthy outer tissue can be sutured closed to decrease patient morbidity.

Studies have demonstrated that perceptual fluency—the ease of perceiving stimuli—does not contribute to higher predictions of future memory performance (judgments of learning; JOLs) for words presented in a larger font (48 pt) than for words presented in a smaller font (18 pt). Here, we investigated whether stimulus size can affect JOLs through another mode of perceptual fluency. We presented stimuli that were initially so small as to be entirely unrecognizable but that gradually increased in size. Stimuli were pictures of common objects (Experiment 1), faces (Experiment 2), and words (Experiments 3 and 4). People indicated when they could identify the stimulus and then made a JOL. The time required for participants to identify each stimulus was our measure of perceptual fluency. In Experiments 1 to 3, we manipulated the speed of the clarification process across trials. Results showed that the less time it took to identify the clarifying stimuli, independent of clarification speed, the higher one’s JOLs. Moreover, fast clarification increased JOLs indirectly by decreasing identification time. In Experiment 4, one group of participants (learner group) could base JOLs on both perceptual fluency and beliefs about how stimulus size affects memory performance, while the other group (observer group) could base JOLs only on beliefs. Inverse relations between identification time and JOLs occurred only in the learner group. These results demonstrate that perceptual fluency may produce size effects on JOLs and support the idea that fluency is an important factor in JOLs.

Egocentric bias is a core feature of autism. This phenomenon has been studied using the false belief task. However, typically developing children who pass categorical (pass or fail) false belief tasks may still show subtle egocentric bias. We examined 7- to 13-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n=76) or typical development (n=113) using tasks with a continuous response scale: a modified false belief task and a visual hindsight bias task. All children showed robust egocentric bias on both tasks, but no group effects were found. Our large sample size, coupled with our sensitive tasks and resoundingly null group effects, indicate that children with and without ASD possess more similar egocentric tendencies than previously reported.

Abstract. Hindsight bias is the tendency to overestimate the foreseeability of an outcome once it is known. This bias has implications for decisions made within the legal system, ranging from judgments made during investigations to those in court proceedings. Legal decision makers should only consider what was known at the time an investigation was conducted or an offense was committed; however, they often review cases with full knowledge of a negative outcome, which can affect their judgments about what was knowable in the past. We conducted a systematic review of the literature on hindsight bias and law. We present five areas of law that hindsight bias affects (medical malpractice, forensic investigation, negligence, patent, criminal), two types of evidence that may lead to hindsight bias (visual and auditory evidence), and hindsight bias in experts and judges. Finally, we discuss strategies for reducing hindsight bias in legal decisions and recommend future research.

Outcome knowledge influences recall of earlier predictions of the event in question. Researchers have hypothesized that age-related declines in inhibitory control may underlie older adults' increased susceptibility to the two underlying bias processes that contribute to this hindsight bias (HB) phenomenon, recollection bias and reconstruction bias. Indeed, Coolin et al. (2015) found that older adults with lower inhibitory control were less likely to recall their earlier predictions in the presence of outcome knowledge (lower recollection ability) and were more likely to be biased by outcome knowledge when reconstructing their forgotten predictions (higher reconstruction bias) than those with higher inhibitory control. In the present study, we assess intraindividual differences in older adults' recollection and reconstruction processes using a within-subjects manipulation of inhibition. We tested 80 older adults (Mage = 71.40, range = 65 to 87) to assess whether (a) experimentally increasing inhibition burden via outcome rehearsal during the HB task impacts the underlying HB processes, and (b) the effects of this outcome rehearsal manipulation on the underlying HB processes vary with individual differences in cognitive abilities. Our findings revealed that outcome rehearsal increased recollection bias independently of individuals' cognitive abilities. Conversely, outcome rehearsal only increased reconstruction bias in individuals with higher inhibitory control, resulting in these individuals performing similarly to individuals with lower inhibitory control. These observations support the role of inhibitory control in older adults' HB and suggest that even individuals with higher inhibition ability are susceptible to HB when processing resources are limited. (PsycINFO Database Record

Egocentric bias is a core feature of autism. This phenomenon has been studied using the false belief task. However, typically developing children who pass categorical (pass or fail) false belief tasks may still show subtle egocentric bias. We examined 7- to 13-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n=76) or typical development (n=113) using tasks with a continuous response scale: a modified false belief task and a visual hindsight bias task. All children showed robust egocentric bias on both tasks, but no group effects were found. Our large sample size, coupled with our sensitive tasks and resoundingly null group effects, indicate that children with and without ASD possess more similar egocentric tendencies than previously reported.

Interrupting a sequence of episodic recognition decisions by a problem-solving task will change the hit and false alarm rate for the following item in a recognition test (Watkins & Peynircioglu, 1990). The mechanisms of this revelation effect have not yet been understood completely. We offer a new explanation based on the global matching model MINERVA 2 (Hintzman, 1984, 1986, 1988). The main mechanism in our approach is that the interrupting problem-solving task eliminates some context features in the retrieval cue for the next recognition decision. Assuming a constant decision criterion, this shifts the means of the underlying familiarity distributions and produces a revelation effect. The means of the familiarity distributions decrease for low-frequency stimuli but can shift to more positive values for high-frequency stimuli. We show how this approach explains established empirical findings. We also test new predictions within three experiments. The first two experiments show that the revelation effect disappears if context features are made more available at test. The third experiment confirms the prediction that the revelation effect increases as a function of pre-experimental frequency. Overall, our approach explains findings that have been difficult to explain so far, provides a framework for new predictions, and shows connections to other memory paradigms via the underlying model.

The integrative memory model combines five core memory systems with an attributional system. We agree with Bastin et al. that this melding is the most novel aspect of the model. But we await further evidence that the model's substantial complexity informs our understanding of false memories or of the development of recollection and familiarity.

Studies suggest that people who cheat on a test overestimate their performance on future tests. Given that erroneous monitoring of one's own cognitive processes impairs learning and memory, this study investigated whether cheating on a test would harm monitoring accuracy on future tests. Participants had the incentive and opportunity to cheat on one (Experiments 1, 2, and 3, with N = 90, 88, and 102, respectively) or two (Experiment 4, N = 214) of four general-knowledge tests. Cheating produced overconfidence in global-level performance predictions in Experiment 2 (Cohen's d ≥ 0.35) but not in Experiments 1 or 4. Also, cheating did not affect the absolute or relative accuracy of item-level performance predictions in Experiments 3 or 4. A Bayesian meta-analysis of all experiments provided evidence against cheating-induced overconfidence in global- and item-level predictions. Overall, our results demonstrate that people who cheat on tests accurately predict their performance on future tests.

We combined data across eight published experiments (N=1369) to examine the formation and consequences of false autobiographical beliefs and memories. Our path models revealed that the formation of false autobiographical belief fully mediated the pathway between suggesting to people that they had experienced a positive or negative food-related event in the past and current preference for that food. Suggestion indirectly affected intention to eat the food via change in autobiographical belief. The development of belief with and without memory produced similar changes in food preferences and behavior intention, indicating that belief in the event drives changes in suggestion-related attitudes. Finally, positive suggestions (e.g., "you loved asparagus the first time you tried it") yielded stronger effects than negative suggestions (e.g., "you got sick eating egg salad"). These findings show that false autobiographical suggestions lead to the development of autobiographical beliefs, which in turn, have consequences for one's attitudes and behaviors.

We report 4 experiments investigating auditory hindsight bias-the tendency to overestimate the intelligibility of distorted auditory stimuli after learning their identity. An associative priming manipulation was used to vary the amount of processing fluency independently of prior target knowledge. For hypothetical designs, in which hindsight judgments are made for peers in foresight, we predicted that judgments would be based on processing fluency and that hindsight bias would be greater in the unrelated- compared to related-prime context (differential-fluency hypothesis). Conversely, for memory designs, in which foresight judgments are remembered in hindsight, we predicted that judgments would be based on memory reconstruction and that there would be independent effects of prime relatedness and prior target knowledge (recollection hypothesis). These predictions were confirmed. Specifically, we found support for the differential-fluency hypothesis when a hypothetical design was used in Experiments 1 and 2 (hypothetical group). Conversely, when a memory design was used in Experiments 2 (memory group), 3A, and 3B, we found support for the recollection hypothesis. Together, the results suggest that qualitatively different mechanisms create hindsight bias in the 2 designs. The results are discussed in terms of fluency misattributions, memory reconstruction, anchoring-and-adjustment, sense making, and a multicomponent model of hindsight bias. (PsycINFO Database Record

Theory of mind (ToM) is the ability to take other people's perspective by inferring their mental state. Most 6-year olds pass the change-of-location false belief task that is commonly used to assess ToM. However, the change-of-location task is not suitable for individuals over 5 years of age, due to its discrete response options. In two experiments, we used a paper and pencil version of a modified change-of-location task (the Real Object Sandbox task) to assess false belief reasoning continuously rather than discretely in adults. Participants heard nine change-of-location scenarios and answered a critical question after each. The memory control questions only required the participant to remember the object's original location, whereas the false belief questions required participants to take the perspective of the protagonist. Participants were more accurate on memory trials than trials requiring perspective taking, and performance on paper and pencil trials correlated with corresponding trials on the Real Object Sandbox task. The Paper and Pencil Sandbox task is a convenient continuous measure of ToM that could be administered to a wide range of age groups.

After learning an event's outcome, people's recollection of their former prediction of that event typically shifts toward the actual outcome. Erdfelder and Buchner (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 24, 387-414, 1998) developed a multinomial processing tree (MPT) model to identify the underlying processes contributing to this hindsight bias (HB) phenomenon. More recent applications of this model have revealed that, in comparison to younger adults, older adults are more susceptible to two underlying HB processes: recollection bias and reconstruction bias. However, the impact of cognitive functioning on these processes remains unclear. In this article, we extend the MPT model for HB by incorporating individual variation in cognitive functioning into the estimation of the model's core parameters in older and younger adults. In older adults, our findings revealed that (1) better episodic memory was associated with higher recollection ability in the absence of outcome knowledge, (2) better episodic memory and inhibitory control and higher working memory capacity were associated with higher recollection ability in the presence of outcome knowledge, and (3) better inhibitory control was associated with less reconstruction bias. Although the pattern of effects was similar in younger adults, the cognitive covariates did not significantly predict the underlying HB processes in this age group. In sum, we present a novel approach to modeling individual variability in MPT models. We applied this approach to the HB paradigm to identify the cognitive mechanisms contributing to the underlying HB processes. Our results show that working memory capacity and inhibitory control, respectively, drive individual differences in recollection bias and reconstruction bias, particularly in older adults.

Studies have shown that false memories can be implanted via innocuous suggestions, and that these memories can play a role in shaping people's subsequent attitudes and preferences. The current study explored whether participants (N = 147) who received a false suggestion that they had become ill drinking a particular type of alcohol would increase their confidence that the event had occurred, and whether their new-found belief would subsequently affect their alcohol preferences. Results indicated that participants who received a suggestion that they had gotten sick drinking rum or vodka before the age of 16 reported increased confidence that the suggested experience had occurred. Moreover, participants who received a false alcohol suggestion also showed a strong trend to report diminished preference for the specified type of alcohol after the false suggestion. Implantation of a false memory related to one's past drinking experiences may influence current drink preferences and could be an important avenue for further exploration in the development of alcohol interventions.

Judgments can depend on the activity directly preceding them. An example is the revelation effect whereby participants are more likely to claim that a stimulus is familiar after a preceding task, such as solving an anagram, than without a preceding task. We test conflicting predictions of four revelation-effect hypotheses in a meta-analysis of 26 years of revelation-effect research. The hypotheses’ predictions refer to three subject areas: (1) the basis of judgments that are subject to the revelation effect (recollection vs. familiarity vs. fluency), (2) the degree of similarity between the task and test item, and (3) the difficulty of the preceding task. We use a hierarchical multivariate meta-analysis to account for dependent effect sizes and variance in experimental procedures. We test the revelation-effect hypotheses with a model selection procedure, where each model corresponds to a prediction of a revelation-effect hypothesis. We further quantify the amount of evidence for one model compared to another with Bayes factors. The results of this analysis suggest that none of the extant revelation-effect hypotheses can fully account for the data. The general vagueness of revelation-effect hypotheses and the scarcity of data were the major limiting factors in our analyses, emphasizing the need for formalized theories and further research into the puzzling revelation effect.

Background: There is increasing demand for noninvasive body contouring but objective data is difficult to compare between modalities. Currently, the most accepted forms of noninvasive body contouring are cryolipolyisis (Cryo), focused ultrasound (FUS), radiofrequency (RF), and low level laser therapy (LLLT).Objective: To summarize the objective data on noninvasive body contouring.Methods: In October 2016, a pubmed search was performed with terms “noninvasive body contouring” or “non-invasive body contouring.” The search was limited to human studies in English on the four major modalities. Results: 55 articles yielded data from 3649 patients. The most well studied modality was Cryo and the least was RF. Decreased abdominal/flank localized adiposity was most the most common endpoint reported. Both the minimum and maximum reported decreases in abdominal girth were from studies using RF (1.4cm and 7.4cm, respectively). Side effects were most common and significant with Cryo and absent with LLLT.Conclusions: Noninvasive body contouring has a significant amount of objective data available in the literature to date. Reductions of localized adiposity are clinically and statistically significant but modest. To date, the best reported positive results have been obtained with RF and the lowest risk of side effects is with LLLT.

In this study, we explore whether false beliefs about a past experience affect current consumption of wine by suggesting to participants that they either “Loved” or “Got Sick” from drinking white wine before age 20. Specifically, we report the consequences of false beliefs about wine, which could take the form of either increased or decreased wine consumption. In response to the suggestion, and similar to other false memory studies many participants became more confident that the suggested event occurred in their past. However, it was easier to influence participants’ consumption behavior when we used the “Loved” suggestion rather than the “Got Sick” suggestion. This finding has implications for marketers who use suggestions to influence product consumption by connecting consumers to their autobiographical memories.

Tasks that precede a recognition probe induce a more liberal response criterion than do probes without tasks—the “revelation effect.” For example, participants are more likely to claim that a stimulus is familiar directly after solving an anagram, relative to a condition without an anagram. Revelation effect hypotheses disagree whether hard preceding tasks should produce a larger revelation effect than easy preceding tasks. Although some studies have shown that hard tasks increase the revelation effect as compared to easy tasks, these studies suffered from a confound of task difficulty and task presence. Conversely, other studies have shown that the revelation effect is independent of task difficulty. In the present study, we used new task difficulty manipulations to test whether hard tasks produce larger revelation effects than easy tasks. Participants (N = 464) completed hard or easy preceding tasks, including anagrams (Exps. 1 and 2) and the typing of specific arrow key sequences (Exps. 3–6). With sample sizes typical of revelation effect experiments, the effect sizes of task difficulty on the revelation effect varied considerably across experiments. Despite this variability, a consistent data pattern emerged: Hard tasks produced larger revelation effects than easy tasks. Although the present study falsifies certain revelation effect hypotheses, the general vagueness of revelation effect hypotheses remains.

After enduring a bad experience such as a career setback, receiving a poor grade on a test, or getting into a fi ght with a best friend, we may wonder whether we or those close to us should have foreseen the outcome. These are examples of perspective-taking, or attempting to reason about what the self or another person could have known, should have known, or currently does know. Perspective-taking is present throughout human development; it is critical to maintaining relationships and necessary in many of our daily interactions. Errors in perspective-taking can have profound consequences in social, legal, medical, and political contexts (Harley, 2007; LaBine & LaBine, 1996; Leary, 1982). Two perspective-taking abilities, namely those involving hindsight and theory of mind (hereinafter ToM) judgments, require individuals to assume a perspective different from the one they currently hold. The challenge inherent to these two judgments is to ignore privileged knowledge (current knowledge others do not possess) when assessing one’s own previous, or another individual’s, naive perspective. When individuals fail to ignore privileged knowledge, they show hindsight bias (hereinafter HB) and an underdeveloped ToM.

In two studies, we examined young children's performance on the paper-and-pencil version of the Sandbox task, a continuous measure of false belief, and its relations with other false belief and inhibition tasks. In Study 1, 96 children aged 3 to 7years completed three false belief tasks (Sandbox, Unexpected Contents, and Appearance/Reality) and two inhibition tasks (Head-Shoulders-Knees-Toes and Grass/Snow). Results revealed that false belief bias-a measure of egocentrism-on the Sandbox task correlated with age but not with the Unexpected Contents or Appearance/Reality task or with measures of inhibition after controlling for age. In Study 2, 90 3- to 7-year-olds completed five false belief tasks (Sandbox, Unexpected Contents, Appearance/Reality, Change of Location, and a second-order false belief task), two inhibition tasks (Simon Says and Grass/Snow), and a receptive vocabulary task (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test). Results showed that false belief bias on the Sandbox task correlated negatively with age and with the Change of Location task but not with the other false belief or inhibition tasks after controlling for age and receptive vocabulary. The Sandbox task shows promise as an age-sensitive measure of false belief performance during early childhood and shows convergent and discriminant validity.

Producing items (e.g., by saying them aloud or typing them) can improve recognition memory. To evaluate whether production increases item distinctiveness and/or memory strength we compared this effect as a function of the percentage of items that participants typed at encoding (i.e., 0%, 20%, 50%, 80%, and 100%). Experiment 1 revealed a strength-based pattern: The production effect was similar across pure-list (i.e., 0% vs. 100%) and mixed-list (i.e., 20%, 50%, 80%) designs, and there was no observed influence of statistical distinctiveness (i.e., 20% vs. 80%). In Experiment 2, we increased the study time for unproduced items to minimise the strength difference between produced and unproduced items. The manipulation attenuated the pure-list effect without eliminating the mixed-list effect, providing support for the inference that the mixed-list effect reflects distinctiveness. An influence of statistical distinctiveness also emerged: The mixed-list effect was larger when participants produced only 20%, rather than 80%, of the items. These findings suggest that both strength and distinctiveness contribute to the production effect in recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)

The revelation effect is a change in response behavior induced by a preceding problemsolving task. Previous studies have shown a revelation effect for faces when the problem-solving task includes attractiveness ratings of the faces. Immediately after this problem-solving task participants judged faces as more familiar than without the problem-solving task. We replicated this result in Experiment 1. Based on the discrepancyattribution hypothesis, we predicted that a problem-solving task that excludes attractiveness ratings would not elicit a revelation effect. However, we found a reversed revelation effect with a problem-solving task that required participants to solve a puzzle of each face (Experiments 2–3). In Experiments 2 and 3, participants judged faces as less familiar after the puzzle task. Our findings support the notion that the revelation effect may manifest as either an increase or a decrease of the experienced familiarity towards the recognition probe. However, our results contradict all current theories of the revelation effect. We discuss implications of our findings for revelation effect theories and provide a possible explanation.

This study reports on a new false belief measure in a sample of 124 children and adolescents with or without high functioning autism (HFASD). In the classic paradigm, a participant predicts in which of two discrete locations a deceived protagonist will look for an object. In the current Sandbox task, the object is buried and reburied in a sandbox, thus creating a continuum between locations. Compared to typically developing individuals (n=62), those with HFASD (n=62) showed a larger egocentric bias on the Sandbox task. They failed to take the protagonist’s false belief into account, despite their adequate ability to infer advanced mental states. This indicates that sensitive measures can reveal subtle first order Theory of Mind impairments in HFASD individuals.

What is the effect on memory when seemingly innocuous photos accompany false reports of the news? We asked people to read news headlines of world events, some of which were false. Half the headlines appeared with photographs that were tangentially related to the event; others were presented without photographs. People saw each headline only once, and indicated whether they remembered the event, knew about it, or neither. Photos led people to immediately and confidently remember false news events. Drawing on the Source Monitoring Framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993), we suggest that people often relied on familiarity and other heuristic processes when making their judgments and thus experienced effects of the photos as evidence of memory for the headlines.

In two experiments, involving 231 subjects, we planted the suggestion that subjects loved to eat asparagus as children. Relative to controls, subjects receiving the suggestion became more confident that they had loved asparagus the first time they tried it. These new (false) beliefs had consequences for those who formed them, including increased general liking of asparagus, greater desire to eat asparagus in a restaurant setting, and a willingness to pay more for asparagus in the grocery store. Ratings of photographs made after the suggestion reveal that the altered nutritional choices may relate to the fact that the sight of asparagus simply looks more appetizing and appealing. These results demonstrate that adults can be led to believe that they had a positive food-related experience as children, and that these false beliefs can have healthy consequences.

Virtually every social interaction involves reasoning about the perspectives of others, or ‘theory of mind’. Previous research suggests that it is difficult to ignore our current knowledge when reasoning about a more naïve perspective (i.e., the curse of knowledge). In this Mini Review, we discuss the implications of the curse of knowledge for certain aspects of theory of mind. Particularly, we examine how the curse of knowledge influences key measurements of false belief reasoning. In closing, we touch on the need to develop new measurement tools to discern the mechanisms involved in the curse of knowledge and false belief reasoning, and how they develop across the lifespan.

Although hindsight bias (the “I knew it all along” phenomenon) has been documented in adults, its development has not been investigated. This is despite the fact that hindsight bias errors closely resemble the errors children make on theory of mind (ToM) tasks. Two main goals of the present work were to (a) create a battery of hindsight tasks for preschoolers, and (b) assess the relation between children’s performance on these and ToM tasks. In two experiments involving 144 preschoolers, 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds exhibited strong hindsight bias. Performance on hindsight and ToM tasks was significantly correlated independent of age, language ability, and inhibitory control. These findings contribute to a more comprehensive account of perspective taking across the lifespan.

We propose that hindsight bias in adults and some limitations in children's “theory of mind” (ToM), or mental–state reasoning, share a core cognitive constraint: a tendency to be biased by one's current knowledge when attempting to recall, or reason about, a more naive cognitive state—regardless of whether thatmore naive state is one's own earlier naive state or someone else's. That is, hindsight bias is a fundamental problem in cognitive perspective–taking. We review the developmental literature on hindsight bias as well as other limitations that resemble hindsight bias. We believe that some of children's limitations inToMmay stem, from the same core component as hindsight bias, and thus, will shed light on the underlying mechanisms. We discuss several processes thatmay contribute to this biased perspective–taking. We believe a developmental approach is necessary for a comprehensive understanding of the nature of hindsight bias in social cognition.