We investigated the factors associated with subjective temporal distance of pandemic-related events in a sample of healthcare workers. A total of 257 healthcare workers were asked to recall two COVID-19 pandemic-related events that impacted them the most at the beginning of the pandemic (April--May 2020), and rated event centrality,…

We examined whether visual disfluency, as elicited by presenting text on flickering slides, affects learning positively and the global judgment of learning (JOL) negatively. Participants (N = 202 in Experiment 1, between-subjects design; N = 53 in Experiment 2, within-subjects design) saw in an online session multiple slides including textual…

Witnesses to crime often experience stress during the witnessed event. However, most laboratory studies examining eyewitness memory do not include a stressful encoding event. Participants (N = 129) completed an experimental stress induction procedure--a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test. We designed three conditions to manipulate…

There are many situations in which a person must accurately estimate a stranger's age. For example, a salesperson must accurately estimate the age of a stranger who wishes to purchase age-restricted goods. Information from a stranger's eyes and hair can indicate their likely age. Here, two experiments examined whether adult participants' accuracy…

The "prevalence effect" is a phenomenon whereby target prevalence impacts performance in visual search (e.g., baggage screening) and visual comparison (e.g., face-matching) tasks -- people more often 'miss' infrequent target stimuli. The current study investigated prevalence effects in fingerprint identification -- an important visual…

For lifeguards, recognizing a swimmer in trouble is a key factor in the rescue process. Although reports show that lifeguards outperform non-lifeguards in their surveillance task, it is unclear to what extent this difference is reflected in gaze behaviour. In the current study, gaze behaviour of nine novice and seven experienced beach lifeguards…

Mind-wandering (MW) has a negative impact on tasks requiring sustained and divided attention like driving. During MW, drivers experience perceptual decoupling. As driving is mainly a visual activity, it would seem to be appropriate to evaluate stages of visual information processing impaired during MW, using event-related potential techniques. The…