'Distress and susceptibility to misinformation'
(AsPredicted #106038)
Created: 09/01/2022 06:34 PM (PT)
This is an anonymized version of the pre-registration. It was created by the author(s) to use during peer-review.
A non-anonymized version (containing author names) should be made available by the authors when the work it supports is made public.
1) Have any data been collected for this study already?No, no data have been collected for this study yet.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? This study seeks to understand the relationship between distress and susceptibility to misinformation (also termed suggestion-induced false memories). We hypothesize that the relationship between distress and susceptibility to misinformation will change over time, such that distress will be associated with lower susceptibility to misinformation when retrieval occurs immediately, while continued levels of distress will be associated with higher susceptibility to misinformation when retrieval is delayed.
Specifically, the primary hypotheses are:
i. Participants' accuracy will be lowest on misled items when compared to control or consistent items.
ii. At immediate retrieval, higher levels of distress will be associated with greater accuracy on misled items
iii. At 1wk-delayed retrieval, higher levels of distress over the past week will be associated with lower accuracy on misled items
Exploratory aims are to explore how the relationship between distress and susceptibility to misinformation is affected by a) whether misled items are central or peripheral, b) aspects of distress (avoidance and intrusions), c) film relevance, and d) test type (cued recall, recognition, source memory test). We will also explore how distress affects the confidence-accuracy relationship.
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. All participants will watch a short trauma analogue film about a car crash (Trauma Film Paradigm; Taylor et al., 2021). After completing some filler puzzles, they will then rate their film-related distress reactions using the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R; Horowitz, Wilner, & Alvarez, 1979). They will then be randomly allocated to hear one of three narratives about the film (the three narratives are counterbalanced to control for any inherent memorability differences of the included details). Each narrative contains 18 counterbalanced critical items: 6 misleading, 6 consistent, and 6 control items.
--Immediate retrieval: Participants will then complete three different memory tests (cued recall with confidence ratings, recognition, source memory) that tests their memory accuracy for each of the 18 items.
--Delayed retrieval: One week later, participants will rate their distress reactions to the film over the past week. Then, they will complete the same three memory tests, measuring memory accuracy of the 18 critical items.
Participants' accuracy on these 18 items (misled, control, consistent items) will act as the dependent variable.
For exploratory hypotheses, the variables will be measured as follows:
--Central and peripheral details will be decided using Ibabe & Sporer's (2004) criteria.
--Aspects of distress will be measured using the Avoidance and Intrusion subscales of IES-R
--Film relevance will be measured on an 11-point scale, ranging from 0 (not at all relevant) to 100 (extremely relevant)
--Confidence will be measured for each cued recall question using an 11-point scale ranging from 0% (not at all confident) to 100% (very confident) (as performed in previous studies Spearing et al., 2021).
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? To examine the primary hypotheses we will use: 3 (item type: misled, control, consistent) x 2 (retrieval time: immediate, delayed) will be used, with both factors being within-participant.
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. Generalised linear mixed models will be used for the main hypotheses. The predictor variables will be item type (misled, consistent, control), distress (continuous variable), and retrieval time (immediate vs. delayed). The outcome variable will be binary accuracy.
Exploratory analyses will be used to investigate the effects of central/peripheral items, distress type, and test type, as well as exploring the confidence-accuracy relationship.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. Exclusions:
i. Those aged under 18 or over 65
ii. Those who report having colour-blindness
iii. Those who report not having normal or corrected-to-normal vision
iv. Those who report having watched the film before
v. Those who give incorrect answers on one of the two attention check questions
vi. Those who don't complete the entirety of at least one memory test
vii. Those who report completing either of the study phases in multiple sittings
viii. Those who report having technical difficulties while watching the film or hearing the narrative
7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size?
No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined. To our knowledge, no study in this research area has used gLMMs as the analysis method. Therefore, we will base our sample size estimations on previous similar studies: Monds et al. (2016, n=105), Nahleen et al. (2020 , n=165) who have used ANOVAs. We have also conducted G*Power runs using ANOVAs with repeated measures and linear regressions. This indicated that the highest sample size requirement for our study is 138 participants. Given this information, we will aim to recruit 200 participants.
We expect to exclude over 10% of participants based on technical difficulties and incorrect responses to attention check questions. Thus, we expect to collect data from at least 230 participants.
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register?
(e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) We will also run a manipulation check on the effect of the film on participant's mood, using scores on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule before and after the film
