Search

Understanding how habitat characteristics influence common bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, distribution and behavior can be useful for conservation. The dolphin community in Roanoke Sound, North Carolina primarily exhibits seasonal residency and there is limited information on their habitat use. The objectives of this study were to increase habitat use knowledge and determine the relationship between habitat characteristics and dolphin distribution using standardized photographic-identification data (2009 – 2017). A hot spot (Getis-Ord Gi*) analysis showed dolphins frequently use the southern region containing the mouth of the estuary for feeding and traveling. Habitat characteristics were modeled with zero-altered gamma (ZAG), generalized linear (GLM), and generalized additive (GAM) models to predict dolphin group density. Models showed that groups were more likely to be present in areas with greater benthic slope variation and shallow areas closer to land, and that different habitat characteristics were associated with feed, social, and travel activities. This study suggests that Roanoke Sound provides a seasonal foraging area and travel corridor between the estuaries and coastal waters. This information contributes baseline knowledge of how habitat potentially influences dolphin distribution and behavior which can be useful for management and conservation, especially in areas where habitat changes and impacts need to be assessed.

The university participant pool is a key resource for behavioral research, and data quality is believed to vary over the course of the academic semester. This crowdsourced project examined time of semester variation in 10 known effects, 10 individual differences, and 3 data quality indicators over the course of the academic semester in 20 participant pools (N = 2696) and with an online sample (N = 737). Weak time of semester effects were observed on data quality indicators, participant sex, and a few individual differences—conscientiousness, mood, and stress. However, there was little evidence for time of semester qualifying experimental or correlational effects. The generality of this evidence is unknown because only a subset of the tested effects demonstrated evidence for the original result in the whole sample. Mean characteristics of pool samples change slightly during the semester, but these data suggest that those changes are mostly irrelevant for detecting effects.

Disclosure has become the preferred way of addressing the threat to researcher objectivity arising from financial conflicts of interest (FCOIs). This article argues that the effectiveness of disclosure at protecting science from the corrupting effects of FCOIs--particularly the kind of disclosure mandated by US federal granting agencies--is more limited than is generally acknowledged. Current NIH and NSF regulations require disclosed FCOIs to be reviewed, evaluated, and managed by officials at researchers' home institutions. However, these reviewers are likely to have institutional and personal interests of their own that may undermine the integrity of their evaluations. This paper presents experimental findings suggesting that such interests affect third-party assessments of FCOIs. Over 200 participants gauged the ethical significance of various hypothetical yet realistic FCOIs in academic research settings. Some of them were led to believe they had a small personal interest in allowing conflicted research to proceed, whereas others' personal outcomes were unrelated to the conflicted research. The results show that motivated reasoning influences FCOI evaluations, such that those with personal interest in conflicted research provided more lenient evaluations of researcher FCOIs. These findings imply that the capacity of federally mandated FCOI disclosure procedures to enhance bias-free science is quite restricted.

To assess the extent to which a video about psychological research would heighten introductory psychology students' interest and participation in research studies, we created a video about ongoing research at our university, the value of research participation, and course requirements for the research experience. Instructors in 4 courses (N = 471 students) verbally explained the research requirement and distributed a document detailing alternatives for completing it. In 2 of these courses, students also saw the video. Results indicated that students who viewed the video reported greater interest in research and completed more research participation hours than did students who did not view the video. We discuss the potential advantages of standardized, noncoercive procedures to encourage student participation in research. (Contains 4 footnotes and 1 table.)

The purpose of the present study was to experimentally examine whether testimony modality leads to differences in perceptions of expert witnesses and their opinions. We hypothesized that simulated testimony delivered via phone would be perceived as less credible, efficacious, and assigned less weight than testimony delivered via videoconference or in-court. We recruited a sample of 275 U.S. men and women via Amazon Mechanical Turk. After viewing a videotaped mock court scenario depicting testimony by a forensic psychological expert witness, participants completed measures of expert credibility, efficacy, and expert social presence. A simple contrast multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed perceptions did not differ between in-court, videoconferencing, and phone testimony conditions. Higher social presence scores predicted more favorable perceptions of the expert. These findings provide clearer support for the continued implementation of remote videoconference testimony in courts. We offer recommendations on how to optimize the use of remote testimony based on the present study and previous findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research suggests mental health diagnoses elicit stigmatization of individuals. The current study builds upon this literature at the intersection of same- and cross-race perceptions. Black and White participants viewed Black and White targets paired with either a mental health diagnosis (e.g., depression), a physical health diagnosis (e.g., high blood pressure), or no health information (control) while indicating each target's favorability and how much social distance they would want from them. Overall, people were more stigmatizing toward targets with a mental health diagnosis than a physical health diagnosis or no diagnosis. Black targets with a mental health diagnosis were stigmatized more than White targets with a mental health diagnosis and White participants displayed a greater aversion to Black targets with a mental health diagnosis than did Black participants. Results contribute to the mental health stigma literature and suggest it may be particularly problematic for White perceivers' attitudes toward Black individuals with mental health diagnoses. Findings may shed light on the racial differences in treatment-seeking amongst Black and White individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]