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A Scoping Review on Sexual Abuse Revictimization in Military Personnel and Veterans
No full textMilitary sexual trauma (MST) is a significant and growing concern within the U.S. military. Despite preventative efforts, recent data indicate continued high incidence (e.g., U.S. Department of Defense, 2023; Collette, 2022). Service members experiencing MST often suffer severe mental health sequelae, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety, and are at higher risk for sexual revictimization. This scoping review addresses the phenomenon of sexual revictimization—any form of sexual abuse following an initial experience—among U.S. military personnel and veterans. While much research links childhood sexual abuse (CSA) to MST, this review comprehensively maps the extent, range, and nature of research published between 2000 and February 2024 on broader patterns of sexual revictimization across the lifespan (childhood, adolescence, pre-military adulthood, during military service, and post-service). The review sought to identify how these patterns have been studied, what is known about associated risk factors and outcomes (particularly mental health), the methodological approaches used, and existing gaps in the literature. The objective is to synthesize current knowledge to inform future research priorities, clinical practices, and targeted prevention and intervention strategies for individuals affected by MST and sexual revictimization
Dialogue and Mood: still no evidence that partners’ emotional state impacts conversational memory
No full textWe conducted two studies investigating whether the emotional state of two partners in a dialogue can influence their respective conversational memories. We examined three indexes (free recall of content, recognition of content, identification of source) with controlled mood induction in the laboratory. A total of 120 participants (60 in each study) took part in a dialogue phase after having been exposed to negative or neutral mood induction. In line with the dialogue literature, results showed that: i) participants remembered self-produced information better than partner-produced information; ii) the better the information was remembered, the more its source was forgotten. However, the results indicate that although mood induction appears to be efficient, it did not have a significant influence on conversational memory. The (non) findings as a function of mood variable were consistent with the only two previously published works that have examined memory in a dialogue setting
Sources of individual variability in a pragmatic reference game
No full textIn this study, we aim to investigate the mechanisms that underlie individual variation on the pragmatic reference game introduced in Franke & Degen (2016). This study extends the smaller-scale pilot study we conducted. In this task, the participants are asked to identify the referent of a message which, they are told, was sent to them by the previous participant. The participants know that the pool of messages available to the speaker was restricted, and solving the critical trials correctly requires deriving an implicature via counterfactual reasoning (“If the speaker had meant to refer to A, they had the unambiguous message a available to them. Since they did not use it, that means that they meant to refer to something else”). In this task, there are a total of 24 critical trials, 12 in the “simple” condition requiring one reasoning step, and 12 in the “complex” condition requiring two reasoning steps. Being able to solve neither, only simple, or both kinds of trials corresponds to the predictions of three formal (Rational Speech Act and Iterated Best Response) models. The original study by Franke & Degen (2016) features stimuli with robots and monsters and accessories, as does our pilot study. However, it has been shown that these stimuli are biased and often lead the participants to select the correct answer for the wrong reason, such as salience or orientation or size of the accessories (Mayn & Demberg (2022)), so we will conduct this task with abstract stimuli. Like in Mayn & Demberg (2022), after completing the main task, consisting of 24 critical trials and 42 fillers, participants will see two critical trials again, one simple and one complex, in that order, and will be asked to provide a justification of their answer in an open-answer form. This will be done in order to monitor possible biases in the task, leading to the participants answering correctly without engaging in the assumed counterfactual reasoning, as well as to gain insight into strategies that result in incorrect answers. To answer the question about the cognitive and personality factors underlying individual variation, we will collect data from a battery of individual difference tests in two sessions. The first session will feature the main task, followed by a 16-item Backward Digit Span Task, a 10-item version of the Cognitive Reflection Test, and a 10-item version of Raven’s Progressive Matrices. The second session, conducted one week after the first one, will include a 75-item version of the Operation Span Task, the Short Story task (Dodell-Feder et al., 2013), and a 40-item version of Mind in the Eyes. This way, we will have two tests per concept: the Short Story Task and Mind in the Eyes tap into Theory of Mind, Backward Digit Span and OSpan tap into working memory capacity, and Raven’s Matrices and the Cognitive Reflection Test tap into general reasoning ability. We will use these measures as predictors for the participants’ performance on the main pragmatic task. We will only reinvite those participants for the second session who do not need to be excluded based on any of the tests in Session 1 (e.g. because of having seen three or more items on the CRT). The one-week long between-session period will allow us to analyze the data for Session 1 and create a list of participants to be reinvited
EI Scale Development Study 2b
No full textThe psychological experience of existential isolation (EI) entails the awareness of an “unbridgeable gap” between oneself and other people and things in the world. The present work focuses on the experience of existential isolation from the outside world, broadly, rather than existential isolation from other people more specifically. Theory suggests there may be two important dimensions of this self-world existential isolation (SWEI). One such dimension would reflect an awareness of the unbridgeable gap, in the form of the general feeling of disconnection between one’s mind and the outside world (participatory gap; SWEI-PG). Another such dimension would reflect an awareness of the unbridgeable gap, in the form of the general feeling that one does not really know what the reality of the outside world is truly like (epistemic gap; SWEI-EG).
The present research therefore has two goals:
First, it seeks to explore the factor structure of a pool of 35 candidate items that may or may not reflect these SWEI component dimensions.
Second, once the factor structure has been explored, the present study also seeks to explore the associations between the SWEI measure and various other epistemic variables—including ideological dogmatism; intellectual humility; mind wandering; dissociation; magical thinking, spirituality, and mental causation; personal need for structure; and tolerance for ambiguity. We will explore the same associations while controlling for self-other existential isolation (Pinel et al., 2017)
Peerspectives: peer review training initiative for the biomedical sciences
No full textBackground & Rationale
Scientific journals publish scholarly articles and provide an important platform for transparent presentation, exchange, and discussion of new scientific developments. Peer review, though often criticized, plays an integral role in ensuring integrity and quality in this scientific process. Given its importance, it is surprising that the scientific peer review and editorial processes generally remain fully absent in the curricula of advanced academic programs. Indeed, in Publon’s 2018 report on the global state of peer review, 88% of survey respondents indicated that peer review training is important or extremely important for ensuring high quality peer review (Publons and Publons, 2018). Furthermore, a 2016 study of 170,000 researchers conducted by Wiley found that 77% of reviewers expressed interest in receiving further training (Warne, 2016). Nevertheless, many scientists report lacking guidance on how to review a scientific paper (Mulligan, Hall and Raphael, 2013). As a result, the first peer reviews performed by early-career researchers (ECRs) are often conducted in a self-guided, “learning-by-doing” setting, which can jeopardize quality and timeliness.
Due to the steadily growing number of articles submitted every day and lack of incentives to peer review, journals report increasing difficulties in finding high-quality reviewers willing to accept review invitations (Heinemann, 2015; Publons and Publons, 2018). This was exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic (Kurth et al., 2020). Illustrating a further challenge, a 2020 study found that 12% of reviews included unprofessional comments, while 41% of reviews were incomplete, inaccurate or contained unsubstantiated critiques (Gerwing et al., 2020).
Although several peer review training resources are available (EQUATOR network, 2021) it remains unclear to what extent new reviewers use these (largely online) tools and if they are effective. Of the few published studies on the topic, it appears that short duration training (Schroter et al., 2004), receiving written feedback from editors (Callaham, Knopp and Gallagher, 2002), or simply matching new reviewers with experienced ones (Houry, Green and Callaham, 2012; Wong et al., 2017) are of limited value in the attempt to improve quality. To date, we only identified two rather informal efforts to explicitly engage students in peer review. The studies were descriptive in nature, lacked formal assessment, and were small in scope (Xu et al., 2016; Podder et al., 2018). In fact, most published studies describing peer review training interventions lack rigorous evaluation, transparency in reporting, sufficient sample size and hands-on, “real world” application.
Project Conceptualization
At the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, doctoral students increasingly pursue cumulative, publication-based dissertation projects instead of monographs, while generally having little or no prior publication experience. Unsurprisingly, these students seek coursework that goes beyond basic scientific writing and introductions to statistics. They seek exposure to best practices in modern study design and data analysis strategies employed in cutting-edge biomedical research. To address all the aforementioned gaps and engage students in a meaningful, hands-on way, we created an elective course for students in the Health Data Sciences (HDS) PhD Program in 2019:
https://iph.charite.de/en/academic_programs/phd_in_health_data_sciences/peerspectives/
The basic structure was a series of four interactive lectures with take-home assignments followed by four hands-on workshops. In the workshops, groups of four students were paired with a mentor with journal editing experience (workshop leaders) to produce four peer review reports for manuscripts that were currently under consideration at a journal partner (see the “Intervention” section for details). Our pilot study of Peerspectives with four participants indicated it provided relevant training and was well-received by the students, editor-mentors, and partner journal’s staff. As a next step, after increasing the program’s capacity to accommodate larger groups over several semesters, we seek to gain insights into the effectiveness of the program.
Setting and participants
Following a pilot in summer of 2019, we began offering Peerspectives as a recurring semester-long elective course at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Germany). The course was led by instructors affiliated with the Health Data Sciences PhD program and students could earn 4 credits towards their studies upon successful completion.
In the first semester run of the course (October 2020 - March 2021), due to limited capacity and high demand spots in the course were initially offered to doctoral students enrolled in the Health Data Sciences PhD program and remaining spots were then made available to other doctoral students in the biomedical sciences both at the Charité and other national and international institutions through an application process. Interested students were asked to provide details about prior training in epidemiology and (bio)statistics as well as to detail their motivation to participate, which were used for participant selection. Students not selected were encouraged to re-apply for future runs of the course.
In the second, third, and fourth runs of the course (April 2021 - August 2021, October 2021 - March 2022, and April 2022 to August 2022), recent post-docs as well as Master’s students in higher semesters, nearing completion of their graduate programs, were also invited to apply for the course. During these recruitment periods, we also advertised the course more intensively outside of our institution in a targeted effort to reach interested students from international universities and those with more diverse academic backgrounds (e.g. fields adjacent to the health data sciences). Course instructors, coordinators, former students, and workshop leaders were encouraged to help spread the word in their networks and on social media.
The maximum course capacity was contingent on the number of available workshop leaders each semester. In the four runs of the course, we enrolled approximately 20 students per semester.
Once the students were offered a spot in the Peerspectives course, they were asked whether they were interested in participating in the scientific evaluation study (see next section).
Recruitment/Enrollment
All students who were selected to take part in the Peerspectives course were asked whether they would like to participate in our scientific evaluation study. If so, they were asked to provide written informed consent after reviewing the detailed, written participant information materials. Students were informed that their choice to participate in the scientific study would in no way influence their ability to successfully pass the course and receive the 4 credit points. During the course, neither instructors nor workshop leaders were aware whether a student in the course was participating in the evaluation study. We continued enrollment until the minimum sample size target was exceeded (see below).
Ethical Considerations
The evaluation study of Peerspectives received approval from the ethics committee of the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin on 17.11.2020 (EA4/190/20).
Intervention
The semester-long Peerspectives course provides peer review training in a hybrid structure. Due to the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and to accommodate interested students outside of Berlin, all runs of the course (after the pilot) were held fully online via Zoom.
The first half of the course consists of four interactive lectures of 180 minutes led by faculty of the Health Data Sciences PhD Program at the Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin focused on (1) the role of scientific journals, editors, peer reviewers, and authors in scientific publishing; (2) sex and gender related aspects in peer review, ethical guidelines for peer review, and open science; (3) the conduct of peer review, including step-by-step guidance on how to write a constructive peer review report; and (4) a live demonstration of drafting a peer review report for a “real” scientific manuscript currently under review at the partner journal. Following each lecture, students are given a reflection assignment to be completed and submitted before discussing as a large group at the start of the next session.
In the second half of the course, students work together in assigned, small groups to produce a peer-review report for each of the four “live” manuscripts provided by the partnering scientific journal. For every workshop group, four course participants are paired with one workshop leader who has prior peer-review and editing experience for a scientific journal (“editor-mentor”). These editor-mentors are recruited from a growing personal network of the course creators; they participate on a voluntary basis without remuneration; and, they are in no way involved in handling of or decision-making regarding the manuscripts under review at the partner journal level. Prior to each workshop meeting, the students draft the peer review report together, with a different student taking the lead organizational role each week. The draft report is then discussed and revised together with the workshop leader in a 180-minute workshop meeting. Once all workshop group members and the workshop leader approve the final review report, it is submitted to the journal by the workshop leader also on behalf of the trainee group (crediting all group members by name).
Upon receipt of the journal’s decision on the paper, the workshop leader disseminates comments from the editors and other peer reviewers to all workshop group members and the group has a chance to discuss these together.
Attendance at all lectures and workshops, as well as submission of homework assignments, and active participation in the workshops is required to receive course credit. In extenuating circumstances, make-up assignments are provided to compensate for missed sessions. When not possible, only a certificate of attendance (without credit points) is issued.
Assessments and procedures
All course participants, regardless of whether they were also participants in the evaluation study, were required to sign a confidentiality agreement with the partnering journal developed for the purposes of Peerspectives, since the manuscripts used in the course are “live” and contemporaneously under review at the partnering journal.
In addition to providing written informed consent, all evaluation study participants were further asked to provide information about their age, gender, educational background and prior methods training, and any prior reviewing experience on a short questionnaire.
Before starting the course, all study participants are asked to complete an online pre-course survey to self-assess their own levels of knowledge and relevant skills. The same 8-question survey is administered again after the conclusion of the course, with additional room for students to provide feedback about the course to the instructors.
To assess the effectiveness of the Peerspectives course as part of a semester of doctoral studies, we will evaluate the program using a pre-/post-assessment comparison. For this purpose, all study participants are requested to draft a peer review report of a manuscript on their own once before (“pre-course assessment”) and once after completing the course (“post-course assessment”) under simulated real-world conditions. Accordingly, participants are told that they may use any resources available to them (“open-book”); however, they are explicitly instructed to work on these review reports alone and not in consultation with others.
To mimic real-world peer review conditions, participants are given two weeks to complete the assessment task. Reminders are sent to any participants who had not yet submitted their reports one week before the deadline, one day before the deadline, and on the day of the deadline (to simulate a real-world reviewing experience). Participants may request a one-week extension of the deadline, in which case, they are again sent reminders at the same intervals leading up to the new, extended deadline. In cases of non-responding participants, to mimic the chasing mechanisms for unfinished peer reviews used by many journal’s manuscript submission management systems, up to three additional reminders are sent until the peer review report is received.
Following the conclusion of a sufficient number of runs of the course to reach the sample size needed for the scientific evaluation, all submitted pre- and post- course assessments will be sent to trained assessors (experienced editors at a partnering scientific journal) under a pseudonym and scored using the validated Review Quality Instrument (RQI), version 3.2 (van Rooyen, Black and Godlee, 1999).
References:
Callaham, M.L., Knopp, R.K. and Gallagher, E.J. (2002) ‘Effect of written feedback by editors on quality of reviews: two randomized trials’, JAMA: the journal of the American Medical Association, 287(21), pp. 2781–2783.
EQUATOR network (2021) Peer review training and resources. Available at: https://www.equator-network.org/toolkits/peer-reviewing-research/peer-review-training-and-resources/#PRTraining (Accessed: 4 March 2021).
Gerwing, T.G. et al. (2020) ‘Quantifying professionalism in peer review’, Research integrity and peer review, 5, p. 9.
Heinemann, L. (2015) ‘Reviewer: an endangered species?!’, Journal of diabetes science and technology, 9(2), pp. 167–168.
Houry, D., Green, S. and Callaham, M. (2012) ‘Does mentoring new peer reviewers improve review quality? A randomized trial’, BMC medical education, 12, p. 83.
Kurth, T. et al. (2020) ‘Parallel pandemic: The crush of covid-19 publications tests the capacity of scientific publishing’, BMJ [Preprint].
Mulligan, A., Hall, L. and Raphael, E. (2013) ‘Peer review in a changing world: An international study measuring the attitudes of researchers’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology , 64(1), pp. 132–161.
Podder, V. et al. (2018) ‘Collective Conversational Peer Review of Journal Submission: A Tool to Integrate Medical Education and Practice’, Annals of neurosciences, 25(2), pp. 112–119.
Publons and Publons (2018) ‘Publons’ Global State Of Peer Review 2018’. doi:10.14322/publons.gspr2018.
van Rooyen, S. et al. (1999) ‘Effect of open peer review on quality of reviews and on reviewers’ recommendations: a randomised trial’, BMJ , 318(7175), pp. 23–27.
van Rooyen, S., Black, N. and Godlee, F. (1999) ‘Development of the review quality instrument (RQI) for assessing peer reviews of manuscripts’, Journal of clinical epidemiology, 52(7), pp. 625–629.
Schroter, S. et al. (2004) ‘Effects of training on quality of peer review: randomised controlled trial’, BMJ, p. 673. doi:10.1136/bmj.38023.700775.ae.
Warne, V. (2016) ‘Rewarding reviewers - sense or sensibility? A Wiley study explained’, Learned Publishing, pp. 41–50. doi:10.1002/leap.1002.
Wong, V.S.S. et al. (2017) ‘Mentored peer review of standardized manuscripts as a teaching tool for residents: a pilot randomized controlled multi-center study’, Research Integrity and Peer Review. doi:10.1186/s41073-017-0032-0.
Xu, J. et al. (2016) ‘Mentored peer reviewing for PhD faculty and students’, Nurse education today, 37, pp. 1–2
Not a Pipe: Local Assignments between Symbols and Discourse Referents
No full textHuman communication often involves local assignments between perceptually available objects and entities that are currently under discussion (discourse referent). This structure is exploited in many communicative media such as pretend play, puppet shows, diagrams, and animations. As these relations are local, infants should not extend the assignments across different discourses. In a looking-while-listening eyetracking paradigm, we investigate whether 14-to-16-month-old infants generalize a pretend-play-like stipulation (e.g., the triangle currently stands for a car) across speakers
Automatic processing of numerical value and string length in multi-digit numbers - Examining various string length differences (PHD EXP3)
No full textThe Arabic number system associates number length with its value so that the longer the number is, the larger its value. We hypothesized that the digits’ identity and the overall string length are both processed automatically when comparing multi-digit numbers from different numeric scales, resulting in a Stroop-like congruity effect. This study will investigate the manner of which performance in a numerical Stroop-like task is influenced by intrapair numerical distance, by intrapair scale differences, and by task instructions. Participants will perform a comparison task of two multi-digit numbers (both of which are multiples of scale numbers) while trying to ignore the task-irrelevant dimension. Each group of participants will be instructed to focus on one of different aspect that influences the perception of the numbers' values (whole number value, left-most digit, and number length)
Predictive capacity of fracture risk assessment tools (in validation process): Scoping Review.
No full textDue to the increase in the prevalence of osteoporosis in the future there will also be an increase in both the prevalence and incidence of fragility fractures.
Fractures not only cause a physical disability, but can also affect the overall quality of life of those affected and place a significant burden on health care systems.
Currently, there are systematic reviews of validated tools for fracture risk prediction. However, at the moment there is no report on the predictive capacity of those tools that are still in the process of development or validation where the use of new predictor variables is being implemented
Sex Trafficking Awareness Assessment and Educational Social Action Research Pre-Registration
No full textSex trafficking is “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act” through force, fraud, or coercion; in the United States, this definition only applies to individuals under the age of 18 (22 USC § 7102). Sex trafficking is prevalent in our society and has increasingly been a topic in the news over the past few decades. But how much do people know about it?
Although researchers have investigated public knowledge about sex trafficking in other countries (e.g., in Nepal; Shrestha et al., 2015), we know less about what the U.S. public knows about this topic. The few studies conducted in the U.S. have looked at narrowly targeted groups, such as health service providers (Beck et al., 2015; Ellis, 2018), counselors (Litam & Lam, 2021; McGrotty, 2020; Sands, 2020), and African American parents (Harrell, 2015). Four of these six studies were dissertations, so little published research exists even on narrow U.S. populations. Researchers looked more broadly at U.S. human sex trafficking in only two studies (Cunningham & Cromer, 2016; Houston-Kolnik, Todd, & Wilson, 2016), but these were limited to university students. The only broad measure published to date is the Sex Trafficking Attitudes Scale (STAS; Houston-Kolnik, Todd, & Wilson, 2016). A solid start, this measure is somewhat incomplete: its language needs to be updated, its structure is rather complicated, and some methodological improvements can be made.
The current social action research study assesses basic knowledge of sex trafficking in a more general U.S. population (university students and a general internet sample) and simultaneously educates participants about sex trafficking. We revised the STAS to include updated language and expanded it to include assessment of myths surrounding sex trafficking. We also improved it methodologically, simplified its structure, and modified it to include an optional educational component. We will report the revised STAS psychometric properties when we publish to make it available and useful to other researchers. Surveying university students and an internet sample allows us to assess basic knowledge and compare students' knowledge about sex trafficking with that of a broader (internet users) population
The effects of autonomy-supportive instructional language on motor learning
No full textAutonomy, competence, and relatedness are considered basic psychological needs that when supported can have positive psychological and performance outcomes. An effective way to foster perceptions of autonomy is through the provision of autonomy-supportive language, which has been shown to be beneficial in a variety of settings including educational psychology, coaching, and health contexts. Despite being included in the OPTIMAL theory of motor learning, autonomy-supportive instructional language has received minimal attention in the motor learning literature. To address this gap, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of autonomy-supportive instructional language on motor learning