Stevent A Martinez

Artificial intelligence systems can produce information that closely resembles real and human-created information, making it difficult to accurately distinguish between synthetic (AI-generated) and non-synthetic content. We explored whether individual differences in attitudes toward AI or one’s history of engagement with AI were related to individual differences in the ability to distinguish AI-generated from real/human-created content. Though attitudes did not predict performance on a human/AI discernment task, more frequent and varied engagement with AI platforms was associated with significantly lower discernment scores. We next tested if we could improve human evaluators’ discernment accuracy through targeted intervention. Participants were assigned to either an experimental group ( n = 60) or a control group ( n = 57). The experimental group completed an intervention in which they first trained with accurately labeled human/AI exemplars and then completed a series of discernment trials while being given immediate feedback and a monetary incentive for each accurate choice. The control group participated in similar exercises but trained with unlabeled human/AI exemplars and received delayed feedback and monetary incentivization based on their performance. While there were no group differences in discernment accuracy at a baseline assessment, participants in the experimental group demonstrated significant gains in discernment accuracy (relative to baseline) at both an intermediate and final assessment, while the control group showed no improvement across assessments. These findings provide evidence that frequent interactions with AI platforms can diminish sensitivity to the differences between real and synthetic content, but that targeted interventions can meaningfully benefit human evaluators' discernment skill.

Despite the salient experience of encoding emotional events, memories of threatening events are prone to distortions and often non-veridical from encoding to recall. Further, threat states have been shown to preferentially disrupt the binding of item-context relationships and enhance goal-relevant information. While extensive work has characterized distinctive features of emotional memory, research has not fully explored the influence of threat on temporal memory, a process putatively supported by the binding of event features into a temporal context. Two primary competing hypotheses have been proposed; that threat can either impair or enhance temporal memory. We analyzed two datasets to assess temporal memory for an in-person haunted house experience. In study 1 (n = 47), we examined temporal structure of memory by characterizing memory contiguity in free recall as a function of individual levels of physiological arousal as a proxy of threat. In study 2 (n = 53), we replicated marginal findings of threat-related increases in memory contiguity found in study 1 and extended these findings by showing threat-related increases in recency discriminations, an explicit test of temporal order memory. Together, these findings demonstrate that threat experience enhances temporal memory both in terms of free recall structure and during explicit memory judgments.

Successful emotion regulation (ER) requires effective strategy selection. Research suggests that disengagement strategies (e.g., distraction) are more often selected than engagement strategies (e.g., reappraisal) as emotional experiences intensify. However, the extent to which ER strategy choice in controlled circumstances reflects strategy usage during complex, multimodal events is not well understood. The present research uses dynamic, multimodal stimuli (i.e., a haunted house, horror movies) to examine the association between affective intensity and regulatory strategy usage among untrained participants – individuals given no prior regulation instructions or direction. Both a preliminary study (n = 54) and Study 1 (n = 118) failed to find relationships between emotional intensity and strategy usage to downregulate emotions as participants navigated a haunted house. Distraction was self-reported to be less successful than reappraisal at high intensities, contrary to expectations. Participants in Study 2 (n = 152) forecasted regulation strategy usage based upon descriptions of emotionallyregulated experiences from the preliminary haunted house study. Affective intensity predicted which strategies forecasters predicted they would use; though, forecasters overpredicted how often distraction was used in practice. Study 3 (n = 242) incorporated strategy usage and forecasting within the same design by showing untrained participants video stimuli of varying-intensity and capturing their regulatory responses. Forecasters again predicted using distraction more often than strategy users did in practice. Forecasters also overpredicted how effectively distraction reduced negative affective intensity relative to what strategy users reported. These results may highlight a disconnect between strategy fittedness when self-regulation occurs in uncontrolled, highlyintense, or complex circumstances.