Often after opening an emergency door, an evacuee may need to turn right or left or go further straight ahead to reach the emergency exit. This study examined whether the currently-adopted emergency exit sign could be made more effective with advance information on the evacuation route. The current sign was modified by adding a left-bent or right-bent arrow to its left-facing or right-facing version respectively. In a computer-simulated evacuation task, participants were required to decide as quickly as possible which direction to turn after going through the door under the current or the modified exit sign. The modified sign was shown to be effective in leading the participants to choose the direction consistent with its directional arrow, whereas the current sign, whether left-facing or right-facing, showed no such effect. However, in a recognition memory test given immediately following the completion of the simulated evacuation task, many of those who had successfully chosen the direction suggested by the modified sign falsely selected the current left-facing sign as what they had seen.
The effects of false memories on polygraph examinations with the Concealed Information Test (CIT) were investigated by using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, which allows participants to evoke false memories. Physiological responses to questions consisting of learned, lure, and unlearned items were measured and recorded. The results indicated that responses to lure questions showed critical responses to questions about learned items. These responses included repression of respiration, an increase in electrodermal activity, and a drop in heart rate. These results suggest that critical response patterns are generated in the peripheral nervous system by true and false memories.
To investigate binocular single vision, we examined monocular contrast sensitivity during binocular fixation by changing the intervals between the beginning of fixation and a probe stimulus, within 10 seconds. Monocular contrast sensitivities were quite stable within 1s of the interval delay in both eyes, but they were reduced in either eye if the interval delay was more than 1s (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, a similar stimulus was monocularly presented. In this case, decline of contrast sensitivity was not observed in either eye. In Experiment 3, when the stimulus was interrupted briefly before the probe presentation, the contrast sensitivity was recovered. These results suggest that after prolonged viewing the binocular system does not sustain either eye sensitivity equally unless there is interruption of the binocular stimulation.