Publications by authors named "Valentine Vanootighem"

The age distribution of nonbelieved memories (NBMs) reported by young and older adults typically reflects a large proportion of events dated to childhood. The present study aimed to further investigate the age of origin of NBMs by using instructions that include an NBM related to adulthood. Participants aged from 40 to 80 years were asked to describe an NBM, to explain why they had stopped believing their memory, and to rate its phenomenal characteristics.

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Verbal descriptions of unfamiliar faces have been found to impair later identification of these faces in adults, a phenomenon known as the "verbal overshadowing effect" (VOE). Although determining whether children are good at describing unfamiliar individuals and whether these descriptions impair their recognition performance is critical to gaining a better understanding children's eyewitness ability, only a couple of studies have examined this dual issue in children and these found no evidence of VOE. However, as there are some methodological criticisms of these studies, we decided to conduct two further experiments in 7-8, 10-11, and 13-14-year-old children and in adults using a more optimal method for the VOE to be observed.

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The cortisol awakening response (CAR) is increasingly recognized as a potential biological marker of psychological and physical health status. Yet, the CAR literature is replete with contradictory results: both supposedly protective and vulnerability psychosocial factors have been associated with both increased and decreased CAR. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that the CAR flexibility would be a better indicator of psychological status than CAR magnitude.

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