The effects of metaphorical and literal comprehension processes on lexical decision latency of sentence components

Two lexical decision experiments were conducted to further investigate the notion that metaphor comprehension involves the formation of a new association between topic and vehicle. Experiment 1 was essentially a replication and extension of Camac and Glucksberg (1984) demonstrating that known word associate pairs show a significant lexical decision latency advantage over their randomly paired counterparts, while topic/vehicle word pairs drawn from apt metaphors do not. The results of Experiment 1 confirm their initial findings even when printed word frequency of the two pair types is held equivalent (a factor not controlled for in the original Camac and Glucksberg study). This result suggests that preexisting topic/vehicle similarity is not an important factor in metaphor comprehension. Experiment 2 was an attempt to detect the hypothesized shift in attribute salience that results in the formation of a new association between topic and vehicle during metaphor comprehension. In Experiment 2, subjects made lexical decisions on topic/vehicle word pairs that were preceded by a paragraph designed to induce either a metaphorical or literal interpretation. For many subjects, a latency advantage was observed for topic/vehicle pairs preceded by a metaphorical context as compared to a mismatching literal context. This finding suggests that metaphor comprehension is a dynamic process which modifies preexisting topic/vehicle similarity, and that metaphorical interpretations are facilitated by extended context.Portions of this paper were submitted to the Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree. Special thanks to Dr. Veronica J. Dark for her comments on theoretical aspects of this work, as well as her assistance with the use of microcomputers for the collection and analysis of data. The feedback provided by Thomas Andre, Lloyd L. Avant, Harry S. Gill, Donald H. Schuster, and Horabail, Venkatagiri is greatly appreciated.     

The interactive effects of affective demeanor, cognitive processes, and perspective-taking focus on helping behavior

The author manipulated affective demeanor (positive or negative) and cognitive processes (positive or negative) displayed by a target person, along with the perspective-taking focus (affect or cognitions) of participants, to assess the unique and interactive effects of those variables on the participants' helping behavior, operationalized as time volunteered to help other students. An ethnically diverse sample (N = 109) of U.S. working adults (mean age = 31.56 years, SD = 8.21) viewed a videotape of a female target talking about returning to college. Participants adopting an affective perspective-taking focus volunteered more time than did those who adopted a cognitive perspective-taking focus. Also, a significant interaction between participants' perspective-taking focus and target's affective demeanor revealed that participants who focused on the target's feelings and who viewed a warm, cheerful target volunteered more time than did the other groups. Moreover, a significant interaction between participants' perspective-taking focus and target's cognitive processes revealed that the participants who focused on the target's feelings and who viewed a confused and unfocused target volunteered more time than did the other groups. The author also discusses the relationship between empathy, personal distress, and helping.     

The effects of verbal labelling on recognition memory for schematic faces

Four experiments investigated the effects of labelling on the encoding and recognition of schematic faces. In Experiments I and II, hard-to-label (H) faces were recognized better after labelling than after observing, whereas easy-to-label (E) faces were not significantly affected. However, E faces were recognized better after labelling when subjects were instructed to attend carefully to all features of the faces during viewing. In Experiments III and IV, which dealt with each kind of face separately, both E and H faces were recognized better after labelling than after observing. An additional improvement in recognition all of faces was found when labelling subjects knew which label was relevant on each recognition trial and were instructed to use it. It was concluded that (a) a verbal label functions mainly to direct attention to specific facial features during viewing, (b)the effect of the label on recognition is positive or negative depending on whether or not it directs attention to features which are functional for the recognition test, (c) the label also forms part of the representation of the face in memory, and (d) a label may serve as a mediator at the time of testing, but only in the presence of specific cues.     

The affective organization of parenting: adaptive and maladaptive processes

This article presents a 3-component model of parenting that places emotion at the heart of parental competence. The model emphasizes (a) child, parent, and contextual factors that activate parents' emotions; (b) orienting, organizing, and motivating effects that emotions have on parenting once aroused; and (c) processes parents use to understand and control emotions. Emotions are vital to effective parenting. When invested in the interest of children, emotions organize sensitive, responsive parenting. Emotions undermine parenting, however, when they are too weak, too strong, or poorly matched to child rearing tasks. In harmonious relationships emotions are, on average, positive because parents manage interactions so that children's and parents' concerns are promoted. In distressed relationships chronic negative emotion is both a cause and a consequence of interactions that undermine parents' concerns and children's development.     

The effects of verbal instruction on affective and expectancy learning

The current research assessed the effects of verbal instruction on affective and expectancy learning during repeated contingency reversals (Experiment 1) and during extinction (Experiment 2) in a picture-picture paradigm. Affective and expectancy learning displayed contingency reversal and extinction, but changes were slower for affective learning. Instructions facilitated reversal and extinction of expectancy learning but did not impact on affective learning. These findings suggest a differential susceptibility of affective and expectancy learning to verbal instruction and question previous reports that verbal instructions can accelerate the extinction of non-prepared fear learning in humans.     

Stress modulation of cognitive and affective processes

This review summarizes the major discussion points of a symposium on stress modulation of cognitive and affective processes, which was held during the 2010 workshop on the neurobiology of stress (Boulder, CO, USA). The four discussants addressed a number of specific cognitive and affective factors that are modulated by exposure to acute or repeated stress. Dr David Morilak discussed the effects of various repeated stress situations on cognitive flexibility, as assessed with a rodent model of attentional set-shifting task, and how performance on slightly different aspects of this test is modulated by different prefrontal regions through monoaminergic neurotransmission. Dr Serge Campeau summarized the findings of several studies exploring a number of factors and brain regions that regulate habituation of various autonomic and neuroendocrine responses to repeated audiogenic stress exposures. Dr Kerry Ressler discussed a body of work exploring the modulation and extinction of fear memories in rodents and humans, especially focusing on the role of key neurotransmitter systems including excitatory amino acids and brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Dr Israel Liberzon presented recent results on human decision-making processes in response to exogenous glucocorticoid hormone administration. Overall, these discussions are casting a wider framework on the cognitive/affective processes that are distinctly regulated by the experience of stress and some of the brain regions and neurotransmitter systems associated with these effects.     

The impact of personality on cognitive, behavioral, and affective political processes: the effects of need to evaluate

Need to evaluate (NE) is a personality trait that reflects a person's proclivity to create and hold attitudes; people high in NE are especially likely to form attitudes toward all sorts of objects. Using data from the 1998 National Election Survey Pilot and the 2000 National Election Survey, NE was shown to predict a variety of important attitude-relevant cognitive, behavioral, and affective political processes beyond simply holding attitudes: NE predicted how many evaluative beliefs about candidates a person held, the likelihood that a person would use party identification and issue stances to determine candidate preferences, the extent to which a person engaged in political activism, the likelihood that a person voted or intended to vote, the extent to which a person used the news media for gathering information, and the intensity of emotional reactions a person felt toward political candidates. Thus, NE appears to play a powerful role in shaping important political behavior, emotion, and cognition.     

The effects of tempo and familiarity on children's affective interpretation of music

When and how does one learn to associate emotion with music? This study attempted to address this issue by examining whether preschool children use tempo as a cue in determining whether a song is happy or sad. Instrumental versions of children's songs were played at different tempos to adults and children ages 3 to 5 years. Familiar and unfamiliar songs were used to examine whether familiarity affected children's identification of emotion in music. The results indicated that adults, 4 year olds and 5 year olds rated fast songs as significantly happier than slow songs. However, 3 year olds failed to rate fast songs differently than slow songs at above-chance levels. Familiarity did not significantly affect children's identification of happiness and sadness in music.     

Preferences as expectation-driven inferences: effects of affective expectations on affective experience

Presents a model arguing that affect and emotion are often formed in an expectation-driven fashion. A pilot study and 2 experiments manipulated undergraduate Ss' affective expectations (e.g., how funny they expected a set of cartoons to be) and whether Ss' expectations were confirmed (e.g., whether the cartoons really were funny). When the value of a stimulus was consistent with an affective expectation, people formed evaluations relatively quickly. Even when the value of a stimulus was discrepant from an affective expectation, people sometimes assimilated the value of the stimulus to their expectations. Other times, such as when making a more fine-grained evaluation of the cartoons, people noticed that they were discrepant from their affective expectations. Under these conditions, people appeared to have more difficulty forming preferences. They took longer to evaluate and spent more time thinking about the cartoons.     

The effects of romantic partners’ goal congruence on affective well-being

Affective well-being in romantic couples was examined from the perspective of interdependence theory. The independent variables were (a) presence of partner, (b) whether an activity met the actor’s goals, and (c) goals of the actor’s partner. Dependent variables were feelings of closeness and affective well-being (happiness, sadness, anger, anxiety). We predicted a three-way interaction with the highest affective well-being when partners are together and activities meet both partners’ goals. In Study 1, data from 194 married individuals who participated in an experience sampling study supported our predictions. Feelings of closeness partially mediated the effect on affective well-being. Study 2 replicated the findings with 112 participants in dating relationships who recalled specific events and made ratings about goals and affective well-being.     

The meaningfulness and meaning of schematic faces

A pool of 128 schematic faces was generated by varying brow, mouth, nose, eye height, and eye shape. Ratings of meaningfulness (how easy it was to find an adjective describing the face) and meaning (the adjective given to the face) were mainly a function of brow and mouth. When brow and mouth were horizontal, faces were least meaningful and neutral in expression; if either brow or mouth moved from the horizontal, faces increased in meaningfulness, meaning being dependent on the moving feature; when both brow and mouth moved from the horizontal, faces were most meaningful, and their expression was a function of the combination of brow and mouth.     

The effects on eye movements of complexity,novelty, and affective tone

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of stimulus complexity, novelty, and affective tone on the direction of eye movements of male college students. Motion pictures were taken of S’s eye while he viewed pairs of stimuli. In no instance, in any part of the 10 sec. viewing interval, did Ss as a group fixate longer on unpleasant stimuli when they were paired with either pleasant or neutral stimuli; and pleasant stimuli consistently dominated neutral stimuli. Also, novel stimuli and complex stimuli tended to dominate their non-novel and less complex competitors. Differences in instructions were found to markedly affect the magnitude but not the direction of fixation-dominance.     

The effects of divided attention on encoding and retrieval processes: The resiliency of retrieval processes

We have recently cast doubt (Craik, Govoni, Naveh-Benjamin, & Anderson, 1996; Naveh-Benjamin, Craik, Guez, & Dori, 1998) on the view that encoding and retrieval processes in human memory are similar. Divided attention at encoding was shown to reduce memory performance significantly, whereas divided attention at retrieval affected memory performance only minimally. In this article we examined this asymmetry further by using more difficult retrieval tasks, which require substantial effort. In one experiment, subjects had to encode and retrieve lists of unfamiliar name-nouns combinations attached to people's photographs, and in the other, subjects had to encode words that were either strong or weak associates of the cues presented with them and then to retrieve those words with either intra- or extra-list cues. The results of both experiments showed that unlike division of attention at encoding, which reduces memory performance markedly, division of attention at retrieval has almost no effect on memory performance, but was accompanied by an increase in secondary-task cost. Such findings again illustrated the resiliency of retrieval processes to manipulations involving the withdrawal of attention. We contend that retrieval processes are obligatory or protected, but that they require attentional resources for their execution.     

The effects of the concreteness of differently valenced words on affective priming

This study aimed to determine whether affective priming is influenced by the concreteness of emotional words. To address this question, we conducted three experiments using lexical decision-priming task. In Experiment 1, positive-abstract (PA) and positive-concrete (PC) words were used as primes to examine the effect of the concreteness of positive words on affective priming, and in Experiment 2, negative-abstract (NA) and negative-concrete (NC) words were used as primes to examine the effect of the concreteness of negative words on affective priming. Results showed that participants responded faster to affectively congruent-abstract trails than incongruent-abstract trails in PA prime conditions, but for PC or negative word (NC and NA) prime conditions, there were no differences between the response times of congruent trails and incongruent trails. To examine the reliability of the priming effects observed in Experiments 1 and 2, we set up a neutral condition as a baseline in Experiment 3, through which we confirmed the difference in the affective priming effect between positive and negative primes in a concrete–abstract dimension. PA words were found to have the tendency to possess more emotional load and facilitate affective association between the prime and the target. The study finding suggests that aside from arousal and valence, the concreteness of positive words also has an impact on affective priming effect.     

The effects of uncontrollable failure and depression on memorial processes

Many investigators have argued that exposure to uncontrollable failure and depressed mood affect learning processes. However, little has been done to explore how information processing is affected by such events. Two experiments revealed that prior failure (Experiment 1) and depressed mood (Experiment 2) have similar effects on a simple free-recall task. These data are interpreted to suggest that the experience of uncontrollable failure and depression disrupt the transfer or retrieval of new information from a transient to a more permanent storage format. The implications of these data are discussed.     

The effects of peer ostracism on children's cognitive processes

In adults, experiences of social exclusion have been shown to not only adversely affect mood and threaten primary needs, but also to disrupt cognitive processes. The aim of this study was to provide an initial test of the effects of social exclusion on cognitive processes in children (N = 55; aged 8–12 years). Ostracism was simulated experimentally using the Cyberball paradigm—a computer-based ball-throwing game that participants believed they were playing with two peers over the internet. Following this, participants were administered subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children. Girls who were ostensibly ignored during the game demonstrated poorer cognitive performance than those who were included by their co-players, while boys did not. Findings are discussed in relation to those previously reported in adult research and evidence of gender-specific correlates of relational aggression in children and adolescents.     

The effects of anxiety upon attention allocation to affective stimuli

Pictures of emotionally aversive, neutral, and pleasant scenes were presented for 500 ms, followed by a probe presented in the same location (valid trials) or an alternate location (invalid trials) as the picture. Response-times to the probes were recorded in low (N=20) and high (N=27) trait anxious participants. Results revealed an overall negative cue validity effect of shorter reaction times (RTs) on invalid than valid trials, suggestive of an inhibition of return effect. Moreover, high trait anxious females showed a reduced negative cue validity effect for aversive pictures in comparison with neutral and pleasant pictures, suggestive of selective interference by the unpleasant material. By contrast, low trait anxious females showed an enhanced negative cue validity effect for aversive pictures relative to neutral and pleasant pictures, suggestive of attentional avoidance of the aversive content. The emotional content of picture cues did not significantly affect RTs in males, regardless of anxiety status. The results suggest that biased attention processes for aversive stimuli may contribute to the greater female propensity for anxiety disorders.     

The effects of induced affective states on letter discrimination in disadvantaged preschool children

The relationship between affective state and academic performance was examined using 30 4- to 6- year old economically disadvantaged black children. Children were assigned to one of three affective induction groups: positive, negative, or neutral affect. Changes from pre- to posttest administrations of a letter discrimination task suggest that negative and positive affect inductions produce different changes in both errors and response latency. These findings suggest that further research on the possibility that negative affect may be responsible in part for the academic difficulties of disadvantaged children and other children under stress is warranted.