Cultural differences in distraction processing: influence of context at retrieval

Cultural differences in information processing affect perceptual judgment, attention, and memory. We investigated whether cultural differences in processing patterns, specifically East Asian participants’ tendency to encode holistically, compared to Western tendencies to process analytically, affect performance on an implicit memory test. First, participants completed a 1-back task on pictures with superimposed distracting words. After a delay filled with a computerised Corsi block task, they performed a word fragment task in which some fragments could be completed with the distracting words from the 1-back task. Critically, fragments were presented with the same pictures as previously seen (matched condition), with no pictures (control condition), or with pictures from other trials on the 1-back task (mismatched condition). Non-Asian Canadian participants showed virtually no priming for distraction, independent of the reinstatement of encoding context. East Asian Canadian participants showed superior priming for fragments that had been paired with their original pictures. They did not show evidence of a detriment for the mismatched, relative to control, condition.     

Cultural differences in visual attention: Implications for distraction processing

We investigated differences between participants of East Asian and Western descent in attention to and implicit memory for irrelevant words which participants were instructed to ignore while completing a target task (a Stroop Task in Experiment 1 and a 1‐back task on pictures in Experiment 2 ). Implicit memory was measured using two conceptual priming tasks (category generation in Experiment 1 and general knowledge in Experiment 2 ). Participants of East Asian descent showed reliable implicit memory for previous distractors relative to those of Western descent with no evidence of differences on target task performance. We also found differences in a Corsi Block spatial memory task in both studies, with superior performance by the East Asian group. Our findings suggest that cultural differences in attention extend to task‐irrelevant background information, and demonstrate for the first time that such information can boost performance when it becomes relevant on a subsequent task.     

Cultural differences in the primacy effect for person perception

Previous work has shown there are robust differences in how North Americans and East Asians form impressions of people. The present research examines whether the tendency to weigh initial information more heavily—the primacy effect—may be another component of these cultural differences. Specifically, we tested whether Americans would be more likely to use first impressions to guide person perception, compared to Japanese participants. In this experiment, participants read a vignette that described a target person's behaviour, then rated the target's personality. Before reading the vignette, some trait information was given to create an expectation about the target's personality. The data revealed that Americans used this initial information to guide their judgments of the target, whereas the Japanese sample based their judgments on all the information more evenly. Thus, Americans showed a stronger primacy effect in their impression formation than Japanese participants, who engaged in more data‐driven processing.     

Directed forgetting of emotional stimuli in borderline personality disorder

On the basis of clinical literature, the authors hypothesized that individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) would show biased information processing when they were exposed to negative affective stimuli of a particular type. Individuals with BPD and controls were tested using a directed forgetting paradigm. Study participants were exposed to 3 types of words (borderline, neutral, positive) and were cued to either remember or forget each word as it was presented. There were no group differences on a free recall task for words in the remember condition. However, participants with BPD recalled significantly more of the borderline words from the forget condition than did controls. In other words, borderline participants remembered borderline words that they were instructed to forget. These results may be consistent with enhanced encoding of salient words and perhaps related themes in BPD individuals.     

Eliciting false memories on implicit and explicit memory tests after incidental learning

Abstract: In a false memory experiment, lists of semantic associates (e.g., newspaper, letter, book, etc.) were presented to three groups of participants to induce false memories for critical nonpresented (CN) words (e.g., read) in an incidental learning task. The control group simply estimated the frequency rate in everyday Japanese discourse of each word on a list. The imagery instruction group received an additional instruction to imagine a thematically related converging word from the target words on a list. Participants in the imagery plus writing group received the same instructions as those in the imagery instruction group, but were also required to write down the word they imagined for each list. The results from the implicit and explicit memory tests given after the incidental learning episode showed that the level of priming for CN words was equivalent to that for actually presented target words for all three groups on the implicit test, whereas explicit memory results showed that participants explicitly recognized more target words than CN words. The implications for implicit associative response and fuzzy‐trace theories of false memory, as well as implicit priming, are discussed.     

Repetition Priming Effects in Proficient Mandarin–Cantonese and Cantonese–Mandarin Bidialectals: An Event-Related Potential Study

The present study adopted a repetition priming paradigm to investigate the bidialectal (bilingual) representation of speakers with different native dialects by event-related potential (ERP) technique. Proficient Mandarin–Cantonese and Cantonese–Mandarin bidialectals participated in the study. They were required to judge whether a word was a biological word or not, when the words (target word) were represented under four types of repetition priming conditions: Mandarin (prime)–Mandarin (target), Mandarin (prime)–Cantonese (target), Cantonese (prime)–Cantonese (target) and Cantonese (prime)–Mandarin (target). Results of reaction time and accuracy primarily indicated larger repetition priming effects in Mandarin–Mandarin and Cantonese–Cantonese (within-language) conditions than that in Mandarin–Cantonese and Cantonese–Mandarin (between-language) conditions. But more importantly, P200 and N400 mean amplitudes revealed distinct repetition priming effects between two types of participants. Specifically, both P200 and N400 indicated that the repetition priming effect in Mandarin–Mandarin condition was larger than that in Cantonese–Cantonese condition for Mandarin–Cantonese participants, whereas it was opposite for Cantonese–Mandarin participants. In addition, P200 also suggested opposite patterns of repetition priming effects in between-language priming conditions for two groups of participants. The repetition priming effect in Mandarin–Cantonese condition was larger than that in Cantonese–Mandarin condition for Mandarin–Cantonese participants, while for Cantonese–Mandarin participants, it was opposite (Mandarin–Cantonese < Cantonese–Mandarin). The results implied a clear asymmetric representation of two dialects for proficient bidialectals. They were further discussed in light of native dialect and language use frequency.     

A longitudinal experimental study comparing the effectiveness of happiness-enhancing strategies in Anglo Americans and Asian Americans

Growing evidence suggests that well-being interventions can be effective. However, it is unclear whether happiness-increasing practices are equally effective for individuals from different cultural backgrounds. To investigate this question, Anglo Americans and predominantly foreign-born Asian Americans were randomly assigned to express optimism, convey gratitude, or list their past experiences (control group). Multilevel analyses indicated that participants in the optimism and gratitude conditions reported enhanced life satisfaction relative to those in the control condition. However, Anglo Americans in the treatment conditions demonstrated larger increases in life satisfaction relative to Asian Americans, while both cultural groups in the control condition showed the least improvement. These results are consistent with the idea that the value individualist cultures place on self-improvement and personal agency bolsters the efforts of Anglo Americans to become more satisfied, whereas collectivist cultures' de-emphasis of self-focus and individual goals interferes with the efforts of Asian Americans to pursue enhanced well-being.     

A longitudinal experimental study comparing the effectiveness of happiness-enhancing strategies in Anglo Americans and Asian Americans

Growing evidence suggests that well-being interventions can be effective. However, it is unclear whether happiness-increasing practices are equally effective for individuals from different cultural backgrounds. To investigate this question, Anglo Americans and predominantly foreign-born Asian Americans were randomly assigned to express optimism, convey gratitude, or list their past experiences (control group). Multilevel analyses indicated that participants in the optimism and gratitude conditions reported enhanced life satisfaction relative to those in the control condition. However, Anglo Americans in the treatment conditions demonstrated larger increases in life satisfaction relative to Asian Americans, while both cultural groups in the control condition showed the least improvement. These results are consistent with the idea that the value individualist cultures place on self-improvement and personal agency bolsters the efforts of Anglo Americans to become more satisfied, whereas collectivist cultures’ de-emphasis of self-focus and individual goals interferes with the efforts of Asian Americans to pursue enhanced well-being.     

Individual and developmental differences in semantic priming: empirical and computational support for a single-mechanism account of lexical processing

Existing accounts of single-word semantic priming phenomena incorporate multiple mechanisms, such as spreading activation, expectancy-based processes, and postlexical semantic matching. The authors provide empirical and computational support for a single-mechanism distributed network account. Previous studies have found greater semantic priming for low- than for high-frequency target words as well as inhibition following unrelated primes only at long stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs). A series of experiments examined the modulation of these effects by individual differences in age or perceptual ability. Third-grade, 6th-grade, and college students performed a lexical-decision task on high- and low-frequency target words preceded by related, unrelated, and nonword primes. Greater priming for low-frequency targets was exhibited only by participants with high perceptual ability. Moreover, unlike the college students, the children showed no inhibition even at the long SOA. The authors provide an account of these results in terms of the properties of distributed network models and support this account with an explicit computational simulation.     

Implicit Puritanism in American moral cognition

Three studies provide evidence that the judgments and behaviors of contemporary Americans are implicitly influenced by traditional Puritan-Protestant values regarding work and sex. American participants were less likely to display traditional values regarding sexuality when implicitly primed to deliberate, as opposed to intuition and neutral primes. British participants made judgments reflecting comparatively liberal sexual values regardless of prime condition (Study 1). Implicitly priming words related to divine salvation led Americans, but not Canadians, to work harder on an assigned task (Study 2). Moreover, work and sex values appear linked in an overarching American ethos. Asian-Americans responded to an implicit work prime by rejecting revealing clothing and sexually charged dancing, but only when their American cultural identity was first made salient (Study 3). These effects were observed not only among devout American Protestants, but also non-Protestant and less religious Americans.     

利他行为的内隐启动研究

通过视觉与组词任务启动范式的两个实验考察了利他人物形象与利他词语对利他行为的内隐启动效应。结果发现,完成利他人物形象视觉启动(实验1)与完成利他组词任务启动(实验2)的实验组被试,在独裁者分配任务中分配给他人的钱数显著多于控制组被试。研究结果表明:利他人物形象视觉和利他语义组词都可以使个体的利他行为被显著直接无意识启动,即内隐启动。研究对设计能更好地启动人们的利他行为的一般情境有重要的启示。     

Lexical access without attention? Explorations using dichotic priming

The authors used lexical decision in a dichotic listening situation and measured identity priming across channels to explore whether unattended stimuli can be processed lexically. In 6 experiments, temporal synchronization of prime and target words was manipulated, and acoustic saliency of the unattended prime was varied by embedding it in a carrier sentence or in babble speech. When the prime was acoustically salient, a cross-channel priming effect emerged, and participants were aware of the prime. When the prime was less salient, no identity priming was found, and participants failed to notice the prime. Saliency was manipulated in ways that did not degrade the prime. Results are inconsistent with models of late filtering, which predict equal priming irrespective of prime saliency.     

The role of interdependence and perceived similarity in depressed affect contagion

This study hypothesized that perceived similarity significantly impacts depressed affect contagion only for individuals with highly interdependent self-construals. Baseline self-construal and affect were measured. Then, after reading a vignette about a depressed or nondepressed target, affect and perceived similarity were assessed. Participants reading the depressed vignette reported higher negative affect than participants reading the nondepressed vignette. Positive affect did not differ between the two conditions. For participants exposed to the depressed vignette, the hypothesized interaction between perceived similarity and interdependence significantly predicted positive affect. It appears that participants with more interdependent self-construals were more likely to "catch" the low positive affect displayed by the depressed target only if they perceived themselves as highly similar to the target.     

The effect of generation on long-term repetition priming in auditory and visual perceptual identification

Perceptual implicit memory is typically most robust when the perceptual processing at encoding matches the perceptual processing required during retrieval. A consistent exception is the robust priming that semantic generation produces on the perceptual identification test (Masson & MacLeod, 2002), a finding which has been attributed to either (1) conceptual influences in this nominally perceptual task, or (2) covert orthographic processing during generative encoding. The present experiments assess these possibilities using both auditory and visual perceptual identification, tests in which participants identify auditory words in noise or rapidly-presented visual words. During the encoding phase of the experiments, participants generated some words and perceived others in an intermixed study list. The perceptual control condition was visual (reading) or auditory (hearing), and varied across participants. The reading and hearing conditions exhibited the expected modality–specificity, producing robust intra-modal priming and non-significant cross-modal priming. Priming in the generate condition depended on the perceptual control condition. With a read control condition, semantic generation produced robust visual priming but no auditory priming. With a hear control condition, the results were reversed: semantic generation produced robust auditory priming but not visual priming. This set of results is not consistent with a straightforward application of either the conceptual-influence or covert-orthography account, and implies that the nature of encoding in the generate condition is influenced by the broader list context.     

“You're overreacting!”: The ambiguity of Asian American microaggressions delegitimizes collective action

Asian Americans are lauded as the model minority who are intelligent and industrious. Simultaneously, they are deemed as perpetual foreigners. The current research examines how racial microaggressions expressed by a White American source toward an Asian American target affect perceptions of the perpetrator and target. White Americans and Asian Americans read about an interaction between two college students, where the racial microaggression made was either an ambiguous expression of the model minority myth (MMM; all studies), an ambiguous perpetual foreigner stereotype (all studies), an unambiguous MMM (all studies), or no racial bias (Studies 2 and 3). Findings indicate that both Whites and Asian Americans respond differently—when exposed to the aforementioned conditions—regarding perceived racism of the White perpetrator and appropriateness of response by the Asian American target; however, they respond similarly regarding perceived legitimacy of collective action by the target. Nevertheless, Whites and Asian Americans deemed the ambiguous microaggression against the target as a model minority not racist relative to unambiguous MMM. Our findings show that ambiguous forms of bias toward Asian Americans go “under the radar” of both Whites and Asian Americans as being racist and contribute to the maintenance of the racial status quo.     

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 unbearable lightness of priming

Repetition priming from text to isolated words has been difficult to observe. One explanation for this difficulty is that previous attempts to observe this type of priming have utilised conditions that normally reduce priming. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate this hypothesis. Experiment 1 involved participants being presented with words in isolation and in text passages. The words were then presented again in a lexical decision test. Results indicated that priming occurred as a result of exposure to both isolated words and words in text, although priming was greater in the word-word condition. Experiment 2 investigated whether priming occurred in a lexical decision test on words that had been read prior to the test in Milan Kundera's novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." There was some evidence that participants who had read the book recently were faster at lexical decision to words from the book than participants who had not read the book. The two experiments therefore indicate that priming can occur from text to isolated words, although it is smaller in magnitude to that observed from word to word. Reasons for this difference, as suggested by Kirsner and Speelman (J. Exp. Psychol.: Learn. Mem. Cogn. 22 (1996) 563) model of repetition priming, are discussed.     

Feeling the past: The absence of experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on text processing

In two self-paced reading experiments, we investigated the hypothesis that information moves backward in time to influence prior behaviors (Bem Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100:407?C425, 2011a). In two of Bem??s experiments, words were presented after target pictures in a pleasantness judgment task. In a condition in which the words were consistent with the emotional valence of the picture, reaction times to the pictures were significantly shorter , as compared with a condition in which the words were inconsistent with the emotional valence of the picture. Bem Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 100:407?C425, (2011a) interpreted these results as showing a ??retroactive priming?? effect resulting from precognition. To test the precognition hypothesis, we adapted a standard repetition priming paradigm from psycholinguistics. In the experiments, participants read a set of texts. In one condition, the participants read the same text twice. In other conditions, participants read two different texts. The precognition hypothesis predicts that readers who encounter the same text twice will experience reductions in processing load during their first encounter with the text. Hence, these readers' average reading times should be shorter than those of readers who encounter the target text only once. Our results indicated that readers processed the target text faster the second time they read it. Also, their reading times decreased as their experience with the self-paced reading procedure increased. However, participants read the target text equally quickly during their initial encounter with the text, whether or not the text was subsequently repeated. Thus, the experiments demonstrated normal repetition priming and practice effects but offered no evidence for retroactive influences on text processing.     

Semantic interference in a delayed naming task: evidence for the response exclusion hypothesis

In 2 experiments participants named pictures of common objects with superimposed distractor words. In one naming condition, the pictures and words were presented simultaneously on every trial, and participants produced the target response immediately. In the other naming condition, the presentation of the picture preceded the presentation of the distractor by 1,000 ms, and participants delayed production of their naming response until distractor word presentation. Within each naming condition, the distractor words were either semantic category coordinates of the target pictures or unrelated. Orthogonal to this manipulation of semantic relatedness, the frequency of the pictures' names was manipulated. The authors observed semantic interference effects in both the immediate and delayed naming conditions but a frequency effect only in the immediate naming condition. These data indicate that semantic interference can be observed when target picture naming latencies do not reflect the bottleneck at the level of lexical selection. In the context of other findings from the picture-word interference paradigm, the authors interpret these data as supporting the view that the semantic interference effect arises at a postlexical level of processing.     

Mind Attribution to Gods and Christians in the Chinese Cultural Context

Drawing on the distinction in mind perception between agency and experience, this research examined whether and how culture-based religion affects mind attribution to gods and Christians in a religious priming paradigm. When attributing mind to gods in Study 1, participants in the religious priming condition attributed more agency to gods than those in the neutral condition. When attributing mind to human religious targets in Study 2, religious participants in the religious priming condition attributed more experience to a Christian target than those in the neutral condition, while atheist participants in the religious priming condition attributed less experience to a Christian target than those in the neutral condition. In addition, religious participants in the religious priming condition attributed more experience to an atheist target than those in the neutral condition. Taken together, mind attribution to religious targets varied on agency and experience, and showed its own cultural features in China.