Syllable monitoring in internally and externally generated English words

The ability of English speakers to monitor internally and externally generated words for syllables was investigated in this paper. An internal speech monitoring task required participants to silently generate a carrier word on hearing a semantically related prompt word (e.g., reveal—divulge). These productions were monitored for prespecified target strings that were either a syllable match (e.g., /dai/), a syllable mismatch (e.g., /daiv/), or unrelated (e.g., /hju:/) to the initial syllable of the word. In all three experiments the longer target sequence was monitored for faster. However, this tendency reached significance only when the longer string also matched a syllable in the carrier word. External speech versions of each experiment were run that yielded a similar influence of syllabicity but only when the syllable match string also had a closed structure. It was concluded that any influence of syllabicity found using either task reflected the properties of a shared perception-based monitoring system.     

Task switching based on externally presented versus internally generated information

A number of observations from the task switching literature suggest that task preparation based on internally generated knowledge is less efficient than task preparation based on externally presented information. In the present study, we investigated task switching based on internally generated versus externally presented information and additionally varied the reliability of foreknowledge. Source and reliability of foreknowledge were varied between groups of participants. With reliable foreknowledge, the relevant task always conformed to foreknowledge, even when the features of the imperative stimulus called for an alternative task. With unreliable foreknowledge, the relevant task was determined by the imperative stimulus and foreknowledge was sometimes misleading. Apart from measuring switch costs, we examined the effectiveness of establishing a task set by measuring interference exerted by conflicting stimuli (conditions with reliable foreknowledge) or misled expectancies (conditions with unreliable foreknowledge). In terms of switch costs, we observed a slight superiority of externally presented over internally generated information when foreknowledge was reliable, but this relationship strongly reversed with unreliable foreknowledge. This conclusion was corroborated by observations regarding the effectiveness of task-set establishment in terms of proneness to interference.

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Fact and fantasy: The effects of internally generated events on the apparent frequency of externally generated events

As John Locke pointed out, there are at least two sources of the contents of the mind: events that occur in the world and events that originate in the mind. Memory, as a record of experience, should contain information from both sources. The present studies investigated memory for the frequency of externally and internally generated events. Individual items were presented to subjects varying numbers of times and tested varying numbers of times. Later, subjects were asked to estimate the frequency of both types of events. Experiment 1 showed that internally generated events influenced the judged frequency of externally generated events and vice versa. The first of these was called the IFE effect and the second the IFI effect. Experiment 2 indicated that the IFE effect was greater when tests consisted of overt, as compared to covert, recall trials. The results were discussed in terms of a model for storing and using occurrence information which would account for both our ability to discriminate between and our tendency to confuse internally and externally generated memory representations.     

Expressive development and basic emotions

Abstract

One important emotion theory currently postulates an innate tie between specific infant facial expressions and a set of discrete basic emotions. The arguments and evidence relevant to this assertion are reviewed. New data are presented from a naturalistic study of one infant's early expressive development and a judgement study of infant facial, vocal, and body activity. These data challenge the innate tie hypothesis. Based on dynamical systems systems theory, an alternate conceptual framework is presented that may allow us to usefully retain the concept of basic emotions while accommodating the data on infant expressive development.     

An argument for basic emotions

Abstract

Emotions are viewed as having evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life-tasks. Each emotion has unique features: signal, physiology, and antecedent events. Each emotion also has characteristics in common with other emotions: rapid onset, short duration, unbidden occurrence, automatic appraisal, and coherence among responses. These shared and unique characteristics are the product of our evolution, and distinguish emotions from other affective phenomena.     

Effects of experience on the coordination of internally and externally timed soccer kicks

The authors investigated differences in the soccer kick between 8 experienced and 10 less experienced participants in 2 different task conditions (kicking a stationary ball or a moving ball at a target). The experienced participants were more accurate than their less experienced counterparts, whereas there were no differences in maximum foot velocity between groups or between conditions. When compared with their performance in the stationary condition, participants kicked the moving ball with a smaller range of movement at the knee of the kicking leg, maintaining a proximodistal coordination pattern. Because of their significantly shorter knee-flexion phase, the participants in the experienced group displayed a significantly shorter time between initiation of the forward swing of the kick and ball contact than that of those in the less experienced group. The rapid knee flexion may have been a strategy of exploiting passive dynamics to increase accuracy rather than velocity. Members of both groups showed a proximodistal initiation sequence in the kicking leg, which suggests that players can acquire that coordination pattern with relatively little structured practice and that further practice leads to improvement possibly through the increased exploitation of passive dynamics.     

Ekman's basic emotions: Why not love and jealousy?

Paul Ekman's view of the emotions is, we argue, pervasive in psychology and is explicitly shaped to be compatible with evolutionary thinking. Yet, strangely, jealousy and parental love, two emotions that figure prominently in evolutionary psychology, are absent from Ekman's list of the emotions. In this paper we examine why Ekman believes this exclusion is necessary, and what this implies about the limits of his conception of emotion. We propose an alternative way of thinking about emotion that does not exclude jealousy and parental love.     

Memory for internally generated words in Alzheimer-type dementia: breakdown in encoding and semantic memory

The "generation effect" is a phenomenon in which words that are generated by the subject are remembered better than words which are read. The present experiments examined this effect in patients with mild-to-moderate dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), healthy elderly adults, and young adults under a variety of different encoding and retrieval conditions. Experiment 1 employed an intentional learning task with multiple study/test trials using the same list of words. While both the young and elderly adults exhibited higher recall for internally generated words than read words, the DAT patients failed to demonstrate the effect even after repeated exposures to the same stimulus list. Experiment 2 replicated this same pattern of results using an incidental learning paradigm with both recall and recognition tests. Various explanations as to why the DAT patients failed to show the generation effect were discussed with particular emphasis placed on the role of semantic memory and encoding failure.     

How does Sam feel?: Children's labelling and drawing of basic emotions

This study compares the ability of children aged from 6 to 11 to freely produce emotional labels based on detailed scenarios (labelling task), and their ability to depict basic emotions in their human figure drawing (subsequent drawing task). This comparison assesses the relevance of the use of a human figure drawing task in order to test children's comprehension of basic emotions. Such a comparison has never been undertaken up to now, the two tasks being seen as belonging to relatively separate fields of investigation. Results indicate corresponding developmental patterns for both tasks and a clear‐cut gap between simple emotions (happiness and sadness) and complex emotions (anger, fear, and disgust) in the ability to label and to depict basic emotions. These results suggest that a drawing task can be used to assess children's understanding of basic emotions. Results are discussed according to the development of perceptual skills and the development of emotion conceptualization.     

Modification of magnitude estimations in thermotactile perception during self-generated and externally generated movements

Fourteen participants felt a 'cold' stimulus move across a fingertip. When movement was self-controlled, the stimulus was reported as feeling less 'cold' than when movement was externally generated.     

Self-transcendent positive emotions increase spirituality through basic world assumptions

Spirituality has mostly been studied in psychology as implied in the process of overcoming adversity, being triggered by negative experiences, and providing positive outcomes. By reversing this pathway, we investigated whether spirituality may also be triggered by self-transcendent positive emotions, which are elicited by stimuli appraised as demonstrating higher good and beauty. In two studies, elevation and/or admiration were induced using different methods. These emotions were compared to two control groups, a neutral state and a positive emotion (mirth). Self-transcendent positive emotions increased participants' spirituality (Studies 1 and 2), especially for the non-religious participants (Study 1). Two basic world assumptions, i.e., belief in life as meaningful (Study 1) and in the benevolence of others and the world (Study 2) mediated the effect of these emotions on spirituality. Spirituality should be understood not only as a coping strategy, but also as an upward spiralling pathway to and from self-transcendent positive emotions.     

The effect of attending to feeling on memory for internally generated stimuli

The present experiments examined the effects of self-focus, as produced by focusing on feelings, on memory. In an initial experiment subjects did complex mental arithmetic significantly faster after self-focus. Because complex mental addition involves internally generated stimuli, the remaining experiments compared the effects, on memory, of self-focus on internally generated stimuli to the effect of self-focus on stimuli supplied by the experimenter. In a second experiment, self-focus facilitated memory for digits recalled in reverse order but not for digits when recalled in the given order. In a third experiment, self-focus facilitated the memory for the classification of digits but not for the digits themselves. In a fourth and fifth experiment, self-focus aided memory for classification of objects into categories such as small, medium, or large but did not aid memory for the objects themselves. In general, improved performance due to feeling focus was attributed to the role that self-focus may play in increasing attention to internally generated stimuli.     

Measuring individual differences in sensitivities to basic emotions in faces

The assessment of individual differences in facial expression recognition is normally required to address two major issues: (1) high agreement level (ceiling effect) and (2) differential difficulty levels across emotions. We propose a new assessment method designed to quantify individual differences in the recognition of the six basic emotions, 'sensitivities to basic emotions in faces.' We attempted to address the two major assessment issues by using morphing techniques and item response theory (IRT). We used morphing to create intermediate, mixed facial expression stimuli with various levels of recognition difficulty. Applying IRT enabled us to estimate the individual latent trait levels underlying the recognition of respective emotions (sensitivity scores), unbiased by stimulus properties that constitute difficulty. In a series of two experiments we demonstrated that the sensitivity scores successfully addressed the two major assessment issues and their concomitant individual variability. Intriguingly, correlational analyses of the sensitivity scores to different emotions produced orthogonality between happy and non-happy emotion recognition. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the independence of happiness recognition, unaffected by stimulus difficulty.     

Bortner type A scores and basic emotions: aggression, distrustful, depression, and gregarious

We examined the correlations between scores on Bortner's scale and measures of aggression, distrustful, gregarious, and depression in 1,084 employees. Prospectively over 2 yr. we investigated the relationship of Type A behavior with cardiac mortality. Subjects classified as Type A had higher mean ratings on measures of aggression and distrustful than did persons classified as Type B. Mortality was lower in patients classified as reporting Type A behavior (12%) than in the patients classified as reporting Type B behavior (22%).     

Context effects on the judgment of basic emotions in the face

This article reports on three experiments on the controversial topic of context effects in the judgment of emotion from the face. In Experiment 1 (N=169) subjects were shown either a happy, sad, or angry anchor face as context followed by a target slide of a neutral face. In Experiment 2 (N=119) subjects were shown an anchor of a happy or angry face as context and a sad face as target. In Experiment 3 (N=180) subjects were shown an anchor of a happy, sad, or surprised face as context and an angry face as target. All experiments used facial expressions from Ekman and Friesen'sPictures of Facial Affect (1976). Dependent measures included intensity ratings of pleasure and arousal dimensions (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974); a judgment of the intensity of six specific emotions expressed (happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgusted, and interested); and categorical judgments of emotions. Significant context effects were observed for the neutral target and, with smaller effects, for the angry and sad targets on dimensional and intensity ratings. The magnitude of the context effect depended on both the target and anchor facial expressions. Greater categorical agreement of emotion was obtained for the target when another face was provided as a context than when the target face was shown alone. These results provide an independent replication and extension of recent research (Russell, 1991; Russell & Fehr, 1987) on the relativity of facial affect judgment.This research was supported by the Faculty Development Grant from Hofstra University to the first author.     

Dependent personality disorder: comparing an expert generated and empirically derived five-factor model personality disorder count

Assessment of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th Ed.; DSM-IV ) personality disorders (PDs) using five-factor model (FFM) prototypes and counts has shown substantial promise, with a few exceptions. Miller, Reynolds, and Pilkonis suggested that the expert-generated FFM dependent prototype might be misspecified in relation to the DSM-IV because of the overemphasis of high Agreeableness and underemphasis of low Conscientiousness in the experts' conception. A meta-analytic review of the relations between the FFM facets and Dependent PD (DPD) was conducted and used to create a revised, empirically based FFM DPD profile and count. The revised profile and count were more strongly correlated with DSM and non-DSM conceptualizations of maladaptive dependency. In addition, the revised FFM DPD profile was able to recreate the patterns of comorbidity typically found when using DSM-IV measures of DPD. Possible explanations for the discrepancy between the expert ratings and the meta-analytic results are offered.     

The consequences of encoding information on the maintenance of internally generated images and thoughts: the role of meaning complexes

Three experiments investigated the hypothesis that internally generated images and thoughts were driven by meaning complexes, a construct which reflects a synthesis of semantic meaning and personal salience (Klinger, 1999). Experiments 1 and 2 contrasted the mutual inhibition between encoding words and non-words on: (i) the frequency that thoughts and images unrelated to the task (task unrelated thought, TUT) were experienced (Experiment 1) and (ii) on the intensity of images generated from long-term memory and maintained under dual task conditions, which whilst familiar were not of particular personal salience (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 examined the physiological arousal associated with the experience of TUT in a semantic encoding task. Evidence suggested that, in general, internally generated images and thoughts, irrespective of the personal salience, were suppressed by the co-ordination of information in working memory. In addition, only the experience of spontaneous images and thoughts of personal salience (TUT, Experiments 1 and 3) interfered reliably with the encoding/retrieval of semantic information from memory. Finally, in Experiment 3, physiological arousal, as indexed by mean heart rate, was associated with a high frequency of TUT. The results of all three experiments support the notion that the maintenance of spontaneously occurring images and thoughts is simultaneously influenced by both the semantic content and the personal salience of the information held in working memory.     

A critical role for "affective neuroscience" in resolving what is basic about basic emotions.

Ortony and Turner (1990) asked "What's Basic About Basic Emotions," and they concluded "very little." They proceeded to advocate a "componential" or "mosaic" view of how emotional systems should be analyzed. Their thesis was flawed by their failure to consider the available neurobehavioral data. Genetically dictated brain systems that mediate affective-emotional processes do exist, even though there are bound to be semantic ambiguities in how we speak about these systems. This commentary summarizes key lines of evidence for coherently operating emotional systems in the brain and advocates the position that the issue of basic emotions can no longer be credibly discussed without adequate consideration of the relevant brain research in the area. The type of conceptual, logical analysis pursued by Ortony and Turner, in the absence of a thorough analysis of the available neurological data, is not an adequate basis for resolving what is basic about basic emotions.     

When effortful thinking influences judgmental anchoring: differential effects of forewarning and incentives on self‐generated and externally provided anchors

Two experiments examined the impact of financial incentives and forewarnings on judgmental anchoring effects, or the tendency for judgments of uncertain qualities to be biased in the direction of salient anchor values. Previous research has found no effect of either manipulation on the magnitude of anchoring effects. We argue, however, that anchoring effects are produced by multiple mechanisms—one involving an effortful process of adjustment from “self‐generated” anchors, and another involving the biased recruitment of anchor‐consistent information from “externally provided” anchors—and that only the former should be influenced by incentives and forewarning. Two studies confirmed these predictions, showing that responses to “self‐generated” anchors are influenced by both incentives and forewarnings whereas responses to “externally provided” anchors are not. Discussion focuses on the implications of these effects for debiasing efforts. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perceptual learning and recognition confusion reveal the underlying relationships among the six basic emotions

The six basic emotions (disgust, anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) have long been considered discrete categories that serve as the primary units of the emotion system. Yet recent evidence indicated underlying connections among them. Here we tested the underlying relationships among the six basic emotions using a perceptual learning procedure. This technique has the potential of causally changing participants’ emotion detection ability. We found that training on detecting a facial expression improved the performance not only on the trained expression but also on other expressions. Such a transfer effect was consistently demonstrated between disgust and anger detection as well as between fear and surprise detection in two experiments (Experiment 1A, n?=?70; Experiment 1B, n?=?42). Notably, training on any of the six emotions could improve happiness detection, while sadness detection could only be improved by training on sadness itself, suggesting the uniqueness of happiness and sadness. In an emotion recognition test using a large sample of Chinese participants (n?=?1748), the confusion between disgust and anger as well as between fear and surprise was further confirmed. Taken together, our study demonstrates that the “basic” emotions share some common psychological components, which might be the more basic units of the emotion system.