Biases in Visual Attention in Depressed and Nondepressed Individuals

Abstract

The present study utilised a cognitive paradigm to examine attentional biases in mildly depressed persons. Twelve depressed and 12 nondepressed subjects completed an attentional task similar to that employed by MacLeod, Mathews, and Tata (1986). A tachistiscope was used to present subjects with a series of word pairs, each with one word printed above the other. Three types of word pairs were presented: manic-neutral, depressed-neutral, and manic-depressed. Selective attention to one member of a word pair was assessed using ac perception task. Based on cognitive models of depression, it was hypothesised that the depressed subjects would attend more to depressed-content words than to manic- or neutral-content words, whereas the nondepressed subjects would not exhibit any attentional biases. In contrast to these predictions, analyses indicated that whereas the depressed subjects attended equally to depressed-, manic-, and neutral-content words, the nondepressed subjects attended more to manic-content than they did to neutral- or depressed-content words. These results add support to the documentation of evenhandedness in the cognitive functioning of depressed subjects, and of self-sewing biases in nondepressed subjects. The present findings are discussed in terms of a zoom lens model of attention, in which depressed persons attempt to exhaustively process their sensory world, but with a loss of attentional resolution. In contrast, nondepressed individuals attempt to process a more limited portion of their sensory world, but with an increase in attentional power. Finally, directions for future research in this area are offered.     

Eyewitness Memory and Metamemory in Product Identification: Evidence for Familiarity Biases

Research on the reliability of eyewitness memory for criminal events has been extensively studied, but eyewitness memory in civil cases has not. However, many of these civil cases revolve around eyewitness memory for events that transpired decades ago. We have developed a paradigm with which to study memory for specific product brand identification, a common question in civil cases involving product liability. Participants were asked to follow recipes and were then given surprise memory tests on the specific brands of products used. In addition, they were asked to report their subjective confidence for each response. Memory and performance was poor after even a brief delay, as was metamemory accuracy: Confidence regarding brand name recall was a poor indicator of accuracy. Participants also displayed a strong familiarity bias. They frequently reported using familiar, common brands, when no such products were actually used. This was especially true at longer delays, after which false identification of familiar products was twice as common as correct responses.     

Cognitive Biases in Visual Pilots' Weather‐Related Decision Making

Flights into deteriorating weather conditions are a significant cause of fatalities in general aviation accidents. This study investigated whether three common cognitive heuristics (anchoring and adjustment, confirmation, outcome) could lead to cognitive biases that might adversely affect pilots' weather‐related decision making. Study 1 found that weather reports obtained before a flight affected how pilots interpreted weather cues during flights (anchoring and adjustment). Study 2 found no evidence that pilots favoured disconfirmatory evidence over confirmatory evidence when deciding which environmental cues were most useful in deciding whether to continue a flight (confirmation). Study 3 found that pilots interpreted the decisions of pilots who flew into deteriorating weather conditions more favourably when the outcome was positive than when it was negative (outcome). These findings suggest that use of these three cognitive heuristics may lead to pilots continuing to fly into deteriorating weather conditions when the safer option is to divert or turn back. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predicting Political Biases Against the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party Movements

Accusations of hypocrisy have flown against both supporters and opponents of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Tea Party movements. Integrating the ideologically objectionable premise model (IOPM), a newly devised model of political judgment, with political tolerance research, we find that how the political activities of OWS and Tea Party demonstrators are described determines whether or not biases against these groups emerge among people low and high in right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA). Specifically, people low in RWA were more biased against the Tea Party than OWS regardless of whether the groups engaged in normatively threatening or reassuring political behavior, whereas people high in RWA were more biased against OWS than the Tea Party when the groups engaged in normatively threatening (and therefore objectionable), but not normatively reassuring (and therefore acceptable) behavior. These findings further support the IOPM's contention that premise objectionableness, not right‐wing orientation, determines biases in political judgment.     

Extending Color Psychology to the Personality Realm: Interpersonal Hostility Varies by Red Preferences and Perceptual Biases

The color psychology literature has made a convincing case that color is not just about aesthetics, but also about meaning. This work has involved situational manipulations of color, rendering it uncertain as to whether color‐meaning associations can be used to characterize how people differ from each other. The present research focuses on the idea that the color red is linked to, or associated with, individual differences in interpersonal hostility. Across four studies (N = 376 undergraduates), red preferences and perceptual biases were measured along with individual differences in interpersonal hostility. It was found that (a) a preference for the color red was higher as interpersonal hostility increased, (b) hostile people were biased to see the color red more frequently than nonhostile people, and (c) there was a relationship between a preference for the color red and hostile social decision making. These studies represent an important extension of the color psychology literature, highlighting the need to attend to person‐based, as well as situation‐based, factors.     

How Discrete Patterns Emerge from Algorithmic Fine-Tuning: A Visual Plea for Kroneckerian Finitism

This paper sets out to adduce visual evidence for Kroneckerian finitism by making perspicuous some of the insights that buttress Kronecker’s conception of arithmetization as a process aiming at disclosing the arithmetical essence enshrined in analytical formulas, by spotting discrete patterns through algorithmic fine-tuning. In the light of a fairly tractable case study, it is argued that Kronecker’s main tenet in philosophy of mathematics is not so much an ontological as a methodological one, inasmuch as highly demanding requirements regarding mathematical understanding prevail over mere preemptive reductionism to whole numbers.     

Biases in Visual Attention in Children and Adolescents With Clinical Anxiety and Mixed Anxiety-Depression

Recent research has indicated that anxious adult and child patients and high trait-anxious adults selectively shift attention toward threatening stimuli. The present study extends this research and investigates the content-specificity of the effects in clinically anxious and mixed anxious–depressed children and adolescents. Twenty four generally anxious patients, aged 9 to 18, 19 mixed anxious–depressed patients, and 24 normal controls were comparable with respect to age, sex, verbal IQ, and vocabulary level. The participants carried out an attentional deployment task in which probe detection latency data were used to determine the distribution of visual attention for threat-related and depression-related material. The results showed that clinically anxious children, relative to controls, selectively allocated processing resources toward threat stimuli. However, mixed anxious–depressed children, relative to controls, did not show any attentional bias towards either threat- or depression-related stimuli. Preliminary data on age and gender differences are also presented. The results of this study are discussed in the light of previous research.     

Electroconvulsive Shock and the Learning of Visual Patterns

The influence of peer models on the modification of impulsive response styles among fourth and sixth grade boys and girls was experimentally investigated. Sociometrically chosen peers were trained to provide reflective verbal and behavioral cues in responding to a selected task. They later performed these skills in the presence of a peer observer. A comparison of posttest performance measures of peer observers with control subjects revealed significant increases in response latencies and decreases in error scores among children exposed to peer models.     

Limiting the use of verbal coding in the Visual Patterns Test

The aims of the study were to assess the availability of verbal coding and its effect on performance in a standard visual matrix task, the Visual Patterns Test (VPT). In a pilot study, participants were presented with the patterns from the VPT and were asked to name the shapes within them. Availability of verbal codes was low overall; however, some patterns resulted in a higher mean number of labels than others. A modified version of the test was created from those patterns that had produced the lowest mean number of labels. A total of 60 participants then took part in an experimental study, which was carried out to assess whether or not the availability of verbal coding affects task performance. It was found that the modified version resulted in a lower visual working-memory span than that of another version in which the availability of verbal coding was higher. The study confirmed that verbal coding does influence visual matrix task performance; however, the modified version now offers a selection of patterns from the VPT where verbal coding has been limited.     

Limiting the use of verbal coding in the Visual Patterns Test

The aims of the study were to assess the availability of verbal coding and its effect on performance in a standard visual matrix task, the Visual Patterns Test (VPT). In a pilot study, participants were presented with the patterns from the VPT and were asked to name the shapes within them. Availability of verbal codes was low overall; however, some patterns resulted in a higher mean number of labels than others. A modified version of the test was created from those patterns that had produced the lowest mean number of labels. A total of 60 participants then took part in an experimental study, which was carried out to assess whether or not the availability of verbal coding affects task performance. It was found that the modified version resulted in a lower visual working-memory span than that of another version in which the availability of verbal coding was higher. The study confirmed that verbal coding does influence visual matrix task performance; however, the modified version now offers a selection of patterns from the VPT where verbal coding has been limited.     

Downsizing and Supersizing: How Changes in Product Attributes Influence Consumer Preferences

This paper investigates how changing the value of one attribute while keeping other attributes constant influences consumers' judgments and behaviors. We find that in two options, a proportionally equal change in one attribute tilts people's preference toward the option with higher (or lower) absolute magnitude of change when the change is desirable (or undesirable). We propose that when individuals face an attribute change, they use a deliberative and effortful response, known as System 2, to detect the change. However, they rely less on this system to evaluate the changed options. Instead, a more automatic System 1 processing influences their decision by making them apply the bigger‐is‐better heuristic (bigger‐is‐worse for an undesirable change) to prefer the option with the highest (lowest) absolute magnitude of change. Six studies demonstrate this phenomenon in both lab and real settings and support our hypothesis. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Young Children Have Difficulty Predicting Future Preferences in the Presence of a Conflicting Physiological State

This study examined children's predictions about their future preferences when they were in two different physiological states (thirsty and not thirsty). Ninety 3‐ to 7‐year‐olds were asked to predict what they would prefer tomorrow: pretzels to eat or water to drink after having consumed pretzels, and again after having had the opportunity to quench their thirst with water. Results showed that although children initially preferred pretzels to water at baseline, they more often indicated that they would prefer water the next day after they had consumed pretzels. After consuming water, however, the same children indicated they would prefer pretzels the next day. Children's verbal justifications for their choices rarely made reference to their current or future states, but rather justifications were more likely to make reference to their general preferences when they were no longer thirsty compared to when they were thirsty. Results suggest that current physiological states have a powerful influence on future preferences. The findings are discussed in the context of the development of episodic foresight, the Bischof‐Kohler hypothesis, and the important and often overlooked role that children's current states play in future decision making. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Biases in preferences for sequences of outcomes in monkeys

Movies, vacations, and meals are all examples of events composed of a sequence of smaller events. How do we go from our evaluations of each scene in a movie to an evaluation of the sequence as a whole? In theory, we should simply average the values of the individual events. In practice, however, we are biased towards sequences where each element tends to be better than the previous, where the last value is large, and we overweight the best (or worst) part of the sequence. To study how general these biases are we examined monkeys’ preferences for sequences of rewards in a novel reward repeat task. Monkeys were first given a sequence of rewards and then chose between repeating the sequence or receiving a standard comparator sequence. We found that, like humans, monkeys overweight events that happen later in a sequence, so much so that adding a small reward to the end of a sequence can paradoxically reduce its value. Monkeys were also biased towards sequences with large peak values (the highest value in the sequence), but only following a working memory challenge, suggesting that this preference may be driven by memory limitations. These results demonstrate the cross-species nature of biases in preferences for sequences of outcomes. In addition, monkeys’ consistent preference for sequences in which large values occur later challenges the generality of discounting models of intertemporal choice in animals.     

From Fragments to Geometric Shape: Changes in Visual Object Recognition Between 18 and 24 Months

ABSTRACT— Visual object recognition is foundational to processes of categorization, tool use, and real-world problem solving. Despite considerable effort across many disciplines and many specific advances, there is no comprehensive or well-accepted account of this ability. Moreover, none of the extant approaches consider how human object recognition develops. New evidence indicates a period of rapid change in toddlers' visual object recognition between 18 and 24 months that is related to the learning of object names and to goal-directed action. Children appear to shift from recognition based on piecemeal fragments to recognition based on geometric representations of three-dimensional shape. These findings may lead to a more unified understanding of the processes that make human object recognition as impressive as it is.     

社交焦虑个体对正性面孔刺激的解释偏差

本研究分别在短时（60ms）和长时（无时间限制）条件下呈现匹配的正性和中性面孔,要求高、低社交焦虑被试选择更具威胁性的面孔,以验证两者对正性刺激是否存在主观解释偏差,并考察该偏差产生于认知加工的哪一阶段。结果发现,长时条件下,高焦虑组选择正性面孔的比例显著高于低焦虑组;短时条件下无显著差异。提示高社交焦虑个体对正性刺激存在主观、外显的解释偏差,他们更倾向于对正性刺激做出消极解释,并且这种偏差产生于认知加工的后期。     

Biases in long-term location memory in the real world

The category adjustment (CA) approach to distortions in location memory has been largely documented in simplified lab-created spaces but minimally in navigable real-world environments. In the current paper, we extend the approach to a navigable real-world environment and specifically evaluate the assumption that long-term location memory may be retrievable despite errors in recall. Memory for the location of a fountain in a heavily navigated square on a university campus was tested by reproduction on a photograph of the square and then by a forced-choice recognition test. While the recall data showed the standard bias, the recognition data revealed chance-level performance. The pattern of results suggests a possible difference between accessibility of working memories for locations within laboratory-created spaces and long-term memories for locations within complex navigable spaces. The results are discussed in terms of the CA model.