Distributional theories of impression formation

This paper examines theories of impression formation which represent stimulus information as distributions on subjective dimensions rather than points along a continuum. These theories explain why unfavorable information often overrides favorable information. Subjects were asked to imagine hypothetical persons described by single adjectives or adjective combinations and to estimate the probability that each person would have various degrees of likeableness. Three models were considered to describe how the likeableness distribution for the adjective combination depends on the distributions of the single adjectives. All three models assume that the mean of the distribution for the adjective combination is described by the equal probability criterion which, for symmetric distributions, implies a weighted average of the single adjective means with weights inversely proportional to their standard deviations. The models can be distinguished on the basis of the standard deviations of the adjective combinations. Estimated standard deviations of the single unfavorable adjectives were smaller than those for the single favorable adjectives. Furthermore, the standard deviation associated with an adjective combination tended to fall between the standard deviations of the single adjectives, consistent with the horizontal averaging model.     

Prenominal adjective order and visual discrimination in children

Preschool and third-grade children heard prenominal adjective phrases describing an object. Each phrase contained an article, two adjectives and a head noun. The phrases were constructed with either normal or inverted adjective order. Either after a one second delay or immediately following phrase presentation, Subjects were shown pictures of two objects. One of the objects (target) depicted the object described in the noun phrase. The other object differed from the target along the dimensions of color, size, or both color and size. The Subject's task was to select the target object. It was predicted that adjective order would influence perceptual strategies used by the Subjects in the visual discrimination task. Analysis of response time scores showed that adjective order interacted with the relevant discriminative stimuli in the discrimination task. These results were interpreted as support for hypotheses that suggest that linguistic organization can constrain conceptual processing involving nonlinguistic information. The effects of the delay condition provided additional evidence for these hypotheses plus support for an arousal hypothesis.     

Immediate and delayed effects of word frequency and word length on eye movements in reading: a reversed delayed effect of word length

Three experiments examined the effects in sentence reading of varying the frequency and length of an adjective on (a) fixations on the adjective and (b) fixations on the following noun. The gaze duration on the adjective was longer for low frequency than for high frequency adjectives and longer for long adjectives than for short adjectives. This contrasted with the spillover effects: Gaze durations on the noun were longer when adjectives were low frequency but were actually shorter when the adjectives were long. The latter effect, which seems anomalous, can be explained by three mechanisms: (a) Fixations on the noun are less optimal after short adjectives because of less optimal targeting; (b) shorter adjectives are more difficult to process because they have more neighbors; and (c) prior fixations before skips are less advantageous places to extract parafoveal information. The viability of these hypotheses as explanations of this reverse length effect on the noun was examined in simulations using an updated version of the E-Z Reader model (A. Pollatsek, K. Reichle, & E. D. Rayner, 2006c; E. D. Reichle, A. Pollatsek, D. L. Fisher, & K. Rayner, 1998).     

The prediction of semantic consistency in self-descriptions: characteristics of persons and of terms that affect the consistency of responses to synonym and antonym pairs

Subjects described themselves, using an alphabetically ordered list of 191 trait adjectives, which included sets of synonyms and antonyms, half of each type more difficult than the other half. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. In one condition, each adjective was listed with its dictionary definition; in the other condition, only the adjectives were listed. All subjects were administered a battery of demographic, cognitive, and personality measures. We analyzed both the relative consistency elicited by different pairs of terms and the individual differences in semantic consistency displayed by different sorts of subjects. Although the provision of definitions served to increase consistency (especially for the difficult antonyms), it did not decrease the range of consistency values across either synonym or antonym pairs. And, although interpair differences in semantic consistency were as difficult to predict in this study as in previous ones, individual differences were highly predictable. The implications of our many findings are discussed in the context of various hypotheses about semantic inconsistency in self-reports.     

The language of possibility and probability: Effects of negation on meaning

Modal adjectives (e.g., “possible” and “probable”) have been the subject of much discussion by linguists and logicians. For ordinary speakers, it was found that an important aspect of the meaning of modal adjectives is that they can all be used to qualify the truth of a statement: Subjects sorted modal adjectives according to similarity of meaning and then ordered the same adjectives solely according to their degree of qualification. The sorting data yielded a one-dimensional scaling solution of low stress that correlated highly with the results from the ordering task. Using the same techniques, negation was found to translate a modal adjective down the scale of qualification (e.g., “improbable” is more qualifying than “probable”) so that the order of affirmative adjectives with respect to each other is preserved for the corresponding negated adjectives. Negation in this domain is more analogous to a subtractive, rather than multiplicative, process. Also, affixal negation, as in “improbable” was consistently found to be more qualifying than lexical negation, as in “not probable.     

Perceptions of women's power as a function of position within an organization

In the present study the authors investigated how people perceive women as a function of position within an organization. Introductory psychology students (N = 456) were given 1 of 6 vignettes depicting people in various occupations, along with an adjective checklist adapted from the Bem Sex Role Inventory (S. L. Bem, 1974). The students indicated on a Likert-type scale the adjectives they believed described the character in the paragraph they received. They were also given a power style scale by T. R. Hinkin and C. A. Schriesheim (1989) and were asked to rate the vignette characters' ability to use each different style (e.g., reward, expertise, referent, legitimate, coercive). The students rated women in high positions as more masculine than men and women in low positions and as masculine as men in high positions. There was little difference in power styles as a function of either the sex or the position level of the vignette character.     

自尊的记忆效应的实验研究

本实验研究证实了自尊的记忆效应的存在,即自尊水平与词性的交互作用对特质形容诃的回忆量有显著影响。具体而言,对于正向词的回忆量,高自尊组显著高于低自尊组。对于负向诃的回忆量,高自尊组与低自尊组无显著差异;而在高自尊组,正向词的回忆量显著高于负向诃的回忆量。在低自尊组,正向词的回忆量与负向诃的回忆量无显著差异。实验结果支持自尊对记忆影响的忽视——不一致模型。     

Combining information from sources that vary in credibility

Models describing the role of source credibility in information integration were tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, subjects estimated the value of used cars based on two cues: blue book value and an estimate provided by one of three friends who examined the car. The three sources were described as differing in mechanical expertise. In the second experiment, subjects rated the likeableness of persons described by either one or two adjectives, each adjective contributed by a different source. The sources differed with respect to the length of their acquaintance with the person to be rated. In both experiments, credibility of the source magnified the impact of the information he provided. Further, this multiplicative effect of a source was inversely related to the credibility of the other source, in violation of additive or constant-weight averaging models, but consistent with a relative-weight averaging model.     

Specificity of Information Processing Styles to Depressive Symptoms in Youth Psychiatric Inpatients

Although information processing has been widely studied with depressed adults, little emphasis has been placed on the specificity of resultant findings to depression, as opposed to other psychological disorders. Analogously, even less effort has been directed toward examining the information processing styles of depressed children and adolescents. The present study investigated the specificity of information processing styles to depression and anxiety among 58 youth psychiatric inpatients. To assess information processing, we used a self-referent encoding task, in which participants were presented with positive and negative adjectives; participants were asked whether these adjectives described them or not, and were then tested on recall of the adjectives. After controlling for age and gender, lower rates of positive adjective endorsement and lower rates of positive adjective recall were found to be associated with depression, but not anxiety. Additionally, negative adjective endorsement was associated with anxiety symptoms. These results suggest specific cognitive features of depressive symptoms.     

Vulnerability to depression,mild depression,and degree of self-schema consolidation

The present study investigated the degree of consolidation of self-schema content in mildly depressed individuals, individuals cognitively vulnerable to depression (but currently nondepressed), and nonvulnerable-nondepressed controls. All three groups of subjects were presented with pairs of adjectives involving one depressed and one nondepressed content adjective, and were asked to decide which of the two adjectives described them the best (or least). Following this, subjects rated each adjective on a 9-point degree of self-reference scale. On the basis of these two types of self-referent judgments, a measure of decision inconsistency was computed for each subject. In accord with predictions generated from a self-schema model of depression, similar decision inconsistency scores were found for mildly depressed and vulnerable-nondepressed individuals. In turn, both of these groups revealed greater decision inconsistencies than normal controls (the nonvulnerable-nondepressed group). Using the inconsistency measure as an index of the degree of consolidation of self-schema content, these findings suggest that relatively poor consolidation of depressed and nondepressed self-schema content may relate to both the etiology and maintenance of depression.     

注意在随意编码自我参照效应中的作用

该研究采用随意编码的研究范式验证随意编码条件下自我参照效应产生的原因是否是自我积极偏差以及由自我积极偏差引起的注意。设计了2（参照条件：自我与他人）×2（形容词效价：积极与消极）的三个实验,分别是实验一效价与参照条件都是组内变量;实验二效价是组内变量,参照条件是组间变量;实验三效价是组间变量,参照条件是组内变量,三个实验结果均发现：自我参照条件下人格特质形容词的再认率显著高于他人参照条件;消极效价词的再认回忆率显著高于积极效价词;参照条件与形容词效价之间的交互作用不显著。结果说明,自我参照效应的发生不依赖于与他人参照条件的比较而产生;消极效应也不依赖于积极效价词的存在而发生;注意可能是随意编码条件下自我参照效应产生的原因。     

Ageing and the self-reference effect in memory

The present study investigates potential age differences in the self-reference effect. Young and older adults incidentally encoded adjectives by deciding whether the adjective described them, described another person (Experiments 1 & 2), was a trait they found desirable (Experiment 3), or was presented in upper case. Like young adults, older adults exhibited superior recognition for self-referenced items relative to the items encoded with the alternate orienting tasks, but self-referencing did not restore their memory to the level of young adults. Furthermore, the self-reference effect was more limited for older adults. Amount of cognitive resource influenced how much older adults benefit from self-referencing, and older adults appeared to extend the strategy less flexibly than young adults. Self-referencing improves older adults’ memory, but its benefits are circumscribed despite the social and personally relevant nature of the task.     

高边缘性人格障碍特质者负性沉浸的自我反思倾向

采用自我参照范式考察边缘性人格障碍(BPD)的自我反思特点。实验1对比高、低BPD特质被试在自我和姓名参照条件下正负性词汇的再认成绩,发现高BPD特质者在自我参照条件下的负性词汇记忆成绩显著高于低BPD特质组。实验2对高BPD特质被试进行正念自我反思训练,结果发现相对于对照组,训练组在自我参照条件下负性词汇的记忆成绩显著降低。高BPD特质者的自我反思存在负性沉浸倾向,且正念自我反思训练可以改善该倾向。     

Ageing and the self-reference effect in memory

The present study investigates potential age differences in the self-reference effect. Young and older adults incidentally encoded adjectives by deciding whether the adjective described them, described another person (Experiments 1 & 2), was a trait they found desirable (Experiment 3), or was presented in upper case. Like young adults, older adults exhibited superior recognition for self-referenced items relative to the items encoded with the alternate orienting tasks, but self-referencing did not restore their memory to the level of young adults. Furthermore, the self-reference effect was more limited for older adults. Amount of cognitive resource influenced how much older adults benefit from self-referencing, and older adults appeared to extend the strategy less flexibly than young adults. Self-referencing improves older adults' memory, but its benefits are circumscribed despite the social and personally relevant nature of the task.