The more you ignore me the closer I get: An ERP study of evaluative priming

We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate the various mental processes contributing to evaluative priming—that is, more positive judgments for targets preceded by affectively positive, as opposed to negative, prime stimuli. To ensure ecological validity, we employed a priori meaningful landscape pictures as targets and emotional adjectives as visual primes and presented both primes and targets for relatively long durations (>1 s). Prime-related lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) revealed response priming as one source of the significant evaluative priming effect. On the other hand, greater right-frontal positive slow wave in the ERP for pictures following negative, as compared with positive, primes indicated altered impression formation, thus supporting automatic spreading activation and/or affect misattribution accounts. Moreover, target LRPs suggested conscious counter-control to reduce the evaluative priming net effect. Finally, when comparing prime ERPs for two groups of participants showing strong versus weak evaluative priming, we found strong evidence for the role of depth of prime processing: In the weak-effect group, prime words evoked an increased visual P1/N1 complex, a larger posterior P2 component, and a greater left-parietal processing negativity presumably reflecting semantic processing. By contrast, a larger medial-frontal P2/N2 complex in the strong-effect group suggested top-down inhibition of the prime’s emotional content. Thus, trying to ignore the primes can actually increase, rather than decrease, the evaluative priming effect.     

Event-related brain potentials to grammatical errors and semantic anomalies

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects silently read several prose passages, presented one word at a time. Semantic anomalies and various grammatical errors had been inserted unpredictably at different serial positions within some of the sentences. The semantically inappropriate words elicited a large N400 component in the ERP, whereas the grammatical errors were associated with smaller and less consistent components that had scalp distributions different from that of the N400. This result adds to the evidence that the N400 wave is more closely related to semantic than to grammatical processing. Additional analyses revealed that different ERP configurations were elicited by open-class (“content”) and closed-class (“function”) words in these prose passages.     

Effects of negative content on the processing of gender information: An event-related potential study

Previous research on emotion in language has mainly concerned the impact of emotional information on several aspects of lexico-semantic analyses of single words. However, affective influences on morphosyntactic processing are less understood. In the present study, we focused on the impact of negative valence in the processing of gender agreement relations. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants read three-word phrases and performed a syntactic judgment task. Negative and neutral adjectives could agree or disagree in gender with the preceding noun. At an electrophysiological level, the amplitude of a left anterior negativity (LAN) to gender agreement mismatches decreased in negative words, relative to neutral words. The behavioral data suggested that LAN amplitudes might be indexing the processing costs associated with the detection of gender agreement errors, since the detection of gender mismatches resulted in faster and more accurate responses than did the detection of correct gender agreement relations. According to this view, it seems that negative content facilitated the processes implicated in the early detection of gender agreement mismatches. However, gender agreement violations in negative words triggered processes involved in the reanalysis and repair of the syntactic structure, as reflected in larger P600 amplitudes to incorrect than to correct phrases, irrespective of their emotional valence.     

Impact of Sluggish Cognitive Tempo and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms on Adults’ Quality of Life

The symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have been linked to dysfunction in numerous life domains for both children and adults. As such, it is likely that individuals with these and other related symptoms (e.g., sluggish cognitive tempo, SCT) may also experience impaired quality of life. The current study examines the association between ADHD and SCT symptoms and quality of life (QOL) in a community sample of adults. Quality of life data collected from 983 participants (M age = 45.6 years) were analyzed primarily through a series of hierarchical multiple regressions employing SCT and ADHD symptom clusters, demographic, and anxiety and depression scale variables as predictors. Results generally supported the hypothesis that ADHD and SCT symptoms would negatively associate with QOL. Amongst the indicators, inattention and SCT emerged as the strongest predictors of low QOL. These findings underscore the negative impact of ADHD symptoms in adulthood, the independent contribution of SCT, and the importance of considering QOL in prospective research and intervention.     

Transformations from adjectives to Scales for the Adjective Check List (ACL): ACLTRANS FORTRAN IV program

The ACLTRANS ANSI FORTRAN IV program transforms the 300 adjectives on the Adjective Check List (Gough, 1950. 1960) into 37 raw and T-standard psychological scales. This program has three advantages over scoring based ob theAdjective Check List Manual (Gough & Heilbrun, 1965, 1980, 1983): ease and speed of computing the raw scale scores; exact partialing of number of adjectives checked from standardized scale scores; and choice of parameter norms for standardization. By using the ACLTRANS program, the researcher can be confident of quick and accurate scoring, as well as appropriate standardization.     

Are the spoken durations of rare words longer than those of common words?

The effects of word frequency, word length, and practice were examined in oral productions of subjects reading lists of 25 rare or common monosyllabic words. Articulation and pause durations, their ratio, and total reading durations were derived from recordings of subjects’ speech. Recorded speech was sampled at 10 kHz, and a criterion of eight times the mean noise level was used to classify productions as articulation or pause. Lists of high frequency words were read more quickly than lists of low-frequency words. No differences were observed in the articulation component. Pause duration was greater for rare than for common words. The ratio of pause to articulation varied with length and word type. No differences were found for high-frequency words, but the ratio of five-letter words was significantly greater than that of three- or four-letter rare words. Results were discussed in relation to the nature and locus of the word-frequency effect. Criteria for defining and measuring speech productions were also raised.     

Long-term retention of information about presentation modality by children and adults

A mixed-modality continuous recognition task followed by a final recognition test after 0 h, 4 h, 1 day, or 7 days was administered to third- and fourth-grade children and adults. Subjects gave recognition responses and reported presentation modalities. Forgetting rates for both words and input mode were invariant with age. The decay functions for presentation modality were affected, however, by the initial input mode, with modality identification declining more rapidly for words heard first than for words seen first. Information about whether a word was seen or heard remained in memory for at least 4 h. The results demonstrate that long-term-memory representations contain a great deal of information about input mode and suggest that the theoretical distinction between automatic and effortful processing may be a useful one.     

Brain processing of task-relevant and task-irrelevant emotional words: An ERP study

Although there is evidence for preferential perceptual processing of written emotional information, the effects of attentional manipulations and the time course of affective processing require further clarification. In this study, we attempted to investigate how the emotional content of words modulates cerebral functioning (event-related potentials, ERPs) and behavior (reaction times, RTs) when the content is task-irrelevant (emotional Stroop Task, EST) or task-relevant (emotional categorization task, ECT), in a sample of healthy middle-aged women. In the EST, the RTs were longer for emotional words than for neutral words, and in the ECT, they were longer for neutral and negative words than for positive words. A principal components analysis of the ERPs identified various temporospatial factors that were differentially modified by emotional content. P2 was the first emotion-sensitive component, with enhanced factor scores for negative nouns across tasks. The N2 and late positive complex had enhanced factor scores for emotional relative to neutral information only in the ECT. The results reinforce the idea that written emotional information has a preferential processing route, both when it is task-irrelevant (producing behavioral interference) and when it is task-relevant (facilitating the categorization). After early automatic processing of the emotional content, late ERPs become more emotionally modulated as the level of attention to the valence increases.     

The role of masculinity and femininity in depression and social satisfaction in elderly females

Several recent meta-analyses indicate a relation between masculinity and psychological adjustment, but there is little correlation between femininity and adjustment. The present study examined the generalizability of this finding in a sample of elderly women. Thirty women ranging in age from 68 to 97 years were administered a battery of questionnaires including the Personal Attributes Questionaire, the Geriatric Depression Scale, the Hopelessness Scale, and three subscales from the Self-Evaluation of Life Function Scale. Consistent with previous meta-analytic results, correlational analyses revealed significant negative relations between masculinity and the cognitive measures of depression (i.e., hopelessness and self-esteem), and no correlation between femininity and these same cognitive measures. Femininity, however, was correlated with social satisfaction and symptoms of aging. Masculinity was unrelated to these social and physical indices of depression. The implications of these findings for the androgyny and masculinity models of mental health are discussed with particular reference to the role that femininity may play in potentiating or exacerbating depression.     

Induction of the McCollough effect I: Figural variables

The effect of line orientation and line configuration on the induction of orientation-specific negatively colored aftereffects was investigated in three separate studies. In the first study, subjects viewed magenta-and-black vertical gratings with one eye, alternating with green-and-black vertical gratings to the other. Monocular tests revealed complementary aftereffects in each eye which disappeared when the test patterns were viewed with both eyes together. In Study 2, imposing a single colored bar against a black background induced negatively colored aftereffects in a white bar against a black background and in a black-and-white grating, while imposing a single black bar against a colored background was ineffective. In Study 3, presenting a magenta square outline elicited green aftereffects in vertical and horizontal bars and gratings as well as in outlines of squares and diamonds, while pairing the magenta square with a green cross had no effect. It was concluded that the induction mechanism responsible for the McCollough effect is sensitive to line orientation but not to shape. This specificity appears incompatible with a simple conditioning model.     

Relations among regular and irregular morphologically related words in the lexicon as revealed by repetition priming

Several experiments examined repetition priming among morphologically related words as a tool to study lexical organization. The first experiment replicated a finding by Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, and Hall (Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1979,18, 399-412), that whereas inflected words prime their unaffixed morphological relatives as effectively as do the unaffixed forms themselves, derived words are effective, but weaker, primes. The experiment also suggested, however, that this difference in priming may have an episodic origin relating to the less formal similarity of derived than of inflected words to unaffixed morphological relatives. A second experiment reduced episodic contributions to priming and found equally effective priming of unaffixed words by themselves, by inflected relatives, and by derived relatives. Two additional experiments found strong priming among relatives sharing the spelling and pronunciation of the unaffixed stem morpheme, sharing spelling alone, or sharing neither formal property exactly. Overall, results with auditory and visual presentations were similar. Interpretations that repetition priming reflects either repeated access to a common lexical entry or associative semantic priming are both rejected in favor of a lexical organization in which components of a word (e.g., a stem morpheme) may be shared among distinct words without the words themselves, in any sense, sharing a “lexical entry.”     

Retrieval operations in cued recall and recognition

The present study compared the effects of two classes of experimental manipulations on the recognition and cued recall of target words learned in the presence of list cues. One class of manipulations, learning instructions (repetition vs. meaningful rehearsal), had similar effects on recall and recognition, whereas the other, preexperimental association between target and cue words, had separable effects: Cue-to-target association affected only recall, while target-to-cue association affected only recognition performance. Recall and recognition were thus viewed as fundamentally similar processes, both of which require retrieval operations. Differences between the two were attributed to the differential abilities of the recall and recognition retrieval cues to access the original episodic event.     

Attitudes Towards Potentially Carrying the FMR1 Premutation: Before vs After Testing of Non-Carrier Females with Diminished Ovarian Reserve

Diminished ovarian reserve (DOR) and premature ovarian failure are associated with elevated FMR1 CGG repeat alleles. We assessed pretest attitudes about potentially carrying the FMR1 premutation (FXP) (>55 CGG repeats) among reproductive age women compared with attitudes after learning their non-carrier status. Ninety-two women with DOR, regular menses and no family history of Fragile X Syndrome underwent FMR1 testing and completed attitudinal questionnaires before (T1) and 3 months after learning the test results (T2). The analysis utilized signed rank tests and α?=?0.05. Very few women thought they were likely to have a FXP (6.6 %). More participants thought FMR1 premutations were “serious” at T2 (62.9 %) than at T1 (46.1 %, p?p?相似文献   

Negative Recurrent Thinking as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Perceived Stress and Depressive Symptoms

Both perceived stress and negative recurrent thinking (rumination and worry) have been associated with depressive symptoms. However, no research to date has investigated the association between perceived stress and negative recurrent thinking. In the present study we aimed to explore whether perceived stress and negative recurrent thinking are associated and whether negative recurrent thinking moderates the relationship between perceived stress and depressive symptoms. A convenience sample of 273 undergraduate students completed the Perceived Stress Scale, the Ruminative Responses Scale-10, the Penn State Worry Questionnaire and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale 2 weeks prior to sitting mid-year examinations. Correlation analyses showed that perceived stress, rumination and worry were positively and significantly associated with depressive symptoms and that perceived stress was positively and significantly associated with rumination and worry. A moderation analysis confirmed that negative recurrent thinking moderated the relationship between perceived stress and depressive symptoms. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Lexical contribution to nonword-repetition effects: Evidence from event-related potentials

Two experiments investigated the modulation of event-related potentials (ERPs) by the repetition of orthographically legal and illegal nonwords. In Experiment 1, subjects silently counted occasional words against a background of nonwords, a proportion of which were repetitions of an immediately preceding legal or illegal item. ERPs to repeated legal items showed a sustained, topographically diffuse, positive-going shift. In contrast, repeated illegal nonwords gave rise to ERPs showing a smaller and temporally more restricted positive-going modulation. In an attempt to equalize depth of processing across legal and illegal nonwords, subjects in Experiment 2 were required to count items containing a nonalphabetic character against the same background of nonword items. ERPs to repeated legal items showed a modulation similar to, although smaller than, that found in Experiment I, but no effects of repetition were observed in the ERPs to the illegal nonwords. It was concluded that the effects of repeating nonwords, at least as manifested in concurrently recorded ERPs, differ as a consequence of whether items can access lexical memory, and that this is inconsistent with the attribution of such effects solely to the operation of episodic memory processes.     

Emotional Impulsivity in Children with ADHD Associated with Comorbid—Not ADHD—Symptomatology

Children with ADHD often demonstrate sudden and intense shifts in both positive and negative affect. This study examined the role of diagnostic status on emotional impulsivity in children utilizing ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Parents of 64 8–12 year old children (15 ADHD-only; 27 ADHD-comorbid; 22 control) completed a diagnostic structured interview and then an EMA protocol, rating the child’s affect thrice daily for 28 days. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) suggested that children with ADHD and a comorbid disorder demonstrated significantly more EMA-derived emotional impulsivity than children with ADHD only and control children. No difference was found between children with ADHD only and control children. This study suggested that children with ADHD demonstrate significantly higher levels of emotional impulsivity than control children only in the presence of a comorbid disorder.     

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.     

Orienting responses to pleasant stimuli when expecting pleasant or unpleasant events

The aim was to investigate further the effect of more vigorous orienting to stimuli denoting common fears than to neutral stimuli in subjects threatened with shock. In two experiments, orienting responses (ORs) to pleasant and to neutral words were compared. In Experiment I, the subjects were expecting shock and, in Experiment II, pleasant music. In neither experiment were there differences either in the magnitudes or in the habituation rates of the electrodermal ORs. For clarification, there should be control both of the subjective salience of the stimuli and also of the level of expectation.     

The relationship between state anxiety and depressed mood: A validity study

The validity of the A-State Scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale was assessed using data from a general health survey. Depression and anxiety states were found to coexist, however, evidence from a factor analysis, showing items from the two tests loaded on separate factors, demonstrated that these states can be measured independently. Both the A-State and the Zung Scales were found to comprise two factors, and for each scale, one factor consisted of positively phrased items, and the other of negative items. The implications of these findings for the construct validity of the two scales are discussed.