Mental representations of attachment figures facilitate recovery following upsetting autobiographical memory recall

A growing literature shows that even the symbolic presence of an attachment figure facilitates the regulation of negative affect triggered by external stressors. Yet, in daily life, pernicious stressors are often internally generated--recalling an upsetting experience reliably increases negative affect, rumination, and susceptibility to physical and psychological health problems. The present research provides the first systematic examination of whether activating the mental representation of an attachment figure enhances the regulation of affect triggered by thinking about upsetting memories. Using 2 different techniques for priming attachment figure representations and 2 types of negative affect measures (explicit and implicit), activating the mental representation of an attachment figure (vs. an acquaintance or stranger) after recalling an upsetting memory enhanced recovery--eliminating the negative effects of the memory recall (Studies 1-3). In contrast, activating the mental representation of an attachment figure before recalling an upsetting memory had no such effect (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, activating the mental representation of an attachment figure after thinking about upsetting memories reduced negative thinking in a stream of consciousness task, and the magnitude of the attachment-induced affective recovery effects as assessed with explicit affect measures predicted mental and physical health in daily life (Study 3). Finally, a meta-analysis of the 3 studies (Study 4) showed that the regulatory benefits conferred by the mental representation of an attachment figure were weaker for individuals high on attachment avoidance. The implications of these findings for attachment, emotion regulation, and mental and physical health are discussed.     

Mothers' attachment representations and choice of infant care: center care vs. home

In the debate concerning the effects of day care on infant development, insufficient attention has been paid to the potential relationship between pre‐existing emotional differences among mothers and the type of care they choose for their infants. To shed light on this issue, this study examines the attachment representations of mothers who choose day‐care centres as opposed to mothers who choose to remain at home with their infants. Participants were 76 primiparous mothers. Mothers' attachment classifications were assessed by the Adult Attachment Interview [AAI; Main M, Kaplan N, Cassidy J. 1985. Security in infancy, childhood, and adulthood: a move to the level of representation. In Growing Points of Attachment Theory and Research. Monograph of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50, (1–2, serial no. 209), Bretherton I, Waters E (eds); 66–104]. Results indicate that more Day‐care than Home‐Care mothers are classified as insecurely attached. These results highlight the contribution of maternal emotional characteristics to the effects of diverse child care arrangements on infant development. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mental representations in fraction comparison

In this study, we investigated the mental representations used in a fraction comparison task. Adults were asked to quickly and accurately pick the larger of two fractions presented on a computer screen and provide trial-by-trial reports of the types of strategies they used. We found that adults used a variety of strategies to compare fractions, ranging among just knowing the answer, using holistic knowledge of fractions to determine the answer, and using component-based procedures such as cross multiplication. Across all strategy types, regression analyses identified that reaction times were significantly predicted by numerical distance between fractions, indicating that the participants used a magnitude-based representation to compare the fraction magnitudes. In addition, a variant of the problem-size effect (e.g., Ashcraft, 1992) appeared, whereby reaction times were significantly predicted by the average cross product of the two fractions. This effect was primarily found for component-based strategies, indicating a role for strategy choice in the formation of mental representations of fractions.     

Mental health consultation in infant day care: A new frontier of prevention

This paper deals with the mental health aspects of infant day care emphasizing that mental health input into the design, implementation and ongoing supervision/evaluation of the majority of day care programs is minimal at the present time. The author proposes the following three criteria by which the adequacy of mental health input in a day care program could be judged: 1) ongoing mental health consultation to the caregiver staff on a weekly basis and by the same clinician(s), 2) assignment of primary caregivers to the infants, 3) periodic naturalistic observations of the infants to be recorded and discussed by the caregivers. The author postulates that consultation to the caregiver staff of infant day care programs represents the opportunity to establish a new frontier of prevention. Therefore, the mental health profession should consider it a goal that every infant day care setting would have a mental health clinician as a consultant. The methods, preventive functions and manpower aspects of such consultation work is discussed.     

Mental representations of affect knowledge

The circumplex structure derived from similarity ratings of affect words is assumed to be a conceptual representation of affect anchored in semantic knowledge. Recently, it been suggested that this structure is not based on semantic knowledge at all, but may instead reflect a type of episodic knowledge: The degree to which emotions covary in everyday life. In two experience-sampling studies, we compared the semantic and the episodic hypotheses by comparing participants' similarity ratings to the observed covariations in their own affective experience computed from their momentary reports. In Study 2, participants also provided estimates of the degree to which their emotions covaried. Evidence from both studies indicate that similarity judgements are related both to semantic and episodic information, indicating that a pure episodic account of similarity ratings, and the mental representation of affect that they reflect, is untenable.     

Mental representations of social status

How do people think about social status? We investigated the nature of social status and number representations using a semantic distance latency test. In Study 1, 21 college students compared words connoting different social status as well as numbers, which served as a control task. Participants were faster at comparing occupations and numbers that were semantically farther apart relative to those more closely related. In Study 2, we examined the semantic distance effect for a social status category, for which participants have as much knowledge of, as with numbers. We asked 15 US Navy Midshipmen to compare the social status associated with different ranks in the Navy as well as compare number magnitudes. Participants were fastest when comparing ranks far in status relative to ranks close in status. These findings reveal that humans have mental representations of social status that share properties with that of number.     

Mental representations of familiar faces

The Bruce and Young (1986) framework makes a number of important distinctions between the types of representation needed to recognize a familiar face. Here, we return to these, focussing particularly on face recognition units. We argue that such representations need to incorporate idiosyncratic within-person variability, asking questions such as 'What counts as a picture of Harrison Ford?'. We describe a mechanism for achieving this, and discuss the relation between image variability and episodic face memories, in the context of behavioural and neurophysiological data.     

Mental representations for musical meter

Investigations of the psychological representation for musical meter provided evidence for an internalized hierarchy from 3 sources: frequency distributions in musical compositions, goodness-of-fit judgments of temporal patterns in metrical contexts, and memory confusions in discrimination judgments. The frequency with which musical events occurred in different temporal locations differentiates one meter from another and coincides with music-theoretic predictions of accent placement. Goodness-of-fit judgments for events presented in metrical contexts indicated a multileveled hierarchy of relative accent strength, with finer differentiation among hierarchical levels by musically experienced than inexperienced listeners. Memory confusions of temporal patterns in a discrimination task were characterized by the same hierarchy of inferred accent strength. These findings suggest mental representations for structural regularities underlying musical meter that influence perceiving, remembering, and composing music.     

Mental models as representations of text

A theory of text representation is outlined which suggests that a text is encoded in a mental model that contains representations of only those individuals and events that are relevant to the interpretation of the text in question. Such models are constructed on-line in response to cues in the text and with reference to knowledge about the world. An experiment is reported which demonstrates that mental models represent the events most probably described in a text. The results confirm previous findings that memory for the content of a passage is not based on the construction of one of its linguistically motivated representations. However, unlike most previous findings, they do support a positive proposal about the nature of the representations on which memory for content is based.     

Adolescents' attachment representations and developmental tasks in emerging adulthood

The association between attachment representations and adolescents' coping with 3 developmental tasks of emerging adulthood-leaving home, advancing in the capacity for mature intimacy, and developing individuation-was examined. Israeli male adolescents (N = 88) were administered the Adult Attachment Interview during their high-school senior year. A year later, they and their friends reported on the adolescents' adjustment to mandatory military service. Three years later, participants and their parents reported on the adolescents' capacity for intimacy using an in-depth interview and on their individuation. An autonomous state of mind was associated with better coping with basic training and with a higher capacity for mature intimacy but was not associated with markers of individuation. The results highlight the importance of attachment representations in shaping an individual's developmental trajectory.     

Cultural representations of immigrant workers by service providers and employers

Cultural perceptions by immigrant service providers and employers potentially shape the employment trajectories of immigrants. I examine perceptions of what motivates immigrants to participate in the Canadian labour market through a Vancouver-based interview survey with immigrant service providers, employment counsellors, NGO administrators and employers who service and/or employ newcomers from South Asia and the former Yugoslavia. The results reveal that multiple perceptions coexist. These perceptions project that immigrants work as a means of survival, a moral obligation, a quest for social distruction and an instrument of social integration. Our understanding of ethnic segmentation of immigrant labour should consider these perceptions.     

Mental representations of spatial and nonspatial relations

Four experiments investigated the representation and integration in memory of spatial and nonspatial relations. Subjects learned two-dimensional spatial arrays in which critical pairs of object names were semantically related (Experiment 1), semantically and episodically related (Experiment 2), or just episodically related (Experiments 3a and 3b). Episodic relatedness was established in a paired-associate learning task that preceded array learning. After learning an array, subjects participated in two tasks: item recognition, in which the measure of interest was priming; and distance estimation. Priming in item recognition was sensitive to the Euclidean distance between object names and, for neighbouring locations, to nonspatial relations. Errors in distance estimations varied as a function of distance but were unaffected by nonspatial relations. These and other results indicated that nonspatial relations influenced the probability of encoding spatial relations between locations but did not lead to distorted spatial memories.     

Stability of attachment representations: the transition to marriage

This study examined the stability of adult attachment representations across the transition to marriage. One hundred fifty-seven couples were assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1985), the Current Relationship Interview (J. A. Crowell & G. Owens, 1996), and measures describing relationship functioning and life events 3 months prior to their weddings and 18 months into their marriages. The authors tested the hypotheses that attachment classifications are stable and that change is related to experiences in the relationship and/or life events; 78% of the sample received the same primary AAI classification (secure, preoccupied, and dismissing) at both times. Change was toward increased security and was associated with feelings and cognitions about the relationship. Only 46% of participants initially classified as unresolved retained the classification. Stability of the unresolved classification was associated with stressful life events and relationship aggression.     

The moderating role of attachment styles in emotional bonding with service providers

In this paper, the authors combine insights from several attachment theories to develop a model that help understanding how customer‐service provider emotional attachment (EA) is formed and how customers' attachment styles moderate this formation process. The authors test their predictions with survey data from 416 customers in two service contexts (i.e., grocery retailing and hairstyling). Results indicate that positive emotions and service quality are the most powerful predictors of EA. They also show that attachment styles moderate the effect of positive emotions, service quality, image congruency, and trust. Moreover, results identify preoccupied (versus fearful) customers as those who are the most (versus the least) emotionally tied to their service providers. This research provides several implications for researchers and managers. Additionally, it offers attachment styles as a new segmentation criterion. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Activating attachment representations impact how we retrieve autobiographical memories

Although much research indicates that proximity to attachment figures confers many psychological benefits, there is little evidence pertaining to how attachment activation may impact autobiographical memory retrieval. Following a negative mood induction to elicit overgeneral autobiographical retrieval, participants (N?=?70) were administered an induction in which they imagined a person who is a strong attachment figure or an acquaintance. Participants then completed an autobiographical memory task to retrieve memories in response to neutral and negative cue words. Attachment priming resulted in less distress, increased retrieval of specific memories, and reduced retrieval of categoric memories. These findings indicate that activation of mental representations of attachment figures can impact on the specificity of autobiographical memory retrieval, and extends prevailing models of autobiographical memory by integrating them with attachment theory.     

Mental representations of obligatory and prohibitory traffic signs

Every traffic sign conveys a single proposition about traffic conditions. Drivers must integrate this proposition with their goals and other known facts to decide on an appropriate action in what amounts to a deduction task. For example, imagine that you are driving a car and you want to turn right at an intersection but there is a no right turn sign. You have to assess the options and make a decision (reach a conclusion). Theoretical accounts from research about reasoning can be applied to how we understand traffic signs and make inferences from them. This study includes two experiments that analysed how people decide whether a situation is allowed or not, taking into account the information provided by one sign - obligatory or prohibitory - or two signs - two obligatory or two prohibitory signs. The number of signs, that is, the complexity of the driving scene, was a key factor in this study. The two experiments differ in the presentation format of the two-sign experimental condition. In the first experiment, the signs were presented as two isolated signs. In the second experiment, the two signs were embedded in one. Equivalent results were found whether two isolated signs or two embedded signs were shown. When an obligatory sign was used at the junction, faster responses were obtained for allowed manoeuvres than for those not allowed. When a prohibitory sign was used, the results were the opposite. However, the advantage of prohibitory signs in the not-allowed situation was not replicated when people had to collect information from two prohibitory signs. Results showed that people integrate two obligatory sign messages - informing where one can go - more easily than two prohibitory sign messages - informing where not to go. Therefore, it could be said that each traffic sign elicits an internal mental model elaboration in which forbidden actions are explicitly labelled by means of attached "mental footnotes" indicating the epistemic status of "prohibitory information."     

Maternal attachment representations in relation to emotional availability and discipline behaviour

Maternal attachment representations have been investigated in relation to sensitivity and emotional support, but rarely in relation to other important areas of daily parent–child interactions in early childhood, like limit setting and discipline strategies. This study investigates maternal attachment representations in relation to parenting sensitive and discipline behaviours. The sample consists of 37 Portuguese high-risk severely economically disadvantaged mothers and their 1- to 4-year-old children, that responded to the Adult Attachment Interview, and were observed in play and discipline interaction contexts. The results showed that a more preoccupied state of mind was related to less emotional availability in free play interaction with child. A more secure attachment representation was related to more psychologically controlling discipline tactics. These findings highlight the relevance of maternal attachment states of mind in understanding parenting practices in several domains, and are discussed in light of sociocultural factors.