Attentional consequences of outcome-related motivational states: Congruent,incongruent, and focusing effects

Two experiments employed a game context to examine the effects of positive and negative feedback on the processing of targets varying in incentive properties. While half the targets carried no value, the others were assigned either a positive incentive value (where points could be gained) or a negative value (where points could be lost), and either a large incentive size (worth 5 points) or a small size (worth 2 points). Feedback from the previous trial was found to exert three effects on subsequent targets. A congruent effect appeared in the faster processing of large targets that matched the positive or negative valence of the previous feedback signal. An incongruent effect was evident in the delays in shifting attention from pretarget cues that contrasted in valence to the previous feedback. A focusing effect was reflected in the general delays following negative feedback in responding to targets with no value. In addition to these outcome influences, processing was generally more efficient for targets carrying positive than negative incentive value, and for targets of large than small size. These findings are discussed in terms of contemporary models of motivation and information processing.     

Effects of shifts in food reinforcement context on rats’ consumption of concurrently available water or sucrose solution

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of signaled transitions from relatively rich to lean conditions of food reinforcement on drinking concurrently available water or sucrose‐sweetened water in rats. Past research demonstrated that these negative incentive shifts produce behavioral disruption in the form of extended pausing on fixed‐ratio schedules. Four male Long‐Evans rats operated on a two‐component multiple fixed‐ratio fixed‐ratio schedule. In one manipulation, the ratio was held constant and the components arranged either a large six‐pellet reinforcer (rich) or small one‐pellet reinforcer (lean). In a second manipulation, the components both produced a one‐pellet reinforcer but differed in terms of the ratio requirement, with the rich and lean conditions corresponding to relatively small and large ratios. In both manipulations, components were pseudorandomly presented to arrange four transitions signaled by retractable levers: lean‐to‐lean, lean‐to‐rich, rich‐to‐rich, and rich‐to‐lean (the negative incentive shift). During experimental conditions, a bottle with lickometer was inserted in the chamber, providing concurrent access either to tap water or a 10% sucrose solution. The negative incentive shift produced considerably more drinking than the other transitions in all rats during both manipulations. The level of drinking was not polydipsic; rather, it appears that the negative incentive shift enhanced the value of concurrently available reinforcers relative to food reinforcement.     

Sensory modality and stimulus control in the pigeon: Cross-species generality of single-incentive selective-association effects

In earlier studies with rats, the effectiveness of the auditory element of a tone–light discriminative stimulus was enhanced when the conditioned incentive value of the compound was negative rather than positive. The present experiment systematically replicated these results in pigeons trained to press a treadle in the presence of a tone–light compound under food-reinforcement or shock-avoidance schedules. Positive incentive value was conditioned to the compound by associating it with either food or relative safety from shock. The compound was made negative in other groups by associating it with shock or the absence of food. When tone and light were presented separately following this training, control by the auditory element was significantly enhanced in the conditions designed to make the compound negative rather than positive. The similarity of this constraint on learning in rats and pigeons suggests that it involves a fundamental attentional and incentive-motivational process with widespread species generality.     

Emotional arousal and overeating in restrained eaters.

We tested the effects of 3 mood inductions (neutral, positive, and negative) on food intake in 91 women of varying degrees of dietary restraint. Mood induction was accomplished by exposure to 1 of 3 film segments: a travelogue (neutral affect), a comedy film (positive affect), and a horror film (negative affect). In subjects exposed to the neutral film, food intake decreased with increasing levels of dietary restraint. Among subjects who viewed either the comedy film or the horror film, however, food intake increased with increasing restraint. Although the horror film appeared to be more disinhibiting than the comedy film, this effect may have resulted from a difference in the intensity of the emotions induced rather than from their valence. These results suggest that emotional arousal, regardless of valence, may trigger overeating among restrained eaters.     

Effects of goal-related motivational states on the orienting of spatial attention

Three experiments are presented indicating that motivational processes arising from incentive and feedback signals exert specific effects on the orienting of visual spatial attention. Subjects played a video game in which targets were presented in one of two peripheral locations. Pre-target cues were employed to orient attention to a location where points could be gained (positive incentive cue), to a location where points could be lost (negative incentive cue) or to neither location (neutral cue). Cost-benefit analyses were used to assess the consequences of such orienting. Although there was no evidence of general attentional biases favoring positive over negative incentives, all three experiments demonstrated an interaction between the incentive value of the current trial and the outcome of the previous trial. Following unsuccessful outcomes, attentional costs were greater for positive than negative incentives, whereas following successful outcomes, costs were larger for negative than positive cues. This pattern was evident for tasks involving detection, perceptual discrimination and memory scanning. These findings are discussed in light of contemporary models of motivation and the control of attention.     

A longitudinal study of the effects of coping motives,negative affect and drinking level on drinking problems among college students

We examined among college students the interactive effects of drinking to cope (DTC) motivation, anxiety and depression symptoms, and drinking level in predicting drinking-related problems (DRPs). Using an Internet-based survey, participants (N = 844, 53% women) first reported on their drinking motives and monthly for up to three months, they reported on their drinking level, anxiety, depression, and DRPs. We found a three-way interaction between DTC motivation and average levels of drinking and anxiety (but not depression) in predicting DRPs. Specifically, among individuals with stronger DTC motives, higher mean levels of anxiety were associated with a stronger positive association between mean drinking levels and DRPs. We did not find three-way interactions in the models examining monthly changes in anxiety, depression, and drinking in predicting monthly DRPs. However, individuals high in DTC motivation showed a stronger positive association between changes in drinking level and DRPs. The results are discussed in terms of mechanisms related to attention-allocation and self-control resource depletion.     

情绪对饮食行为的影响

人类的饮食行为受到诸多因素的影响, 包括生理因素、心理因素及社会文化因素等, 其中情绪对饮食行为的影响日益受到研究者的重视, 这种影响一般表现为摄入量的多少和食物(热量)的选择。通过探讨不同情绪下临床和非临床个体食物摄入量的表现, 总结发现消极情绪导致个体暴饮暴食的可能更大。积极情绪影响下的饮食行为的研究结果则存在分歧: 生理角度解释为积极情绪能够促进个体的享乐机制, 导致进食行为增加; 而自我控制理论则认为积极情绪增加了个人资源以抵制美食诱惑。此外, 进一步探讨了情绪影响下饮食行为的神经生理机制。未来在饮食相关的临床研究和治疗上, 需要对情绪影响下的饮食行为有更深入的神经机制方面的探究。     

Inducing an interpretation bias changes self-imagery: a preliminary investigation

Prior work suggests that variations in self-imagery can influence the emotional interpretations people make about social situations. The current experiment investigated the converse possibility: that inducing an inferential bias can change the content of self-related images. The effects of repeated practice in accessing either negative or positive social outcomes was tested by having participants report on self-images generated during subsequent experience with ambiguous social situations. Participants and independent judges rated the content of participants’ self-images as being more negative after prior practice in accessing negative rather than positive social outcomes. Furthermore, participants who practiced accessing negative outcomes rated their anticipated anxiety in an imagined stressful social situation as being greater, and their expected social performance as poorer than participants in the positive outcome group. Groups did not differ in state anxiety levels when making their ratings, so it is unlikely that any observed differences between groups can be attributed to mood effects. We suggest that this finding is consistent with the hypothesis that inferential biases and content of self-images can interact with each other and may together serve to maintain social anxiety.     

Decision-making processes of youth

Research supports the theory that after administrators make a decision, feedback, both positive and negative, and also the administrators' perceived security vis-à-vis their position affect their level of commitment to a course of action. However, this research fails to recognize that subjects of college age playing administrators in the simulated, experimental treatments which have been presented in the research had nothing personally to lose if they made a bad decision--an orientation contradictory to the reality of most actual administrative positions. Additionally, the research ignores the interactional effects of the personality of decision makers in terms of their anxiety levels and the judgments they make. This study took both of these considerations into account by creating a decision-making situation within which prospective administrators made monetary commitments to long-term goals while their anxiety level, both as a basic personality attribute and an index of the reality of the decision-making process, was monitored under conditions of varying levels of job insecurity and resistance to their policies in relation to their decisions. Analyses revealed that contrary to the results of past research which used college students as subjects: (1) there is a significant negative correlation between levels of anxiety and commitments to previously chosen courses of action; (2) there are no significant effects of job security on commitment; and, most importantly, (3) high resistance to a policy decision leads to significantly less monetary commitments to long-term goals. The findings suggest that the basis for the contradictory results lies with the anxiety level of decision makers and the realism of experiencing a loss by making poor decisions.     

Manipulations of subjects'' level of arousal in dichotic listening

The effects of manipulation of the subject's level of arousal on the right ear advantage (REA) in dichotic listening to CV-syllables were investigated. There were three different arousal manipulations under high and low incentive levels. Negative manipulations involved threat of electric shock (high incentive) or noise (low incentive) for incorrect answers. Positive manipulations involved the possibility to earn a substantial (high incentive) or small (low incentive) sum of money for correct answers. A third, neutral, condition involved no specific instructions about consequences for correct or incorrect answers. Thirty-six females participated in the study. Heart rate was recorded as an independent measure of change in level of arousal as a function of the experimental instructions. The results showed that the high negative condition abolished the REA effect, with a non-significant difference between ears. This was caused by both an increase in correct left ear reports and a decrease in correct right ear reports. The other arousal conditions had no effect on the REA. The results are discussed in terms of right hemisphere dominance for aversive emotional processing in dichotic listening.     

Components of reward in social dilemmas

A social dilemma (Dawes, 1980) may be defined as a situation in which a collection of individuals is faced with a conflict between maximizing selfish interests and maximizing collective interests. The dilemma is based on the fact that if all choose to maximize selfish interests, all are worse off than if all choose to maximize collective interests. In a decomposed social dilemma (Pruitt, 1967), the outcomes are divided into two components: one component is based on one's own choice and the second component is based on the choices made by the others. Using 3-person decomposed games, two types of incentives were contrasted: a positive incentive (bonus) for cooperative choices and a negative incentive (penalty) for noncooperative choices. Two experiments were conducted using male college students. The results of both experiments showed that the positive incentive evoked a higher level of cooperation than the negative incentive. The results are discussed in terms of nonadditive utility components, Pruitt's motivational interpretation, and Kelley and Thibaut's (1978) theory of interdependence.     

Social Anxiety Symptoms in Young Children: Investigating the Interplay of Theory of Mind and Expressions of Shyness

Children’s early onset of social anxiety may be associated with their social understanding, and their ability to express emotions adaptively. We examined whether social anxiety in 48-month-old children (N = 110; 54 boys) was related to: a) a lower level of theory of mind (ToM); b) a lower proclivity to express shyness in a positive way (adaptive); and c) a higher tendency to express shyness in a negative way (non-adaptive). In addition, we investigated to what extent children’s level of social anxiety was predicted by the interaction between ToM and expressions of shyness. Children’s positive and negative expressions of shyness were observed during a performance task. ToM was measured with a validated battery, and social anxiety was assessed using both parents’ reports on questionnaires. Socially anxious children had a lower level of ToM, and displayed more negative and less positive shy expressions. However, children with a lower level of ToM who expressed more positive shyness were less socially anxious. Additional results show that children who displayed shyness only in a negative manner were more socially anxious than children who expressed shyness only in a positive way and children who did not display any shyness. Moreover, children who displayed both positive and negative expressions of shyness were more socially anxious than children who displayed shyness only in a positive way. These findings highlight the importance of ToM development and socio-emotional strategies, and their interaction, on the early development of social anxiety.     

Social anxiety and positive emotions: a prospective examination of a self-regulatory model with tendencies to suppress or express emotions as a moderating variable

The purpose of the present study was to examine social anxiety as a predictor of positive emotions using a short-term prospective design. We examined whether the effects of social anxiety on positive emotions are moderated by tendencies to openly express or supress emotions. Over the course of a 3-month interval, people with excessive social anxiety endorsed stable, low levels of positive emotions. In addition, people with low social anxiety who frequently display their emotions openly, whether negative or positive, reported the greatest increases in positive emotions. Similar results were found when using a measure of emotion suppression (low social anxiety and less tendency to rely on these types of regulatory acts led to the greatest positive emotions). These social anxiety main and interactive effects could not be attributed to depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that relations between social anxiety and positive emotional experiences over time are best understood in the context of meaningful individual differences such as affect regulatory strategies.     

Is positive thinking in anticipation of a performance situation better than distraction? An experimental study in preadolescents

The current study compares the effects of experimentally induced positive anticipatory thinking and distraction in preadolescents aged 12–13. Eighty‐seven participants were instructed to either engage in positive anticipatory thoughts or perform a distraction task while preparing to perform a sporting activity in front of their peers. Results revealed that trait social anxiety was associated with more negative estimates of sport performance and catastrophic thoughts relating to the impending sport activity. Additionally, compared to children who distracted, children in the positive anticipation condition showed significantly increased anxiety levels, more catastrophic thoughts and more negative predictions of sport performance and appearance, although these effects did not appear to interact with trait social anxiety. Finally, no significant manipulation effect on participants’ observable behavior was found. The findings further highlight the utility of distracting from an impending, anxiety‐provoking situation to keep anxious feelings to a low level.     

Locus of Control and Activity Level as Moderators in the Quantitative Job Demands—Satisfaction/ Psychological Anxiety Relationship: An Experimental Analysis

The present study examined the impact the quantitative job demands on satisfaction and psychological anxiety. In addition, the moderating effects of locus of control and activity level were examined. Consistent with the literature, perceptions of job demands were found to negatively affect satisfaction and positively affect psychological anxiety. Individuals reporting high activity levels had the strongest positive relationship between perceived job demands and psychological anxiety. Finally, external locus of control strengthened the negative relationship between perceived job demands and satisfaction. Results and social implications are discussed.     

Parental Behaviors During Family Interactions Predict Changes in Depression and Anxiety Symptoms During Adolescence

This study investigated the prospective, longitudinal relations between parental behaviors observed during parent-adolescent interactions, and the development of depression and anxiety symptoms in a community-based sample of 194 adolescents. Positive and negative parental behaviors were examined, with negative behaviors operationalized to distinguish between observed parental expressions of aggression and dysphoria. Results showed that higher levels of parental aggression prospectively predicted higher levels of both depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescents over two-and-a-half years, whereas higher levels of positive parental behaviors prospectively predicted lower levels of depression symptoms only. Parental dysphoric behavior was not related to changes in either symptom dimension. These results suggest that patterns of parental behaviors may be differentially associated with depressive versus anxious outcomes in adolescents, and highlight the potential role for family-focused prevention or treatment interventions aimed at reducing an escalation of depression and anxiety symptoms in adolescence.     

焦虑个体“冷”、“热”执行功能Stroop效应量比较

该文采用Stroop实验范式对筛选出的49名高焦虑个体和48名低焦虑个体的“冷”、“热”执行功能进行测量,以探讨不同焦虑程度个体“冷”、“热”执行功能间的差异。结果表明,在“冷”执行功能方面,高焦虑个体与低焦虑个体Stroop效应量之间没有显著差异;在“热”执行功能方面,两组被试情绪Stroop的效应量无差异;两类词;12的Stroop效应量差异显著;词汇类型×被试类型的交互作用非常显著;进一步的简单效应分析表明,两组被试的情绪Stroop效应量在消极词汇水平差异显著,两类词汇Stroop效应量在低焦虑组差异显著。说明高、低焦虑个体在“冷”执行功能上没有显著差异,高焦虑个体的“冷”执行功能正常,而“热”执行功能下降,表现为高焦虑个体对两极情绪的趋避关系失调,即对消极情绪具有偏向性,对积极情绪具有回避性。     

父母教养方式与幼儿焦虑关系的三水平元分析

以0~7岁学前儿童为样本,采用元分析方法考察父母教养方式（积极和消极）与幼儿焦虑之间的关系。通过文献检索,共获得26项研究,含136个独立效应量,被试总数达13565名。由于部分研究中存在多个效应量,当前研究针对两种教养方式分别构建了三级元分析模型。主效应检验发现,父母积极教养方式与幼儿焦虑呈显著负相关,而父母消极教养方式与幼儿焦虑呈显著正相关。调节效应检验发现,父母积极教养方式与幼儿焦虑之间的相关受到父亲受教育水平和幼儿生活质量的调节,但不受幼儿性别、母亲受教育水平和焦虑测量工具类型的影响。此外父母消极教养方式与幼儿焦虑之间的相关受到焦虑测量工具类型的调节,但这一相关不受幼儿性别、生活质量和父母受教育水平的调节。上述结果表明,父母教养方式与幼儿焦虑之间的关系密切,也指出了将来的研究过程中要关注父亲受教育水平、幼儿生活质量和焦虑测量工具类型在两者关系中的作用。     

Skin temperature biofeedback for multiple sessions with monetary incentives

This study evaluated the relative effectiveness of two incentive contingencies in learning biofeedback-assisted control of peripheral skin temperature: positive versus positive/negative monetary incentives. Both incentive groups of 10 participated in six sessions, including pre- and posttraining voluntary control sessions, and four intervening sessions with visual feedback and monetary contingencies. Each session consisted of adaptation, resting baseline, feedback or voluntary control, and a final resting baseline. The results indicated no significant difference in response control between groups and an over-all decline in temperature within sessions. Self-control was evidenced by the slower rate of decline in temperature for the first as compared to the last session, and feedback control by the attenuation in the rate of decline in the last three training sessions. Based on data from other physiological responses, these findings are not likely due to habituation effects. It was concluded that response control should not necessarily be defined in terms of increasing temperature but rather by reference to an appropriate comparison condition. Motivational effects should be further investigated with alternative incentive contingencies.     

Primary and secondary reinforcers as distinctive cues which acquire information value in partial-reinforcement discrimination training

To assess the cue as opposed to incentive effect of reward, rats were trained on an easy visual discrimination with food contingent on 50 or 100% of the correct responses, and white-noise contingent on 0, 50 or 100% of these responses. Additionally, the 50% food and noise schedules were structured for different groups to produce positive, zero, or negative correlations of the two events. Although the addition of noise did not affect learning with 100% food, the slower learning observed with 50% food was increasingly offset by greater percentages of noise, with the 50% groups showing faster learning under the negative than zero correlation and faster under the zero than positive correlation. Together with supporting speed data, these results indicate that a “neutral” stimulus can be substituted for food with little loss in performance. Consequently, the reinforcing effect of food is attributed in part to its function as a cue which, like noise, can increase the discriminability of the alternatives and provide information about the correctness of the response.