If you can't join them, beat them: effects of social exclusion on aggressive behavior.

Social exclusion was manipulated by telling people that they would end up alone later in life or that other participants had rejected them. These manipulations caused participants to behave more aggressively. Excluded people issued a more negative job evaluation against someone who insulted them (Experiments 1 and 2). Excluded people also blasted a target with higher levels of aversive noise both when the target had insulted them (Experiment 4) and when the target was a neutral person and no interaction had occurred (Experiment 5). However, excluded people were not more aggressive toward someone who issued praise (Experiment 3). These responseswere specific to social exclusion (as opposed to other misfortunes) and were not mediated by emotion     

Automatic emotion regulation after social exclusion: tuning to positivity

Nine experiments tested competing hypotheses regarding nonconscious affective responses to acute social exclusion and how such responses may relate to positive mental health. The results strongly and consistently indicated that acute social exclusion increased nonconscious positive affect. Compared to nonexcluded participants, excluded participants recalled more positive memories from childhood than did accepted participants (Experiment 1), gave greater weight to positive emotion in their judgments of word similarity (Experiments 2 and 3), and completed more ambiguous word stems with happy words (Experiments 4a and 4b). This process was apparently automatic, as participants asked to imagine exclusion overestimated explicit distress and underestimated implicit positivity (Experiment 3). Four final experiments showed that this automatic emotion regulation process was found among participants low (but not high) in depressive symptoms (Experiments 5 and 6) and among participants high (but not low) in self-esteem (Experiments 7 and 8). These findings suggest that acute exclusion sets in motion an automatic emotion regulation process in which positive emotions become highly accessible, which relates to positive mental health.     

Context effects of pictures and words in naming objects, reading words, and generating simple phrases

In five language production experiments it was examined which aspects of words are activated in memory by context pictures and words. Context pictures yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects on response times when participants generated gender-marked noun phrases in response to written words (Experiment 1A). However, pictures yielded no such effects when participants simply read aloud the noun phrases (Experiment 2). Moreover, pictures yielded a gender congruency effect in generating gender-marked noun phrases in response to the written words (Experiments 3A and 3B). These findings suggest that context pictures activate lemmas (i.e., representations of syntactic properties), which leads to effects only when lemmas are needed to generate a response (i.e., in Experiments 1A, 3A, and 3B, but not in Experiment 2). Context words yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects in picture naming (Experiment 1B). Moreover, words yielded Stroop-like but no semantic effects in reading nouns (Experiment 4) and in generating noun phrases (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that context words activate the lemmas and forms of their names, which leads to semantic effects when lemmas are required for responding (Experiment 1B) but not when only the forms are required (Experiment 4). WEAVER++ simulations of the results are presented.     

Context effects of pictures and words in naming objects,reading words,and generating simple phrases

In five language production experiments it was examined which aspects of words are activated in memory by context pictures and words. Context pictures yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects on response times when participants generated gender-marked noun phrases in response to written words (Experiment 1A). However, pictures yielded no such effects when participants simply read aloud the noun phrases (Experiment 2). Moreover, pictures yielded a gender congruency effect in generating gender-marked noun phrases in response to the written words (Experiments 3A and 3B). These findings suggest that context pictures activate lemmas (i.e., representations of syntactic properties), which leads to effects only when lemmas are needed to generate a response (i.e., in Experiments 1A, 3A, and 3B, but not in Experiment 2). Context words yielded Stroop-like and semantic effects in picture naming (Experiment 1B). Moreover, words yielded Stroop-like but no semantic effects in reading nouns (Experiment 4) and in generating noun phrases (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that context words activate the lemmas and forms of their names, which leads to semantic effects when lemmas are required for responding (Experiment 1B) but not when only the forms are required (Experiment 4). WEAVER++ simulations of the results are presented.     

Breaking apart the typical mortality salience manipulation: Two questions,two outcomes

The typical mortality salience manipulation asks participants to reflect on two questions, one about the emotions associated with the thought of death and the other about what happens after one dies. In five experiments, we separated these two questions and gave participants either one or a control question. In Experiment 1, participants' responses to the afterlife question were coded as being informed more by cultural knowledge and values compared with responses to the emotion question. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that participants responding to the afterlife question showed greater stereotype usage compared with those responding to the emotion or a control question. In Experiment 4, results illustrate that the afterlife and emotion question differ on various coding dimensions related to self‐focus, emotion, and culturally related death words, but not death‐related words. In addition, participants who responded to the afterlife question demonstrated greater cultural worldview defense by setting a higher bail for an alleged prostitute compared with those who answered the emotion or a control question. In Experiment 5, participants responding to the emotion question demonstrated a greater preference for personally endorsed values compared with those who responded to the emotion or a control question. These results suggest that the two questions used in the common mortality salience manipulation produce different results when separated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of post-encoding emotion on recollection and familiarity for pictures

Although prior studies have examined the effect of post-encoding emotional arousal on recognition memory for words, it is unknown whether the enhancement effect observed on words generalizes to pictures. Furthermore, prior studies using words have showed that the effect of emotional arousal can be modulated by stimuli valence and delay in emotion induction, but it is unclear whether such modulation can extend to pictures and whether other factors such as encoding method (incidental vs. intentional encoding) can be modulatory. Five experiments were conducted to answer these questions. In Experiment 1, participants encoded a list of neutral and negative pictures and then watched a 3-min neutral or negative video. The delayed test showed that negative arousal impaired recollection regardless of picture valence but had no effect on familiarity. Experiment 2 replicated the above findings. Experiment 3 was similar to Experiment 1 except that participants watched a 3-min neutral, negative, or positive video and conducted free recall before the recognition test. Unlike the prior two experiments, the impairment effect of negative arousal disappeared. Experiment 4, where the free recall task was eliminated, replicated the results from Experiment 3. Experiment 5 replicated Experiments 1 and 2 and further showed that the impairment effects of negative arousal could be modulated by delay in emotion induction but not by encoding method or stimuli valence. Taken together, the current study suggests that the enhancement effect observed on words may not generalize to pictures.     

Phonetic-semantic mediated false recognition: does activation fail to spread?

Spoken word recognition involves brief activation of candidate words. Six experiments examined whether words semantically related to phonologically activated words would be falsely recognized. Experiments 1 and 2 involved homophones as test words; Experiment 3 used strong associates for the semantic mediation link. Experiment 4 approximated lists of "strong" converging associates. Experiment 5 expanded the real time needed for word identification by using a gating procedure during study. In Experiment 6, the goal was to create a more sensitive test by requiring participants to indicate which of two lures (mediated or control) was "most likely" to be new. Recognition errors were sensitive to separate phonetic and semantic stages in the mediated chain; however, there was little evidence of mediated false recognition, despite expectations derived from common models of spreading activation.     

Estimating valence from the sound of a word: Computational,experimental, and cross-linguistic evidence

It is assumed linguistic symbols must be grounded in perceptual information to attain meaning, because the sound of a word in a language has an arbitrary relation with its referent. This paper demonstrates that a strong arbitrariness claim should be reconsidered. In a computational study, we showed that one phonological feature (nasals in the beginning of a word) predicted negative valence in three European languages (English, Dutch, and German) and positive valence in Chinese. In three experiments, we tested whether participants used this feature in estimating the valence of a word. In Experiment 1, Chinese and Dutch participants rated the valence of written valence-neutral words, with Chinese participants rating the nasal-first neutral-valence words more positive and the Dutch participants rating nasal-first neutral-valence words more negative. In Experiment 2, Chinese (and Dutch) participants rated the valence of Dutch (and Chinese) written valence-neutral words without being able to understand the meaning of these words. The patterns replicated the valence patterns from Experiment 1. When the written words from Experiment 2 were transformed into spoken words, results in Experiment 3 again showed that participants estimated the valence of words on the basis of the sound of the word. The computational study and psycholinguistic experiments indicated that language users can bootstrap meaning from the sound of a word.     

Now you see it, now you don't: repetition blindness for nonwords

Repetition blindness (RB) for nonwords has been found in some studies, but not in others. The authors propose that the discrepancy in results is fueled by participant strategy; specifically, when rapid serial visual presentation lists are short and participants are explicitly informed that some trials will contain repetitions, participants are able to use partial orthographic information to correctly guess repetitions on repetition trials while avoiding spurious repetition reports on control trials. The authors first replicated V. Coltheart and R. Langdon's (2003) finding of RB for words but repetition advantage for nonwords (Experiment 1). When all participants were encouraged to utilize partial information in a same/different matching task along with an identification task, a repetition advantage was observed for both words and nonwords (Experiment 2). When guessing of repetitions was made detectable by including non-identical but orthographically similar items in the experiments, the repetition advantage disappeared; instead, RB was found for both words and nonwords (Experiments 3 and 4). Finally, when experiments did not contain any identical items, participants almost never reported repetitions, and reliable RB was found for orthographically similar words and nonwords (Experiments 5 and 6).     

Be aware of the rifle but do not forget the stench: differential effects of fear and disgust on lexical processing and memory

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of discrete emotions in lexical processing and memory, focusing on disgust and fear. We compared neutral words to disgust-related words and fear-related words in three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed a lexical decision task (LDT), and in Experiment 3 an affective categorisation task. These tasks were followed by an unexpected memory task. The results of the LDT experiments showed slower reaction times for both types of negative words with respect to neutral words, plus a higher percentage of errors, this being more consistent for fear-related words (Experiments 1 and 2) than for disgust-related words (Experiment 2). Furthermore, only disgusting words exhibited a higher recall accuracy than neutral words in the memory task. Moreover, the advantage in memory for disgusting words disappeared when participants carried out an affective categorisation task during encoding (Experiment 3), suggesting that the superiority in memory for disgusting words observed in Experiments 1 and 2 could be due to greater elaborative processing. Taken together, these findings point to the relevance of discrete emotions in explaining the effects of the emotional content on lexical processing and memory.     

Social exclusion impairs self-regulation

Six experiments showed that being excluded or rejected caused decrements in self-regulation. In Experiment 1, participants who were led to anticipate a lonely future life were less able to make themselves consume a healthy but bad-tasting beverage. In Experiment 2, some participants were told that no one else in their group wanted to work with them, and these participants later ate more cookies than other participants. In Experiment 3, excluded participants quit sooner on a frustrating task. In Experiments 4-6, exclusion led to impairment of attention regulation as measured with a dichotic listening task. Experiments 5 and 6 further showed that decrements in self-regulation can be eliminated by offering a cash incentive or increasing self-awareness. Thus, rejected people are capable of self-regulation but are normally disinclined to make the effort.     

Emotional arousal enhances word repetition priming

Three experiments were conducted to determine if emotional content increases repetition priming magnitude. In the study phase of Experiment 1, participants rated high-arousing negative (taboo) words and neutral words for concreteness. In the test phase, they made lexical decision judgements for the studied words intermixed with novel words (half taboo, half neutral) and pseudowords. In Experiment 2, low-arousing negative (LAN) words were substituted for the taboo words, and in Experiment 3 all three word types were used. Results showed significant priming in all experiments, as indicated by faster reaction times for studied words than for novel words. A priming × emotion interaction was found in Experiments 1 and 3, with greater priming for taboo relative to neutral words. The LAN words in Experiments 2 and 3 showed no difference in priming magnitude relative to the other word types. These results show selective enhancement of word repetition priming by emotional arousal.     

The effect of emotion on interpretation and logic in a conditional reasoning task

The effect of emotional content on logical reasoning is explored in three experiments. Theparticipants completed a conditional reasoning task (If p, then q) with emotional and neutral contents. In Experiment 1, existing emotional and neutral words were used. The emotional value of initially neutral words was experimentally manipulated in Experiments 1B and 2, using classical conditioning. In all experiments, participants were less likely to provide normatively correct answers when reasoning about emotional stimuli, compared with neutral stimuli. This was true for both negative (Experiments 1B and 2) and positive contents (Experiment 2). The participants' interpretations of the conditional statements were also measured (perceived sufficiency, necessity, causality, and plausibility). The results showed the expected relationship between interpretation and reasoning. However, emotion did not affect interpretation. Emotional and neutral conditional statements were interpreted similarly. The results are discussed in light of current models of emotion and reasoning.     

An eye movement analysis of the spatial contiguity effect in multimedia learning

In three studies, eye movements of participants were recorded while they viewed a single-slide multimedia presentation about how car brakes work. Some of the participants saw an integrated presentation in which each segment of words was presented near its corresponding area of the diagram (integrated group, Experiments 1 and 3) or an integrated presentation that also included additional labels identifying each part (integrated-with-labels group, Experiment 2), whereas others saw a separated presentation in which the words were presented as a paragraph below the diagrams (separated group, Experiments 1 and 2) or as a legend below the diagrams (legend group, Experiment 3). On measures of cognitive processing during learning, the integrated groups made significantly more eye-movements from text to diagram and vice versa (integrative transitions; d = 1.65 in Experiment 1, d = 0.85 in Experiment 2, and d = 1.44 in Experiment 3) and significantly more eye-movements from the text to the corresponding part of the diagram (corresponding transitions; d = 2.02 in Experiment 1 and d = 1.35 in Experiment 3) than the separated groups. On measures of learning outcome the integrated groups significantly outperformed the separated groups on transfer test score in Experiment 1(d = .80) and Experiment 2 (d = .73) but not in Experiment 3 (d = .35). Spatial contiguity encourages more attempts to integrate words and pictures and enables more successful integration of words and pictures during learning, which can result in meaningful learning outcomes.     

Are pictures good for learning new vocabulary in a foreign language? Only if you think they are not

The current study explored whether new words in a foreign language are learned better from pictures than from native language translations. In both between-subjects and within-subject designs, Swahili words were not learned better from pictures than from English translations (Experiments 1-3). Judgments of learning revealed that participants exhibited greater overconfidence in their ability to recall a Swahili word from a picture than from a translation (Experiments 2-3), and Swahili words were also considered easier to process when paired with pictures rather than translations (Experiment 4). When this overconfidence bias was eliminated through retrieval practice (Experiment 2) and instructions warning participants to not be overconfident (Experiment 3), Swahili words were learned better from pictures than from translations. It appears, therefore, that pictures can facilitate learning of foreign language vocabulary--as long as participants are not too overconfident in the power of a picture to help them learn a new word.     

The concreteness effect on judgments of learning: Evaluating the contributions of fluency and beliefs

Researchers have often determined how cues influence judgments of learning (JOLs; e.g., concrete words are assigned higher JOLs than are abstract words), and recently there has been an emphasis in understanding why cues influence JOLs (i.e., the mechanisms that underlie cue effects on JOLs). The analytic-processing (AP) theory posits that JOLs are constructed in accordance with participants’ beliefs of how a cue will influence memory. Even so, some evidence suggests that fluency is also important to cue effects on JOLs. In the present experiments, we investigated the contributions of participants’ beliefs and processing fluency to the concreteness effect on JOLs. To evaluate beliefs, participants estimated memory performance in a hypothetical experiment (Experiment 1), and studied concrete and abstract words and made a pre-study JOL for each (Experiments 2 and 3). Participants’ predictions demonstrated the belief that concrete words are more likely to be remembered than are abstract words, consistent with the AP theory. To evaluate fluency, response latencies were measured during lexical decision (Experiment 4), self-paced study (Experiment 5), and mental imagery (Experiment 7). Number of trials to acquisition was also evaluated (Experiment 6). Fluency did not differ between concrete and abstract words in Experiments 5 and 6, and it did not mediate the concreteness effect on JOLs in Experiments 4 and 7. Taken together, these results demonstrate that beliefs are a primary mechanism driving the concreteness effect on JOLs.     

Recognizing cognates and interlingual homographs: Effects of code similarity in language-specific and generalized lexical decision

In four experiments, we investigated how cross-linguistic overlap in semantics, orthography, and phonology affects bilingual word recognition in different variants of the lexical decision task. Dutch-English bilinguals performed a language-specific or a generalized lexical decision task including words that are spelled and/or pronounced the same in English and in Dutch and that matched one-language control words from both languages. In Experiments 1 and 3, "false friends" with different meanings in the two languages (e.g., spot) were presented, whereas in Experiments 2 and 4 cognates with the same meanings across languages (e.g., film) were presented. The language-specific Experiments 1 and 2 replicated and qualified an earlier study (Dijkstra, Grainger, & Van Heuven, 1999). In the generalized Experiment 3, participants reacted equally quickly on Dutch-English homographs and Dutch control words, indicating that their response was based primarily on the fastest available orthographic code (i.e., Dutch). In Experiment 4, cognates were recognized faster than English and Dutch controls, suggesting coactivation of the cognates' semantics. The nonword results indicate that the bilingual rejection procedure can, to some extent, be language specific. All results are discussed within the BIA+ (bilingual interactive activation) model for bilingual word recognition.     

Effects of emotion and age on performance during a think/no-think memory task

Recent studies have demonstrated that young adults can voluntarily suppress information from memory when directed to. After learning novel word pairings to criterion, participants are shown individual words and instructed either to "think" about the associated word, or to put it out of mind entirely ("no-think"). When given a surprise cued recall test, participants typically show impaired recall for no-think words relative to think or "control" (un-manipulated) words. The present study investigated whether this controlled suppression effect persists in an aged population, and examined how the emotionality of the to-be-suppressed word affects suppression ability. Data from four experiments using the think/no-think task demonstrate that older and younger adults can suppress information when directed to (Experiment 1), and the age groups do not differ significantly in this ability. Experiments 2 through 4 demonstrate that both age groups can suppress words that are emotional (positive or negative valence) or neutral. The suppression effect also persists even if participants are tested using independent probe words that are semantically related to the target words but were not the studied cue words (Experiments 3 and 4). These data suggest that the cognitive functioning necessary to suppress information from memory is present in older adulthood, and that both emotional and neutral information can be successfully suppressed from memory.     

Inhibition of return following instructions to remember and forget.

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to slowed responding to a target that appears in the same rather than in a different location as a preceding peripheral onset cue. This study examined IOR as a function of whether the peripheral onset cue was a word that participants were directed to remember or forget. Using a modified item-method directed forgetting paradigm, words appeared one at a time to the left or right, followed by a remember or forget instruction. A target dot was then presented either in the same peripheral location as the preceding word or in a different location; participants made a speeded response to localize this target. Confirming compliance with the memory instructions, recall tests that alternated with blocks of IOR trials (Experiment 1) revealed few intrusions of to-be-forgotten words, and a final recognition test (Experiments 1 and 3) revealed more hits for to-be-remembered words than for to-be-forgotten words. Reaction times to the target dot revealed greater magnitude IOR following to-be-forgotten words than following to-be-remembered words (Experiments 1 and 3). Moreover, when compared to baseline IOR values (Experiment 2), it appeared that this difference resulted from a magnification of IOR following forget instructions and a reduction in IOR following remember instructions. These results demonstrate the usefulness of IOR as an index of memorial processes and suggest that attentional orienting may play a role in the remembering and forgetting of words presented in peripheral visual locations.     

The sensorimotor contributions to implicit memory, familiarity, and recollection

The sensorimotor contributions to memory for prior occurrence were investigated. Previous research has shown that both implicit memory and familiarity draw on gains in stimulus-related processing fluency for old, compared with novel, stimuli, but recollection does not. Recently, it has been demonstrated that processing fluency itself resides in stimulus-specific motor simulations or reenactment (e.g., covert pronouncing simulations for words as stimuli). Combining these lines of evidence, it was predicted that stimulus-specific motor interference preventing simulations should impair both implicit memory and familiarity but leave recollection unaffected. This was tested for words as verbal stimuli associated to pronouncing simulations in the oral muscle system (but also for tunes as vocal stimuli and their associated vocal system, Experiment 2). It was found that oral (e.g., chewing gum), compared with manual (kneading a ball), motor interference prevented mere exposure effects (Experiments 1-2), substantially reduced repetition priming in word fragment completion (Experiment 3), reduced the familiarity estimates in a remember-know task (Experiment 5) and in receiver-operating characteristics (Experiment 6), and completely neutralized familiarity measured by self-reports (Experiment 4) and skin conductance responses (Experiment 7), while leaving recollection and free recall unaffected (across Experiments 1-7). This pattern establishes a rare memory dissociation in healthy participants, that is, explicit without implicit memory or recognizing without feeling familiar. Implications for embodied memory and neuropsychology are discussed.