Priming a natural or human-made environment directs attention to context-congruent threatening stimuli

Research suggests that attention is attracted to evolutionary threats (e.g., snakes) due to an evolved "fear-module" that automatically detects biological threats to survival. However, recent evidence indicates that non-evolutionary threats (e.g., guns) capture and hold attention as well, suggesting a more general "threat-relevance" mechanism that directs attentional resources toward any potential danger in the environment. The current research measured how selective attentional resources were influenced both by the type of threat (e.g., snake vs. gun) and by the context in which the threat was encountered. Participants were primed with either natural or human-made environments to assess how these contexts influence attention to evolutionary and non-evolutionary threats, as measured by a spatial-cueing task. The results indicate that whether biological or non-biological threats receive greater attentional processing is determined by the context in which they are encountered.     

Hypochondriacs' estimation of negative outcomes: domain-specificity and responsiveness to reassuring and alarming information

Based on hypochondriacal patients' tendency to overestimate the seriousness of bodily sensations and health risks [Barsky, A. J., Wyshak, G. & Klerman, G. L. (1990). The Somatosensory Amplification Scale and its relationship to hypochondriasis. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 24, 323-334; Warwick, H. M. C., & Salkovskis, P. M. (1990). Hypochondriasis. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 28, 105-117], we investigated whether hypochondriacal individuals (n = 20) are inclined to report higher estimates of negative outcomes than healthy controls (n = 20) when interpreting ambiguous health-related and nonhealth-related events. In addition, we explored the influence of additional reassuring and alarming information on hypochondriacs' estimates of negative outcomes. Following the cognitive-behavioural model of hypochondriasis [Warwick, H. M. C. & Salkovskis, P. M. (1989). Hypochondriasis. In J. Scott, J. M. G. Williams & A. T. Beck (Eds.), Cognitive therapy in clinical practice: an illustrative casebook. (pp. 78-102). London: Routledge] we hypothesized that hypochondriacal individuals would be more responsive to alarming information and less responsive to reassuring information than healthy controls. Yet, hypochondriacs were neither found to be immune for reassuring information, nor to be hypersensitive to alarming information. Meanwhile, irrespective of the additional alarming or reassuring information, hypochondriacs clearly showed a domain-specific bias towards higher estimates of negative outcomes in ambiguous health-related situations.     

Priming a natural or human-made environment directs attention to context-congruent threatening stimuli

Research suggests that attention is attracted to evolutionary threats (e.g., snakes) due to an evolved “fear-module” that automatically detects biological threats to survival. However, recent evidence indicates that non-evolutionary threats (e.g., guns) capture and hold attention as well, suggesting a more general “threat-relevance” mechanism that directs attentional resources toward any potential danger in the environment. The current research measured how selective attentional resources were influenced both by the type of threat (e.g., snake vs. gun) and by the context in which the threat was encountered. Participants were primed with either natural or human-made environments to assess how these contexts influence attention to evolutionary and non-evolutionary threats, as measured by a spatial-cueing task. The results indicate that whether biological or non-biological threats receive greater attentional processing is determined by the context in which they are encountered.     

Show me what threatens you,and I can tell who you are: Perception of threat and the self

Abstract

This article proposes a methodical way to understand the self from the angle of psychologically meaningful threat. On the basis of systematic cross-cultural examination of threats to core self-motives, this comprises the notion of self as being most reliably described by instances in which a person shows a motivated response to information from the social environment. Building on accounts of cultural differences in self- construal, this approach allows insight into self-related processes, because motivated responses to self-threat should depend on how the self is defined in the social space. The research conducted from this approach has examined cultural differences to threats to freedom, belonging and consistency. For people with a collectivistic cultural background, as well as for those with a more interdependent self-construal within a given culture, responses to freedom, belonging and consistency threats were less intense, particularly when threats were directed at the individual sense of self. Looking at the self from this perspective further allows for insight into underlying mechanisms into self-related processes, as well as for more direct information on the influence of context on what constitutes the self.     

Emotion- and intrusion-based reasoning in Vietnam veterans with and without chronic posttraumatic stress disorder.

Patients suffering from anxiety disorders other than posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) interpret anxiety responses themselves as evidence that threat is impending: "if anxiety, then threat" (Arntz, Rauner, & van den Hout, 1995, Behaviour Research and Therapy, 33, 917-925). This "emotion-based reasoning" (ER) may render a disorder self-perpetuating. Analogous to ER, danger might also be inferred from the presence of intrusions: "intrusion-based reasoning" (IR). The aims of this study were to test whether ER and IR are involved in chronic PTSD. Vietnam combat veterans with or without PTSD or other anxiety disorders rated perceived danger of brief scenarios in which information about objective danger (danger vs safety) and response (anxiety/intrusions vs non-distressing emotion) was systematically varied. Two series were administered: ER-scenarios were non-specific for PTSD and IR-scenarios were specific for PTSD. Relative to control participants, PTSD patients engaged in both ER and IR: whereas veterans without PTSD inferred the danger of scenarios from objective stimulus information, veterans with PTSD also inferred danger from the presence of anxiety or intrusions. Further analyses showed that these effects were largely mediated by perceived uncontrollability.     

Fear and the amygdala: manipulation of awareness generates differential cerebral responses to phobic and fear-relevant (but nonfeared) stimuli

Rapid response to danger holds an evolutionary advantage. In this positron emission tomography study, phobics were exposed to masked visual stimuli with timings that either allowed awareness or not of either phobic, fear-relevant (e.g., spiders to snake phobics), or neutral images. When the timing did not permit awareness, the amygdala responded to both phobic and fear-relevant stimuli. With time for more elaborate processing, phobic stimuli resulted in an addition of an affective processing network to the amygdala activity, whereas no activity was found in response to fear-relevant stimuli. Also, right prefrontal areas appeared deactivated, comparing aware phobic and fear-relevant conditions. Thus, a shift from top-down control to an affectively driven system optimized for speed was observed in phobic relative to fear-relevant aware processing.     

The emergence of inferential rules: The use of pragmatic reasoning schemas by preschoolers

This study contrasts the pragmatic view with the natural logic view regarding the origin of inferential rules in conditional reasoning. The pragmatic view proposes that pragmatic rules emerge first, and the generalizations of these produce formal rules. In contrast, the natural logic view proposes that the formal rules emerge first and serve as a core that is then supplemented by pragmatic rules. In an experiment, scenarios involving conditional rules in different contexts, permission and arbitrary, were administered to independent groups of preschool children. To rule out the matching bias [Evans, J. St. B. T., & Lynch, J. S. (1973). Matching bias in the selection task. Br J Psychol 64, 391–397] as a possible explanation of reasoning performance, children were given conditional rules with a negated consequent. The results show that in the arbitrary context modus tollens (MT) was unavailable, and the use of modus ponens (MP) was unstable. In contrast, children in the permission context reliably used both MP and MT. In addition, they realized that a conditional rule does not imply a definite answer when the consequent holds. These findings suggest that, in their explicit forms, pragmatic rules emerge earlier than formal rules and in particular, even as basic a rule as MP is generalized from a context-specific form to a context-general one in preschool children.     

The self-serving function of hypochondriacal complaints: physical symptoms as self-handicapping strategies

The present experiment tested the hypothesis that hypochondriacal individuals commonly use reports of physical illness and symptoms as a strategy to control attributions made about their performances in evaluative settings (i.e., self-handicapping strategies). Specifically, it was predicted that hypochondriacal individuals would report more recent physical illness and complaints and more current physical symptoms in an evaluative setting in which poor health could serve as an alternative explanation for poor performance than would either individuals in an evaluative setting in which poor health was precluded as an excuse or individuals in a nonevaluative setting. As predicted, results supported this self-protective pattern of complaints in a hypochondriacal sample but not in a nonhypochondriacal group. The self-protective role of hypochondriacal behavior is discussed in relation to other theory and research on the nature and treatment of hypochondriasis.     

Altered processing of health threat words as a function of hypochondriacal tendencies and experimentally manipulated control beliefs

Attentional biases associated with various forms of psychopathology have been well documented. Few studies, however, have assessed the factors that moderate these biases. The present paper assesses the biased processing of health words as a function of hypochondriacal tendencies during a threat of bioterrorism (anthrax), and whether perceived control can moderate those biases. Based on a sample of 328 participants, hypochondriacal tendencies were associated with slower reaction times on a modified emotional Stroop task when the stimulus words were anthrax-related, and this effect was moderated by a manipulation of perceived control. Specifically, individuals with low perceived control over the health threat had greater attentional bias of anthrax infection, independent of related variables such as anxiety.     

Danger expectancies, self-efficacy and insight in spider phobia

In the current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, (1994) Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.) Washington, DC: author) phobic adults and adolescents are said to "recognize that the phobia is excessive or unreasonable" given the actual danger posed by the feared situation. The present study examined perceptions of danger in 15 spider phobic subjects and a matched set of controls before, during and after a spider-avoidance test. When detached from the phobic stimulus, phobic subjects: (1) gave higher estimates of the probability of being bitten than controls did; (2) gave higher estimates of the injuries that would result from being bitten and (3) in line with these first two findings, believed their high levels of anticipated anxiety were more reasonable and appropriate to the demands of the situation than controls did. These findings are inconsistent with the prevailing notion that when detached from the phobic situation patients can accurately evaluate the danger of potential phobic encounters. Instead, the findings suggest that phobic individuals, whether detached or in the presence of the feared object, have relatively limited insight into the irrationality of their fears. In examining the mediation of phobic phenomena, both self-efficacy and danger estimates remained significantly related to the anxiety and avoidance experienced in the spider-avoidance task. Further research designed to experimentally establish the likely causal roles of these two constructs is warranted.     

Quasi-Indexicals and Knowledge Reports

We present a computational analysis of de re, de dicto, and de se belief and knowledge reports. Our analysis solves a problem first observed by Hector-Neri Castaneda, namely, that the simple rule '(A knows that P) implies P' apparently does not hold if P contains a quasi-indexical. We present a single rule, in the context of a knowledge-representation and reasoning system, that holds for all P, including those containing quasi-indexicals. In so doing, we explore the difference between reasoning in a public communication language and in a knowledge-representation language, we demonstrate the importance of representing proper names explicitly, and we provide support for the necessity of considering sentences in the context of extended discourse (e.g., written narrative) in order to fully capture certain features of their semantics.     

Flexible attention deployment in threatening contexts: An instructed fear conditioning study

Factors leading humans to shift attention away from danger cues remain poorly understood. Two laboratory experiments reported here show that context interacts with learning experiences to shape attention avoidance of mild danger cues. The first experiment exposed 18 participants to contextual threat of electric shock. Attention allocation to mild danger cues was then assessed with the dot-probe task. Results showed that contextual threat caused subjects to avert attention from danger cues. In the second experiment, 36 participants were conditioned to the same contextual threat used in Experiment 1. These subjects then were randomly assigned to either an experimental group, trained to shift attention toward danger cues, or a placebo group exposed to the same stimuli without the training component. As in Experiment 1, contextual threat again caused attention allocation away from danger in the control group. However, this did not occur in the experimental group. These experiments show that acute contextual threat and learning experiences interact to shape the deployment of attention away from danger cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Contrast Effects on Strategic-Issue Framing

We examined determinants of subjective framing other than semantic manipulation. Participants in the first experiment (n= 176) read several business threats or opportunities, prior to describing a strategic issue. Results revealed a contrast effect, where those exposed to unequivocal opportunities framed an equivocal issue as a threat, whereas those exposed to unequivocal threats did not view the same issue as threatening. A second experiment (n= 185) replicated the contrast effect using only one context manipulation (i.e., threat or opportunity business scenario), and alternative modes of presentation (i.e., serial vs simultaneous). A third experiment (n= 72) showed that the contrast effects extended beyond simple perceptions to actual intentions and behaviors. We conclude that the narrowing of one's frame for a strategic issue may result in a restricted range of alternatives considered and suboptimal responses.     

The belief in a just world and immanent justice reasoning in adults

Deciding that negative experiences are punishment for prior misdeeds, even when plausible causal links are missing, is immanent justice (IJ) reasoning (Piaget, 1932/1965). Three studies examined a just world theory analysis of IJ reasoning in adults (Lerner, 1980). Studies 1 and 2 varied the valence of a target person's behavior prior to them experiencing an unrelated negative (car accident, Study 1) or positive (lottery win, Study 2) outcome. Participants viewed the outcomes as the result of prior behavior most when they fit deservingness expectations (good person won the lottery, bad person injured in automobile accident), suggesting that just world concerns influenced IJ reasoning. The lottery-winning finding (Study 2) also extends IJ reasoning to positive experiences. A third study found that a manipulation of just world threat in one context (prolonged or ended suffering of an HIV victim) influenced IJ responses in a subsequent unrelated context (automobile accident scenario).     

小学生图形推理策略发展特点的研究

本研究用我们修订的瑞文推理为材料,对145名儿童图形推理策略进行研究。结果发现：小学生在解决图形推理问题时使用六种策略,它们分别是分析策略、不完全分析策略、知觉分析策略、知觉匹配策略、格式塔策略和自主想象策略;不同年龄儿童在解决不同类型题目时的策略使用表现出不同的特点,儿童在解决数量规则题中,知觉分析策略在整个小学儿童阶段占主导地位,而在解决加减规则题中,分析策略占主导地位,随年龄增长而呈上升趋势;小学二年级开始出现图形推理能力发展的飞跃,二年级儿童开始能够同时观察到两种规则,五六年级儿童更能够不受题目形式的影响．而是从本质上把握逻辑规则。     

Early vigilance and late avoidance of threat processing: Repressive coping versus low/high anxiety

The time course of a bias in predicting danger as a function of a repressive coping style was examined. The participants belonged to repressor, low - anxious, or high - anxious groups. They read context sentences predictive of threat or nonthreat event outcomes, followed by target words for rapid naming representing the outcomes. The interval between context and target word was 50 ms (Experiment 1), 550 ms (Experiment 2), or 1050 ms (Experiments 3 and 4). There was bias for naming words confirming threatening outcomes: (a) for repressors in the 550-ms delay condition; and (b) for high - anxiety participants in the 1050-ms delay condition. Repressive coping facilitated early processing of threat, but inhibited late processing, whereas high anxiety was characterised by sustained vigilance for threat. There were clear differences in threat processing by repressors and the low - anxious participants     

Dangerous Enough: Moderating Racial Bias with Contextual Threat Cues

Research shows that participants shoot armed Blacks more frequently and quickly than armed Whites, but make don't-shoot responses more frequently and quickly for unarmed Whites than unarmed Blacks. We argue that this bias reflects the perception of threat — specifically, threat associated with Black males. Other danger cues (not just race) may create a similar predisposition to shoot, and if these cues promote shooting when the target is White, they should attenuate racial bias. We embedded targets in threatening and safe backgrounds. Racial bias was evident in safe contexts but disappeared when context signaled danger, and this reduction was largely due to an increased tendency to shoot White targets.     

Marry who you love: Intergroup contact with gay people and another stigmatized minority is related to voting on the restriction of gay rights through threat

The study examined factors associated with discrimination against gay people in a public referendum aimed at the restriction of gay rights. We tested whether positive and negative intergroup contact with gay people and intergroup contact with another stigmatized minority, the Roma, were associated with how the heterosexual majority voted in the referendum (i.e., discrimination). We tested two mechanisms underlying the link between intergroup contact and discrimination—the mediation by intergroup threat and the mediation by outgroup attitudes. We found that negative contact with both gay people and the Roma was associated with a higher probability of gay discrimination while positive contact was associated with a lower probability of gay discrimination. Intergroup threat, not intergroup attitudes, mediated the link between intergroup contact and discrimination. In the case of contact with gay people, intergroup contact was linked to discrimination through threat from gay people. In the case of contact with Roma, intergroup contact was linked to discrimination through the generalization of threats from the Roma to gay people but not via the generalization of outgroup attitudes. Our research brings novel evidence that contact with one minority can affect discrimination against another minority in both positive and negative way and that perceived threat, but not attitudes, plays a key role in majority's decision to discriminate against gay people.     

小学生图形推理策略个体差异

选取一至六年级儿童145名为对象,根据项目中图形关系的规则,把瑞文测验的项目分成6类,选择出14道题目为实验材料,探讨小学生图形推理策略的个体差异.结果发现,数学能力不同的小学生在解决简单图形推理问题时,基本上使用知觉算法策略,没有表现出差异.但在较难图形推理问题时差异显著,中高数学水平儿童主要使用分析策略和知觉分析策略;而低数学水平儿童基本上使用知觉匹配策略;除了格式塔类型的题目以外,推理水平高的儿童在解决这五类题目时主要使用分析策略和知觉分析策略,而推理水平低的儿童主要使用知觉匹配策略;推理水平高的儿童在解决较为简单的图形推理问题时的策略使用很集中,随着题目难度的加大,策略变得越来越分散,而推理水平低的儿童则无论题目难易如何变化,他们的策略主要使用知觉匹配策略,而且表现出随机性特点.     

Interpretation of bodily symptoms in hypochondriasis.

Although it has been suggested that hypochondriasis is caused by the misinterpretation of innocuous bodily sensations, support for this hypothesis rests largely upon uncontrolled self-report. We investigated the interpretation of ambiguous bodily sensations in three experiments using separate samples of non-clinical subjects differing in level of hypochondriacal concern. Results confirmed that subjects with high hypochondriacal concern endorse more thoughts about illness interpretations of bodily sensations, but reported thought content resembled 'catastrophic' rather than the 'non-emergency' thoughts suggested by Warwick and Salkovskis (Hypochondriasis. Behavior Research and Therapy, 28, 105-117, 1990). Presence of an interpretive bias was further supported in a study of recognition bias for disambiguated versions of ambiguously threatening sentences, although this applied as much to social as to illness threats. A final experiment failed to support the hypothesis of an automatic inference bias, but did show that subjects with high hypochondriacal concern were quicker to correctly identify previously exposed illness words. Thus, reported thoughts are consistent with catastrophic interpretations of common bodily sensations, but interpretive bias may not be limited to illness threat. However, high hypochondriacal subjects do show a more specific enhanced perceptual sensitivity to illness cues, which may play a role in maintaining their concern with bodily symptoms.