BRIEF REPORT

The effects of masking task load on latent inhibition (LI, poorer learning for a previously exposed irrelevant stimulus than for a novel stimulus) were examined as a function of levels of schizotypality. With low load, LI was present in low schizotypal but not high schizotypal participants. With high load, LI was abolished in low schizotypal, but was present in high schizotypal participants. The data support a distraction rather than a resource limitation model of attentional dysfunction in high schizotypal normals. Implications of the model for understanding the attentional dysfunction in schizophrenia are discussed.     

BRIEF REPORT

We employed a psychophysiological marker of directed attention (the visual scanpath) to investigate visuocognitive processing of particular facial expressions in healthy individuals (N = 47). Visual scanpaths were recorded using video-oculography while subjects viewed digitised photographs of threat-related (fear, anger) and nonthreat (sad, happy, neutral) facial expressions. Hypotheses regarding the existence of a differential viewing strategy for threat-related facial expressions were based upon the adaptive significance of rapid detection and effective appraisal of social threat from conspecific face stimuli. When compared with each of the nonthreat faces, viewing strategies for expressions of anger and fear were characterised by increased distance between fixations (extended scanning), with more fixations, of longer duration, to feature areas of these faces. The extended scanning style suggests that threat-related faces evoke a "vigilant" style of scanning, whereby longer saccadic eye movements may reflect heightened autonomic responses to threat, while the increased foveal attention to feature areas of threat-related faces may facilitate cognitive appraisal of the personal significance and direction of impending threat. These results suggest the existence of distinct visuocognitive patterns for processing threat-related facial expressions, in response to the evolutionary advantage of detecting and appraising social threat.     

BRIEF REPORT

Fascination for extremely negative scenes was examined by exposing 152 students to pictures of September 11 attacks 8 months after their occurrence. Participants rated their orientation toward the pictures, their felt emotions, and their self and world views. Factor analysis of the orientation items yielded three clusters. Fascination characterized 32.9% of respondents; it was related only to attention and interest. Rejection (23%) involved aversion for the pictures and related thoughts; it was correlated to dysphoric emotions and to motivational depletion. Ambivalence (20.4%) was related to attention and interest, to most specific negative emotions, to an inclination to process the pictures cognitively and interpersonally, and to indices of enhanced social reliance and personal growth. These results are discussed in reference to various relevant theoretical models.     

BRIEF REPORT

The aim of this study was to explore the impact of quantifiers on depressed future thinking. Universal quantifiers, such as all and none, express bleak expectations and their global nature suggests no alternatives or exceptions (e.g., “ None of the future will be happy; all of it will be bleak”). We hypothesised that less extreme quantifiers would access alternative future perspectives. Depressed participants with high levels of hopelessness generated continuations to sentence stems that quantified different amounts of future time. Averaging over conditions, the depressed were more negative than never-depressed controls, but differences were attenuated in response to the quantifier some —the depressed were more positive and less negative under this condition (e.g., “ Some of the future…will be good”). By differentiating subsets of the future, some produced contrasts with negative global models and accessed positive alternatives.     

BRIEF REPORT

The emotional Stroop task has been widely used to examine attentional bias in a variety of psychological disorders. In one format of this task, words are presented to participants in a mixed randomised or quasi-randomised sequence. We present data from two independent studies involving smokers, the results of which show that words appearing after smoking-related items in the mixed sequence are responded to more slowly than words appearing after neutral items. These carry-over effects may reduce the size of emotional Stroop effects on the mixed Stroop task. We discuss the implications of these carry-over effects for research using the emotional Stroop task.     

BRIEF REPORT: LATENCY FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF ELOPEMENT

Elopement is a potentially dangerous problem behavior prevalent among individuals with developmental disabilities. However, functional analysis of elopement presents unique challenges including potential confounds because of the need for participant retrieval during functional analysis sessions. In the current study, we implemented a latency functional analysis with an eight‐year‐old child with an intellectual disability, in which the dependent measure was latency to elopement. Following the latency functional analysis, a functional communication intervention was developed and its effectiveness in decreasing elopement was evaluated using an ABAB design. Findings suggest that a functional analysis of latency may be a suitable methodology to identify the operant function of elopement. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

BRIEF REPORT The dynamic aspects of emotional facial expressions

In this study, we presented computer‐morphing animations of the facial expressions of six emotions to 43 subjects and asked them to evaluate the naturalness of the rate of change of each expression. The results showed that the naturalness of the expressions depended on the velocity of change, and the patterns for the four velocities differed with the emotions. Principal component analysis of the data extracted the structures that underlie the evaluation of dynamic facial expressions, which differed from previously reported structures for static expressions in some aspects. These results suggest that the representations of facial expressions include not only static but also dynamic properties.     

BRIEF REPORT Perception of the duration of emotional events

Participants were trained on a temporal bisection task in which visual stimuli (a pink oval) of 400 ms and 1600 ms served as short and long standards, respectively. They were then presented comparison durations between 400 ms and 1600 ms, represented by faces expressing three emotions (anger, happiness, and sadness) and a neutral‐baseline facial expression. Relative to the neutral face, the proportion of long responses was higher, the psychophysical functions shifted to the left, and the bisection point values were lower for faces expressing any of the three emotions. These findings indicate that the duration of emotional faces was systematically overestimated compared to neural ones. Furthermore, consistent with arousal‐based models of time perception, temporal overestimation for the emotional faces increased with the duration values. It appears, therefore, that emotional faces increased the speed of the pacemaker of the internal clock.     

BRIEF REPORT Bilinguals' recall and recognition of emotion words

Recall of emotion words is superior to neutral words. Prior work reported in this journal (Anooshian & Hertel, 1994) found that this effect was absent in a second language. Words in a second language may thus lack the emotional associations of words acquired in childhood. To determine whether memory probes may be generally useful for assessing emotionality effects in a first versus a second language, Anooshian and Hertel's paradigm was extended in several ways. Recall was compared to recognition, and a variety of types of emotion words were studied, including taboo terms, and phrases likely to be learned in childhood (reprimands). Superior memory for emotion words was obtained in both the recall and recognition tasks, but this occurred in both the first and second language and indeed was stronger, for some stimuli, in the second language. This suggests that, even for bilingual speakers who acquire their second late (after age 12), words in the second language retain rich emotional associations.     

BRIEF REPORT: PSYCHOLINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE AS AN INDICATOR OF MODERNIZATION

The Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) was administered to 80 Ss from four cultural systems of varying degrees of modernization in Sierra Leone. Extensive univariate results were reporbed by Karr (1969). This short note indicates the utility of muliivariate analyses. Multiple dis- criminant analysis was applied to the nine ITPA subtests, resulting in two significant discriminsant functions. The first function separated the groups along the hypothesized modernization continuum. The second function in- dicated one way in which bhe hypothesized levels of modernization did not hold up under empirical investigation.     

BRIEF REPORT: THE EQUIVALENCE OF TWO MULTIVARIATE CLASSlFICATION SCHEMES

The equivalence of two multivariate classification schemes is shown when the sizes of the samples drawn from the populations to which assignment is required are identical. One scheme is based on posterior probabilities determined from a Bayesian density function; the second scheme is based on likelihood ratio discriminated scores. Both of these procedures involve prior probabilities; if estimates of these priors are obtained from the identical sample sizes, the equivalence follows.     

BRIEF REPORT Self‐reference,ambiguity, and dysphoria

The present study examined two aspects of a dysphoric attentional bias: (1) the role of the emotional tone of the stimuli; and (2) the role of self‐referential processing. A total of 40 nondepressed participants were divided into groups of high and low dysphoria and then primed using a series of formal and self‐referent tasks. Word fragments were presented, using a computer. Each word fragment could be completed with either of two solutions: (i) a word primed through a formal learning process: or (ii) a word primed through a self‐referential process. Results indicated that dysphoric participants; (1) showed a bias towards negative information in general; and (2) showed a bias towards using self‐referent words to complete ambiguous word fragments, independent of the emotional tone of the stimuli. The implications of these findings for both the dysphoric self‐concept and cognitive therapy are discussed.     

BRIEF REPORT Gratitude and prosocial behaviour: An experimental test of gratitude

McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson (2001) posited that gratitude prompts individuals to behave prosocially. However, research supporting the prosocial effect of gratitude has relied on scenario and self-report methodology. To address limitations of previous research, this experiment utilised a laboratory induction of gratitude, a method that is potentially more covert than scenarios and that elicits actual grateful emotion. Prosocial responses to gratitude—operationalised as the distribution of resources to another—were paired with a self-report measure of gratitude to test the prosocial effect of gratitude. To investigate positive mood as an alternative explanation, this experiment compared responses of individuals receiving a favour to responses of individuals receiving a positive outcome by chance. A total of 40 participants were randomly assigned to either a Favour or Chance condition. Participants receiving a favour helped more and reported more gratitude compared to participants in the Chance condition.     

BRIEF REPORT: Intrusive Thoughts and Intrusive Memories in a Nonclinical Sample

We investigated the relative frequency and aversiveness of intrusive thoughts and memories by eliciting the five most common of each in a mixed-sex nonclinical sample. Intrusive memories were a common phenomenon, although not as common as intrusive thoughts. When memories were elicited first, memories and thoughts were rated as equally pleasant, but thoughts were related as more unpleasant when they were elicited first. The most intrusive memory was associated more often with sadness and happiness, whereas the most intrusive thought was associated more often with fear.     

BRIEF REPORT: BARTLETT'S TEST OF SPHERICITY AND CHANCE FINDINGS IN FACTOR ANALYSIS

Bartlett's test of sphericitg: was applied to a correlation matrix computed on random normal deviates by Armstrong and Soelberg (1968), and returned a chi square value indicating that the matrix could have been generated from a population where the correlation coefficients are zero. These results re- emphasize the desirability of computing this test prior to proceeding t o factor extraction, and in accord with the findings of other writers, indicate this test to be sensitive in detecting results which can be ascribed to chance.