Habituation of the visual orienting response in young children1, 2

The eye tracks of 29 children (aged 2-7 years) were recorded by a reflection eye camera while they were looking ata4by 4 matrix of 16 white geometric shapes. When a circle suddenly changed to red, the children immediately looked at it for two-thirds of the presentation time, a reading which was 16 times the initial level before this novel color was introduced. With repeated presentations of the novel red circle display, progressively fewer fixations fell on the red circle. After 20 trials, this habituation was incomplete, and the red circle was still drawing six times the initial amount of looking found on the original white circle. Ss were apparently relatively slow to form a neural representation of the visual environment due to the wide range of choices in the original display. The age of the children had no monotonic effect on the high, and virtually equal, initial visual concentration, nor on the rate at which habituation occurred. An interesting contrast, therefore, appeared between these data and the marked age effects noted by others in the recognition of letter-like shapes. Unlike recognition tasks, orienting and habituation need a minimum of stimulus interpretation. Children, even as young as 2 years, have demonstrated a remarkable efficiency in these processes of orienting and habituation to novelty.     

Impaired memory retrieval correlates with individual differences in cortisol response but not autonomic response

Stress can enhance or impair memory performance. Both cortisol release and sympathetic nervous system responses have been implicated in these differential effects. Here we investigated how memory retrieval might be affected by stress-induced cortisol release, independently of sympathetic nervous system stress responses. Thirty-two healthy participants (16 women) learned emotionally arousing and neutral words. One hour later, half of the participants underwent a stressor (cold pressor test) and the other half, a control warm water exposure, both followed by a delayed free recall task. The stressed participants were split into those who did (responders, N = 8) and those who did not (nonresponders, N = 6) show a cortisol response. Both responders and nonresponders showed comparable sympathetic nervous system activity (skin conductance level) during the cold pressor. The cortisol responders recalled significantly fewer words compared to nonresponders, and compared to control participants; this effect was most pronounced for moderately arousing words (compared to highly arousing and neutral words). These results suggest that individual differences in cortisol reactivity affect memory retrieval performance, and help to explain the differential effects of stress on memory.     

Individual differences in electrodermal activity as a function of subjects' anxiety

The present study examines the relationships between electrodermal activity (EDA) and anxiety in an attention demanding task, by looking at the neuropsychology of individual differences. 261 normal volunteer female students completed the Cattell anxiety form, and only subjects with extreme anxiety scores (deciles 0, 1 and 2 on the one hand, N = 22; deciles 9 and 10 on the other hand, N = 24) were retained. Subjects were presented a set of 16 stimuli (8 neutral and 8 emotional slides) in a randomized order (different for each subject), of 35 msec and 1 sec duration and a randomized inter-stimuli time of average 45 sec. Skin conductance levels (SCLs), interstimuli spontaneous fluctuations (SSCRs), skin conductance response (SCR) amplitudes and electrodermal latencies were recorded, as well as skin temperature (ST). Highly anxious subjects showed significantly lower SCLs, lower SCR amplitudes, fewer interstimuli SSCRs and longer latencies than subjects with low anxiety, whereas ST did not differ between groups. These results, showing that in normal subjects there are individual electrodermal differences as a function of trait-anxiety scores, are discussed both in terms of individual differences in self-regulatory neural processes and in reference to Gray's anxiety theory.     

The effects of individual differences in test anxiety and type of orienting task on levels of organization in free recall

In Experiment 1, high and low test-anxious subjects recalled a list composed of words that could be organized either by taxonomic categories or first letters. High-anxiety subjects showed less recall and conceptual clustering. There was no anxiety difference in alphabetic clustering, but low-anxiety subjects used alphabetic clusters to bridge transitions between conceptual categories more often than did high-anxiety subjects. An initial orienting task which required semantic processing reduced the recall deficit for high-anxiety subjects but not the clustering deficit. Low-anxiety subjects seemed minimally affected by a nonsemantic-orienting task. Experiment 2 used a list that could be organized by associates or rhymes. High-anxiety subjects recalled less and exhibited less clustering of both types. The nonsemantic-orienting task depressed performance for both anxiety levels, though the effect was somewhat greater for high-anxiety subjects. Overall, these results provide little evidence to support the hypothesis that high-anxiety subjects process differently only for semantic content, but methodological limitations preclude unequivocally rejecting that view.     

Habituation of orienting reaction in night terrors

A polygraphic study on resistance to habituation of the somatic (EMG), autonomic (finger vasoconstriction, galvanic skin reaction, respiration, pulse) and EEG (acoustic-evoked potential, EEG-blocking reaction) components of the orienting reaction elicited by a repetitive auditory stimulus was performed in 36 patients with night terrors and in 72 matched subjects in two control groups. The study evidenced a significantly higher resistance to habituation of the orienting reaction in patients with night terrors than in normal subjects (control group I) but significantly lower than in patients with symptomatic epilepsy (control group II). The severity of these habituation disturbances in patients with night terrors depended on the patients’ age, the history of nocturnal events and their clinical form, as well as on the etiology of episodes. The habituation changes found in patients with night terrors may be ascribed to the nervous disorders of functional and/or organic nature which generated also the night terrors episodes.     

The role of individual differences,response profiles,and treatment consonance in anxiety disorders

The importance of individual differences, response profiles, and treatment consonance in anxiety-disorders clinical research is reviewed. Anxiety-disorders assessment, synchrony, and concordance phenomena are examined within the framework of the tripartite model. Issues regarding response stereotypy, response specificity, and etiological vs. current response typologies are discussed. Interactions of varying response profiles with different treatment modalities are addressed, in terms of both previous and prospective studies. A preliminary classification schema is offered, for illustrative purposes, with empirical support for the differential outcome of anxiety patients receiving consonant vs. nonconsonant response profile × treatment type pairings. Hypotheses are presented regarding predicted effects of consonant vs. nonconsonant subject-treatment interactions. Recommendations for programmatic research are offered to accelerate scientific inquiry into the role of individual differences and response profiles in anxiety-disorders assessment, treatment, and research.Preparation of this paper was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 36299.     

Individual differences in text comprehension as a function of test anxiety and prior knowledge

This study investigated the relationship between reading comprehension and comprehension monitoring with undergraduates (223 women, 69 men). Further, the effect of test anxiety and of prior knowledge on reading comprehension and on comprehension monitoring was examined in groups of students of equal intellectual ability. Students with high scores on reading comprehension performed better on a comprehension monitoring task as well. Individual differences in reading comprehension with a multiple-choice response format emerged as a function of the interaction between test anxiety and prior knowledge. Students with low prior knowledge and high test anxiety performed worst of all. We found a far less detrimental effect of test anxiety and prior knowledge on monitoring comprehension than on reading comprehension.