The effects of fear arousal,fear position,fear exposure,and sidedness on compliance with dietary instructions

Investigated the effects of fear arousal and sidedness variables on compliance with a dietary regimen. Experiments involved 202 women volunteers who were 10 per cent or more overweight, and aged 20-60 years. Experiment 1 involved a 3 (low, medium, high fear) × 2 (single, multiple exposure to fear message) × 2 (one-, two-sided communication) design. The fear levels involved discussing the health hazards of obesity. Experiment 2 manipulated the fear-message position relative to the recommendations (fear-recommendations, recommendations-fear, fear-delay-recommendations). Persuasive impact was measured via follow-up weight checks at 2, 4, 8, and 16 weeks. Results indicate nonsignificant effects from sidedness and pre-standardised fear levels. Using subjects' fear arousal ratings medium fear is significantly better (p < .025), supporting Janis's curvilinear hypothesis. A single exposure to the fear message is superior (p < .025) to multiple exposures, the interaction with time being highly significant (p < .001). Experiment 2 results indicate the optimum position for the fear message as immediately prior to recommendations (p < .025). Results support both cognitive and fear-reduction hypotheses, but the latter is favoured.     

The effects of sex and fear level of subjects on the snake approach behaviour of dyads

Dyads, differing in composition in terms of sex and fear level of subjects, were video-recorded whilst interacting with a harmless snake. Approach measures were taken for all subjects in the form of latency of first touch, percentage time in contact with snake and intensity of interaction from no touching at all through to picking up. As hypothesized, ‘fearless’ subjects showed more approach than ‘fearful’, with latency giving the most significant difference. Male and female scores were not significantly different on any measure, although there was a significant interaction on latency between sex and fear level, due to the performance of fearful females. Contrary to hypothesis there was no evidence that males regardless of fear level showed any more approach when paired with a female partner. There was evidence in line with hypothesis that fearless females showed more approach when paired with other females. Fearless males showed more approach when paired with fearful partners and fearful females when paired with fearless partners. These results are discussed in terms of the literature on the laboratory study of human fear and therapeutic modeling.     

The effects of exposure duration and practice on the immediate memory spans of children and adults

Immediate memory spans for alphabetic items were determined for second-grade, fifth-grade, and adult subjects. Subjects were tested on three days, ten trials per day at each of three exposure durations: 15, 50, and 200 msec. One half of the subjects were presented with exposure durations in an ascending order, the other half in a descending order. The results indicated that immediate memory span increases with age and practice. The exposure duration effect depended on the order and day in which durations were presented. There was a suggestion that the exposure duration effect was also dependent upon the age and sex of the subject. The ordering of array positions from most accurately reported to least accurately reported was identical for all three age levels, indicating that scanning strategies are well established at an early age.     

Face recognition memory: The effects of exposure duration and encoding instruction

Two experiments test the effects of exposure duration and encoding instruction on the relative memory for five facial features. Participants viewed slides of Identi-kit faces and were later given a recognition test with same or changed versions of each face. Each changed test face involved a change in one facial feature: hair, eyes, chin, nose or mouth. In both experiments the upper-face features of hair and eyes were better recognized than the lower-face features of nose, mouth, and chin, as measured by false alarm rates. In Experiment 1, participants in the 20-second exposure duration condition remembered faces significantly better than participants in the 3-second exposure duration condition; however, memory for all five facial features improved at a similar rate with the increased duration. In Experiment 2, participants directed to use feature scanning encoding instructions remembered faces significantly better than participants following age judgement instructions; however, the size of the memory advantage for upper facial features was less with feature scanning instructions than with age judgement instructions. The results are discussed in terms of a quantitative difference in processing faces with longer exposure duration, versus a qualitative difference in processing faces with various encoding instructions. These results are related to conditions that affect the accuracy of eyewitness identification.     

The effects of delay and exposure duration in a face recognition task

Face recognition was investigated in a successive comparison task. Subjects were required to makesame/different judgments about pairs of Photo-fit faces that were either identical or differed by a single feature. Picture information extraction and retention were examined by manipulating stimulus delay and exposure duration. Results indicated that overall performance was better for the top of the face. The eyes and mouth were more vulnerable than the rest of the face to recognition decrement after a delay, possibly due to their role in facial expression. When features were ranked in order of processing difficulty for each subject, it appeared that features were processed serially and delay affected a retrieval stage, while short exposure affected a visual comparison stage of processing. For the feature ranks, a single dimension of “salience” appeared to be both perceptual and mnemonic.     

The effects of self-exposure instructions on agoraphobic outpatients

Nineteen agoraphobic outpatients were randomly assigned to four sessions of either (1) Exposure: planning and discussion of exposure homework tasks requiring patients to enter and remain in phobic situations hitherto avoided; or (2) Control: discussion of marital, family and social difficulties and strategies for dealing with these.A small but significant effect was found at post-test and at one month follow-up in favour of the exposure condition. It is suggested that this variable should be controlled in future relevant experiments and is worth including as an inexpensive expedient of active treatment of phobias.     

The effects of exposure duration and surrounding frames on direct and indirect tilt aftereffects and illusions

Direct and indirect tilt illusions (TIs) have been shown to have different mechanisms, because spatial parameters that affect the one do not affect the other, and vice versa. The indirect TI, for example, is reduced markedly by a surrounding vertical square frame, a manipulandum that has no effect on the direct TI (Wenderoth & Johnstone, 1988a). In six experiments, we show that both direct and indirect TIs are enhanced in magnitude with short (10-60 msec) exposures; that tilt aftereffects (TAEs) induced with short test exposures are entirely comparable in magnitude; that a surrounding square frame reduces indirect TAEs but not direct TAEs, just as occurs with the TI; and that when the surrounding frame is present during adaptation only, test only, and both or neither, the greatest indirect TAE reduction occurs when the frame is present during the test. These results are consistent with the view (Wenderoth & Johnstone, 1987, 1988a, 1988b) that indirect TIs and TAEs may not reflect temporary neural modification based on V1 lateral inhibitory processes but rather the operation of more global, possibly extrastriate, orientation-constancy mechanisms.     

The effects of learning instructions and cueing on free recall

Eighty unrelated high-imagery words were presented for free recall learning in groups of four words each. Learning instructions were varied, with one group told to relate the words in each input group by means of images, another group told to use verbal (sentence) mediators, and the control group not given specific learning instructions. During recall, list items were presented as retrieval cues in some conditions. In comparison with the control condition, imagery and verbal mediation instructions produced greater recall, more clustering, and a largez number of instances per group recalled. When the retrieval cues were selected such that one cue came from each of the input groups and when the strength of within-group organization was quite high, Ss recalled more words and a larger number of input groups. It was concluded that instructions and cueing conditions influenced different aspects of the free recall process. Instructions influenced the organization of individual words into units, and cueing affected the retrieval of specific units.