Simultaneous and sequential Feature Negative discriminations: Elemental learning and occasion setting in human Pavlovian conditioning

Using a conditioned suppression task, we investigated simultaneous (XA−/A+) vs. sequential (X → A−/A+) Feature Negative (FN) discrimination learning in humans. We expected the simultaneous discrimination to result in X (or alternatively the XA configuration) becoming an inhibitor acting directly on the US, and the sequential discrimination in X becoming a negative occasion setter acting indirectly on the A-US link. After simultaneous FN training, X+ training completely abolished discriminative XA/A responding (Experiment 1), and X transferred inhibition to new targets B regardless of their training history (B+ or YB−/B+) (Experiment 2), suggesting X became a simple inhibitor. After sequential FN training, X showed the predicted selective transfer to a target B that also had been modulated (Y → B−/B+), not to a simple excitor (B+) (Experiment 4), but turning X into an excitor (X+) likewise disrupted discriminative X → A/A responding (Experiment 3). This suggests that X acquired a combination of modulatory and direct inhibitory properties, and that the joint contribution of both components is necessary for the suppression of the target-induced US activation.     

Person-organization fit: Testing socialization and attraction-selection-attrition hypotheses

Using the socialization and attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) frameworks, this study examined the relation between employees’ work values and their organization’s values (person-organization fit). With a two year time interval, 140 respondents participated in a longitudinal study. After entry, socialization served to enhance homogeneity. The work values underwent small changes and the perception of fit with the organization grew. Despite high retention rates results confirmed the attrition effect. Results indicated that the lower the perceived match between own and organizational values at entry, the more likely it was that someone left the organization over time. We concluded that socialization as well as attrition mechanisms were present at the same time.     

Unhappy self-esteem: a meaningful exception to the rule.

Self-esteem and well-being are often seen as closely related and sometimes even considered conceptually identical. In marked contrast to this association, the focus of this article is on experiences of a high level of self-esteem coexisting with a low level of well-being: unhappy self-esteem. Although these experiences constitute an exception to the general rule, they nevertheless have a theoretically coherent character. In this article, a framework was used in which the self was considered an organized process, and an idiographic assessment procedure--the method of self-confrontation--was called upon. The self-statements of 15 subjects in the Netherlands showing unhappy self-esteem were compared, and the phenomenon was found to clearly refer to anger and opposition.     

Transcendence and psychological health: studies with long-term participants of the transcendental meditation and TM-Sidhi program

We investigated the nature of the relationship between experiences of transcendental consciousness and psychological health. In Study 1, three groups with different levels of experience in transcendental meditation (TM) and in the TM-Sidhi program (techniques that have been shown to produce experiences of transcendental consciousness) were studied, using the self-investigation method of Hermans (1976). We employed blind interviewers and raters with various attitudes toward TM to minimize the possible impact of a variety of artifacts. Cross-sectionally, experience with TM and the TM-Sidhi program was positively related to a general measure of psychological health (p = .002); longitudinally, the meditating groups improved more than the control group on the psychological health measure (p less than .03). In Study 2, two contrast groups of long-term participants were similar on several confounding variables but differed on physiological indicators of experiences of transcendental consciousness. The groups with the positive physiological indicators showed a trend toward higher scores on the psychological health factor (p = .092), indicating that psychological health may be developed through the systematic cultivation of transcendental meditation and the TM-Sidhi program.     

Anxiety meets fear in perception of dynamic expressive gaze

This study investigated in 2 experiments whether reflexive cuing of attention that occurs after perception of a gaze cue is greater for fearful than for happy faces in normal participants, as hypothesized from a social neuroscience perspective. To increase neuroecological validity, dynamic stimulus presentation was used to display faces that simultaneously morphed from a neutral expression into a happy or fearful one and shifted eye gaze from the center to the periphery. Shifts of attention resulting from a natural fearful gaze were expected to be related to participants' anxiety traits, in agreement with the often found increased selective attention to threat in anxious participants. Both hypotheses were confirmed: Fearful faces induced stronger gaze cuing than happy faces, and the strength of this cuing effect was correlated to participants' anxiety levels. These results suggest a neural network, which integrates the processing of gaze, expression, and emotional states to adaptively prime vigilance under threatening circumstances.     

Trauma and autobiographical memory specificity in depressed inpatients

Research on autobiographical memory has shown that clinical depression is associated with a difficulty in retrieving specific autobiographical memories in response to cue words. This study examined the relation between lack of autobiographical memory specificity and self-reported trauma in a group of depressed adults (N = 23). In addition to the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986) participants completed a number of questionnaires assessing the presence of traumatic experiences in the past, level of depression and neuroticism. The number of specific responses was not related to depression severity, but was significantly associated with the presence and severity of reported physical abuse. Participants who had been victim of physical abuse were less specific than participants who had not been confronted with such physical adversities. The results are discussed in the context of a functional hypothesis about the developmental relations between memory specificity, trauma and depression.     

Emotional stroop performance for masked angry faces: it's BAS, not BIS

Theoretical models concerning selective attention to emotional stimuli predict heightened vigilance to angry faces in people with heightened trait anxiety or greater activity of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS). Recent evidence from electroencephalographic lateralization and affect studies and from studies assessing attentional biases to angry faces suggest, however, that heightened anger and activity of the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) should predict vigilant responding to angry faces. Social anxiety should predict avoidance of angry faces. Results from a masked emotional Stroop task verified these hypotheses, but an unmasked emotional Stroop provided no reliable relations. This dissociation confirms earlier claims that masked emotional Stroop performance is impervious to conscious control over the cognitive-emotional processes, as measured by the Stroop task.     

Reality monitoring and metacognitive beliefs related to cognitive confidence in obsessive-compulsive disorder

The present study investigated general reality monitoring ability, and selective reality monitoring ability for anxiety relevant actions in a group of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and a group of non-anxious controls. In addition, reality monitoring confidence was assessed, as well as specific meta-cognitive beliefs related to cognitive confidence (by means of the Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ)). No differences were found between both groups in actual reality monitoring ability. Unlike previous studies, the reality monitoring task included actions that were related to the individual concerns of the OCD patients and were ideographically selected. Nevertheless, no differential reality monitoring effect was observed for the anxiety relevant stimuli. Data from the MCQ, however, revealed that OCD patients had less overall confidence in their memory for actions and their reality monitoring ability. Analysis of the confidence ratings of the reality monitoring task showed that this reduced confidence was restricted to the neutral actions. No differences were observed for patients that reported low or high frequencies of checking behaviour. The whole of these data do not support memory deficit models of OCD, but are in line with recent emphasis on the importance of memory confidence and other meta-cognitive beliefs in OCD.     

The person as co-investigator in self-research: Valuation theory

Recent developments in self-research show the self to be increasingly conceived as an organized and highly dynamic phenomenon. In combination with the arguments presented in the preceding article, these developments are a good reason for adopting a method in which the psychologist and the subject work together in the study of the self: The self-confrontation method and the theory on which it is based—valuation theory—are presented as an example of such an approach. This method construes the self as an organized process of valuations, a valuation being any unit of meaning that the person finds of importance in thinking about his or her life. Formulated in the language of the person him- or herself; these valuations and how they develop over time are considered in a dialogue between the psychologist and the subject. For the purposes of demonstration, two phenomena that are not easily observedare discussed here: (a) the existence of an imaginal figure not visibly present but functioning as a signifcant other in the person's daily life, and (b) the presence of a character in a recurring dream, which later gets included as an integral part of the self: Finally, the present approach is briefly discussed as representing a constructivist view of personality psychology.