Enduring consequences of experimentally induced biases in interpretation

Previous research has demonstrated that it is possible to induce biases in the interpretation of ambiguous text passages by training. Participants consistently trained to interpret emotionally ambiguous passages in either a negative or positive direction show training-congruent effects when presented with new ambiguous material. These training effects are demonstrated by participants' subsequent recognition ratings for disambiguating sentences, which represent both possible meanings of the novel ambiguous test passages. In this series of experiments, we investigated the durability of these training effects over time spans of up to 1 day and found them to be robust. The findings encourage us to believe that induced biases may serve as a useful analogue to those observed clinically.     

Socioeconomic status and insomnia

This investigation compared the likelihood of insomnia and insomnia-related health consequences among individuals of different socioeconomic status. A random-digit dialing procedure was used to recruit at least 50 men and 50 women in each age decade from 20 to 80+ years old. Participants completed 2 weeks of sleep diaries as well as questionnaires related to fatigue, sleepiness, and psychological distress. Socioeconomic status was measured by education status assessed at 3 different levels: individual, household, and community. Results indicated that individuals of lower individual and household education were significantly more likely to experience insomnia even after researchers accounted for ethnicity, gender, and age. Additionally, individuals with fewer years of education, particularly those who had dropped out of high school, experienced greater subjective impairment because of their insomnia.     

Neural mechanisms of affective interference in schizotypy

Negatively valenced stimuli foster cognitive impairment in schizotypy and schizophrenia. To identify relevant brain mechanisms, the authors had 16 positive-schizotypy and 16 control participants perform an emotional Stroop task, judging the ink color of negative and neutral words during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of regional brain activity. Schizotypy individuals showed increased right and decreased left activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, indicating a deficit in maintenance of attentional set in the presence of negative emotional distractors. They also showed abnormal activity in ventral limbic areas, including decreased activity in nucleus accumbens and increased activity in hippocampus and amygdala, a circuit involved in the integration of cognitive and affective processes. These results indicate that aspects of emotion-cognition processes and the brain mechanisms that implement them are similar in schizotypy and schizophrenia.     

Asymmetric interference between sex and emotion in face perception

Previous research with speeded-response interference tasks modeled on the Garner paradigm has demonstrated that task-irrelevant variations in either emotional expression or facial speech do not interfere with identity judgments, but irrelevant variations in identity do interfere with expression and facial speech judgments. Sex, like identity, is a relatively invariant aspect of faces. Drawing on a recent model of face processing according to which invariant and changeable aspects of faces are represented in separate neurological systems, we predicted asymmetric interference between sex and emotion classification. The results of Experiment 1, in which the Garner paradigm was employed, confirmed this prediction: Emotion classifications were influenced by the sex of the faces, but sex classifications remained relatively unaffected by facial expression. A second experiment, in which the difficulty of the tasks was equated, corroborated these findings, indicating that differences in processing speed cannot account for the asymmetric relationship between facial emotion and sex processing. A third experiment revealed the same pattern of asymmetric interference through the use of a variant of the Simon paradigm. To the extent that Garner interference and Simon interference indicate interactions at perceptual and response-selection stages of processing, respectively, a challenge for face processing models is to show how the same asymmetric pattern of interference could occur at these different stages. The implications of these findings for the functional independence of the different components of face processing are discussed.     

Convergence and predictive validity in measures of optimism and pessimism: Sequential studies

Optimism and pessimism are personality variables that have repeatedly been shown to affect health, job performance, and social relationships. Various instruments purport to measure these dispositions that differ substantially in their theoretical and measurement models. While research has examined relations between subsets of these measures, their unique predictive ability has been neglected. Three sequential studies evaluated the interrelation and predictive ability of the three most utilized instruments, the Life Orientation Test (LOT), the O/P Instrument (OPI) and variants of the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ). Consistent with expectations, measures sharing a future-expectancy component (LOT and OPI) were moderately related and most predictive of health, depression, and coping. ASQ measures were modestly related to the LOT and OPI and offered less consistent predictions.     

The relationship between online visual representation of a scene and long-term scene memory

In 3 experiments the author investigated the relationship between the online visual representation of natural scenes and long-term visual memory. In a change detection task, a target object either changed or remained the same from an initial image of a natural scene to a test image. Two types of changes were possible: rotation in depth, or replacement by another object from the same basic-level category. Change detection during online scene viewing was compared with change detection after delay of 1 trial (Experiments 2A and 2B) until the end of the study session (Experiment 1) or 24 hr (Experiment 3). There was little or no decline in change detection performance from online viewing to a delay of 1 trial or delay until the end of the session, and change detection remained well above chance after 24 hr. These results demonstrate that long-term memory for visual detail in a scene is robust.     

Influence of virtual reality training on the roadside crossing judgments of child pedestrians

The roadside crossing judgments of children aged 7, 9, and 11 years were assessed relative to controls before and after training with a computer-simulated traffic environment. Trained children crossed more quickly, and their estimated crossing times became better aligned with actual crossing times. They crossed more promptly, missed fewer safe opportunities to cross, accepted smaller traffic gaps without increasing the number of risky crossings, and showed better conceptual understanding of the factors to be considered when making crossing judgments. All age groups improved to the same extent, and there was no deterioration when children were retested 8 months later. The results are discussed in relation to theoretical arguments concerning the extent to which children's pedestrian judgments are amenable to training.     

Social recognition memory: the effect of other people's responses for previously seen and unseen items

When people discuss their memories, what one person says can influence what another person reports. In 3 studies, participants were shown sets of stimuli and then given recognition memory tests to measure the effect of one person's response on another's. The 1st study (n = 24) used word recognition with participant-confederate pairs and found that the effect of confederate responses on participant responses was larger for previously unseen items than for previously seen items (omega(p) = .23). This finding was replicated in the 2nd study, which used photographs of cars (n = 24). In the 3rd study (n = 54), which used photographs of faces with participant pairs, the effect was also larger for unseen items. Results indicate that people rely more on other people's memories for unremembered objects than for remembered objects. This is important for both theories of memory and applications (e.g., witnesses talking, students studying together).     

Novel visual stimuli activate a population of neurons in the primate orbitofrontal cortex

Neurons were found in the rhesus macaque anterior orbitofrontal cortex that respond to novel but not to familiar visual stimuli. Some of these neurons responded to all novel stimuli, and others to only a subset (e.g., to novel faces). The neurons have no responses to familiar reward- or punishment-associated visual stimuli, nor to taste, olfactory or somatosensory inputs. The responses of the neurons typically habituated with repeated presentations of a novel stimulus, and five presentations each 1s was the median number for the response to reach half-maximal. The neurons did not respond to stimuli which had been novel and shown a few times on the previous day, indicating that the neurons were involved in long-term memory. The median latency of the neuronal responses was 120 ms. The median spontaneous firing rate was 1.3 spikes/s, and the median response to novel visual stimuli was 6.0 spikes/s. These findings indicate that the long-term memory for visual stimuli is information that is represented in a region of the primate anterior orbitofrontal cortex.     

Epidemiological Measurement of Children's and Adolescents' Exposure to Community Violence: Working with the Current State of the Science

A number of measures have been used in epidemiological studies of children's exposure to community violence, yet the quality of these instruments is not uniformly good. This paper undertakes a systematic review of the most commonly used (or most promising) self-report or interview-administered instruments, with regard to their conceptual bases and psychometric properties. Based on the review, recommendations are made for working with the current state of the science in order to move the field forward. A key recommendation is for sounder conceptualization of work in the field and greater transparency in the reporting of research, in order to facilitate the comparability of studies.