Blacky the Cat,I: Semantic Differential Ratings

Two criteria for an alternate form of the Blacky Test, designed to facilitate female identification with Blacky are suggested: 1) the main character must be perceived by females as more feminine than the original stimulus, and 2) the main character must not be viewed differently by male and female Ss in other respects. Semantic Differential ratings of both the original Blacky stimuli and a revised “sexually neutral” cat form (N = 320) indicated that an alternate version could meet both these requirements. Differences between the responses of female Ss to both forms were further shown to be a) generally specific to female Ss, b) specific to the character of Blacky (rather than Mama) and c) often enhanced when Ss made judgments after having seen all twelve cartoons of the test, rather than only the first two.     

An item response theory/confirmatory factor analysis of the Autobiographical Memory Test

The Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT) is used to assess the degree of specificity of autobiographical memory. The AMT usually contains cue words of both positive and negative valence, but it is unclear whether these valences form separate factors or not. Accordingly, confirmatory factor analysis assessed whether the AMT measures one overall factor, or whether different cue types are related to different factors. Results were consistent across three datasets (N = 333, N = 405, and N = 336). A one-factor model fitted each dataset well, which suggests that responses to positive and negative cues are related to the one construct. In addition, item response theory analyses showed that the AMT is most precise for people who score low on memory specificity. Implications for using the AMT with high-functioning samples are discussed.     

Relativism, sceptical paradox, and semantic blindness

Relativism about knowledge attributions is the view that a single occurrence of ‘S knows [does not know] that p’ may be true as assessed in one context and false as assessed in another context. It has been argued that relativism is equipped to accommodate all the data from speakers’ use of ‘know’ without recourse to an error theory. This is supposed to be relativism’s main advantage over contextualist and invariantist views. This paper argues that relativism does require the attribution of semantic blindness to speakers, viz. to account for sceptical paradoxes and epistemic closure puzzles. To that end, the notion of semantic blindness is clarified by distinguishing between content-blindness and index-blindness, and it is argued that the attribution of index-blindness required by the relativist account is implausible. Along the way, it is shown that error-theoretic objections from speakers’ inter-contextual judgments fail against relativism.     

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity and affect regulation

The effect of specificity of autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval on the affective impact of an emotional event was examined. In Study 1 (N = 90) the impact of a negative and positive experience was compared between student participants who habitually retrieve autobiographical memories (AMs) in a specific way and participants who generally retrieve less specific memories. In Study 2 (N = 48) the effect of an experimentally induced (specific vs. overgeneral) retrieval style on the impact of a negative experience was studied in student participants who habitually retrieve less specific memories. Study 1 replicated the finding of Raes, Hermans, de Decker, Eelen, & Williams (2003 Raes, F, Hermans, D, de Decker, A, Eelen, P and Williams, JMG. (2003). Autobiographical memory specificity and affect regulation: An experimental approach. Emotion, 3: 201–206. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that a negative event leads to less subjective distress in low‐specific participants as compared with high‐specific participants. However, both groups did not differ in their affective reaction to a positive event. Important, reduced memory specificity was associated with “repressive coping”, providing further evidence for the idea that reduced memory specificity is used as an avoidant or repressive‐defensive mechanism to regulate negative affect (Williams, 1996 Williams JMG (1996) Depression and the specificity of autobiographical memory In D. C. Rubin (Ed.) Remembering our past. Studies in autobiographical memory (pp. 244–267) Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). In Study 2, participants who were induced to retrieve memories in an overgeneral way experienced more distress following a negative event as compared with participants who were induced to retrieve memories in a specific way. Results are discussed in the context of recent findings concerning AM specificity and emotion regulation (Philippot, Schaefer, & Herbette, 2003 Philippot, P, Schaefer, A and Herbette, G. (2003). Consequences of specific processing of emotional information: Impact of general versus specific autobiographical memory priming on emotion elicitation. Emotion, 3: 270–283. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Directions for further research are suggested.     

Attentional bias towards angry faces is moderated by the activation of a social processing mode in the general population

ABSTRACT

Dot-probe studies usually find an attentional bias towards threatening stimuli only in anxious participants, but not in non-anxious participants. In the present study, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether attentional bias towards angry faces in unselected samples is moderated by the extent to which the current task requires social processing. In Experiment 1, participants performed a dot-probe task involving classification of either socially meaningful targets (schematic faces) or meaningless targets (scrambled schematic faces). Targets were preceded by two photographic face cues, one angry and one neutral. Angry face cues only produced significant cueing scores (i.e. faster target responses if the target replaced the angry face compared to the neutral face) with socially meaningful targets, not with meaningless targets. In Experiment 2, participants classified only meaningful targets, which were either socially meaningful (schematic faces) or not (schematic houses). Again, mean cueing scores were significantly moderated by the social character of the targets. However, cueing scores in this experiment were non-significant in the social target condition and significantly negative in the non-social target condition. These results suggest that attentional bias towards angry faces in the dot-probe task is moderated by the activation of a social processing mode in unselected samples.     

Acoustic correlates of emotional dimensions in laughter: Arousal,dominance, and valence

Although laughter plays an essential part in emotional vocal communication, little is known about the acoustical correlates that encode different emotional dimensions. In this study we examined the acoustical structure of laughter sounds differing along four emotional dimensions: arousal, dominance, sender's valence, and receiver-directed valence. Correlation of 43 acoustic parameters with individual emotional dimensions revealed that each emotional dimension was associated with a number of vocal cues. Common patterns of cues were found with emotional expression in speech, supporting the hypothesis of a common underlying mechanism for the vocal expression of emotions.     

Threatening joy: Approach and avoidance reactions to emotions are influenced by the group membership of the expresser

It has been repeatedly stated that approach and avoidance reactions to emotional faces are triggered by the intention signalled by the emotion. This line of thought suggests that each emotion signals a specific intention triggering a specific behavioural reaction. However, empirical results examining this assumption are inconsistent, suggesting that it might be too short-sighted. We hypothesise that the same emotional expression can signal different social messages and, therefore, trigger different reactions; which social message is signalled by an emotional expression should be influenced by moderating variables, such as the group membership of the expresser. In two experiments, we show that group membership influences approach and avoidance reactions to emotional expressions: Emotions (fear and happiness) expressed by in-group members elicited concordant behaviour, whereas emotions expressed by out-group members activated the reverse pattern. A third experiment, in which participants directly evaluated smiling and fearful individuals resembling in-group and out-group members supported this result.     

Underlying processes in the implicit association test: dissociating salience from associations

The authors investigated whether effects of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) are influenced by salience asymmetries, independent of associations. Two series of experiments analyzed unique effects of salience by using nonassociated, neutral categories that differed in salience. In a 3rd series, salience asymmetries were manipulated experimentally while holding associations between categories constant. In a 4th series, valent associations of the target categories were manipulated experimentally while holding salience asymmetries constant. Throughout, IAT effects were found to depend on salience asymmetries. Additionally, salience asymmetries between categories were assessed directly with a visual search task to provide an independent criterion of salience asymmetries. Salience asymmetries corresponded to IAT effects and also accounted for common variance in IAT effects and explicit measures of attitudes or the self-concept.