On the generalization of attitude accessibility after repeated attitude expression

The more accessible an attitude is, the stronger is its influence on information processing and behavior. Accessibility can be increased through attitude rehearsal, but it remains unknown whether attitude rehearsal also affects the accessibility of related attitudes. To investigate this hypothesis, participants in an experimental condition repeatedly expressed their attitudes towards exemplars of several semantic categories during an evaluative categorization task. Participants in a control condition performed a non‐evaluative task with the same exemplars and evaluated unrelated attitude objects. After a 30‐minute interval, participants in the experimental condition were faster than controls to evaluate not only the original exemplars but also novel exemplars of the same categories. This finding suggests that the effect of attitude rehearsal on accessibility generalizes to attitudes towards untrained but semantically related attitude objects. © 2016 The Authors. European Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The go/no-go priming task: automatic evaluation and categorisation beyond response interference

The response-window version of a go/no-go (GNG) response priming task is introduced using both evaluative (Experiment 1) and animacy decision (Experiment 2). In each trial a cue indicates which target category should lead to a key-press. The target is preceded by either a congruent or incongruent prime. The standard priming task was added as well. Both tasks yielded robust priming effects. However, they differed regarding a signature of response activation paradigms, that is, the Gratton effect (i.e. smaller priming effects following incongruent trials compared to congruent trials), which is present in the standard task but absent in the GNG task. This indicates that effects found with the GNG task are caused by different processes compared to the standard task. Experiment 3 tested an alternative account to explain priming effects in the GNG task. By manipulating response biases, Experiment 3 provides evidence for this account.     

Which kind of attention is captured by cues with the relative target colour?

Most theories of visual search maintain that attention is selectively tuned to the attributes of the search target (e.g., orange). Conversely, according to the relational account, attention is biased to the relative feature of the target (e.g., redder). However, previous studies that supported the relational account mainly measured mean response times. Hence, the results might not reflect early, perceptual mechanisms (e.g., signal enhancement) but later, decision-based mechanisms (channel selection). The current study tested the relational account against feature-specific theories in a spatial cueing task, in which the targets were backward-masked, and target identification accuracy was measured. The first experiment corroborated earlier results, demonstrating that relational effects are due to signal enhancement. In the second experiment, we chose highly discriminable colours along the blue–red continuum, and obtained results that were more consistent with broad feature-specific rather than relational tuning. The implications of these findings for current theories of attention are discussed.     

Automatic non-associative semantic priming: episodic affective priming of naming responses

Affective priming for associatively unrelated prime-target pairs was investigated using (a) the naming task, (b) a short stimulus onset asynchrony (250 ms), and (c) primes that had acquired their affective connotation during a differential evaluative conditioning procedure. Despite the fact that the primes and the targets were related on the affective dimension only, significant priming emerged. This finding indicates that mere affective overlap is sufficient to produce automatic priming. As such, our results are in line with theoretical accounts of automatic priming that are based on semantic relatedness.     

Positive schizotypal symptoms predict treatment outcome in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Previous research has suggested that the presence of schizotypal personality disorder may represent a risk factor for treatment failure in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Relying on a dimensional approach, the present study investigated whether the predictive importance of schizotypal personality is shared by all of its features to the same extent or whether it is confined to a subset of symptoms. Fifty-three patients underwent multi-modal cognitive-behavioral therapy with or without adjunctive antidepressive medication. Therapy response was defined as a 35% decline of the Y-BOCS total score. At baseline assessment, patients were asked to fill out the schizotypal personality questionnaire, the perceptual aberration scale and the Beck depression inventory. Stepwise regression analysis and group comparisons conducted with the schizotypal and depression scales revealed that elevated scores in the positive schizotypal scales, especially perceptual aberrations, were highly predictive for treatment failure. Responders to treatment and non-responders did not significantly differ on other variables or on scores in two scales which measured response biases. The study provides evidence that positive schizotypal symptoms are antecendents for treatment failure in OCD. It needs to be evaluated whether these at-risk individuals benefit from additional intervention, such as the adminstration of low-dose atypical neuroleptics and specifically tailored behavorial intervention.     

The ADP-IV questionnaire: differential validity and concordance with the semi-structured interview

The Assessment of DSM-IV Personality Disorders questionnaire (ADP-IV) is a self-report measure of the DSM-IV Axis II personality disorders (PDs). The ADP-IV assesses for each DSM-IV criterion its typicality as well as the accompanying distress and impairment. This study investigates two important aspects of the construct validity of the ADP-IV: (a) the differential validity (i.e., the ability to differentiate between a sample of the general Flemish population ( n = 659) and a sample of psychiatric inpatients ( n = 487) with a high prevalence of clinical PD diagnoses, and patients with and without a PD in the psychiatric sample; (b) the convergent validity with the SCID-II semi-structured interview in a population of psychiatric inpatients ( n = 59). The results indicate a good differential validity: the dimensional scales and the categorical measures discriminated well between both groups and between patients with and without a PD diagnosis in the psychiatric sample. Concerning the concordance with the SCID-II, a decent level of agreement is exemplified by a correlation of.67 between the dimensional total scores of both instruments and by kappa coefficients for an "any" Axis II diagnosis at the.50 level. In conclusion, the results indicate that the ADP-IV is an efficient method for assessing PD in dimensional and categorical ways.     

Artificially induced valence of distractor words increases the effects of irrelevant speech on serial recall

In a game context, nonwords either were artificially associated with negative valence or were in some sense neutral or irrelevant. Subsequently, participants memorized target words in silence or while attempting to ignore the negatively valent, irrelevant, or neutral auditory distractor nonwords. The presence of distractor nonwords impaired recall performance, but negative distractor nonwords caused more disruption than neutral and irrelevant distractors, which did not differ in how much disruption they caused. These findings conceptually replicate earlier results showing disruption due to valence with natural language words and extend them by demonstrating that auditory features that may possibly be confounded with valence in natural language words cannot be the cause of the observed disruption. Explanations of the irrelevant speech effect within working memory models that specify an explicit role of attention in the maintenance of information for immediate serial recall can explain this pattern of results, whereas structural models of working memory cannot.     

Individual difference variables,affective differentiation,and the structures of affect

Methodological arguments are usually invoked to explain variations in the structure of affect. Using self-rated affect from Italian samples (N=600), we show that individual difference variables related to affective differentiation can moderate the observed structure. Indices of circumplexity and congruence coefficients to the hypothesized target were used to quantify the observed structures. Results did not support the circumplex model as a universal structure. A circular structure with axes of activation and valence was approximated only among more affectively differentiated groups: students and respondents with high scores on Openness to Feelings and measures of negative emotionality. A different structure, with unipolar Positive Affect and Negative Affect factors, was observed among adults and respondents with low Openness to Feelings and negative emotionality. The observed structure of affect will depend in part on the nature of the sample studied.     

Stereotype threat in the classroom: dejection mediates the disrupting threat effect on women's math performance

Research on stereotype threat, which is defined as the risk of confirming a negative stereotypic expectation about one's group, has demonstrated that the applicability of negative stereotypes disrupts the performance of stigmatized social groups. While it has been shown that a reduction of stereotype threat leads to improved performance by members of stigmatized groups, there is a lack of clear-cut findings about the mediating processes. The aim of the present study is to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms that stereotype threat causes in women working on mathematical problems. In addition, the study set out to test stereotype threat theory in a natural environment: high school classrooms. The experiment involved the manipulation of the gender fairness of a math test. The results indicate that the stereotype threat effect exists in this everyday setting. Moreover, it appears that dejection emotions mediate the effect of threat manipulation.     

Central and autonomic nervous system integration in emotion

Emotions involve physiological responses that are regulated by the brain. The present paper reviews the empirical literature on central nervous system (CNS) and autonomic nervous system (ANS) concomitants of emotional states, with a focus on studies that simultaneously assessed CNS and ANS activity. The reviewed data support two primary conclusions: (1) numerous cortical and subcortical regions show co-occurring activity with ANS responses in emotion, and (2) there may be reversed asymmetries on cortical and subcortical levels with respect to CNS/ANS interrelations. These observations are interpreted in terms of a model of neurovisceral integration in emotion, and directions for future research are presented.