Incongruency effects in affective processing: automatic motivational counter-regulation or mismatch-induced salience?

Attention is automatically allocated to stimuli that are opposite in valence to the current motivational focus (Rothermund, 2003; Rothermund, Voss, & Wentura, 2008). We tested whether this incongruency effect is due to affective-motivational counter-regulation or to an increased salience of stimuli that mismatch with cognitively activated information. Affective processing biases were assessed with a search task in which participants had to detect the spatial position at which a positive or negative stimulus was presented. In the motivational condition, positive or negative affective-motivational states were induced by performance feedback after each trial. In the cognitive activation condition, participants memorised the word "good" or "bad" during the search task. The affective incongruency effect was replicated in the motivational condition, whereas an affective congruency effect obtained in the cognitive activation condition. These findings support an explanation of affective incongruency effects in terms of automatic counter-regulation that is motivational in nature.     

Culture modifies the operation of prime-to-behavior effects

Culture affects the extent to which people focus on other people or on the situation in drawing inferences. Building on recent research showing that perceptions of others and situations can mediate prime-to-behavior effects, we tested whether culture would modify both the mechanism and the outcome of primed constructs on behavior. Easterners and Westerners were primed with competitiveness or cooperativeness before playing a social dilemma game with an ambiguously or unambiguously competitive player. Results indicated that the primes had different effects on the social dilemma decisions of Easterners and Westerners and that these effects were due to the different consequences the primes had for Easterners' and Westerners' perceptions of the other player and construals of the situation.     

How to switch on and switch off semantic priming effects for natural and artifactual categories: activation processes in category memory depend on focusing specific feature dimensions

"Semantic priming" refers to the phenomenon that people react faster to target words preceded by semantically related rather than semantically unrelated words. We wondered whether momentary mind sets modulate semantic priming for natural versus artifactual categories. We interspersed a category priming task with a second task that required participants to react to either the perceptual or action features of simple geometric shapes. Focusing on perceptual features enhanced semantic priming effects for natural categories, whereas focusing on action features enhanced semantic priming effects for artifactual categories. In fact, significant priming effects emerged only for those categories thought to rely on the features activated by the second task. This result suggests that (a) priming effects depend on momentary mind set and (b) features can be weighted flexibly in concept representations; it is also further evidence for sensory-functional accounts of concept and category representation.     

The revealing glance: Eye gaze behavior to concealed information

We explored the usefulness of eye fixation durations as a dependent measure in a concealed knowledge test, drawing on Ryan, Hannula, and Cohen (2007), who found eye fixations on a familiar face to be longer than fixations on an unknown face. However, in their study, participants always had to select the known face out of three faces; thus, recognition and response intention could not be differentiated. In the experimental phase of our experiment, participants saw six faces per trial and had to select one of them. We had three conditions: In the first, one of the six faces was a known face, and the participants had to conceal that knowledge and select another face (concealed display); in another, one of the six faces was a known face, and the participants had to select that face (revealed display); or finally, all six faces were unknown, and participants had to select any of the six faces (neutral display). Using fixation durations as the dependent measure, we found a pure and early recognition effect; that is, fixations on the concealed faces (known but not selected) were longer than fixations on the nonselected unknown target faces in the neutral display. In addition, we found a response intention effect; that is, fixation durations on the selected known faces were longer than those on concealed faces (known but not selected).     

Masked emotional priming beyond global valence activations

An immense body of research demonstrates that emotional facial expressions can be processed unconsciously. However, it has been assumed that such processing takes place solely on a global valence-based level, allowing individuals to disentangle positive from negative emotions but not the specific emotion. In three studies, we investigated the specificity of emotion processing under conditions of limited awareness using a modified variant of an affective priming task. Faces with happy, angry, sad, fearful, and neutral expressions were presented as masked primes for 33 ms (Study 1) or 14 ms (Studies 2 and 3) followed by emotional target faces (Studies 1 and 2) or emotional adjectives (Study 3). Participants' task was to categorise the target emotion. In all three studies, discrimination of targets was significantly affected by the emotional primes beyond a simple positive versus negative distinction. Results indicate that specific aspects of emotions might be automatically disentangled in addition to valence, even under conditions of subjective unawareness.     

Self-injury and disordered eating: expressing emotion dysregulation through the body

Previous research has suggested that emotion dysregulation, body‐related concerns, and depressive symptoms are associated with nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI) and disordered eating (DE) separately and in combination. However, it has been difficult to ascertain to what extent these constructs contribute to NSSI and DE given the relatively small number of studies examining their co‐occurrence, particularly among nonclinical samples. Based on responses to self‐report questionnaires, college‐aged women who completed the study were divided into three groups: NSSI only; DE only; and NSSI + DE based on clinical cutoff criteria. Results support hypotheses that emotion dysregulation is a shared vulnerability and that body‐related concerns and depression exhibit unique patterns of association across the three groups. It appears that NSSI is best understood as a response to negative affective states relative to DE, which is best understood as a set of behaviors motivated by body image concerns. The presence of both NSSI and DE is primarily influenced by emotion dysregulation and the dominant difficulties linked to each behavior; depression and body dissatisfaction. These findings suggest that treatment and prevention efforts should emphasize emotion regulation skills and differentially target body concerns or depressive symptoms according to the primary behavioral dysfunction that is present.     

The Penn State Worry Questionnaire—Past Day: Development and Validation of a Measure Assessing Daily Levels of Worry

Based on the widely used Penn State Worry Questionnaire for trait worry, a scale was developed to measure the level of worry experienced during the past 24 h. This instrument, the Penn State Worry Questionnaire—Past Day (PSWQ-PD), was administered to a student sample and two clinical samples. The PSWQ-PD demonstrated high internal consistency, good convergent validity and adequate test-retest reliability. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed that a unifactorial solution provided the best fit. Moreover, it was shown that the PSWQ-PD is a more state-like worry measure than the original PSWQ. The PSWQ-PD is a promising, brief tool for daily worry assessment, which is apt for frequent administration.     

Effect of self-discrepancy on specificity of autobiographical memory retrieval

Research using a cue word paradigm has consistently shown that depression, in both adults and adolescents, is associated with difficulties in retrieving specific autobiographical memories. Inspired by previous work stating that depressed feelings are related to a perceived discrepancy between attributes of the actual and the ideal self, the present study aimed to investigate the hypothesis that cues bringing discrepancies between the actual and ideal selves to the foreground might promote or facilitate the recall of overgeneral (instead of specific) autobiographical memories. In two studies adolescents provided autobiographical memories in response to 10 high-discrepant and 10 low-discrepant words. As predicted, results in both studies showed an effect of cue word discrepancy on the specificity of autobiographical memories such that participants retrieved a smaller proportion of specific and a greater proportion of overgeneral memories in response to high-discrepant words as compared to low-discrepant words. The findings are discussed in terms of the self-memory system (SMS) as a conceptual framework of autobiographical memory (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000).     

Neuropattern: a new translational tool to detect and treat stress pathology. II. The Teltow study

The present study was designed to test the clinical utility of Neuropattern (NP), a newly developed translational diagnostic tool. NP consists of biological and psychological measures that facilitate the identification of functional changes (called "neuropatterns") in patients with stress-related health problems. In this prospective, randomized control trial, we expected NP to improve therapeutic efficacy, as compared with the usual treatment. NP was applied to 101 in-patients suffering from various mental disorders (mainly depression, anxiety disorders, and adjustment disorders), and scoring high on the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) somatization scale. The patients (73% females, mean?±?standard deviation age 46?±?9.03 years) were randomly assigned to two groups: in the experimental group (n?=?51), physicians received results from NP diagnostics, while in the control group (n?=?50), this information was not available until discharge from the hospital. Improvements of symptoms in consequence of treatment were monitored by two self-rating scales, the SCL-90-R and Short Form-12 health survey, and a physician's clinical global rating (Beeintr?chtigungs-Schwere Score). There was a significantly greater improvement in the experimental group in the self-rating assessments on symptom severity (p?=?0.03) and quality of life (p?=?0.05), but not in the observer rating of emotional, physical, and social-communicative functioning (p?=?0.13). Treatment efficacy in patients can be improved by providing the attendant physician and the patient with diagnostic information and treatment recommendations by NP. The role of concrete mediators of treatment efficacy awaits further research.     

Measuring Spirituality as a Universal Human Experience: A Review of Spirituality Questionnaires

Spirituality is an important theme in health research, since a spiritual orientation can help people to cope with the consequences of a serious disease. Knowledge on the role of spirituality is, however, limited, as most research is based on measures of religiosity rather than spirituality. A questionnaire that transcends specific beliefs is a prerequisite for quantifying the importance of spirituality among people who adhere to a religion or none at all. In this review, we discuss ten questionnaires that address spirituality as a universal human experience. Questionnaires are evaluated with regard to psychometric properties, item formulation and confusion with well-being and distress. Although none of the questionnaires fulfilled all the criteria, the multidimensional Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire is promising.