“Of course I will ...”: The combined effect of certainty and level of expectancies on persistence and performance

The importance of performance expectancies for the prediction of regulation of behavior and actual performance has long been established. Building on theories from the field of social cognition, we suggest that the level of performance expectancies, as well as the certainty of the expectancy, have a joint influence on an individual’s beliefs and behavior. In two studies (one cross sectional using a sample of secondary school students and one longitudinal using a sample of university students) we found that expectancies more strongly predicted persistence, and subsequent performance, the more certain the expectancy was. This pattern was found even if prior performance was controlled, as in Study 2. The data give an indication that it may be useful to include certainty as an additional variable in expectancy models.     

Life Satisfaction and Positive Adjustment as Predictors of Emotional Distress in Men With Coronary Heart Disease

This two-wave longitudinal study examines the ability of life satisfaction and adjustment strategies to predict anxious and depressive symptoms in coronary heart disease male patients. Studies have shown that most heart attack survivors report these symptoms, which may worsen the prognosis of the disease. At Time 1, immediately after the first cardiac episode, eighty-eight men reported their life satisfaction levels, adjustment strategies used, and anxious and depressive symptoms experienced. At Time 2, six months later, sixty-three of those patients reported only their anxious and depressive symptoms again. The results showed that, after controlling for demographic variables, anxious and depressive symptoms at Time 1 were predicted by positive adjustment and life satisfaction. At Time 2, after controlling for both demographic variables and Time 1-emotional symptoms, none of the psychological variables predicted anxious symptoms, while depressive symptoms were only predicted by life satisfaction. It is concluded that an adequate level of life satisfaction may help to decrease emotional distress, both short and long term, while the use of positive adjustment strategies is especially important immediately after diagnosis.     

Personal Values and Well-Being among Europeans,Spanish Natives and Immigrants to Spain: Does the Culture Matter?

The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between personal values and well-being. Two correlational studies are presented with the following random samples: (1) four native samples: two samples from the 2006 European Social Survey (Europe n1 = 28,375, Spain n2 = 1,321) and two Basque samples (n3 = 1,770; n4 = 820); and (2) a sample of immigrants in the Basque Country (quasirandom) (n5 = 1,171). Age range of respondents was 18–60 years. The instruments used were for measuring: (1) personal values (Schwartz’s PVQ-40 or PVQ-21), and (2) well-being (Bradburn’s PNA, Goldberg’s GHQ, and life satisfaction and perceived control items from the World Value Survey). Partial correlation analysis was applied, with PVQ scale response bias controlled. The data supported a positive association of hedonic and psychological well-being with openness to experience and individualist values, and a negative association with power and conservation or collectivist values. Satisfaction with life partially mediated the relationship between personal values and affect. The results support a universal association of healthy values with well-being.     

« Femmes au volant,danger au tournant » Les conductrices sont-elles victimes d’une menace de stéréotype ?

Owing to the sexuation of occupations associating technical attributes with men and relational skills with women, the latter are less numerous in professions where driving is involved. The negative stereotype associating women with poor driving skills is thus likely to have a cognitive and behavioral impact. According to the model of the stereotype threat, could activation of the threat inhibit the performance of women in a Highway Code test? After performing an association task that demonstrated a largely negative stereotype, 56 female students took a Highway Code test in two conditions: an experimental condition where the stereotype was activated by a comparison between men and women (N = 17); and a control condition without activation (N = 39). Subjects performed less well in the experimental condition, demonstrating the expected effects of the stereotype threat.     

Relative quantity judgments in South American sea lions (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Otaria flavescens</Emphasis>)

There is accumulating evidence that a variety of species possess quantitative abilities although their cognitive substrate is still unclear. This study is the first to investigate whether sea lions (Otaria flavescens), in the absence of training, are able to assess and select the larger of two sets of quantities. In Experiment 1, the two sets of quantities were presented simultaneously as whole sets, that is, the subjects could compare them directly. In Experiment 2, the two sets of quantities were presented item-by-item, and the totality of items was never visually available at the time of choice. For each type of presentation, we analysed the effect of the ratio between quantities, the difference between quantities and the total number of items presented. The results showed that (1) sea lions can make relative quantity judgments successfully and (2) there is a predominant influence of the ratio between quantities on the subjects’ performance. The latter supports the idea that an analogue representational mechanism is responsible for sea lions’ relative quantities judgments. These findings are consistent with previous reports of relative quantities judgments in other species such as monkeys and apes and suggest that sea lions might share a similar mechanism to compare and represent quantities.     

Cognitive correlates of emotional traits: perceptions of self and others

Two studies examined how individuals' perceptions of self and others are associated with different emotional traits. Study 1 (N = 386) used structural equation modeling of questionnaire data to examine the relations between emotional traits (i.e., affect intensity, affect variability, and trait pleasant and unpleasant affect) and self- and other-perceptions (i.e., self-instability, self-esteem, other-instability, and perceived treatment by others). Study 2 (N = 99) used path analyses of data collected using an event sampling method in which online measures of emotional experiences (i.e., intensity, frequency, and variability of pleasant and unpleasant affect) as well as perceptions of self and others (i.e., self-instability, self-esteem, other-instability, perceived treatment by others) were collected. The strongest and most consistent finding was that affect variability was associated with both self- and other-instability. The results linking affect intensity with self- and other-instability were limited to negative intensity. There was also evidence of pleasant affect being associated with both self-esteem and perceived treatment by others, and unpleasant affect being associated with self-esteem and other-instability.     

Long-lasting attentional influence of negative and taboo words in an auditory variant of the emotional Stroop task

Using an auditory adaptation of the emotional and taboo Stroop tasks, the authors compared the effects of negative and taboo spoken words in mixed and blocked designs. Both types of words elicited carryover effects with mixed presentations and interference with blocked presentations, suggesting similar long-lasting attentional effects. Both were also relatively resilient to the long-lasting influence of the preceding emotional word. Hence, contrary to what has been assumed (Schmidt & Saari, 2007), negative and taboo words do not seem to differ in terms of the temporal dynamics of the interdimensional shifting, at least in the auditory modality.     

The Geneva affective picture database (GAPED): a new 730-picture database focusing on valence and normative significance

In emotional research, efficient designs often rely on successful emotion induction. For visual stimulation, the only reliable database available so far is the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). However, extensive use of these stimuli lowers the impact of the images by increasing the knowledge that participants have of them. Moreover, the limited number of pictures for specific themes in the IAPS database is a concern for studies centered on a specific emotion thematic and for designs requiring a lot of trials from the same kind (e.g., EEG recordings). Thus, in the present article, we present a new database of 730 pictures, the Geneva Affective PicturE Database, which was created to increase the availability of visual emotion stimuli. Four specific negative contents were chosen: spiders, snakes, and scenes that induce emotions related to the violation of moral and legal norms (human rights violation or animal mistreatment). Positive and neutral pictures were also included: Positive pictures represent mainly human and animal babies as well as nature sceneries, whereas neutral pictures mainly depict inanimate objects. The pictures were rated according to valence, arousal, and the congruence of the represented scene with internal (moral) and external (legal) norms. The constitution of the database and the results of the picture ratings are presented.     

Cross-structural priming: prepositional phrase attachment primes relative clause attachment

In this paper we show that attachment height (high vs. low attachment) of a modifier to a complex noun phrase (CNP; e.g., "the servant of the actress"), can be primed between dissimilar syntactic structures. In a sentence completion experiment, we found that the attachment height of a prepositional phrase (PP) in the prime sentence primed the attachment height of a relative clause (RC) in the target sentence. This cross-structural priming effect cannot be explained in terms of the priming of specific phrase-structure rules or even sequences of specific phrase-structure rules (Scheepers, 2003), because the attachment of a PP to a CNP is generated by a different phrase-structure rule than the attachment of an RC. However, the present data suggest that the location at which the RC is attached to the CNP is mentally represented, independent of the specific phrase-structure rule that is attached, or by extension, that the abstract hierarchical configuration of the full CNP and the attached RC is represented (Desmet & Declercq, 2006). This is the first demonstration of a cross-structural priming effect that cannot be captured by phrase-structure rules.     

The use of virtual reality for episodic memory assessment: effects of active navigation

Episodic memory was assessed using Virtual Reality (VR). Forty-four (44) subjects visualized a target virtual apartment containing specific objects in each room. Then they visualized a second virtual apartment comprised of specific objects and objects shared by the two apartments. Subjects navigated in the virtual apartments in one of the following two conditions: active and passive. Four main episodic memory components were scored from the VR exposures: (1) learning effect; (2) active forgetting effect; (3) strategies at encoding and at retrieval; and (4) false recognitions (FRs). The effect of navigation mode (active vs. passive) on each memory component was examined. Active subjects had better learning and retrieval (recognition hits) performances compared to passive subjects. A beneficial effect of active navigation was also observed on the source-based FR rates. Active subjects made fewer source-based FRs compared to passive subjects. These overall results for the effect of active navigation are discussed in terms of the distinction between item-specific and relational processing.