Affective recognition memory processing and event-related brain potentials

Recognition memory was examined for visual affective stimuli using behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures. Images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) that varied systematically in arousal level (low, high) and valence direction (unpleasant, pleasant) were first viewed passively. Then, during a response phase, the original images were intermixed with an equal number of new images and presented, and participants were instructed to press a button to indicate whether each stimulus picture was previously viewed (target) or new (foil). Participants were more sensitive to unpleasant- than to pleasant-valence stimuli and were biased to respond to high-arousal unpleasant stimuli as targets, whether the stimuli were previously viewed or new. Response times (RTs) to target stimuli were systematically affected by valence, whereas RTs to foil stimuli were influenced by arousal level. ERP component amplitudes were generally larger for high than for low arousal levels. The P300 (late positive component) amplitude was largest for high-arousal unpleasant target images. These and other amplitude effects suggest that high-arousal unpleasant stimuli engage a privileged memory-processing route during stimulus processing. Theoretical relationships between affective and memory processes are discussed.     

Predicting academic success with the Big 5 rated from different points of view: Self‐rated,other rated and faked

Self‐ratings of personality predict academic success above general intelligence. The present study replicated these findings and investigated the increment of other‐ratings or intentionally distorted self‐ratings. Participants (N = 145) had to compile a personality questionnaire twice. First they were given neutral instructions. The second time they were asked to imagine a specific applicant setting. Furthermore, two peers rated each participant. Additionally, verbal, numerical and figural reasoning scores were obtained. Grades on a statistics exam obtained 2 months later served as the criterion. Results replicated prior findings and showed incremental validity for self‐ and other‐rated personality, which was stable after controlling for intelligence. Faking had no impact on the domain‐score level, but results on the facet‐score level were less encouraging. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of Happiness on All-Cause Mortality During 15 Years of Follow-Up: The Arnhem Elderly Study

Positive psychological characteristics may be beneficial for physical health. However, prospective data on the effects of happiness on survival is scarce. In a population-based cohort study, the Arnhem Elderly Study, happiness was measured by two items, being: “I have many moments of happiness” and “I often laugh happily”. In Cox proportional hazard models, happiness was analyzed as a predictor of 15 year all-cause mortality for 861 (85%) of 1,012 elderly subjects aged 65–85 years. Results showed that happiness was inversely associated with mortality (age- and sex-adjusted hazard ratio of 0.78 for happy subjects versus unhappy subjects; 95% confidence interval 0.64–0.95, P = 0.01 for trend), but that this relationship was no longer statistically significant after adjustment for physical activity and prevalent morbidity. Thus, happiness predicts for lower mortality, which may partly be mediated by more physical activity and lower morbidity.     

Immediate and delayed effects of word frequency and word length on eye movements in reading: a reversed delayed effect of word length

Three experiments examined the effects in sentence reading of varying the frequency and length of an adjective on (a) fixations on the adjective and (b) fixations on the following noun. The gaze duration on the adjective was longer for low frequency than for high frequency adjectives and longer for long adjectives than for short adjectives. This contrasted with the spillover effects: Gaze durations on the noun were longer when adjectives were low frequency but were actually shorter when the adjectives were long. The latter effect, which seems anomalous, can be explained by three mechanisms: (a) Fixations on the noun are less optimal after short adjectives because of less optimal targeting; (b) shorter adjectives are more difficult to process because they have more neighbors; and (c) prior fixations before skips are less advantageous places to extract parafoveal information. The viability of these hypotheses as explanations of this reverse length effect on the noun was examined in simulations using an updated version of the E-Z Reader model (A. Pollatsek, K. Reichle, & E. D. Rayner, 2006c; E. D. Reichle, A. Pollatsek, D. L. Fisher, & K. Rayner, 1998).     

When is motion 'motion'?

Examples of visual motion have become more and more abstract over the years, leading up to 'third-order' stimuli where direction is actually determined by the observer through top - down attention. But how far can this be pushed--are there motion stimuli that are yet more arbitrary and abstract? Actually, there is a broad class of 'conceptual motion' stimuli--things like a moving grating of faces, or a shifting pattern of words--that are perfect analogs to traditional 'perceptual motion' stimuli, solvable by the same motion computation and for which observers can readily make direction-of-motion judgments. Interestingly though, these do not produce a sensation of motion (among other automatic consequences of motion detection). Here we compare a luminance-based perceptual motion stimulus to a semantic-based conceptual motion stimulus to contrast the psychophysical hallmarks of these motion categories.     

Test of Alternative Hypotheses Explaining the Comorbidity Between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Conduct Disorder

There is significant comorbidity between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorder (CD). The conclusions of studies that examined the causes of comorbidity between ADHD and CD conflict, with some researchers finding support for the three independent disorders model and others finding support for the correlated risk factors model. We tested these models and eleven alternative hypotheses using the same analytical approach. The participants were 110 monozygotic twin pairs and 181 dizygotic twin pairs recruited from the Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center Twin Study. The three independent disorders model did not fit the data, whereas the correlated risk factors model fit the data well. Several other comorbidity models fit the data as well as or better than the correlated risk factors model. The results suggest that correlated risk factors are a better explanation for the comorbidity between ADHD and CD than a third, independent ADHD+CD subtype.     

The End of the Person–Situation Debate: An Emerging Synthesis in the Answer to the Consistency Question

We review the history and current status of the person–situation debate. We propose that the person–situation debate (1) is over and (2) that it ended in a ‘Hegelian’ synthesis. Specifically, we propose the following synthesis resolution: There are multiple types of consistency; behavior is consistent for some of those types and not for others; and personality and traits exist in the forms that produce the consistent behaviors. Incorporating both personality processes and trait structures in research will move personality research forward. In this article, we summarize the advances that the two perspectives have generated by working in opposition; we explain why both sides will suffer from continuing to work independently; and we anticipate several future directions that synthesis‐informed personality research can and should take.     

Evidence for the DTA hypothesis II: Threatening self-esteem increases death-thought accessibility

Three studies assessed the impact of self-esteem threat on death-thought accessibility (DTA). Increased DTA resulted from three distinct types of self-esteem threat. Studies 1 and 2 employed negative feedback procedures in which participants were told that they scored below average on an intelligence test (Study 1), or that their personality was incongruent for their desired career path (Study 2). In Study 3, participants were led to believe that they would give an ill prepared speech in front of their peers. In Studies 1 and 2 DTA was assessed via reaction times on a lexical decision task, while Study 3 employed a word-fragment completion task. Study 3 demonstrated the DTA buffering effect of fortifying self-esteem via self-affirmation. Discussion focused on general implications for TMT, self-esteem, and mental health.     

Extensive measurement with incomparability

Standard theories of extensive measurement assume that the objects to be measured form a complete order with respect to the relevant property. In this paper, representation and uniqueness theorems are presented for a theory that departs radically from this completeness assumption. It is first shown that any quasi-order on a countable set can be represented by vectors of real numbers. If such an order is supplemented by a concatenation operator, yielding a relational structure that satisfies a set of axioms similar to the standard axioms for an extensive structure, we obtain a scale possessing the crucial properties of a ratio scale. Incomparability is thus compatible with extensive measurement. The paper ends with a brief discussion on some possible applications and developments of this result.     

Detecting the presence of a singleton involves focal attention

It has been claimed that the detection of a feature singleton can be based on activity in a feature map that allows coarse coding that something unique is present in the visual field. In the present study, participants detected the presence or absence of a color singleton. Even though the letter form of the color singleton was task-irrelevant, we showed that repeating the letter form of the singleton resulted in repetition priming on the next trial. Such repetition priming was not found when a nonsingleton letter was repeated as the singleton. Since the letter form of the color singleton could only be picked up by focal attention, the repetition priming effect indicates that focal attention is allocated to the feature singleton even in the simplest present-absent feature detection tasks. We showed that this effect is equally strong in conditions of low and high perceptual load. These results are inconsistent with theories that it is possible to detect a feature singleton without directing some form of attention to its location.