Selective bias in retrospective self-reports of negative mood states

Retrospective self-report questionnaires of negative mood states experienced in the past (e.g., the most recent two weeks) tend to be exaggerated in a negative direction relative to the average ratings given to the moods contemporaneously. The present study used three measures that decomposed mood states into their constituent elements to examine whether certain components selectively contributed to this negative bias or all components contributed to this bias equally. Fifty-three participants responded to the questionnaires via the Internet every evening for two weeks. On the final day, participants recalled and retrospectively evaluated their mood state over the previous two weeks as a whole. The results revealed that memory bias occurred selectively for negative mood states. Anxiety, depression, and helplessness were exaggerated in the global compared with the daily ratings. None of the positive mood components showed any bias in the retrospective global ratings. A regression analysis indicated that the difference in daily and global ratings for negative mood was partly explained by peak and final scores. Higher peak scores led to greater overestimation whereas final scores had smaller effects; the higher the final score was, the less participants overestimated their negative mood in the global ratings.     

The effects of acute stress and perceptual load on distractor interference

Selective attention can be improved under conditions in which a high perceptual load is assumed to exhaust cognitive resources, leaving scarce resources for distractor processing. The present study examined whether perceptual load and acute stress share common attentional resources by manipulating perceptual and stress loads. Participants identified a target within an array of nontargets that were flanked by compatible or incompatible distractors. Attentional selectivity was measured by longer reaction times in response to the incompatible than to the compatible distractors. Participants in the stress group participated in a speech test that increased anxiety and threatened self-esteem. The effect of perceptual load interacted with the stress manipulation in that participants in the control group demonstrated an interference effect under the low perceptual load condition, whereas such interference disappeared under the high perceptual load condition. Importantly, the stress group showed virtually no interference under the low perceptual load condition, whereas substantial interference occurred under the high perceptual load condition. These results suggest that perceptual and stress related demands consume the same attentional resources.     

The attentional blink: Increasing target salience provides no evidence for resource depletion. A commentary on Dux, Asplund, and Marois (2008)

The authors have argued elsewhere that the attentional blink (AB; i.e., reduced target detection shortly after presentation of an earlier target) arises from blocked or disrupted perceptual input in response to distractors presented between the targets. When targets replace the intervening distractors, so that three targets (T1, T2, and T3) are presented sequentially, performance on T2 and T3 improves. Dux, Asplund, and Marois (2008) argued that T3 performance improves at the expense of T1, and thus provides evidence for resource depletion. They showed that when T1 is made more salient (and presumably draws more resources), an AB for T3 appears to reemerge. These findings can be better explained, however, by (1) the relationship between T1 and T2 (not T1 and T3) and (2) differential salience for T3 in the long-lag condition of Dux et al.’s study. In conclusion, the Dux et al. study does not present a severe challenge to input control theories of the AB.     

The Amazing Life and Times of Oliva Espín

ABSTRACT

Oliva Espín is a prolific feminist and multicultural writer and psychologist who has significantly contributed to feminist therapy throughout her career. This biographical article highlights her many contributions to feminism, feminist psychology, and humankind.     

NMDA receptor-dependent processes in the medial prefrontal cortex are important for acquisition and the early stage of consolidation during trace, but not delay eyeblink conditioning

Permanent lesions in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) affect acquisition of conditioned responses (CRs) during trace eyeblink conditioning and retention of remotely acquired CRs. To clarify further roles of the mPFC in this type of learning, we investigated the participation of the mPFC in mnemonic processes both during and after daily conditioning using local microinfusion of the GABA(A) receptor agonist muscimol or the NMDA receptor antagonist APV into the rat mPFC. Muscimol infusions into the mPFC before daily conditioning significantly retarded CR acquisition and reduced CR expression if applied after sufficient learning. APV infusion also impaired acquisition of CRs, but not expression of well-learned CRs. When infusions were made immediately after daily conditioning, acquisition of the CR was partially impaired in both the muscimol and APV infusion groups. In contrast, rats that received muscimol infusions 3 h after daily conditioning exhibited improvement in their CR performance comparable to that of the control group. Both the pre- and post-conditioning infusion of muscimol had no effect on acquisition in the delay paradigm. These results suggest that the mPFC participates in both acquisition of a CR and the early stage of consolidation of memory in trace, but not delay eyeblink conditioning by NMDA receptor-mediated operations.     

Priority Information Used for the Processing of Japanese Sentences: Thematic Roles,Case Particles or Grammatical Functions?

The present study investigated scrambling effects on the processing of Japanese sentences and priority information used among thematic roles, case particles and grammatical functions. Reaction times for correct sentence decisions were significantly prolonged for scrambled active sentences with transitive verbs in the first experiment and with ditransitive verbs in the second experiment. Errors were made with scrambled sentences more than canonical sentences in both experiments, which suggested that scrambling effects were apparent in active sentences. Passive sentences in the third experiment indicated that canonical order defined based on case particles, not thematic roles, was more quickly and accurately identified than scrambled order. Potential sentences in the fourth experiment and causative sentences in the fifth experiment indicated that the processing of scrambled sentences based on grammatical functions, but not on case particles, required longer reaction times and resulted in higher error rates than canonical sentences. Consequently, scrambling effects in the present study indicated that neither thematic roles nor case particles can provide fully-satisfactory information for canonical phrase order, and that only grammatical functions offer satisfactory information in all types of sentences.     

Development of upper visual field bias for faces in infants

The spatial location of the face and body seen in daily life influences human perception and recognition. This contextual effect of spatial locations suggests that daily experience affects how humans visually process the face and body. However, it remains unclear whether this effect is caused by experience, or innate neural pathways. To address this issue, we examined the development of visual field asymmetry for face processing, in which faces in the upper visual field were processed preferentially compared to the lower visual field. We found that a developmental change occurred between 6 and 7 months. Older infants aged 7–8 months showed bias toward faces in the upper visual field, similar to adults, but younger infants of 5–6 months showed no such visual field bias. Furthermore, older infants preferentially memorized faces in the upper visual field, rather than in the lower visual field. These results suggest that visual field asymmetry is acquired through development, and might be caused by the learning of spatial location in daily experience.     

Mere presence of distractors: Another determining factor for the attentional blink1

Abstract: When two visual targets are presented in rapid succession, perception of the second target is deteriorated if the temporal lag between the two targets is short (0–300 ms). This ‘attentional blink’ (AB) phenomenon has been believed to occur only when the second target is followed by a backward mask or when there is a task switching between two targets. The present study revealed another determining factor for the occurrence of the AB, the presence or absence of a distractor stream. Five experiments examined the effect of possible confounding factors in the extant literature and suggested that the mere presence of a distractor stream affects the processing of targets even when the observers tried to ignore them, resulting in a processing delay. This effect is discussed in a model of AB deficit in terms of decay of the second target's representation.     

The effect of observer's set on the processing of temporally distributed items1,2

Abstract: Perception of the second of two rapidly presented targets is impaired when the temporal lag between them is short (attentional blink, AB). Previous studies showed two types of AB functions. One is that the performance for the second target has been found to be most impaired at the shortest lag (Lag 1), that is, when the second target appeared directly after the ?rst target. The other is that the performance was not impaired at Lag 1 (Lag 1 sparing). The present study examined whether the task set of observers determines the occurrence of Lag 1 sparing. The experiment revealed that Lag 1 sparing occurred only when the observers were informed of the relationships of target locations. The present results extend the explanation of Lag 1 sparing by attentional gating ( Visser, Zuvic, Bischof, & Di Lollo, 1999 b) and suggest that this gating system is not stimulus‐driven but subject to goal‐directed control.     

Suicides in active-duty enlisted Navy personnel.

Cases of completed suicide among U.S. Navy enlisted personnel occurring from 1974 through 1985 were identified and compared with similar rates in the U.S. general population and in the U.S. Army. Although the Navy suicide rate was the lowest of the three groups, this rate increased between 1976 and 1983. This was in contrast to national and Army trends during the same period. Young white males in the apprentice/recruit and blue-collar occupations had the highest rates of completed suicide in the Navy. Recommendations for prevention and treatment are discussed.