Objective: Medical treatments take place in social contexts; however, little research has investigated how social modelling might influence treatment outcomes. This experimental pilot study investigated social modelling of treatment effectiveness and placebo treatment outcomes.
Design: Fifty-nine participants took part in the study, ostensibly examining the use of beta-blockers (actually placebos) for examination anxiety. Participants were randomly assigned to observe a female confederate report positive treatment effects (reduced heart rate, relaxed, calm) or feeling no different.
Main outcome measures: Heart rate, anxiety and blood pressure were assessed, as were symptoms and attributed side effects.
Results: Heart rate decreased significantly more in the social modelling compared to control condition, p = .027 (d = .63), and there were trends towards effects in the same direction for both anxiety, p = .097 (d = .46), and systolic blood pressure, p = .077 (d = .51). Significant pre-post placebo differences in heart rate, anxiety and diastolic blood pressure were found in the social modelling group, ps < .007 (ds = .77–1.37), but not the control condition, ps > .28 (ds = .09–.59).
Conclusions: Social observation of medication effectiveness enhanced placebo effectiveness in heart rate, and showed a trend towards enhancing treatment effectiveness in both anxiety and systolic blood pressure. Social modelling may have utility in enhancing the effectiveness of many active medical treatments. 相似文献
Objective: This study was designed to investigate whether whole-body scanning might promote healthy eating and physical activity in women, and to explore the effects of scanning on body image.
Design: Fourteen women aged 22–45 years without histories of eating disorders or whole-body scanning took part in semi-structured interviews before and after scanning. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis.
Results: Scans did not look as expected, and participants expressed ‘surprise’ and ‘shock’. Participants focused on perceived negative aspects of their bodies as revealed in scan images, and agreed that women with body concerns would find scans too ‘real’ and ‘raw’. Eleven women who met UK Government physical activity and healthy eating guidelines reported that the scan provided additional motivation to maintain, and in nine cases to increase, those behaviours. Two women who neither exercised nor ate healthily would not increase physical activity or change their diets significantly following scanning.
Conclusion: Whole-body scanning may enable maintenance or even acceleration of physical activity and healthy eating, but is unlikely to be useful in promoting initiation of these behaviours. Participants engaged in unhelpful body critique when viewing scans; scanning needs to be confined to contexts where support is provided, to avoid increasing body-related concerns. 相似文献
The numerical cognition literature suggests that numerical stimuli (and hence prices) are represented and encoded in memory as magnitude representations (i.e., judgments of relative “size”). The magnitude representation associated with the numerical value of a price may be the same as (congruent) or different from (incongruent) the magnitude representation associated with some other related dimension. We conducted 3 experiments to examine the effects of congruent versus incongruent magnitude representations on price perceptions and purchase intentions. We find that congruent magnitude representations result in more favorable price knowledge (i.e., greater value perceptions and lower price judgments) and increased purchase likelihood. Our findings suggest that consumers are not consciously aware of the role of magnitude representations in influencing price perceptions. 相似文献
Social psychologists have recently shown great interest in implicit attitudes, but questions remain as to the boundary conditions under which such attitudes can predict subsequent judgments and behavior, including reactions toward single category members. In two experiments, we demonstrate the predictive validity of two priming-based measures of implicit attitudes, using a lexical decision task developed by Wittenbrink, Judd, and Park (1997) as well as a perceptual identification paradigm pioneered by Payne (2001). Moreover, we show that these effects were moderated by perceived group variability, such that implicit attitudes offered much stronger predictive leverage if the members of the target category (Blacks) were perceived to be homogenous than if they were not. The implications of the present research for the “moderator approach” previously employed in the explicit attitude literature are discussed. 相似文献
We report the construction of a new operant chamber that incorporates modern computer, touchscreen, and display technologies. An LCD display was housed in the front wall of a lightweight Plexiglas chamber. An Apple eMac computer was used to present visual stimuli on the monitor and to control other chamber events. Responses to the stimuli were recorded using a transparent resistive-type touchscreen that overlaid the monitor. The resulting system is simple and inexpensive to construct but powerful and flexible enough to explore a broad range of issues in animal learning and behavior. 相似文献
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developed (TD) adult participants viewed pairs of scenes for a simple "spot the difference" (STD) and a complex "which one's weird" (WOW) task. There were no group differences in the STD task. In the WOW task, the ASD group took longer to respond manually and to begin fixating the target "weird" region. Additionally, as indexed by the first-fixation duration into the target region, the ASD group failed to "pick up" immediately on what was "weird". The findings are discussed with reference to the complex information processing theory of ASD (Minshew & Goldstein, 1998 ). 相似文献
According to the procedural reinstatement principle, procedural information leads to strong retention but limited transfer, whereas declarative information leads to poor retention but robust transfer. To test this principle in Experiment 1, participants were trained to perform a serial response task in one of 3 conditions (declarative, procedural, mixed) and were subsequently tested in either the same or another condition. Required responses were identical in the three conditions; they differed only in the emphasis given to declarative or procedural information. Consistent with the procedural reinstatement principle, in terms of response time procedural information was more durable than declarative information. In Experiment 2, transfer was assessed using procedural and declarative conditions, but participants transferred between response sequences within those conditions. Although there was transfer in response time between sequences with procedural information, the greatest magnitude of transfer was found in one direction with declarative information, consistent with the procedural reinstatement principle. 相似文献
The present review summarizes research investigating how words are identified parafoveally (and foveally) in reading. Parafoveal and foveal processing are compared when no other concurrent task is required (e.g., in single-word recognition tasks) and when both are required simultaneously (e.g., during reading). We first review methodologies used to study parafoveal processing (e.g., corpus analyses and experimental manipulations, including gaze-contingent display change experiments such as the boundary, moving window, moving mask, and fast priming paradigms). We then turn to a discussion of the levels of representation at which words are processed (e.g., orthographic, phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic). Next, we review relevant research regarding parafoveal processing, summarizing the extent to which words are processed at each of those levels of representation. We then review some of the most controversial aspects of parafoveal processing, as they relate to reading: (1) word skipping, (2) parafoveal-on-foveal effects, and (3) n + 1 and n + 2 preview benefit effects. Finally, we summarize two of the most advanced models of eye movements during reading and how they address foveal and parafoveal processing. 相似文献