Conscious intrusion of threat information via unconscious priming in anxiety

Preferential processing of threat has been implicated in the development and perpetuation of anxiety. We investigated threat processing and anxiety using a subliminal priming paradigm. People with high or low trait anxiety viewed masked, briefly presented words, and then took an exclusion-completion test in which three-letter stems were to be completed without using recently perceived words. Completion rates were greater for words viewed subliminally compared to a baseline estimate. In addition, unconscious priming was greater for threat than for neutral words in the high-trait-anxiety group, and for neutral than for threat words in the low-trait-anxiety group. Enhanced unconscious priming of threat completions among anxious individuals may model intrusions in anxiety, when unconscious processing breaks into consciousness in the form of threat-related intrusive thoughts.     

Affect of the unconscious: Visually suppressed angry faces modulate our decisions

Emotional and affective processing imposes itself over cognitive processes and modulates our perception of the surrounding environment. In two experiments, we addressed the issue of whether nonconscious processing of affect can take place even under deep states of unawareness, such as those induced by interocular suppression techniques, and can elicit an affective response that can influence our understanding of the surrounding environment. In Experiment 1, participants judged the likeability of an unfamiliar item—a Chinese character—that was preceded by a face expressing a particular emotion (either happy or angry). The face was rendered invisible through an interocular suppression technique (continuous flash suppression; CFS). In Experiment 2, backward masking (BM), a less robust masking technique, was used to render the facial expressions invisible. We found that despite equivalent phenomenological suppression of the visual primes under CFS and BM, different patterns of affective processing were obtained with the two masking techniques. Under BM, nonconscious affective priming was obtained for both happy and angry invisible facial expressions. However, under CFS, nonconscious affective priming was obtained only for angry facial expressions. We discuss an interpretation of this dissociation between affective processing and visual masking techniques in terms of distinct routes from the retina to the amygdala.     

Cognitive Tempo in Educable Mentally Retarded Children

The present study investigated the relationship of time and errors on the Matching Familiar Figures test to the mental age of 40 Caucasian male, educable mentally retarded (EMR) children. The children, who ranged in age from six to 18 years, had intelligence test scores of less than 80, were exhibiting problems in adaptive behavior, and were all receiving special education services. An ANOVA revealed that with increasing mental age, elapsed time to first response increased and errors decreased, thus indicating a mental age developmental decrease in impulsivity. For all subjects, time was inversely related to errors. The data suggest that the development of cognitive tempo in EMR children parallels that of nonhandicapped children.     

Political Violence in Northern Ireland

This study examined political violence, focusing on paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland, particularly that of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). The study argued that the parameters of such behavior are similar in some important respects for all conflict-oriented groups, whether national armed forces or paramilitary organizations. The motivation, personal characteristics, and proximate situational influences involved in the violence in Northern Ireland are considered. The analysis draws on concepts and research from social psychology and attempts to construct a tentative psychological framework to facilitate an understanding of political violence in general.     

Children's Use of Gaze and Limb Movement Cues to Infer Deception

A sample of 96 children from kindergarten, 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades judged the truthfulness of peers who varied in gaze and limb movement while providing verbal communications. Results indicated that children attributed greater lying to the peers who displayed indirect rather than direct gaze and active rather than nonactive limb movement. The use of these cues was more evident in 4th- and 6th-grade children than it was in kindergarten and 2nd-grade children. Pilot studies indicated that adults and children as young as 5-6 years of age associated indirect gaze and active limb movement with anxiety. The findings are discussed with respect to children's theory of mind, concepts of lying, understanding of display rules, and learning of physiological cues associated with deception.     

Parental Influence on Attitudes toward Institutional Authority

Two views were examined on the development of attitudes toward institutional authority: one proposing that such attitudes are normally transmitted from parent to offspring, the other that such attitudes develop as a consequence of childhood experiences with the trustworthiness of parental authorities. University students in England (N = 50) completed questionnaires to provide assessments of their attitudes toward authority and those of their parents, and also judgments of the trustworthiness of their parents, as recalled from childhood. Consistent with previous studies, there was evidence of a “generation gap,” with parents being perceived as significantly more proauthority than students. Nevertheless, multiple regression analyses indicated that students' attitudes toward authority were positively and significantly related to the perceived attitudes of their parents, suggesting transmission from parents to offspring. There was no evidence to support the view that the students' attitudes were affected by their judgments of parental trustworthiness.     

How schoolchildren’s acceptance of self and others relate to their attitudes to victims of bullying

Previous research has indicated that harm to the mental health of children who are repeatedly victimised by their peers at school can be ameliorated through social or emotional support provided by other students. In this study we examined whether student provictim attitudes are related to more basic attitudes to self and attitudes to others. Measures of these attitudes were developed for use with children, and shown to be internally consistent and possess concurrent validity. Relations between these variables were then examined with a sample of Australian school children ( $N = 212$ ) aged between 9 and 14 years. Provictim attitudes correlated significantly ( $r = .55$ ) with acceptance of others, but not with acceptance of self ( $r = -.04$ ). Controlling for age and gender, multiple regression analyses confirmed these findings. Attitudes to victims were less positive for older students ( $r = -.22$ ). Gender differences, however, were not significant. These findings suggest that among schoolchildren self-acceptance is unrelated to positive attitudes towards victims, whereas acceptance of others has a moderately strong relation with provictim attitude. Implications for improving attitudes to victims among school children were examined.