Intention memory and achievement motivation: volitional facilitation and inhibition as a function of affective contents of need-related stimuli

Replicating findings of J. Kuhl and M. Kazén (1999), reduction or removal of Stroop interference was achieved after short exposure to primes eliciting positive affect. This effect was need specific: Stroop interference removal (volitional facilitation) was found with positive primes related to achievement needs but not with positive primes related to affiliation or power needs. Five studies are reported. College students and unemployed university graduates participated in 2 studies each and branch managers of a large insurance company in 1 study. Whereas Stroop interference reduction or removal was found in all groups after positive-achievement primes, the 2 groups of unemployed persons additionally showed a significant increase of Stroop interference (volitional inhibition) after exposure to primes related to negative achievement episodes. Results are discussed in the context of Kuhl's personality systems interactions theory.     

Biased language use in stereotype maintenance: the role of encoding and goals

In 4 studies, the authors investigated the relative impact of biased encoding of information and communication goals on biased language use. A category label (linguistic expectancy bias, Study 1) or a group label (linguistic intergroup bias, Study 2) was presented either before or after a story that participants were asked to communicate. Biased language use only emerged when participants learned about the group membership of the actor or the category label before hearing the story. However, communication goals had an effect on language use at the retrieval stage, independent of encoding (Studies 3 and 4). Although communication goal effects seemed to overwhelm encoding effects, encoding still influenced language use under externally imposed time pressure (Study 3) and self-imposed time constraints (Study 4). This research reaffirms the importance of both cognitive and communicative processes in stereotype maintenance and highlights the conditions under which they each operate.     

The Impact of Personality and Religion on Attitudes toward Alcohol among 16–18 Year Olds in Northern Ireland

Background: Previous research demonstrates a negative relationship between attitude toward alcohol and religiosity. However, what is less apparent is if this relationship may, at least in part, be a function of individual differences in personality, as previous research has demonstrated a relationship between certain measures of personality and both attitude toward alcohol and attitude toward religiosity. The aim of the present study was to explore the impact of personality and the relative efficacy of different markers of religiosity in predicting attitude toward alcohol among a sample of 16–18 year olds in Northern Ireland. Method: The Francis Scale of Attitude toward Alcohol (Francis, 1992c. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 31, 45–50) was administered alongside the Abbreviated Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Francis, Brown, & Philipchalk, 1992. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(4), 443–449), the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (Francis & Stubbs, 1987. Personality and Individual Differences, 8, 741–743) and measures of frequency of personal prayer and church attendance among a sample of 243 16- to 18-year-old sixth-form students in Northern Ireland. Results and conclusion: The data demonstrate that a more prohibitive attitude toward alcohol was correlated with lower psychoticism scores (tendermindedness) and a more positive attitude toward Christianity. Multiple-regression analyses confirm the importance of attitude toward religion in predicting individual differences in attitude toward alcohol.     

The dynamics of self-esteem in adults over a 6-month period: an exploratory study

In this exploratory study, the authors examined the dynamics of self-esteem in 8 adults over a 6-month period. Each participant (M age = 29.4 years, SD = 7.9, SEM = 2.8) completed a single item from the Physical Self Inventory (G. Ninot, M. Fortes, & D. Delignières, 2001) using a 10-cm visual analog scale (horizontal line), twice a day between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m. and between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. Time series analyses, including autocorrelation and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) procedures, showed that global self-esteem dynamics were neither stable, stationary, nor random. The ARIMA procedures indicated that this perceived dimension functioned as a moving average (0, 1, 1) without a significant constant, thus suggesting a short-term dynamic adjustment. This pattern is a typical signature of a complex system submitted to several constraints and not an indication of personality trait or state.     

Early psychological consequences of the March 11, 2004, terrorist attacks in Madrid, Spain

On March 11, 2004, Al-Qaeda set off 10 bombs on several train routes in Madrid. 192 people were killed and 2,000 wounded. In this study, 1,179 questionnaires were administered Week 2 after the attacks to residents 18 years and over from the affected geographical areas. The questionnaire included items about sociodemographic variables and exposure to the attacks. Psychological effects were assessed as presence of acute stress and depressive symptomatology and functional impairment. 46.7% of the sample presented symptomatology of acute stress and 49.6% depressive symptoms. Among the symptoms of acute stress, the most frequent were re-experiencing (72.5%) and dissociative symptoms (71.8%). The chief predicting variables in symptomatology were being female, over 65 yr. old, and a habitual train user. The large number of affected people was refined with an item analysis and the consideration of severity of interference in psychosocial functioning.     

The Spanish version of Betts' Questionnaire Upon Mental Imagery

Sheehan's shortened form of Betts' Questionnaire Upon Mental Imagery is one of the most widely used inventories for measuring imaging. Participants were 562 undergraduate students (414 women and 148 men), with a mean age of 20.2 yr. In a principal components analysis followed by varimax orthogonal rotation for the Spanish version, eight factors were identified, six of which coincide with those of the original English version. Internal consistency was .92 (Cronbach alpha). Scores on the Betts Questionnaire Upon Mental Imagery correlated -.34 with those on the Gordon Test of Visual Imagery Control, .58 with those on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, and .02 with the Verbalizer-Visualizer Questionnaire.     

Determinants of capacious memory: a process-dissociation and experiential approach

The aim of this study is to delineate some important circumstances where exceptionally good memory performance, or capacious memory occurs. A further aim is to study memory processes involved in this memory phenomenon. In a first experiment, participants looked through two series of pictures differing in number and were evaluated in two-alternative forced-choice and yes-no recognition memory tasks combined in a process-dissociation procedure. Moreover, participants were asked to provide remember and know responses to tap recollective experience. The results as to forced-choice recognition task accuracy and according to process-dissociation procedure estimates were replicated in a second experiment with a more intrinsic contextual manipulation, and in a third, forgetting experiment. In addition to replicating previous findings, the results show (a) that capacious memory is associated with strong feelings of recollection; and (b) that familiarity (in terms of the process-dissociation framework) contributes to this phenomenon.     

Visual search for object orientation can be modulated by canonical orientation

The authors studied the influence of canonical orientation on visual search for object orientation. Displays consisted of pictures of animals whose axis of elongation was either vertical or tilted in their canonical orientation. Target orientation could be either congruent or incongruent with the object's canonical orientation. In Experiment 1, vertical canonical targets were detected faster when they were tilted (incongruent) than when they were vertical (congruent). This search asymmetry was reversed for tilted canonical targets. The effect of canonical orientation was partially preserved when objects were high-pass filtered, but it was eliminated when they were low-pass filtered, rendering them as unfamiliar shapes (Experiment 2). The effect of canonical orientation was also eliminated by inverting the objects (Experiment 3) and in a patient with visual agnosia (Experiment 4). These results indicate that orientation search with familiar objects can be modulated by canonical orientation, and they indicate a top-down influence on orientation processing.     

Detection of sound rise time by adults with dyslexia

Low sensitivity to amplitude modulated (AM) sounds is reported to be associated with dyslexia. An important aspect of amplitude modulation cycles are the rise and fall times within the sound. In this study, simplified stimuli equivalent to just one cycle were used and sensitivity to varying rise times was explored. Adult participants with dyslexia or compensated dyslexia and a control group performed a detection task with sound pairs of different rise times. Results showed that the participants with dyslexia differed from the control group in rise time detection and a correlation was found between rise time detection and reading and phonological skills. A subgroup of participants with lower sensitivity to rise time detection characterized by low accuracy in syllable-level phonological skills was found within the dyslexic group. Short stimuli containing only one rise time produced associations with phonological skills and reading, even in a language where the perception of rise time contrasts are not crucial for the signaling of phonemic contrast.     

The perception of second language sounds in early bilinguals: new evidence from an implicit measure

Previous studies have suggested that nonnative (L2) linguistic sounds are accommodated to native language (L1) phonemic categories. However, this conclusion may be compromised by the use of explicit discrimination tests. The present study provides an implicit measure of L2 phoneme discrimination in early bilinguals (Catalan and Spanish). Participants classified the 1st syllable of disyllabic stimuli embedded in lists where the 2nd, task-irrelevant, syllable could contain a Catalan contrastive variation (/epsilon/-/e/) or no variation. Catalan dominants responded more slowly in lists where the 2nd syllable could vary from trial to trial, suggesting an indirect effect of the /epsilon/-/e/ discrimination. Spanish dominants did not suffer this interference, performing indistinguishably from Spanish monolinguals. The present findings provide implicit evidence that even proficient bilinguals categorize L2 sounds according to their L1 representations.