Transient attention does increase perceived contrast of suprathreshold stimuli: a reply to Prinzmetal, Long, and Leonhardt (2008)

Carrasco, Ling, and Read (2004) showed that transient attention increases perceived contrast. However, Prinzmetal, Long, and Leonhardt (2008) suggest that for targets of low visibility, observers may bias their response toward the cued location, and they propose a cue-bias explanation for our previous results. Our response is threefold. First, we outline several key methodological differences between the studies that could account for the different results. We conclude that the cue-bias hypothesis is a plausible explanation for Prinzmetal et al.'s (2008) results, given the characteristics of their stimuli, but not for the studies by Carrasco and colleagues, in which the stimuli were suprathreshold (Carrasco, Ling, & Read, 2004; Fuller, Rodriguez, & Carrasco, 2008; Ling & Carrasco, 2007). Second, we conduct a study to show that the stimuli used in our previous studies are not near-threshold, but suprathreshold (Experiment 1, Phase 1). Furthermore, we found an increase in apparent contrast for a high-contrast stimulus when it was precued, but not when it was postcued, providing more evidence against a cue-bias hypothesis (Experiment 1, Phase 2). We also show that the visibility of the stimuli in Prinzmetal et al. (2008) was much lower than that of Carrasco, Ling, and Read, rendering their stimuli susceptible to their cue-bias explanation (Experiment 2). Third, we present a comprehensive summary of all the control conditions used in different labs that have ruled out a cue bias explanation of the appearance studies. We conclude that a cue-bias explanation may operate with near-threshold and low-visibility stimuli, as was the case in Prinzmetal et al. (2008), but that such an explanation has no bearing on studies with suprathreshold stimuli. Consistent with our previous studies, the present data support the claim that attention does alter the contrast appearance of suprathreshold stimuli.     

Suicide and African American teenagers: risk factors and coping mechanisms

In this study we investigated whether locus of control, hopelessness, and depression were primary risk factors for suicide ideation and attempts in African American youth, and whether congruency between locus of control and religious coping style reduced suicide risk. The sample consisted of 176 African American high school students (115 females; 61 males). Multiple and logistic regression were used to determine relationships among study variables. Depression was found to mediate the relationship between hopelessness and suicidal behaviors. External locus of control led to greater risk for hopelessness and depression, with a trend in the predicted direction for suicide attempts. Religious coping style alone was not always associated with reduction of risk of suicidal behaviors, yet some evidence suggests that congruency between locus of control and religious coping style reduces risk. Results provide additional support for suicide interventions to target depressive symptoms. Results also highlight the importance of examining the role of culturally salient variables such as fatalism and religious coping style when developing intervention programs for suicide.     

Goal-directed memory: the role of cognitive control in older adults' emotional memory

The present study revealed that older adults recruit cognitive control processes to strengthen positive and diminish negative information in memory. In Experiment 1, older adults engaged in more elaborative processing when retrieving positive memories than they did when retrieving negative memories. In Experiment 2, older adults who did well on tasks involving cognitive control were more likely than those doing poorly to favor positive pictures in memory. In Experiment 3, older adults who were distracted during memory encoding no longer favored positive over negative pictures in their later recall, revealing that older adults use cognitive resources to implement emotional goals during encoding. In contrast, younger adults showed no signs of using cognitive control to make their memories more positive, indicating that, for them, emotion regulation goals are not chronically activated.     

The interaction of objective and subjective organizations in a localization search task

We investigated how both objective and subjective organizations affect perceptual organization and how this perceptual organization, in turn, influences observers’ performance in a localization search task. Two groups of observers viewing exactly the same stimuli (objective organization) performed in significantly different ways, depending on how they were induced to parse the display (subjective organization). In Experiments 1 and 2, the observers were asked to describe the location of a tilted target among a varying number of vertical or horizontal distractors. Subjective organization was induced by instructing observers to parse the display into either three horizontal regions (rows) or three vertical regions (columns). The position of the target was critical: location performance, as assessed by reaction time and errors, was consistently impaired at the locations adjacent to the boundaries defining the regions, producing what we refer to as thesubjective boundary effect. Furthermore, the extent of this effect depended on whether the stimulus-driven and conceptually driven information concurred or conflicted. This made location information more or less accessible. In Experiment 1, the strength of objective grouping was a function of the proximity of the items (near or far conditions) and their orientation in a 6×6 matrix. In Experiment 2, the strength of objective grouping was a function of similarity of color (items were color coded by rows or by columns) and the orientation of the items in a 9×9 matrix. The subjective boundary effect was more pronounced when the display promoted grouping in the direction orthogonal to that of the task (e.g., when observers parsed by rows but vertical distractors were closer together [Experiment 1] or color coded [Experiment 2] to induce global columns). In contrast, this effect decreased when the direction of both objective and subjective organizations was parallel (e.g., when observers parsed by rows and horizontal distractors were closer together [Experiment 1] or were color coded [Experiment 2] to induce global rows). A localization search task proved to be an ideal forum in which objective and subjective organizations interacted. We discuss how these results indicated that observers’ performance in a localization task was determined by the interaction of objective and subjective organizations, and that the resulting perceptual organization constrained coarse location information.     

“Yes,I Can,I Feel Good,and I Just Do It!” On Gain Cycles and Spirals of Efficacy Beliefs,Affect, and Engagement

Taking Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory as our starting point, we tested how efficacy beliefs (self‐efficacy and perceived collective efficacy) reciprocally influence activity engagement (vigor, dedication, and absorption) indirectly through their impact on positive affect (enthusiasm, satisfaction, and comfort) over time. We conducted two longitudinal studies using independent samples. Study 1 is a two‐wave longitudinal field study that examines gain cycles regarding the dynamic relationships among self‐efficacy, positive affect, and work engagement in 274 secondary school teachers. Study 2 is a three‐wave longitudinal laboratory study about gain spirals in the dynamic relationships among collective efficacy beliefs, positive affect, and task engagement in 100 university students working in groups. Our findings show that: (1) efficacy beliefs reciprocally influence activity engagement indirectly through their impact on positive affect over time; (2) enthusiasm is the positive affect with the strongest effect on activity engagement; and (3) a gain spiral exists whereby efficacy beliefs increase over time due to engagement and positive affect (most notably enthusiasm). Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications in terms of Social Cognitive Theory.     

Teams make it work: how team work engagement mediates between social resources and performance in teams

In this study we analyze the mediating role of team work engagement between team social resources (i.e., supportive team climate, coordination, teamwork), and team performance (i.e., in-role and extra-role performance) as predicted by the Job Demands-Resources Model. Aggregated data of 533 employees nested within 62 teams and 13 organizations were used, whereas team performance was assessed by supervisor ratings. Structural equation modeling revealed that, as expected, team work engagement plays a mediating role between social resources perceived at the team level and team performance as assessed by the supervisor.     

About the dark and bright sides of self-efficacy: workaholism and work engagement

Taking the Resources-Experiences-Demands Model (RED Model) by Salanova and colleagues as our starting point, we tested how work self-efficacy relates positively to negative (i.e., work overload and work-family conflict) and positive outcomes (i.e., job satisfaction and organizational commitment), through the mediating role of workaholism (health impairment process) and work engagement (motivational process). In a sample of 386 administrative staff from a Spanish University (65% women), Structural Equation Modeling provided full evidence for the research model. In addition, Multivariate Analyses of Variance showed that self-efficacy was only related positively to one of the two dimensions of workaholism, namely, working excessively. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical contributions in terms of the RED Model.     

Sleep deprivation and stressors: Evidence for elevated negative affect in response to mild stressors when sleep deprived

Stress often co-occurs with inadequate sleep duration, and both are believed to impact mood and emotion. It is not yet known whether inadequate sleep simply increases the intensity of subsequent stress responses or interacts with stressors in more complicated ways. To address this issue, we investigated the effects of one night of total sleep deprivation on subjective stress and mood in response to low-stress and high-stress cognitive testing conditions in healthy adult volunteers in two separate experiments (total N = 53). Sleep was manipulated in a controlled, laboratory setting and stressor intensity was manipulated by changing difficulty of cognitive tasks, time pressure, and feedback about performance. Sleep-deprived participants reported greater subjective stress, anxiety, and anger than rested controls following exposure to the low-stressor condition, but not in response to the high-stressor condition, which elevated negative mood and stress about equally for both sleep conditions. These results suggest that sleep deprivation lowers the psychological threshold for the perception of stress from cognitive demands but does not selectively increase the magnitude of negative affect in response to high-stress performance demands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).