Health information processed under limited attention: is it better to be "hot" or "cool?".

INTRODUCTION: The attentional myopia model (T. Mann & A. Ward, 2004) posits that under conditions of limited attention, individuals will be disproportionately influenced by highly salient cues. The "hot/cool" model (J. Metcalfe & W. Mischel, 1999) suggests that cues designed to activate "hot" emotional systems will typically dominate attention and promote relevant behavior more than cues designed to activate "cool" cognitive systems. METHOD: While under conditions of high or low cognitive load, participants heard information regarding the use of a zinc supplement and reported their intentions to try it. In Study 1, cool message cues that promoted the use of zinc were more salient than hot cues that discouraged its use. In Study 2, hot cues that discouraged the use of zinc were more salient than cool cues that promoted its use. RESULTS: In both studies, the imposition of cognitive load increased the influence of salient cues, regardless of their motivational "temperature." CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with the attentional myopia model, either hot or cool health message cues can exert strong influence over individuals, depending on the relative salience of those cues.     

Early Identification of Autism: Implications for Counselors

The author reviews an article (L. C. Eaves & H. H. Ho, 2004) published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders that discussed screening tools and diagnostic assessments used to identify autism in 2‐year‐olds as well as a follow‐up study 2½ years later. The author also provides a discussion of the impact of receiving this diagnosis on families and roles for counselors.     

A Longitudinal Investigation of the Friendship Model of Relational Interdependent Self-Construal

A four-wave longitudinal study examined how relational-interdependent self-construal (RISC) or the tendency to think of one’s self in terms of close relationships, was related to cognitions and behaviors within friendships. In same-sex friendships, in both concurrent and prospective analyses, own RISC was associated with perceived friend’s RISC, own relationship supportive behaviors, and own relationship quality. Perceived friend’s RISC predicted perceived friend’s relationship supportive behaviors. Own behaviors predicted fulfillment of own friendship functions, which predicted own relationship quality. In prospective analyses, behaviors mediated the RISC-friendship function relation, and behaviors and friendship functions both mediated the RISC-relationship quality relation. However, the influence of perceived friend’s RISC on subsequent variables was through its association with perceived friend’s behavior, which was associated with own friendship functions concurrently.     

Utilization of reward-prospect enhances preparatory attention and reduces stimulus conflict

The prospect of gaining money is an incentive widely at play in the real world. Such monetary motivation might have particularly strong influence when the cognitive system is challenged, such as when needing to process conflicting stimulus inputs. Here, we employed manipulations of reward-prospect and attentional-preparation levels in a cued-Stroop stimulus conflict task, along with the high temporal resolution of electrical brain recordings, to provide insight into the mechanisms by which reward-prospect and attention interact and modulate cognitive task performance. In this task, the cue indicated whether or not the participant needed to prepare for an upcoming Stroop stimulus and, if so, whether there was the potential for monetary reward (dependent on performance on that trial). Both cued attention and cued reward-prospect enhanced preparatory neural activity, as reflected by increases in the hallmark attention-related negative-polarity ERP slow wave (contingent negative variation [CNV]) and reductions in oscillatory Alpha activity, which was followed by enhanced processing of the subsequent Stroop stimulus. In addition, similar modulations of preparatory neural activity (larger CNVs and reduced Alpha) predicted shorter versus longer response times (RTs) to the subsequent target stimulus, consistent with such modulations reflecting trial-to-trial variations in attention. Particularly striking were the individual differences in the utilization of reward-prospect information. In particular, the size of the reward effects on the preparatory neural activity correlated across participants with the degree to which reward-prospect both facilitated overall task performance (shorter RTs) and reduced conflict-related behavioral interference. Thus, the prospect of reward appears to recruit attentional preparation circuits to enhance processing of task-relevant target information.     

An electrophysiological dissociation of craving and stimulus-dependent attentional capture in smokers

It has been suggested that over the course of an addiction, addiction-related stimuli become highly salient in the environment, thereby capturing an addict’s attention. To assess these effects neurally in smokers, and how they interact with craving, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) in two sessions: one in which participants had just smoked (non-craving), and one in which they had abstained from smoking for 3 h (craving). In both sessions, participants performed a visual-search task in which two colored squares were presented to the left and right of fixation, with one color being the target to which they should shift attention and discriminate the locations of two missing corners. Task-irrelevant images, both smoking-related and non-smoking-related, were embedded in both squares, enabling the shift of spatial attention to the target to be examined as a function of the addiction-related image being present or absent in the target, the distractor, or both. Behaviorally, participants were slower to respond to targets containing a smoking-related image. Furthermore, when the target contained a smoking-related image, the neural responses indicated that attention had been shifted less strongly to the target; when the distractor contained a smoking-related image, the shift of attention to the contralateral target was stronger. These effects occurred independently of craving and suggest that participants were actively avoiding the smoking-related images. Together, these results provide an electrophysiological dissociation between addiction-related visual-stimulus processing and the neural activity associated with craving.     

Political Moralism and Constitutional Reasoning: A Reply to Bernard Williams

Res Publica - Williams’s well-known critique of the ‘moralism’ of liberal political philosophy—its disconnect from political reality—holds special significance for the...