On the role of reduced auditory feedback and kinesic self-stimulation during Stroop Color-Word performance1

Feedback from one's own voice provides important vocal–motor cues for effective cognitive processing. Reduction of such feedback is known to disturb such functioning. Work in our laboratory has shown that kinesic self-stimulation also plays an important role in cognition, and appears to regulate the focusing of attention under conditions of distraction. The present study investigated the effects of both auditory feedback and kinesic self-stimulation in the regulation of cognitive interference during performance of the Stroop Color-Word Task. Twelve subjects were tested on the Stroop task under conditions of normal and occluded hearing. Kinesic self-stimulation and response errors during color-word performance were recorded on video tape. The findings indicated that not only did self-stimulation increase when voice feedback was reduced, but that this increase was associated with a reduction in specific types of color-word performance errors. Individual differences revealed that high kinesic responders made significantly fewer errors in task performance than did low kinesic responders. Results were interpreted as revealing a kinesic feedback mechanism which has adaptive significance in regard to self-editing when auditory feedback is reduced.     

Differential effects of priming at the encoding and judgment stage

Two experiments investigated whether the direction of priming effects depends on the processing stage at which the individual links the prime to a trait that is applicable to the evaluation of an ambiguously described target person. In line with previous research, it is hypothesized that assimilation effects will emerge when primes are processed in terms of a trait concept that is applicable to the encoding task. However, when the primes are not processed in applicable trait terms, they may still affect subsequent Judgments if the individual recalls the prime when judging the target along a trait dimension. In this case, the primes may serve as an anchor, resulting in contrast effects. Two experiments, in which subjects were primed with names of prototypically nice or hostile famous individuals under instructions that did or did not prompt subjects to process the prime in applicable trait terms, supported these hypotheses. Implications for the emergence of priming effects in everyday social interaction are discussed.     

Risk taking in achievement-oriented situations: Do people really maximize affect or competence information?

Several studies of choice behavior (risk taking) in achievement-oriented situations are reanalyzed. The usual ways of pooling all choices over trials and subjects conceal the series of subjects' decisions and the dynamics inherent in these decisions. A basic strategy of subjects in an achievement-oriented choice situation seems to be to start with an easy task, choose a more difficult one whenever you succeed, and stay mostly at the same difficulty level whenever you fail. A computer model, in which such simple assumptions are made, generates preference functions over the order of difficulty levels that are indistinguishable from those found in empirical studies. It is concluded that the study of choice behavior in achievement-oriented situations should be based on the analysis of the series of single decisions by one subject. For this we need models that allow the predictions of such decisions and the prediction of action-controlling cognitions and emotions.