Does attitude acquisition in evaluative conditioning without explicit CS-US memory reflect implicit misattribution of affect?

Research that dissociates different types of processes within a given task using a processing tree approach suggests that attitudes may be acquired through evaluative conditioning in the absence of explicit encoding of CS-US pairings in memory. This research distinguishes explicit memory for the CS-US pairings from CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory. It has been suggested that the latter effect may be due to an implicit misattribution process that is assumed to operate when US evocativeness is low. In the present research, the latter assumption was supported neither by two high-powered experiments nor by complementary meta-analytic evidence, whereas evocativeness exerted an influence on explicit memory. This pattern of findings is inconsistent with the view that CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory reflects an implicit misattribution process at learning. Hence, the underlying learning process is awaiting further empirical scrutiny.     

False memory in aging: effects of emotional valence on word recognition accuracy

Memory is susceptible to distortions. Valence and increasing age are variables known to affect memory accuracy and may increase false alarm production. Interaction between these variables and their impact on false memory was investigated in 36 young (18-28 years) and 36 older (61-83 years) healthy adults. At study, participants viewed lists of neutral words orthographically related to negative, neutral, or positive critical lures (not presented). Memory for these words was subsequently tested with a remember-know procedure. At test, items included the words seen at study and their associated critical lures, as well as sets of orthographically related neutral words not seen at study and their associated unstudied lures. Positive valence was shown to have two opposite effects on older adults' discrimination of the lures: It improved correct rejection of unstudied lures but increased false memory for critical lures (i.e., lures associated with words studied previously). Thus, increased salience triggered by positive valence may disrupt memory accuracy in older adults when discriminating among similar events. These findings likely reflect a source memory deficit due to decreased efficiency in cognitive control processes with aging.     

The Unconventional, but Conventionalist, Legacy of Lewis’s “Convention”

The philosopher David Lewis is credited by many social scientists, including mainstream economists, with having founded the modern (game-theoretical) approach to conventions, viewed as solutions to recurrent coordination problems. Yet it is generally ignored that he revised his approach, soon after the publication of his well-known book. I suggest that this revision has deep implications (probably not perceived by Lewis himself) on the analytical links between coordination, uncertainty and rationality. Thinking anew about these issues leads me to map out an alternative social scientific research programme. The traditional ontological equipment of methodological individualism should be reinforced in order to admit the existence of an “intersubjective” world beside the two familiar worlds: the “objective” world of observable things, and the “subjective” world of expectations and individual beliefs. In particular, language becomes necessary to understand coordination via conventions, rather than the other way round. That has led a group of institutionalist economists and pragmatist sociologists to develop an enlarged model of rationality, no longer isolated from questions of coordination and values. This model is the basis for the “Economics of Conventions”.     

Visual motion disambiguation by a subliminal sound

There is growing interest in the effect of sound on visual motion perception. One model involves the illusion created when two identical objects moving towards each other on a two-dimensional visual display can be seen to either bounce off or stream through each other. Previous studies show that the large bias normally seen toward the streaming percept can be modulated by the presentation of an auditory event at the moment of coincidence. However, no reports to date provide sufficient evidence to indicate whether the sound bounce-inducing effect is due to a perceptual binding process or merely to an explicit inference resulting from the transient auditory stimulus resembling a physical collision of two objects. In the present study, we used a novel experimental design in which a subliminal sound was presented either 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence of two disks moving towards each other. The results showed that there was an increased perception of bouncing (rather than streaming) when the subliminal sound was presented at or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence compared to when no sound was presented. These findings provide the first empirical demonstration that activation of the human auditory system without reaching consciousness affects the perception of an ambiguous visual motion display.     

Locating attractiveness in the face space: Faces are more attractive when closer to <Emphasis Type="Italic">their</Emphasis> group prototype

Face attractiveness relates positively to the mathematical averageness of a face, but how close attractive faces of varying groups are to their own and to other-group prototypes in the face space remains unclear. In two studies, we modeled the locations of attractive and unattractive Caucasian, Asian, and African faces in participants’ face space using multidimensional scaling analysis. In all three sets of faces, facial attractiveness significantly increased with the absolute proximity of a face to its group prototype. In the case of Caucasian and African faces (Study 1), facial attractiveness also tended to increase with the absolute proximity of a face to the other-group prototype. However, this association was at best marginal, and it became clearly nonsignificant when distance to the own-group prototype was controlled for. Thus, the present research provides original evidence that average features of faces contribute to increasing their attractiveness, but only when these features are average to the group to which a face belongs. The present research also offers further support to face space models of people’s mental representations of faces.     

Preference for attractive faces in human infants extends beyond conspecifics

Human infants, just a few days of age, are known to prefer attractive human faces. We examined whether this preference is human-specific. Three- to 4-month-olds preferred attractive over unattractive domestic and wild cat (tiger) faces (Experiments 1 and 3). The preference was not observed when the faces were inverted, suggesting that it did not arise from low-level image differences (Experiments 2 and 3). In addition, the spontaneous preference for attractive tiger faces influenced performance in a recognition memory task involving attractive versus unattractive tiger face pairings (Experiment 4). The findings suggest that infant preference for attractive faces reflects the activity of general processing mechanisms rather than a specific adaptation to mate choice.     

Hidden profiles and the consensualization of social stereotypes: how information distribution affects stereotype content and sharedness

We examined the impact of the distribution of information regarding social groups on the formation of shared stereotypes within triads in two studies. Three‐person groups discussed which of three groups (A, B, and C) was the most able and the most sociable. In Study 1, some of the information about these three groups was available to all group members (shared) whereas the remainder was distributed among group members (unique). Based on the total profile, there was more evidence of group A being sociable and of group B being able than of A being able and B sociable. In Study 1 (n = 58), sampling was manipulated as ‘representative’ (information in line with the overall differences was shared) or ‘unrepresentative’ (only information contradicting these differences was shared). In a third condition, all items of information were shared. Emerging stereotypes were directly influenced by sampling of information independently of the discussion. As well as this, the discussion consensualized initial stereotypes. In Study 2 (n = 52), sampling was always unrepresentative and we manipulated the labels associated with the target groups in such a way that the stereotype associated with the label was either inconsistent or consistent with the overall differences between the target groups. In the inconsistent condition, participants were more likely to discuss information that violated stereotypical expectations, and to be less influenced by sampling as a result of discussion. Altogether, these findings suggest that information sampling directly affects the consensualization of social stereotypes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lesions of the dorsal subiculum and the dorsal hippocampus impaired pattern separation in a task using distinct and overlapping visual stimuli

The contribution of the dorsal subiculum (DS) and of the dorsal hippocampus (DH) to memory for distinct and overlapping visual stimuli was examined. Rats with selective lesions of the DS or the DH were compared to sham-operated rats on a delayed matching-to-place task guided by distal visual cues in a modified radial-arm maze. Overlapping distal visual cues could be perceived from three arm entrances (adjacent arms) and a unique set of distal cues were more likely to be seen from the other two arm entrances (distinct arms). Rats with DS lesions were impaired on trials with baited adjacent arms, but not on trials with baited distinct arms. Rats with DH lesions were impaired on both types of trials. These results suggest that the DS and the DH are necessary for pattern separation and that they may have different contributions to memory.