Attitudinal Approaches to Health Behavior: Integrating Expectancy‐Value and Automaticity Accounts

Attitudes are a key construct in health psychology due to their central role in motivating and changing behavior. An expectancy‐value framework has been the dominant conceptual approach for exploring the impact of attitudes on health behavior, applications of which emphasize volition and rational decision making. More recently, attention has focused on automatic attitudes, which are believed to capture reflexive aspects of motivation. Dual‐process models such as the MODE generally treat expectancy‐value and automaticity accounts as representing separate processing pathways. However, both accounts depend on associative learning. Learning history pairs beliefs or features with evaluations; subsequent activation of beliefs or features activates associated evaluations and drives overall attitude. Therefore, a single information processing architecture may accommodate expectancy‐value and automaticity approaches within a unifying framework, and this is provided by neural network (connectionist) accounts. In this paper, we highlight how a greater emphasis on the information processing mechanics of associative learning can provide a more parsimonious model of attitudes, which may also extend to a wider array of memory‐related phenomena of relevance to health psychology.     

Dancing shapes: a comparison of luminance-induced distortions

We present an illusory display in which a grid of outlined squares is positioned in front of a moving luminance gradient. Observers perceive a strong, illusory, 'wavelike' motion of the superimposed squares. We compared luminance effects on dynamic and static aspects of this illusion. The dynamic aspect was investigated by means of a temporal gradient, which induced an illusory pulsing of the outlined squares. The static aspect was investigated in two different ways. In one experiment, the outlined squares were positioned on a spatial gradient, which caused the squares to look like trapezoid shapes. In another experiment, the squares were positioned on different luminance fields, which affected their apparent size. In all experiments, luminance settings were the same, and observers were asked to indicate the direction and strength of the induced distortions. The overall results show large agreements between the dynamic distortion and the first-mentioned static distortion, whereas different tendencies emerged for the second static distortion. In a second series of experiments, we examined these distortions for various ranges of the luminance gradient and for border gradients as well. On the basis of these data, we explored how the directions of the perceived distortions of the single-gradient displays examined in this paper could be related to each other.     

An item gains and losses analysis of false memories suggests critical items receive more item-specific processing than list items

In a repeated testing paradigm, list items receiving item-specific processing are more likely to be recovered across successive tests (item gains), whereas items receiving relational processing are likely to be forgotten progressively less on successive tests. Moreover, analysis of cumulative-recall curves has shown that item-specific processing produces a slower, but steadier rate of recall than relational processing. The authors relied on these findings to determine the type of processing that both list items and critical lures receive in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory procedure. The first 2 experiments revealed that critical lures produced more item gains, but only the list items resulted in a decrease in item losses across successive tests. The critical lures also produced slower but steadier cumulative recall. In Experiments 3 and 4, the critical items were physically presented during study, which resulted in the lures producing progressively fewer losses across successive tests. The authors concluded that critical items receive more item-specific processing than list items but that unless they are presented in the list, they do not become part of participants' organized retrieval scheme.     

Different strategies for using motion-in-depth information in catching

Previous studies on ball catching have had the limitation that the catcher was restricted to lateral hand movements. The authors investigated catching behavior in the more natural situation in which hand movements were unconstrained. Movements of the hand were tracked as participants tried to "catch" an approaching ball simulated with changing size and/or changing disparity. Participants used 1 of 2 distinct interception strategies: (a) a "cutting-off" strategy where time to passage (TTP) information was used to guide movements of the hand in depth such that the ball was caught farther in front of the face when the ball was approaching more slowly and (b) a "waiting" strategy where the hand was moved along a frontoparallel plane that was constant across ball trajectories and speeds. Cue dissociation and selective adaptation manipulations demonstrated that the catcher's estimates of TTP and crossing distance were based on a combination of binocular and monocular information.     

Don't stand so close to me: the effects fo self-construal in interpersonal closeness

Abstract— Three studies investigated the effects of self-construal activation on behavior conducive to interpersonal proximity. Study 1 revealed that compared with control participants, participants who were primed with the independent (or personal) self sat further away from where they anticipated another person would sit in a waiting room. Results of Study 2 indicated that participants primed with the interdependent (or social) self sat closer to the anticipated other person than did those primed with the independent self. Finally, Study 3 used the chronic self-construal of participants to predict the seating distance in dyadic settings. Results showed that greater independence of participants' self-construals was associated with greater spatial distance during the interaction. Together, the studies provide clear evidence that self-construal activation automatically influences interpersonal behavior as reflected in the actual distance between the self and others. Results are discussed in terms of the functions and motives connected to self-construals.     

Attending to the execution of a complex sensorimotor skill: expertise differences, choking, and slumps

A simulated baseball batting task was used to compare the relative effects of attending to extraneous information (tone frequency) and attending to skill execution (direction of bat movement) on performance and swing kinematics and to evaluate how these effects differ as a function of expertise. The extraneous dual task degraded batting performance in novices but had no significant effect on experts. The skill-focused dual task increased batting errors and movement variability for experts but had no significant effect on novices. For expert batters, accuracy in the skill-focused dual task was inversely related to the current level of performance. Expert batters were significantly more accurate in the skill-focused dual task when placed under pressure. These findings indicate that the attentional focus varies substantially across and within performers with different levels of expertise.     

Reality monitoring and metacognitive beliefs related to cognitive confidence in obsessive-compulsive disorder

The present study investigated general reality monitoring ability, and selective reality monitoring ability for anxiety relevant actions in a group of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and a group of non-anxious controls. In addition, reality monitoring confidence was assessed, as well as specific meta-cognitive beliefs related to cognitive confidence (by means of the Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ)). No differences were found between both groups in actual reality monitoring ability. Unlike previous studies, the reality monitoring task included actions that were related to the individual concerns of the OCD patients and were ideographically selected. Nevertheless, no differential reality monitoring effect was observed for the anxiety relevant stimuli. Data from the MCQ, however, revealed that OCD patients had less overall confidence in their memory for actions and their reality monitoring ability. Analysis of the confidence ratings of the reality monitoring task showed that this reduced confidence was restricted to the neutral actions. No differences were observed for patients that reported low or high frequencies of checking behaviour. The whole of these data do not support memory deficit models of OCD, but are in line with recent emphasis on the importance of memory confidence and other meta-cognitive beliefs in OCD.     

Ignoring famous faces: category-specific dilution of distractor interference

The extent to which famous distractor faces can be ignored was assessed in six experiments. Subjects categorized famous printed target names as those of pop stars or politicians, while attempting to ignore a flanking famous face distractor that could be congruent (e.g, a politician's name and face) or incongruent (e.g., a politician's name with a pop stars face). Congruency effects on reaction times indicated distractor intrusion. An additional, response-neutral flanker (neither pop star nor politician) could also be present. Congruency effects from the critical distractor face were reduced (diluted) by the presence of an intact anonymous face, but not by phase-shifted versions, inverted faces, or meaningful nonface objects. By contrast, congruency effects from other types of distracting objects (musical instruments, fruits), when printed names for these classes were categorized, were diluted equivalently by intact faces, phase-shifted faces, or meaningful nonface objects. Our results suggest that distractor faces act differently from other types of distractors, suffering from only face-specific capacity limits.