Self-regulation of commitment to reduce cigarette consumption: Mental contrasting of future with reality

The model of fantasy realisation (Oettingen, 2000 Oettingen, G. 2000. Expectancy effects on behavior depend on self-regulatory thought. Social Cognition, 18: 101–129. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) specifies mental contrasting of a positive future with negative reality as a strategy that creates strong goal commitments. We propose that fantasies about a positive and negative future produce strong goal commitments when contrasted with the respective reality. The present study supports this hypothesis in the area of reducing cigarette consumption. Mental contrasting of a positive future with negative reality as well as mental contrasting of a negative future with positive reality led to taking immediate action when participants had high expectations of success. Results indicate that both fantasies about a positive future and a negative future can be used to commit to goals that benefit health and prevent disease.     

Infants' perception of timbre: classification of complex tones by spectral structure

Infants 7 to 8.5 months of age were tested for their discrimination of timbre or sound quality differences in the context of variable exemplars. They were familiarized with a set of complex tones with specified spectral structure; members of the set varied in fundamental frequency, intensity, or duration. Infants were then tested for their detection of tones that contrasted in spectral structure but were similar in other respects. They successfully differentiated the two spectral structures in the context of these variations, indicating that they can classify tonal stimuli on the basis of timbre. When the stimuli were organized into arbitrary categories, infants were unable to differentiate these categories, indicating that their performance with nonarbitrary categories was not attributable to memorization of the familiarized set.     

Components of rational-emotive imagery: Two experiments with nonassertive students

Unassertive students took part in two experiments to assess the contributions of emotional and cognitive rehearsal procedures in rational-emotive imagery. In each study participants received analogue treatment in groups, which met twice for one and a half hours. In Experiment 1 behavior rehearsal (BR) was more effective than emotional rehearsal (ER, which involved tryping to attenuate unwanted feelings in fantasy) and cognitive rehearsal (CR, which involved examining negative, and rehearsing helpful, self-statements) as assessed by a self-report measure of assertiveness. In Experiment 2 combinations of Experiment 1 procedures were tested in a factorial design. On a behavioral test, BR proved more effective than the treatment combinations, but on questionnaire measures of social anxiety and irrational beliefs rational-emotive imagery (the combination of CR with ER) was superior to the other treatment conditions. Results are encouraging in that rational-emotive imagery was more successful than either component in isolation, even within the limits of a brief analogue study. Further clinical trials are needed.     

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Ultra-rapid visual categorisation of natural and artifactual objects

Visual processing is known to be very fast in ultra-rapid categorisation tasks where the subject has to decide whether a briefly flashed image belongs to a target category or not. Human subjects can respond in under 400 ms, and event-related-potential studies have shown that the underlying processing can be done in less than 150 ms. Monkeys trained to perform the same task have proved even faster. However, most of these experiments have only been done with biologically relevant target categories such as animals or food. Here we performed the same study on human subjects, alternating between a task in which the target category was 'animal', and a task in which the target category was 'means of transport'. These natural images of clearly artificial objects contained targets as varied as cars, trucks, trains, boats, aircraft, and hot-air balloons. However, the subjects performed almost identically in both tasks, with reaction times not significantly longer in the 'means of transport' task. These reaction times were much shorter than in any previous study on natural-image processing. We conclude that, at least for these two superordinate categories, the speed of ultra-rapid visual categorisation of natural scenes does not depend on the target category, and that this processing could rely primarily on feed-forward, automatic mechanisms.     

Semantic self-knowledge and the vat argument

Philosophical Studies - Putnam’s vat argument is intended to show that I am not a permanently envatted brain. The argument holds promise as a response to vat scepticism, which depends on the...     

Therapeutic failure in a case of aversion therapy

A problem of paramount importance in the application of behaviour therapy concerns the relationship between personality parameters and the therapeutic outcome of such therapy, particularly in the case of aversion therapy. This report is concerned with a comparison between two patients with similar psychometric scores and similar complaints, one of whom responded well to aversion therapy while the other withdrew from treatment. It is argued that this differential response to treatment was due not to the amount of anxiety present but rather to a specific fear in the case of the latter patient that the treatment itself would precipitate cancer. Precautionary enquiries along these lines should, in future, be carried out prior to embarking on an aversion therapy programme.