Only “efficient” emotional stimuli affect the content of working memory during free-recollection from natural scenes

Emotional events are thought to have privileged access to attention and memory, consuming resources needed to encode competing emotionally neutral stimuli. However, it is not clear whether this detrimental effect is automatic or depends on the successful maintenance of the specific emotional object within working memory. Here, participants viewed everyday scenes including an emotional object among other neutral objects followed by a free-recollection task. Results showed that emotional objects—irrespective of their perceptual saliency—were recollected more often than neutral objects. The probability of being recollected increased as a function of the arousal of the emotional objects, specifically for negative objects. Successful recollection of emotional objects (positive or negative) from a scene reduced the overall number of recollected neutral objects from the same scene. This indicates that only emotional stimuli that are efficient in grabbing (and then consuming) available attentional resources play a crucial role during the encoding of competing information, with a subsequent bias in the recollection of neutral representations.     

Book and Website Reviews

Using practicing sales managers as subjects, the results indicate that personal characteristics of gender and weight may be used in making disciplinary judgments following episodes of a particular type of unacceptable work behavior, an unethical selling act. As hypothesized, saleswomen were disciplined less severely while overweight salespeople were disciplined more severely. However, being overweight produced harsher discipline for saleswomen but had no effect on salesmen. A stated organizational policy about the particular type of unacceptable behavior used did bring about more equal treatment for those described as overweight but did not even out the discipline administered to men and women.     

Neurocognitive correlates of white matter quality in adolescent substance users

Background

Progressive myelination during adolescence implicates an increased vulnerability to neurotoxic substances and enduring neurocognitive consequences. This study examined the cognitive manifestations of altered white matter microstructure in chronic marijuana and alcohol-using (MJ + ALC) adolescents.

Methods

Thirty-six MJ + ALC adolescents (ages 16–19) and 36 demographically similar controls were evaluated with diffusion tensor imaging (Bava et al., 2009) and neurocognitive tests. Regions of group difference in fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were analyzed in relation to cognitive performance.

Results

In users, lower FA in temporal areas related to poorer performance on attention, working memory, and speeded processing tasks. Among regions where users had higher FA than controls, occipital FA was positively associated with working memory and complex visuomotor sequencing, whereas FA in anterior regions was negatively associated with verbal memory performance.

Conclusions

Findings suggest differential influences of white matter development on cognition in MJ + ALC using adolescents than in non-using peers. Neuroadaptation may reflect additive and subtractive responses to substance use that are complicated by competing maturational processes.     

What Studies of Actors and Acting Can Tell Us About Memory and Cognitive Functioning

ABSTRACT— The art of acting has been defined as the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances. Our many years of researching theatrical expertise have produced findings relevant to text comprehension, learning theory, cognitive aging, and expert memory. In this article, we first discuss how large amounts of dialogue, learned in a very short period, can be reproduced in real time with complete spontaneity. We then turn to abstracting the essence of acting and applying it to diverse undertakings, from discovering optimal learning strategies to promoting healthy cognitive aging. Finally, we address the implications of acting expertise on current theories of embodied cognition.     

What are television advertisements really trying to tell us? A postmodern perspective

This paper differentiates between the modern and the postmodern approach to advertising. It provides indicators of the nature of postmodern advertisements and proposes a methodology based on critical discourse analysis for interpreting the meaning and understanding the structure of such advertisements. The paper discusses the purpose of the postmodern approach to advertising and argues that its very imagery may further confuse an already confused postmodern consumer. The credibility of the imagery may also be questioned where it is perceived to be an illusion that is incapable of being substantiated. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications.     

'Experiencing' Alpha: Finding and Embodying the Spirit and Being Transformed--Empowerment and Control in a ('Charismatic') Christian Worldview

This article analyses the Alpha Course, the 15-session evangelising programme designed by Holy Trinity Brompton. It argues that it is a popular form of evangelism influenced by the 'charismatic' movement, which aims to initiate participants into a particular religious 'experience'. It further argues that the course aims to stimulate participants to locate themselves, psychologically and socially, within a 'charismatic' worldview. The article aims to examine, phenomenologically, the Alpha 'experience', through an ethnographic analysis of the course and in particular its Holy Spirit weekend. The article relates Alpha to the wider beliefs and practices of the 'charismatic' movement and religious experience and assesses what it means for contemporary Christianity. It seeks to show that the initial 'experience' gained on the Alpha Course is continued within 'charismatic' experience in church meetings and services and looks at the personal empowerment and social control that may be at work.     

Coping and Psychological Distress as a Function of the Bully Victim Dichotomy in Older Children

While it has been well established that bullying and being bullied have negative psychological consequences for children, the more recent literature has suggested a more complex relationship based on social cognition. A debate has arisen as to whether bullies have deficits or strengths in social cognition. In a study of 236 children (112 males and 124 females) aged between 12 and 15 years the current research explored three main aspects of social cognition, problem-solving style, perceived control and optimism in both bullies and victims. The findings suggest that the debate may hinge on whether the bullies are also victims. In this study bullies had higher scores on problem-solving control while bully victims had the lowest scores. These variations corresponded to differences in psychological distress suggesting that bullies may have developed more effective coping strategies with the reverse being true for bully victims