Affective priming in the valent/neutral categorisation task is due to affective matching,not encoding facilitation: Reply to Spruyt

Spruyt obtained an affective congruency effect in a valent/neutral categorisation task, which contrasts with the absence of such an effect in the same task that was reported by Werner and Rothermund. The crucial difference between the two studies is that Spruyt presented only valent primes, whereas Werner and Rothermund presented equal amounts of valent and neutral primes and targets in their experiments. Removing the neutral primes introduces a confound of affective matches with the required response. Affective congruency effects in Spruyt's study can be explained straightforwardly in terms of such an affective matching strategy. To demonstrate the influence of matching strategies in the valent/neutral task without neutral primes, we conducted an experiment in which we induced an affective mismatching strategy. In support of our reasoning, this study revealed an affective incongruency effect in the valent/neutral categorisation task. We conclude that affective congruency as well as incongruency effects in the valent/neutral categorisation task reflect post-lexical affective (mis-)matching strategies rather than encoding facilitation.     

Attentional bias towards angry faces is moderated by the activation of a social processing mode in the general population

ABSTRACT

Dot-probe studies usually find an attentional bias towards threatening stimuli only in anxious participants, but not in non-anxious participants. In the present study, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether attentional bias towards angry faces in unselected samples is moderated by the extent to which the current task requires social processing. In Experiment 1, participants performed a dot-probe task involving classification of either socially meaningful targets (schematic faces) or meaningless targets (scrambled schematic faces). Targets were preceded by two photographic face cues, one angry and one neutral. Angry face cues only produced significant cueing scores (i.e. faster target responses if the target replaced the angry face compared to the neutral face) with socially meaningful targets, not with meaningless targets. In Experiment 2, participants classified only meaningful targets, which were either socially meaningful (schematic faces) or not (schematic houses). Again, mean cueing scores were significantly moderated by the social character of the targets. However, cueing scores in this experiment were non-significant in the social target condition and significantly negative in the non-social target condition. These results suggest that attentional bias towards angry faces in the dot-probe task is moderated by the activation of a social processing mode in unselected samples.     

The consequences of pain: The social and physical pain overlap on psychological responses

Current theories suggest that social and physical pain overlap in their neurological and physiological outcomes. We investigated how social and physical pain overlap in their psychological responses by testing the hypothesis that both social and physical pain would thwart satisfaction on four human needs, worsen mood, and increase desire to aggress. In Experiment 1, recalling an experience of social or physical pain produced overlapping effects in the form of thwarted self‐esteem and control needs and increased negative affect and desire to aggress. In Experiment 2, we induced social (Cyberball ostracism) or physical pain (cold pressor) within the laboratory session, and found that both pain types produced feelings of being ignored and excluded, and thwarted belonging, self‐esteem, control, and meaningful existence. Our results provide further support to pain overlap theories and indicate that social and physical pain cause common psychological consequences, resulting in new ways to understand and manage pain. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing Emotion Regulation in Social Anxiety Disorder: The Emotion Regulation Interview

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is thought to involve emotional hyper-reactivity and emotion dysregulation. However, the precise nature of the emotion dysregulation in SAD has not been well characterized. In the present study, the Emotion Regulation Interview (ERI) was developed to quantify the frequency and self-efficacy of five emotion regulation strategies specified by Gross’s (Review of General Psychology 2: 271–299, 1998) process model of emotion regulation. Forty-eight individuals with SAD and 33 healthy controls (HCs) were interviewed about responses during (a) a laboratory speech task and (b) two recent social anxiety-evoking situations. Individuals with SAD reported greater use of avoidance and expressive suppression than HCs, as well as lesser self-efficacy in implementing cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. These regulation deficits were not accounted for by differences in emotional reactivity. These findings highlight specific emotion regulation deficits in SAD, and support the idea that the Emotion Regulation Interview may be usefully applied to other clinical disorders.     

Contributions of modern measurement theory to measuring executive function in early childhood: An empirical demonstration

This study demonstrates the merits of evaluating a newly developed battery of executive function tasks, designed for use in early childhood, from the perspective of item response theory (IRT). The battery was included in the 48-month assessment of the Family Life Project, a prospective longitudinal study of 1292 children oversampled from low-income and African American families. IRT models were applied to a select set of tasks to demonstrate empirically (a) a principled method for item evaluation, including the utility of item characteristic curves; (b) how to explicitly test whether the measurement properties of executive function tasks are invariant across mutually exclusive subgroups of youths; (c) how the precision of measurement of a given task can vary according to underlying child ability; and (d) the utility of using IRT-based versus percentage correct scores. Results are discussed with respect to the importance of developing psychometrically sound and scalable instruments that facilitate the measurement of interindividual differences in intraindividual change of executive function across the early childhood period.     

Contingency in Nature

Contingencies in Nature may be explained, but such explanations refer to other contingencies (pt. I). Is there a way to “explain away” all contingencies? The first physical theory of modern times, Newton’s theory of gravitation, was received in a way that leaves this question open (pt. II), while Kepler’s theory of cosmological harmony arrived at a positive solution (pt. III). However, later developments in science outdated Kepler’s approach (pt. IV).     

The control of stimulus-driven saccades is subject not to central, but to visual attention limitations

In three experiments, we investigated whether the control of reflexive saccades is subject to central attention limitations. In a dual-task procedure, Task 1 required either unspeeded reporting or ignoring of briefly presented masked stimuli, whereas Task 2 required a speeded saccade toward a visual target. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the two tasks was varied. In Experiments 1 and 2, the Task 1 stimulus was one or three letters, and we asked how saccade target selection is influenced by the number of items. We found (1) longer saccade latencies at short than at long SOAs in the report condition, (2) a substantially larger latency increase for three letters than for one letter, and (3) a latency difference between SOAs in the ignore condition. Broadly, these results match the central interference theory. However, in Experiment 3, an auditory stimulus was used as the Task 1 stimulus, to test whether the interference effects in Experiments 1 and 2 were due to visual instead of central interference. Although there was a small saccade latency increase from short to long SOAs, this difference did not increase from the ignore to the report condition. To explain visual interference effects between letter encoding and stimulus-driven saccade control, we propose an extended theory of visual attention.     

Intra- and inter-judge reliabilities in measuring the skin-fold thicknesses of ultra runners under field conditions

Inter- and intra-judge reliabilities of skinfold measures were investigated in a sample of 27 men and 11 women ultramarathon runners. Two physicians had agreement higher than 90% in field measurements before an ultramarathon race.     

EDMUND ENGELMAN: PHOTOGRAPHER OF SIGMUND FREUD'S HOME AND OFFICES

Over the course of several days in May 1938, Edmund Engelman, a young, talented and resourceful Viennese photographer, immortalised the home and offices of Sigmund Freud in a series of pictures that represent the fullest visual documentation of the setting in which Freud lived and worked throughout almost his entire career. He also photographed Freud, his daughter and his wife. These photographs are best known through a book that also contains a memoir of Engelman (Engelman, 1976). The photographs have been recognised primarily for their documentary value and not appreciated for their artistic merit. Through a series of interviews with Engelman and members of his family, biographical data about the artist and information about the photographs has been gathered that heretofore has not been published. This historical note elaborates on Engelman's life before and after taking the photographs, and places the photographs in the context of the life of the photographer.