Interlateral asymmetry in the time course of the effect of a peripheral prime stimulus

Evidence exists that both right and left hemisphere attentional mechanisms are mobilized when attention is directed to the right visual hemifield and only right hemisphere attentional mechanisms are mobilized when attention is directed to the left visual hemifield. This arrangement might lead to a rightward bias of automatic attention. The hypothesis was investigated by testing male volunteers, wherein a "location discrimination" reaction time task (Experiments 1 and 3) and a "location and shape discrimination" reaction time task (Experiments 2 and 4) were used. Unilateral (Experiments 1 and 2) and unilateral or bilateral (Experiments 3 and 4) peripheral visual prime stimuli were used to control attention. Reaction time to a small visual target stimulus in the same location or in the horizontally opposite location was evaluated. Stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) were 34, 50, 67, 83 and 100 ms. An important prime stimulus attentional effect was observed as early as 50 ms in the four experiments. In Experiments 2, 3 and 4, this effect was larger when the prime stimulus occurred in the right hemifield than when it occurred in the left hemifield for SOA 100 ms. In Experiment 4, when the prime stimulus occurred simultaneously in both hemifields, reaction time was faster for the right hemifield and for SOA 100 ms. These results indicate that automatic attention tends to favor the right side of space, particularly when identification of the target stimulus shape is required.     

The Milwaukee Inventory for Subtypes of Trichotillomania-Adult Version (MIST-A): Development of an Instrument for the Assessment of “Focused” and “Automatic” Hair Pulling

This article describes the development of the Milwaukee Inventory for Subtypes of Trichotillomania-Adult Version (MIST-A), which was designed to assess “automatic” and “focused” pulling subtypes of trichotillomania (TTM). Participants reporting symptoms of TTM (n = 1,697) completed an internet survey; participants were later randomly assigned to either Exploratory (n = 848) or Confirmatory (n = 849) Analyses. Exploratory Analyses examined the development and psychometric properties of the MIST-A. Results of an exploratory factor analysis revealed a two-factor solution. Factor 1 (“focused” pulling scale) and 2 (“automatic” pulling scale) consisted of ten and five items respectively, with both scales demonstrating adequate internal consistency and good construct and discriminant validity. Subsequent confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated support for the scale’s underlying factor structure. The MIST-A provides researchers with a reliable and valid assessment of “automatic” and “focused” pulling, although replication using a clinically ascertained sample is necessary.

Understanding and using the implicit association test: V. measuring semantic aspects of trait self‐concepts

Implicit Association Tests (IATs) often reveal strong associations of self with positive rather than negative attributes. This poses a problem in using the IAT to measure associations involving traits with either positive or negative evaluative content. In two studies, we employed non‐bipolar but evaluatively balanced Big Five traits as attribute contrasts and explored correlations of IATs with positive (e.g. sociable vs. conscientious) or negative (e.g. reserved vs. chaotic) attributes. Results showed (a) satisfactory internal consistencies for all IATs, (b) explicit–explicit and implicit–implicit correlations that were moderate to high and comparable in strength after both were corrected for attenuation and (c) better model fit for latent variable models that linked the implicit and explicit measures to distinct latent factors rather to the same factor. Together, the results suggest that IATs can validly assess the semantic aspect of trait self‐concepts and that implicit and explicit self‐representations are, although correlated, also distinct constructs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A consequence of school grade labels: preservice teachers’ interpretations and recall of children’s classroom behavior

This study investigated whether preservice teachers’ attitudes surrounding school grade labels influenced interpretations and recall of children’s classroom behavior using the automatic attitude activation model (Fazio, In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior, 1986) as a theoretical framework. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: The expectation of viewing a video of children in schools labeled as “A,” “F,” or “typical” as a result of the school’s aggregated student performance on standardized tests. Results indicated that participants who believed that they were viewing a video of an “F” classroom recalled more negative and fewer positive behaviors compared to the “typical” classroom. Likewise, there was a trend for participants to recall more negative and fewer positive behaviors when viewing a video of an “F” compared to an “A” school. Therefore, negative attitudes about a school label of “F” biased preservice teachers’ perceptions and memories of children’s classroom behaviors.

几种策略选择模型的发展轨迹与比较

策略选择作为儿童认知发展的重要方面,日益受到人们的关注.20世纪70年代后,一些研究者相继构建出几种策略选择的理论模型,以说明儿童策略选择的过程及其机制.文章根据策略模型发展的历程,对元认知模型、联结分布模型、适应性策略选择模型和策略选择与发现模型进行了概述与比较,以摸清策略模型发展的轨迹与特点,由此进一步明确策略模型研究发展的方向.     

The Relations of Cognitive Triad, Dysfunctional Attitudes, Automatic Thoughts, and Irrational Beliefs with Test Anxiety

Previous research has highlighted the important role of cognition in anxiety, including test anxiety. The present study explores the role of cognitive distortions and irrationality in test anxiety by studying the relationships among cognitive triad (core beliefs), dysfunctional attitudes (intermediate beliefs), negative automatic thoughts, irrational beliefs, debilitating test anxiety, and facilitating test anxiety in 138 undergraduates. Multiple regression analyses showed that only the cognitive triad as a whole was a significant predictor of debilitating anxiety. Specifically, negative view of self was a significant predictor of debilitating anxiety. The results supported an expansion of the current cognitive conceptualizations of test anxiety to include the importance of negative self-view. Other implications are also discussed.     

Interrelationships between spider fear associations,attentional disengagement and self-reported fear: A preliminary test of a dual-systems model

Recent conceptualisations of anxiety posit that equivocal findings related to the time-course of disengaging from threat-relevant stimuli may be attributable to individual differences in associative and rule-based processing. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that strength of spider-fear associations would indirectly predict reported spider fear via impaired disengagement. One hundred and thirty-one undergraduate volunteer participants completed the Go/No-go Association Task, a visual search task, and self-report spider fear questionnaires. Stronger spider-fear associations were associated with reduced disengagement accuracy, whereas higher levels of reported spider fear were related to faster engagement with and disengagement from spiders. Bootstrapping multiple mediation analyses demonstrated that stronger-spider fear associations evidenced an indirect relationship with reported spider fear via reduced disengagement accuracy, highlighting the importance of fine-grained analyses of different aspects of cognitive bias. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive models of anxiety.     

Effortful versus automatic emotional processing in schizophrenia: Insights from a face-vignette task

Adaptive emotional responding relies on dual automatic and effortful processing streams. Dual-stream models of schizophrenia (SCZ) posit a selective deficit in neural circuits that govern goal-directed, effortful processes versus reactive, automatic processes. This imbalance suggests that when patients are confronted with competing automatic and effortful emotional response cues, they will exhibit diminished effortful responding and intact, possibly elevated, automatic responding compared to controls. This prediction was evaluated using a modified version of the face-vignette task (FVT). Participants viewed emotional faces (automatic response cue) paired with vignettes (effortful response cue) that signalled a different emotion category and were instructed to discriminate the manifest emotion. Patients made less vignette and more face responses than controls. However, the relationship between group and FVT responding was moderated by IQ and reading comprehension ability. These results replicate and extend previous research and provide tentative support for abnormal conflict resolution between automatic and effortful emotional processing predicted by dual-stream models of SCZ.     

Understanding the coherence of the severity effect and optimism phenomena: Lessons from attention

Claims that optimism is a near-universal characteristic of human judgment seem to be at odds with recent results from the judgment and decision making literature suggesting that the likelihood of negative outcomes are overestimated relative to neutral outcomes. In an attempt to reconcile these seemingly contrasting phenomena, inspiration is drawn from the attention literature in which there is evidence that both positive and negative stimuli can have attentional privilege relative to neutral stimuli. This result provides a framework within which I consider three example phenomena that purport to demonstrate that people’s likelihood estimates are optimistic: Wishful thinking; Unrealistic comparative optimism and Asymmetric belief updating. The framework clarifies the relationships between these phenomena and stimulates future research questions. Generally, whilst results from the first two phenomena appear reconcilable in this conceptualisation, further research is required in reconciling the third.