The Importance of Cognitive Dissonance in Understanding and Treating Victims of Intimate Partner Violence

External mechanisms and batterer behaviors have commonly been cited as to why women remain in intimate partner violence relationships. However, past research has generally minimized the focus on individual psychological elements of victims that perpetuate their commitments to abusers. The current review proposes the potential for cognitive dissonance resolution as an underlying mechanism to affect female victims’ stay/leave decisions while in domestically violent relationships. High and low levels of self-esteem differentially affect the resolution of cognitive dissonance as explained by self-consistency and self-affirmation theories. Theories of commitment including the foot-in-the-door principle, justification of effort, and the investment model are applied specifically to the arousal of dissonance in victims. The importance of taking into account the mechanisms of dissonance arousal and subsequent reduction techniques are proposed for treating this population and preventing similar relationships in the future.     

发展性计算障碍的最新研究进展

发展性计算障碍是一种影响算术技能获得的特定的学习障碍。截至目前,有关发展性计算障碍的认知与神经机制的理论尚存分歧,有关诊断与鉴别标准也未统一。近年来,对于发展性计算障碍的理论假设有从一般认知因素取向到数学特定因素取向发展的趋势。而随着脑成像技术的不断发展,对于发展性计算障碍神经机制的研究也从针对单个脑区的特异性功能发展到从功能连接网络角度进行研究。并且研究者们开始尝试开发基于数学认知基本理论的干预方法,并采用了利用生物技术手段的新方法。基因-脑-行为的整合研究将有助于全面揭示发展性计算障碍的发生机制,而建立在系统理论基础上经过科学评估的干预手段将可能有效促进障碍者的计算能力。     

The components of visual attention and the ubiquitous Simon effect

Spatial responding is influenced by the degree of correspondence between the stimulus–response (S–R) code activated by the target's task-irrelevant location and the S–R code activated by the target's non-spatial, task-relevant feature. A generally accepted explanation of this “Simon effect,” named after its discoverer, is that there is a natural tendency to respond towards the source of stimulation. First we will review the ubiquity of the Simon effect. Then we will review the literature, including our own studies when appropriate, that has explored the relationship between the Simon effect and the components of attention: alertness, orienting and executive control, with an emphasis on visual orienting. The Simon effect is reduced when participants are not alert and when executive control is effective in filtering out the irrelevant location information. When attention is oriented endogenously, or is captured exogenously by uninformative peripheral stimulation, the Simon effect is additive with attentional facilitation (i.e., the Simon effect is the same magnitude for targets presented at attended and unattended locations). Yet, some forms of orienting, such as orienting directed by gaze and biased by inhibition of return, modulate the Simon effect. We will explore the implications of these patterns of additivity and interaction for our understanding of both the Simon effect and spatial attention.     

Detrimental effects of using negative sentences in the autobiographical IAT

The autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) is a method that accurately identifies which one of two contrasting autobiographical events is true for the subject. The aIAT indexes the real autobiographical event (e.g. I was in Paris for Christmas) on the basis of the facilitating effect because it maps the real autobiographical event with true sentences (e.g. I am in front of a computer) on the same motor response. In this paper we focus on the conditions under which the autobiographical IAT accurately and reliably identifies autobiographical memories. A recent study showed a reduction in the accuracy of the aIAT when negative sentences are used. We have investigated the detrimental effect on aIAT accuracy of such negative sentence items, used to describe autobiographical events, compared with affirmative sentence items. While we highlight the reliability of the results obtained using negative sentences, we also show that the use of affirmative sentences in describing autobiographical events guarantees high accuracy and reliability of results in identifying the true autobiographical event. Finally, we summarise the criteria for preparing stimuli for an effective aIAT in order to maximise correct classifications of individual subjects.     

Playing the Simon game: Use of the Simon task for investigating human information processing

A little more than 40 years ago, J. R. Simon and colleagues introduced what is now called the Simon task, which yielded a correspondence effect known as the Simon effect. In this paper, I set Simon's contribution in the context of research on stimulus-response compatibility. The novel contribution of the Simon task is described, along with foundational findings using the task that Simon and colleagues reported. I acknowledge the significance of Simon's (1990) review chapter in generating my own interests in the Simon task and describe four selected lines of research from my lab that have been a result of those interests. The article concludes with a brief tribute to Simon and his contribution to experimental psychology.     

Processing of task-irrelevant natural scenes in social anxiety

In this study, by manipulating perceptual load, we investigated whether socially anxious people process task-irrelevant, non-emotional, natural scenes. When attention was directed to letters and perceptual load was low, task-irrelevant natural scenes were processed, as evidenced by repetition priming effects, in both high and low socially anxious people. In the high perceptual load condition, repetition-priming effects decreased in participants with low social anxiety, but not in those with high social anxiety. The results were the same when attention was directed to pictures of animals: even in the high perceptual load condition, high socially anxious participants processed task-irrelevant natural scenes, as evidenced by flanker effects. However, when attention was directed to pictures of people, task-irrelevant natural scenes were not processed by participants in either anxiety group, regardless of perceptual load. These results suggest that high socially anxious individuals could not inhibit task-irrelevant natural scenes under conditions of high perceptual load, except when attention was focused on people.     

Tag, you're it: Tagging as an alternative to yes/no recognition in item method directed forgetting

The current study contrasted a standard yes/no recognition task with a tagging recognition task in the context of an item-method directed forgetting paradigm. During the study phase, a series of words was presented one at a time, each followed by an instruction to remember (R) or forget (F). The retention of R and F study words was tested using either a typical yes/no recognition task or a tagging recognition task in which participants labeled each word as “R”, “F” or “New”. The directed forgetting effect observed in each task was equivalent in magnitude. However, the tagging recognition task afforded an additional analysis of the errors of misattribution that was not possible with the more typical yes/no recognition task. Interestingly, when falsely recognizing a Foil word, participants were more likely to assign an “F” tag than an “R” tag. These errors of misattribution are consistent with existing accounts of directed forgetting that suggest R words are better encoded than F words. We argue for the utility of the tagging procedure, given it does not alter the directed forgetting effect normally seen with yes/no recognition but provides additional information about errors of misattribution.     

Volume completion in 4.5-month-old infants

In this study, we examined 4.5-month-old infants' visual completion of self-occluding three-dimensional objects. A previous study on this topic reported that 6-month-old, but not 4-month-old infants extrapolate a convex, symmetric prism from a limited view of its surfaces (Soska & Johnson, 2008). As of yet, studies on the development of amodal completion of three-dimensional, self-occluding objects are scarce. Given 4-month-old infants' abilities to derive three-dimensional shape from a variety of visual cues, three-dimensional amodal completion may well depend on the perceptual strength of three-dimensionality in the stimulus displays. The first experiments (1A and 1B) tested this hypothesis by means of a habituation paradigm and showed that 4.5-month-old infants are indeed able to amodally complete the back of a self-occluding object when sufficient three-dimensional cues are available. Further support for volume completion in 4.5-month-old infants was found in a second experiment, again using a habituation paradigm, that measured perceived connectedness between two visually separated, self-occluding, three-dimensional objects.     

Mind-wandering: phenomenology and function as assessed with a novel experience sampling method

Mind-wandering refers to the occurrence of thoughts whose content is both decoupled from stimuli present in the current environment and unrelated to the task being carried out at the moment of their occurrence. The core of this phenomenon is therefore stimulus-independent and task-unrelated thoughts (SITUTs). In the present study, we designed a novel experience sampling method which permitted to isolate SITUTs from other kinds of distractions (i.e., irrelevant interoceptive/exteroceptive sensory perceptions and interfering thoughts related to the appraisal of the current task). In Experiment 1, we examined the impact of SITUTs on the performance of the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART; a Go/No-Go task). Analyses demonstrated that SITUTs impair SART performance to the same extent as irrelevant sensory perceptions. In Experiment 2, we further examined SITUTs in order to assess the possible functions of mind-wandering. We observed that the content of most of reported SITUTs refers to the anticipation and planning of future events. Furthermore, this “prospective bias” was increased when participants' attention had been oriented toward their personal goals before performing the SART. These data support the view that an important function of mind-wandering relates to the anticipation and planning of the future.     

The influence of motor simulations on language comprehension

This study investigates the influence of activating specific motor codes on the comprehension of passages that describe the use of an object requiring similar motor manipulations. In three experiments, participants either imagined or pantomimed performing an action involving a common object. Participants then held the action in memory while reading a brief story, which described another object that required similar or different motor behaviors. Reading times were collected on the complementary actions. Finally, participants acted out the original action. In Exp. 1 and 2, reading slowed to the verbs. Exp. 2 revealed the slowing to be true interference, which disappeared in Exp. 3 when the action did not need to be recalled. The results suggest that readers activate motor codes when reading story actions, which supports an embodied view. The results also indicate that activated codes bound to an action will, at least briefly, impair reading about a complementary action requiring the same codes, consistent with Hommel's (2009) theory of event coding.