Attentional capture by irrelevant emotional distractor faces is contingent on implicit attentional settings

Although expressions of facial emotion hold a special status in attention relative to other complex objects, whether they summon our attention automatically and against our intentions remains a debated issue. Studies supporting the strong view that attentional capture by facial expressions of emotion is entirely automatic reported that a unique (singleton) emotional face distractor interfered with search for a target that was also unique on a different dimension. Participants could therefore search for the odd-one out face to locate the target and attentional capture by irrelevant emotional faces might be contingent on the adoption of an implicit set for singletons. Here, confirming this hypothesis, an irrelevant emotional face captured attention when the target was the unique face with a discrepant orientation, both when this orientation was unpredictable and when it remained constant. By contrast, no such capture was observed when the target could not be found by monitoring displays for a discrepant face and participants had to search for a face with a specific orientation. Our findings show that attentional capture by emotional faces is not purely stimulus driven and thereby resolve the apparent inconsistency that prevails in the literature on the automaticity of attentional capture by emotional faces.     

Arousal (but not valence) amplifies the impact of salience

Previous findings indicate that negative arousal enhances bottom-up attention biases favouring perceptual salient stimuli over less salient stimuli. The current study tests whether those effects were driven by emotional arousal or by negative valence by comparing how well participants could identify visually presented letters after hearing either a negative arousing, positive arousing or neutral sound. On each trial, some letters were presented in a high contrast font and some in a low contrast font, creating a set of targets that differed in perceptual salience. Sounds rated as more emotionally arousing led to more identification of highly salient letters but not of less salient letters, whereas sounds’ valence ratings did not impact salience biases. Thus, arousal, rather than valence, is a key factor enhancing visual processing of perceptually salient targets.     

Fear of evaluation unpacked: day-to-day correlates of fear of negative and positive evaluation

Background and objectives: Social interactions inevitably go along with repeated evaluations. Some individuals are particularly sensitive to social evaluations: Psychometric studies suggest stable and distinct individual differences on fear of negative evaluations (FNE) and fear of positive evaluation (FPE). However, little is known about day-to-day correlates of FNE and FPE, particularly their respective contribution to positive/negative affect level and affect reactivity to different stressor types.

Design: Two studies naturalistically assessed the level of negative/positive affect and its reactivity to different stressor types (from distant or close social network, work and daily hassles, assessed daily) as a function of FNE/FPE.

Method: Ecological Momentary Assessment employed five daily prompts during 12/10 days in convenience samples of 50/59 participants.

Results: FNE predicted lower positive affect level only in Study 2. Consistent across studies negative affect reactivity to stressors emanating from the distant social network was increased in individuals high in FNE or FPE.

Conclusions: Results document the relevance of both types of evaluation fears (FNE/FPE) for day-to-day affect and stress reactivity. They further specify whose evaluations are well tolerated (close network) or feared (distant network), thereby refining current psycho-evolutionary accounts of FNE/FPE.     

Ego depletion improves insight

Initial acts of self-control can reduce effort and performance on subsequent tasks – a phenomenon known as ego depletion. Ego depletion is thought to undermine the capacity or willingness to engage executive control, an important determinant of success for many tasks. We examined whether ego depletion improves performance on a task that favours less executive control: insight problem solving. In two experiments, participants completed an ego-depletion manipulation or a non-depleting control condition followed by an insight problem-solving task (i.e., matchstick arithmetic). Participants in the depleting condition demonstrated greater insight problem-solving accuracy than those in the non-depleting control condition. Priming theories of willpower did not impact these results. Although ego depletion is widely regarded as a “state of impairment”, attendant decreases in executive control may foster insightful thinking.     

Understanding supplement use: an application of temporal self-regulation theory

Vitamin and mineral supplement use is increasing worldwide. As evidence of the effects of these practices are equivocal at best, it is important to determine why individuals engage in vitamin and mineral supplement use through the application of a theoretical framework. The aim of this study was to employ temporal self-regulation theory (TST) to establish the determinants of supplement use. A cross-sectional design was used with a sample of 121 individuals who consume vitamins or minerals as dietary supplements. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to determine the influence of intention, habit, self-control, and the interaction between intention and habit and self-control on the frequency of supplement use. The model accounted for a significant proportion of variance in behaviour (R² = .44) with intention and habit significantly related to supplement use. Self-control moderated the relationship between intention and behaviour indicating that intention was not related to behaviour when self-control was low. The TST model offers a satisfactory account of supplement use and provides avenues for interventions aimed at increasing safe and beneficial supplement use and decreasing potentially harmful supplement use.     

中性抽象词和具体词情绪信息获得的差异

采用词汇迫选学习范式考察不同类型词汇获得情绪信息的认知机制。结果发现：（1）在迫选过程中与积极图片匹配的具体词汇喜好度显著高于与消极图片匹配的喜好度,而抽象词学习并未表现出这样的效应。（2）积极图片下被选择词汇的喜好度显著高于未被选择词汇的喜好度,而消极图片下被选择词汇与未被选择词汇的喜好度差异不显著。该结果表明具体词相较于抽象词更易获得相应情绪信息,积极情绪比消极情绪信息更易被习得。     

Can contesting orientations predict grittier,more self-controlled athletes?

Grit and self-control are highly desired qualities of character in the sport arena. This two-study investigation used a new theoretical approach, contesting theory, to examine whether contesting orientations could predict these characteristics among intercollegiate athletes. Contesting theory identifies two distinct modes of cognitively processing the meaning and purpose of contesting, one rooted in a contest-is-partnership metaphor and the other a contest-is-war metaphor. Study 1 (N = 799) found that contesting orientations added incremental utility beyond demographic and control variables to the prediction of the two dimensions of grit (perseverance and consistency). Specifically, the partnership orientation positively predicted higher grit scores. Study 2 (N = 1179) replicated the findings of Study 1 with only minor variations and also demonstrated that contesting orientations add to the prediction of self-control. Results are discussed in terms of the practical implications for sport practitioners and, more broadly, the value of contesting theory to positive psychology.     

Flexible and inflexible task sets: Asymmetric interference when switching between emotional expression,sex, and age classification of perceived faces

The present study investigated whether the processing characteristics of categorizing emotional facial expressions are different from those of categorizing facial age and sex information. Given that emotions change rapidly, it was hypothesized that processing facial expressions involves a more flexible task set that causes less between-task interference than the task sets involved in processing age or sex of a face. Participants switched between three tasks: categorizing a face as looking happy or angry (emotion task), young or old (age task), and male or female (sex task). Interference between tasks was measured by global interference and response interference. Both measures revealed patterns of asymmetric interference. Global between-task interference was reduced when a task was mixed with the emotion task. Response interference, as measured by congruency effects, was larger for the emotion task than for the nonemotional tasks. The results support the idea that processing emotional facial expression constitutes a more flexible task set that causes less interference (i.e., task-set “inertia”) than processing the age or sex of a face     

Age and age of acquisition: An evaluation of the cumulative frequency hypothesis

An important determinant of picture and word naming speed is the age at which the names were learned (age of acquisition). Two related interpretations of these effects are that they reflect differences between words in their cumulative frequency of use, or that they reflect differences in the amount of time early and lateacquired words have spent in lexical memory. Both theories predict that differences between early and late-acquired words will be less apparent in older than younger adults. Two experiments are reported in which younger and older adults read words varying in age of acquisition or frequency, or named objects varying in age of acquisition. There was an observed effect of word frequency only for young adults' word naming. In contrast, strong age of acquisition effects were found for both the young and the old participants. The implications of these results for theories of how age of acquisition might affect lexical processing are discussed.