积极情绪提高背景线索学习的适应性

背景线索的学习缺乏适应性, 这种缺乏表现在两个方面：其一是难以在已习得的场景表征上捆绑一个新目标位置(Re-learning), 也就是场景表征的更新受阻; 其二是在习得一组场景表征后, 难以学习另一组全新场景(New-learning)。研究表明, 在旧场景表征上捆绑一个新目标位置的能力可能与注意范围大小有关, 而学习全新场景则需要重置学习功能。积极情绪可以有效扩大注意范围, 并改善对旧有认知模式的固着, 因此积极情绪启动将有可能提升背景线索学习的适应性。本研究采用效价为中性和积极的情绪性图片来启动对应的情绪, 探索旧场景捆绑新目标位置时和学习全新场景时, 背景线索的学习情况, 验证积极情绪是否可以提高背景线索学习中的适应性。实验发现, 积极情绪无法促进旧场景上捆绑新目标位置的背景线索学习(Re-learning), 但是可以促进全新场景的学习(New-learning)。该结果说明, 积极情绪可以提高被试的场景学习能力进而促进对全新场景的学习, 却无法减少由表征相似性引起的旧表征的自动检索, 进而无法改善旧表征的更新过程。     

Nervous Instability and Genius: Military and Political Leaders

Participants (N = 106) performed an affective priming task with facial primes that varied in their skin tone and facial physiognomy, and, which were presented either in color or in gray-scale. Participants' racial evaluations were more positive for Eurocentric than for Afrocentric physiognomy faces. Light skin tone faces were evaluated more positively than dark skin tone faces, but the magnitude of this effect depended on the mode of color presentation. The results suggest that in affective priming tasks, faces might not be processed holistically, and instead, visual features of facial priming stimuli independently affect implicit evaluations.     

Consciously identified attachment hierarchies: cognitive accessibility of attachment figure names as a function of threat primes in a lexical decision task

Studies have linked the subliminal priming of threat-related words to heightened cognitive accessibility directed towards the names of identified attachment figures. The present study used a lexical decision task to examine the cognitive accessibility of names of individuals who formed part of participants' self-reported attachment hierarchies. We did not find support for heightened accessibility in relation to the names of (a) consciously identified attachment figures in general, (b) full-blown attachment figures, or (c) primary attachment figures. However, our data revealed that participants showed increased accessibility to mothers' names in response to threat primes. This effect was even identified in individuals who did not consider mothers to occupy a primary position in their attachment hierarchy. Results are discussed in the context of attachment system activation in early adulthood.     

The direction of masked auditory category priming correlates with participants' prime discrimination ability

Semantic priming refers to the phenomenon that participants typically respond faster to targets following semantically related primes as compared to semantically unrelated primes. In contrast, Wentura and Frings (2005) found a negatively signed priming effect (i.e., faster responses to semantically unrelated as compared to semantically related targets) when they used (a) a special masking technique for the primes and (b) categorically related prime-target-pairs (e.g., fruit-apple). The negatively signed priming effect was most pronounced for participants with random prime discrimination performance, whereas participants with high prime discrimination performance showed a positive effect. In the present study we analyzed the after-effects of masked category primes in audition. A comparable pattern of results as in the visual modality emerged: The poorer the individual prime discrimination, the more negative is the semantic priming effect. This result is interpreted as evidence for a common mechanism causing the semantic priming effect in vision as well as in audition instead of a perceptual mechanism only working in the visual domain.     

Temperament and negative semantic priming in children 7 to 12 years old

The present research assessed whether children with high and low scores on temperament traits differed in their ability to inhibit irrelevant task information in a lexical decision task. Children from 7 to 12 years old were classified based on temperament dimensions measured using a version of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire. The participants were instructed to either attend to (and remember) or to ignore a masked prime word followed by a central probe target on which they made a lexical decision. The results revealed several notable outcomes. First of all, recognition memory was better for attended than ignored words, providing further evidence that attention instructions influenced the processing of the primes.

Secondly, although no negative priming effect was obtained in the “ignore” condition, 43% of children showed this effect. Thirdly, children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and Impulsivity showed ignored negative priming, whereas children scoring high on Inhibitory Control and low on Impulsivity ignored facilitation. Data are discussed within the framework of negative priming as a complex phenomenon that involves the interaction of different factors such as age, type of task, and certain temperament traits.     

Condicionamiento con estímulos enmascarados: Desarrollo de Efectos de Priming como Evidencia de Aprendizaje Asociativo no Consciente

Resumen

Los argumentos tradicionales de la discusión sobre el papel del procesamiento consciente en el condicionamiento clásico humano se revisan a la luz de los resultados de aprendizaje no consciente obtenidos recientemente en el campo del aprendizaje implícito. Tomando en cuenta las limitaciones de los argumentos teóricos y experimentales que sustentan la «necessary-gate hypothesis» (Dawson y Furedy, 1976), se proponen dos explicaciones alternativas que incluyen la posibilidad de obtener efectos de aprendizaje no consciente. Estas explicaciones se ponen a prueba a través de un estudio experimental de condicionamiento semántico en el que se emplean técnicas de enmascaramiento retroactivo para evitar la percepción consciente del Estímulo Condicionado (EC), del Estímulo Incondicionado (EI) o de ambos, obteniendo claros efectos de aprendizaje asociativo no consciente en los grupos en los que sólo uno de los dos estímulos puede ser procesado conscientemente, cuando este efecto se mide a través de índices indirectos de «priming» automático entre el EC y el El.

Los resultados se discuten en el marco de los papeles que la atención y el procesamiento no consciente pueden jugar en el desarrollo de asociaciones a largo plazo.     

Disociaciones entre pruebas implícitas y explícitas de memoria: significado e implicaciones teóricas

Resumen

Las disociaciones entre pruebas implícitas y explícitas de memoria se han convertido últimamente en el fenómeno más rico e ilustrativo teóricamente de que la memoria se manifiesta tanto de una forma directa o explícita como de una forma indirecta o implícita. La distinción entre memoria implícita y explícita ha proporcionado un marco teórico y de trabajo extremadamente fructífero para aumentar nuestro conocimiento sobre la naturaleza y arquitectura de la memoria. En este trabajo se presenta una amplia revisión de las disociaciones entre pruebas implícitas y explícitas de memoria, las múltiples variables que las producen, las distintas poblaciones susceptibles de generarlas y las explicaciones más relevantes sobre su significado. De entre estas explicaciones destacan: 1) la que considera que las disociaciones son el resultado de diferentes procesos y 2) la que entiende que reflejan diferentes sistemas de memoria. Entre los proponentes de ambas explicaciones se ha desarrollado un debate que ha llevado a una nueva concepción de la naturaleza y arquitectura del sistema de memoria que da fundamento a los efectos de priming.     

Intentional and automatic processing of numerical information in mathematical anxiety: testing the influence of emotional priming

ABSTRACT

Current theoretical approaches suggest that mathematical anxiety (MA) manifests itself as a weakness in quantity manipulations. This study is the first to examine automatic versus intentional processing of numerical information using the numerical Stroop paradigm in participants with high MA. To manipulate anxiety levels, we combined the numerical Stroop task with an affective priming paradigm. We took a group of college students with high MA and compared their performance to a group of participants with low MA. Under low anxiety conditions (neutral priming), participants with high MA showed relatively intact number processing abilities. However, under high anxiety conditions (mathematical priming), participants with high MA showed (1) higher processing of the non-numerical irrelevant information, which aligns with the theoretical view regarding deficits in selective attention in anxiety and (2) an abnormal numerical distance effect. These results demonstrate that abnormal, basic numerical processing in MA is context related.     

An inkblot for sexual preference: A semantic variant of the Affect Misattribution Procedure

A newly developed Semantic Misattribution Procedure (SMP), a semantic variant of the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP), was used in three studies as an indirect measure of sexual interest. Using a known-group approach, homosexual men (Studies 1 and 2), heterosexual men (Studies 1 to 3) and heterosexual women (Study 3) were asked to guess the meaning of briefly presented Chinese ideographs as “sexual” or “not sexual”. The ideographs were preceded by briefly presented primes depicting male and female individuals of varying sexual maturity. As hypothesised, the frequency of “sexual” responses increased after priming with pictures of individuals of the preferred sex and increasing sexual maturation. The SMP showed satisfactory reliability and convergent validity as indicated by correlations with direct and two indirect measures of sexual interest. In two further studies, the hypothesised pattern was replicated whereas a standard AMP with the identical prime stimuli did not produce this result. The potential usefulness of semantic variants of the AMP is discussed.