Mental state decoding in past major depression: Effect of sad versus happy mood induction

Individuals with mild depression show an enhanced ability to read or “decode” others' mental states. The goal of the present study was to investigate whether this pattern of performance is related specifically to the pathology of depression or whether it is simply a feature of the transient dysphoric state. Forty-one undergraduates with a previous episode of major depression and 52 undergraduates with no depression history participated in a mental state decoding task following a sad versus happy mood induction. Previously depressed participants were significantly more accurate in their mental state judgements than were the never-depressed participants, suggesting that enhanced mental state decoding may be a specific feature of depression in remission. Furthermore, previously depressed participants whose positive mood increased in response to the happy mood induction showed a poorer level of performance on the task, similar to that observed in the never-depressed group. Thus, a happy mood may have induced a somewhat less accurate, but perhaps more adaptive, approach to processing social information. These findings were robust after controlling for current level of depression and anxiety symptoms, intensity of response to the mood induction, response times, and performance on a control task.     

The Relationship between Intelligence and Age among Superior Adults

The authors addressed whether parental expression of disappointment should be included as a distinct factor in M. L. Hoffman's (2000) well-established typology of parenting styles (induction, love withdrawal, power assertion). Hoffman's 3-factor model, along with a more inclusive 4-factor model (induction, love withdrawal, power assertion, and expressions of disappointment), were respectively evaluated in exploratory factor analyses. The analysis utilized extant data (J. Krevans &; J. C. Gibbs, 1996) comprised of responses by children (N = 73) and their mothers (N = 67) to an adaptation of M. L. Hoffman and H. D. Saltzstein's (1967) parental discipline measure. The findings supported Hoffman's original model. Disappointment may be reducible to love withdrawal or induction, although disappointment may be a more appropriate induction for adolescents.     

Impact of Experimentally Induced Positive and Anxious Mood on Alcohol Expectancy Strength in Internally Motivated Drinkers

The effects of musically‐induced positive and anxious mood on explicit alcohol‐related cognitions (alcohol expectancy strength) in 47 undergraduate students who consume alcohol either to enhance positive mood states (for enhancement motives) or to cope with anxiety (for anxiety‐related coping motives) were investigated. Pre‐ and post‐mood induction, participants completed the emotional reward and emotional relief subscales of the Alcohol Craving Questionnaire – Now. The hypothesis that anxiety‐related coping motivated drinkers in the anxious mood condition (but not those in the positive mood condition) would exhibit increases in strength of explicit emotional relief alcohol expectancies after the mood induction was supported. An additional, unanticipated finding was that enhancement‐motivated drinkers in the anxious condition also showed significant increases in strength of explicit emotional relief (but not emotional reward) alcohol expectancies. The hypothesis that enhancement‐motivated (but not anxiety‐related coping motivated) participants would exhibit increases in explicit emotional reward expectancies following exposure to the positive mood induction procedure was not supported. Taken together with past research findings, the current results highlight the importance of distinguishing between subtypes of negative affect (i.e., anxious and depressed affect) in exploring the affective antecedents of explicit alcohol outcome expectancies.     

Dual frames for causal induction: the normative and the heuristic

Causal induction in the real world often has to be quick and efficient as well as accurate. We propose that people use two different frames to achieve these goals. The A-frame consists of heuristic processes that presuppose rarity and can detect causally relevant factors quickly. The B-frame consists of analytic processes that can be highly accurate in detecting actual causes. Our dual frame theory implies that several factors affect whether people use the A-frame or the B-frame in causal induction: among these are symmetrical negation, intervention and commitment. This theory is tested and sustained in two experiments. The results also provide broad support for dual process accounts of human thinking in general.     

Emotional, cognitive and physiological correlates of abuse-related stress in borderline and antisocial personality disorder

Childhood abuse is an important precursor of borderline personality disorder (BPD) and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). The current study compared the emotional reactivity to abuse-related stress of these patients on a direct and an indirect level. Changes in self-reported affect and schema modes, psychophysiology and reaction time based cognitive associations were assessed following confrontation with an abuse-related film fragment in patients with BPD (n = 45), ASPD (n = 21), Cluster C personality disorder (n = 46) and non-patient controls (n = 36). Results indicated a hyperresponsivity of BPD-patients on self-reported negative affect and schema modes, on some psychophysiological indices and on implicit cognitive associations. The ASPD-group was comparable to the BPD group on implicit cognitions but did not show self-reported and physiological hyper-reactivity. These findings suggest that BPD and ASPD-patients are alike in their implicit cognitive abuse-related stress reactivity, but can be differentiated in their self-reported and physiological response patterns.     

语言类比推理的神经机制：来自ERP研究的证据

实验通过“A:B::C:D”范式, 采用事件相关电位技术, 考察了语言类比推理的神经机制。实验结果显示：图式生成阶段诱发出N400和P300成分, 反映了类比源域的词对概念通达和词对关系抽取的加工过程; 类比映射阶段诱发出N400和晚期负成分LNC, 反映了类比目标域前项词汇概念意义的激活, 以及将已获取的图式关系类比映射于目标域, 并进行推理的加工过程。研究结果表明, 语言类比推理的神经机制复杂, 牵涉到一系列认知加工步骤; LNC成分与类比映射阶段的加工关系密切, 其波幅和头皮分布的广泛性情况与类比映射关系的复杂程度成正比。     

A rose in any other font would not smell as sweet: effects of perceptual fluency on categorization

Fluency--the ease with which people process information--is a central piece of information we take into account when we make judgments about the world. Prior research has shown that fluency affects judgments in a wide variety of domains, including frequency, familiarity, and confidence. In this paper, we present evidence that fluency also plays a role in categorization judgments. In Experiment 1, participants judged a variety of different exemplars to be worse category members if they were less fluent (because they were presented in a smaller typeface). In Experiment 2, we found that fluency also affected judgments of feature typicality. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated that the effects of fluency can be reversed when a salient attribution for reduced fluency is available (i.e., the stimuli are hard to read because they were printed by a printer with low toner). In Experiment 4 we replicated these effects using a within-subject design, which ruled out the possibility that the effects were a statistical artifact caused by aggregation of data. We propose a possible mechanism for these effects: if an exemplar and its category are closely related, activation of one will cause priming of the other, leading to increased fluency. Over time, feelings of fluency come to be used as a valid cue that can become confused with more traditional sources of information about category membership.     

人工类别学习的认知神经研究

基于类别学习包含类别归纳、分类和认知控制3个子过程的假设, 设计了人工类别学习的新任务, 利用高密度ERP技术并结合偶极子源分析, 从纵向和横向两个方面研究了人工类别学习的神经基础与机制。结果表明, 人工类别学习涉及前扣带回、前额叶皮质和内侧颞叶等关键脑区, 并在时间序列上显示了这些脑区扮演的不同作用。基于当前发现, 我们从时-空水平上讨论了的人工类别学习的认知神经机制。     

其它可能原因对于因果共变信息作用的影响

研究使用相继呈现信息的方法控制了被试获得信息的顺序,将其它可能原因在因果判断过程中所起到的作用分离了出来,并按照其对不同共变信息的影响进行了分析。研究结果表明：(1)其它可能原因会影响到被试利用因果共变信息而进行的因果推断。(2)其它可能原因与待判断原因共同存在的程度在很大程度上影响着其它可能原因所起到的作用。(3)其它可能原因对于不同共变信息的影响有着明显的差别。