When old and frail is not the same: Dissociating category and stimulus effects in four implicit attitude measurement methods

It is not always clear whether implicit attitude measures assess the attitude towards single stimuli or the attitude towards categories. Nevertheless, this is important to know—both for interpreting implicit attitude effects and for selecting the test that is most appropriate for individual research aims. We investigated this for four implicit measures: the standard Implicit Association Test (IAT), the IAT-recoding free (IAT-RF), and two versions of the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST, identification (ID)-EAST). Effects in the standard IAT reflect evaluations of categories and single stimuli, whereas the IAT-RF measures attitudes towards categories only. Both versions of the EAST measure evaluations of single stimuli independently from the evaluation of categories. Three different effect sources are distinguished: attitudes towards single stimuli (IAT; EAST and ID-EAST), attitudes towards target categories (IAT and IAT-RF), and processes of recoding (IAT), which do not necessarily reflect attitudes.     

Context-specific control in the single-prime negative-priming procedure

The current paper examines the applicability of the context-specific control principle to the probe selection dependence of negative-priming effects using the single-prime procedure. In a series of experiments, we highlight the applicability of the context-specific control principle, first by illustrating a key result that implicates the role of context-specific control and challenges the contextual similarity principle. Following this, we show the importance of distinct probe contexts in the single-prime negative-priming procedure and report a novel finding that illustrates a learning effect that can occur within an experimental session. Finally, we test the relation of our novel learning effect to a related learning proposal offered by Frings and Wentura (2006), and we demonstrate that the learning involved in context-specific control is not dependent on contingency learning. Overall, the patterns of results highlight the role of context-sensitive memory in controlling how current perception and action are integrated with prior experience.     

Can time-based decay explain temporal distinctiveness effects in task switching?

In task switching, extending the response–cue interval (RCI) reduces the switch cost—the detriment to performance when switching compared to repeating tasks. This reduction has been used as evidence for the existence of task-set decay processes. Recently, this has been challenged by the observation of sequential dependencies on the RCI effect: switch cost is only reduced at longer RCIs when the previous trial had a short RCI. This trial-wise variation of RCI is thought to affect the temporal distinctiveness (TD) of a previous task's episodic trace, affecting the probability of its automatic retrieval on the current trial; importantly, TD is thought to be independent of the current trial's RCI. The present study highlights a dependency between the current RCI and TD, and demonstrates that a decay model can reproduce some patterns of data attributed to TD. Further, the decay account makes a strong prediction when TD is held constant: repetition response times should slow as the RCI increases, and switch response times should be facilitated. This prediction was tested via re-analysis of extant data and three experiments. The re-analysis provided some evidence for the decay account, but Experiments 1 and 2 report slowing for task repetition and switch trials, which cannot be explained by a task-set decay process. Experiment 3, which utilized tasks requiring perceptual judgements, showed small evidence for decay. We conclude that the data are largely consistent with the TD account and that the evidence for decay of higher-level task-sets is not convincing.     

Reward enhances backward inhibition in task switching

Recently, effects of reward incentives on interference-induced cognitive adjustments have drawn much attention. It has been demonstrated that reward can reduce or eliminate switch costs which occurred when alternating between different tasks. However, it still remains a question how reward affects inhibitory processes underlying task switching. The present study examined this issue by combining a task-switching paradigm with performance-contingent reward. Results showed that the inhibitory processes were modulated by reward, with n-2 repetition costs incremented after reward delivery. Data suggest that reward-triggered reduction or elimination of switch costs may reflect enhancing inhibitory processes which are motivated by reward signals and targeted at the irrelevant task set. These findings shed new light on the role of reward in cognitive control.     

When proportion consensus scoring works

Most objectively scored tests use items with easily identifiable correct answers. When such veridical scoring keys cannot be constructed, researchers sometimes use proportion consensus scoring (PCS) to identify the best answers. To determine if PCS identifies the best answers, we scored a test using both PCS and veridical scoring. Among 353 undergraduates, regular PCS, two-stage PCS, and expert PCS all had high correlations for easy items, but no PCS methods had high correlations for difficult items. Thus, PCS cannot reliability identify the best answers to individual items. However, PCS worked well for total scores. For easy items, total scores had correlations above .99 for all PCS methods. For difficult items, expert and two-stage PCS had correlations of .92 and .82 for the 60-item test. Thus, expert and two-stage PCS can be justified (even for difficult items) if the scoring key is based upon people who truly possess some degree of expertise and if scores are summed over many items.     

Personality characteristics and state mood influence individual deck selections on the Iowa Gambling Task

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is commonly used to assess risky decision making in clinical and non-clinical populations, and negative mood and various personality characteristics have been shown to affect the number of advantageous and disadvantageous selections on this task. Recent research has suggested that IGT data should be analyzed at the individual deck level due to differences in frequency and magnitude of losses, and the present study examined how personality characteristics and state mood may affect deck level selections on this task. Participants were 91 undergraduate students (38 male) who completed measures of impulsivity and sensation seeking, behavioral activation and inhibition, state mood, and the computerized IGT. Results indicated that negative mood, drive, impulsivity, and sensation seeking were all positively correlated with Deck B selections, but negatively correlated with Deck D selections. No differences emerged in correlations between Decks A and B or Decks A and D. Results indicate that mood and personality characteristics differentially relate to selections from the individual decks on the IGT. Results have implications for the assessment of decision making, as personality and fluctuations in state-dependent mood could mimic pathological risk-taking if analysis is conducted on the combined decks.     

Implicit measurement of positive and negative future thinking as a predictor of depressive symptoms and hopelessness

Research using explicit measures has linked decreased positive future thinking, but not increased negative future thinking, with clinical depression. However, individuals may be unable or unwilling to express thoughts about the future, and can be unaware of implicit beliefs that can influence their behavior. Implicit measures of cognition may shed light on the role of future thinking in depression. To our knowledge, the current study presents the first implicit measure of positive and negative future thinking. A sample of 71 volunteers (38 healthy; 33 with sub-clinical depression) completed both implicit and explicit measures of positive and negative future thinking. The findings indicate differences in the evaluation of both positive and negative future events between the two groups. However, group differences were more pronounced on the implicit measure. These findings point to the potential utility of an implicit measure of future thinking in mental health research and clinical practice.     

基于潜在类别分析的6~15岁儿童平衡秤任务认知规则探索

本研究使用自编平衡秤测验测试468名6~15岁儿童,通过潜在类别分析对认知规则进行分类。结果发现,被试使用了规则Ⅰ、规则Ⅰ'、规则Ⅱ、补偿规则、规则Ⅳ、距离优势规则等六种规则;6~9岁儿童主要使用规则Ⅰ;10~13岁儿童主要使用补偿规则;14岁以上儿童主要使用规则Ⅳ;13岁到14岁之间,使用规则Ⅳ的儿童数量呈跳跃式增加。与规则评估技术相比,潜在类别分析用于认知规则研究具有明显优势,最后对运用此方法的前提假设与局限进行了讨论。     

Task-switching abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder

Task-switching performance is often used as a measure of executive control functions. Various task-switching studies in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) found, in contrast to expectations, no impairments in cognitive flexibility. Here, we studied whether the role of memory for arbitrary task rules can explain these findings, and how studying rule memory can help to generally better understand executive control. We designed a novel task-switching paradigm to separate cognitive flexibility from demand on memory for arbitrary rules, and we compared 19 children with ASD (9 to 16 years old) with an age- and IQ-matched control group. Children with ASD had increased difficulty with task switching only when memorizing arbitrary rules was required. When no arbitrary rules needed to be memorized, they performed accurately and quickly. Nevertheless, they showed less distraction from task-irrelevant stimulus features, suggesting that they represented tasks differently from the children in the comparison group. We conclude that children with ASD have a weaker capacity of forming rule representations, which only leads to performance impairment when they need to memorize arbitrary rules. Further, executive control impairments in ASD seem more complex than hitherto hypothesized due to mutual interactions between memory demand and task representations.     

Dissociations and associations of performance in syntactic comprehension in aphasia and their implications for the nature of aphasic deficits

Sixty-one pwa were tested on syntactic comprehension in three tasks: sentence-picture matching, sentence-picture matching with auditory moving window presentation, and object manipulation. There were significant correlations of performances on sentences across tasks. First factors on which all sentence types loaded in unrotated factor analyses accounted for most of the variance in each task. Dissociations in performance between sentence types that differed minimally in their syntactic structures were not consistent across tasks. These results replicate previous results with smaller samples and provide important validation of basic aspects of aphasic performance in this area of language processing. They point to the role of a reduction in processing resources and of the interaction of task demands and parsing and interpretive abilities in the genesis of patient performance.