Specific predictive power of automatic spider-related affective associations for controllable and uncontrollable fear responses toward spiders

This study examined the predictive power of automatically activated spider-related affective associations for automatic and controllable fear responses. The Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST; De Houwer, 2003) was used to indirectly assess automatic spider fear-related associations. The EAST and the Fear of Spiders Questionnaire (FSQ) were used to predict fear responses in 48 female students from Maastricht University with varying levels of spider fear. Results showed that: (i) the EAST best predicted automatic fear responses, whereas (ii) the FSQ best predicted strategic avoidance behavior. These results suggest that indirect measures of automatic associations may have specific predictive power for automatic fear responses.     

Associational social capital and psychological type: an empirical enquiry among cathedral Friends in England

A sample of 1131 members of the Friends associations of six English cathedrals (616 women and 515 men) completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales (FPTS) and a modified version of the Williams Religious Social Capital Index (WRSCI). The data demonstrated that higher levels of religious social capital were found among extraverts (compared with introverts), sensing types (compared with intuitive types), and feeling types (compared with thinking types). No significant differences were found between judging types and perceiving types. The finding that extraverts displayed higher levels of religious social capital poses a challenge for the cathedrals, given that introverts outnumbered extraverts by nearly 2:1 in the Friends groups. Since religious social networks are known to influence generosity with time and money, it is suggested that cathedrals not only develop strategies to recruit more extravert Friends but also devise novel ways of encouraging introvert types to participate in associational activities where social capital will be generated.     

加工水平及词对类型在新异联系形成中的作用

该研究采用过程分离方法和知觉辨认方法探讨不同加工水平和词对类型在新异联系形成中的作用。结果表明,深加工是形成非相关词对间联想启动的条件之一。另外,具体词对的联想启动没有表现出加工水平效应,出现了内隐和外显记忆的分离现象,提示不同的词对类型与加工水平间存在着交互作用,当联系程度较紧时,并不一定需要语义加工,而联系程度不紧时,语义加工则是必要的。     

Longitudinal pathways between mental health difficulties and academic performance during middle childhood and early adolescence

There is a growing appreciation that child functioning in different domains, levels, or systems are interrelated over time. Here, we investigate links between internalizing symptoms, externalizing problems, and academic attainment during middle childhood and early adolescence, drawing on two large data sets (child: mean age 8.7 at enrolment, n = 5,878; adolescent: mean age 11.7, n = 6,388). Using a 2‐year cross‐lag design, we test three hypotheses – adjustment erosion, academic incompetence, and shared risk – while also examining the moderating influence of gender. Multilevel structural equation models provided consistent evidence of the deleterious effect of externalizing problems on later academic achievement in both cohorts, supporting the adjustment‐erosion hypothesis. Evidence supporting the academic‐incompetence hypothesis was restricted to the middle childhood cohort, revealing links between early academic failure and later internalizing symptoms. In both cohorts, inclusion of shared‐risk variables improved model fit and rendered some previously established cross‐lag pathways non‐significant. Implications of these findings are discussed, and study strengths and limitations noted.

Statement of contribution

What is already known on this subject?

• Longitudinal research and in particular developmental cascades literature make the case for weaker associations between internalizing symptoms and academic performance than between externalizing problems and academic performance.
• Findings vary in terms of the magnitude and inferred direction of effects. Inconsistencies may be explained by different age ranges, prevalence of small‐to‐modest sample sizes, and large time lags between measurement points.
• Gender differences remain underexamined.

What does this study add?

• The present study used cross‐lagged models to examine longitudinal associations in age groups (middle child and adolescence) in a large‐scale British sample.
• The large sample size not only allows for improvements on previous measurement models (e.g., allowing the analysis to account for nesting, and estimation of latent variables) but also allows for examination of gender differences.
• The findings clarify the role of shared‐risk factors in accounting for associations between internalizing, externalizing, and academic performance, by demonstrating that shared‐risk factors do not fully account for relationships between internalizing, externalizing, and academic achievement. Specifically, some pathways between mental health and academic attainment consistently remain, even after shared‐risk variables have been accounted for.
• Findings also present consistent support for the potential impact of behavioural problems on children's academic attainment.
• The negative relationship between low academic attainment and subsequent internalizing symptoms for younger children is also noteworthy.

     

Aging and prejudice: Diminished regulation of automatic race bias among older adults

A popular view holds that older adults are more prejudiced than younger adults because they grew up in a less tolerant era. An alternative view proposes that aging corresponds with stronger prejudice among older adults because they have reduced capacity to inhibit biased associations that come to mind automatically. To independently assess these possibilities, we modeled the processes underlying implicit racial attitudes in samples of teenagers through people in their nineties. Results indicated that older adults showed greater implicit bias because they were less able to regulate the automatic associations they possessed, not because of holding stronger associations in the first place. These findings suggest that age-related increases in racial biases, even those that are implicit, may be due to self-regulatory failure of older adults, rather than to cohort effects.     

Bias and regulation of bias in intergroup interactions: Implicit attitudes toward Muslims and interaction quality

Previous research suggests that automatically activated bias manifests itself in behavior that can jeopardize the quality of intergroup interactions. However, regulation of automatic associations has the potential to attenuate their influence on intergroup interaction. To test this possibility, 46 non-Muslim White participants interacted with a Muslim confederate and completed an implicit measure of attitudes toward Muslims. The Quadruple Process model [Sherman, J. W., Gawronski, B., Gonsalkorale, K., Hugenberg, K., Allen, T. J., & Groom, C. J. (2008). The self-regulation of automatic associations and behavioral impulses. Psychological Review, 115, 314-335] was applied to the implicit measure to estimate participants’ strength of negative associations with Muslims and their ability to overcome those negative associations. The confederate’s ratings of how much he liked the participants were predicted by an interaction between automatic negative associations and the ability to overcome them. Specifically, when the strength of participants’ negative associations with Muslims was low, participants’ level of overcoming bias was unrelated to the confederate’s ratings. In contrast, the ability to regulate automatic negative associations predicted greater liking when those associations were strong.     

Spatial representations elicit dual-coding effects in mental imagery

Spatial aspects of words are associated with their canonical locations in the real world. Yet little research has tested whether spatial associations denoted in language comprehension generalize to their corresponding images. We directly tested the spatial aspects of mental imagery in picture and word processing (Experiment 1). We also tested whether spatial representations of motion words produce similar perceptual-interference effects as demonstrated by object words (Experiment 2). Findings revealed that words denoting an upward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the top of the display, whereas words denoting a downward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the bottom of the display. Perceptual-interference effects did not obtain for pictures or for words lacking a spatial relation. These findings provide greater empirical support for the perceptual-symbols system theory ( Barsalou, 1999, 2008 ).