Attentional biases for threat after fear-related autobiographical recall

Background : Previous studies suggested that affective state could enhance stimulus salience and modulate attention allocation for mood-congruent information, but contrasting data have been reported on the effects of mood induction on attentional biases for threat (ABTs) in non-clinical individuals.

Objective : We aimed to assess whether laboratory-induced negative mood can increase individuals’ tendency to allocate attention on threatening stimuli, thus determining a difficulty in attentional disengagement from threat. We also aimed at assessing whether level of trait anxiety could modulate the effect of mood induction on attentional biases.

Methods : We used an autobiographical episode recall procedure for mood induction (fear, happiness and neutral episode recall), and an exogenous cueing task with threatening and non-threatening images to assess attentional biases in 120 undergraduate students.

Results: Participants showed a significant difficulty in disengaging attention from threat after recalling fear-related episodes, independently from their trait anxiety level.

Conclusions: These findings clarify that the ABTs are not exclusive to anxiety disorders or high trait anxiety individuals, and could also arise in non-clinical individuals in a fearful context.     

The effects of type of instruction,animacy cues,and dimensionality of objects on the shape bias in 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children

Robust evidence exists for the shape bias, or children's tendency to extend novel names and categorize objects more readily on the basis of shape than on other object features. However, issues remain about the conditions that affect the shape bias and its importance as a linguistic device. In this research, we examined how type of instruction (common noun naming, proper noun naming, same kind, and goes with), animacy of objects (animate, inanimate), and dimensionality of objects (two‐dimensional, three‐dimensional) affect the shape bias in 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children. Overall, all children showed strong use of the shape bias with categorization (same kind, goes with) instructions, the former in line with the shape‐as‐cue theory. Additionally, the shape bias was quite robust in the inanimate condition, regardless of type of instruction or dimensionality of objects. However, in the animate condition, a proper noun naming instruction coupled with an animate object cue reduced the shape bias across both two‐ and three‐dimensional objects. Implications of these findings are presented.

Highlights

• This study assessed the “shape bias,” a linguistic strategy young children routinely use when confronted with the task of extending a novel name from one object to another.
• Novel name extension and categorization tasks were used in this study.
• Shape bias was affected by the type of instructions, animacy of objects, and dimensionality of objects.

     

Decision mechanisms underlying mood-congruent emotional classification

There is great interest in understanding whether and how mood influences affective processing. Results in the literature have been mixed: some studies show mood-congruent processing but others do not. One limitation of previous work is that decision components for affective processing and responses biases are not dissociated. The present study explored the roles of affective processing and response biases using a drift-diffusion model (DDM) of simple choice. In two experiments, participants decided if words were emotionally positive or negative while listening to music that induced positive or negative mood. The behavioural results showed weak, inconsistent mood-congruency effects. In contrast, the DDM showed consistent effects that were selectively driven by an a-priori bias in response expectation, suggesting that music-induced mood influences expectations about the emotionality of upcoming stimuli, but not the emotionality of the stimuli themselves. Implications for future studies of emotional classification and mood are subsequently discussed.     

Attention bias to threat in mothers with emotional disorders predicts increased offspring anxiety symptoms: a joint cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis

There is convincing evidence of the transmission of anxiety and depression from parents to children; however, mechanisms by which this vulnerability is passed on are unclear. Cognitive models and a small body of cross-sectional research suggest that parental attention biases (ABs) may be one mechanism involved in transmission. Longitudinal associations of maternal and offspring ABs with offspring symptoms have been scarcely studied. Forty-three mothers–child dyads were included. All children (7–12 years old) were diagnosis-free while 24 mothers had a lifetime emotional disorder (anxiety or depression) (high risk, HR) and 19 mothers had no psychiatric diagnoses (low risk, LR). This study examined cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of maternal and child AB and child anxiety symptomology at initial and 12-month assessments. ABs were assessed using a visual-probe task with emotional faces. There was a significant cross-sectional but not longitudinal association of increased child anxiety symptoms with increased maternal threat AB for HR but not LR dyads. At the cross-sectional level, increases in HR but not LR offspring anxiety symptomology were associated with maternal threat AB. Larger longitudinal studies are required that examine the interplay between parent–child variables and include multiple time-points of assessment and measures of AB.     

Developing cognitions about race: White 5‐ to 10‐year‐olds' perceptions of hardship and pain

White American adults assume that Blacks feel less pain than do Whites, but only if they believe that Blacks have faced greater economic hardship than Whites. The current study investigates when in development children first recognize racial group differences in economic hardship and examines whether perceptions of hardship inform children's racial bias in pain perception. Five‐ to 10‐year‐olds (N = 178) guessed which of two items (low versus high value) belonged to a Black and a White child and rated the amount of pain a Black and a White child would feel in 10 painful situations. By age 5, White American children attributed lower‐value possessions to Blacks than Whites, indicating a recognition of racial group differences in economic hardship. The results also replicated the emergence of a racial bias in pain perception between 5 and 10. However, unlike adults', children's perceptions of hardship do not account for racial bias in pain perception.     

The Semantic Drift of Quotations in Blogspace: A Case Study in Short‐Term Cultural Evolution

We present an empirical case study that connects psycholinguistics with the field of cultural evolution, in order to test for the existence of cultural attractors in the evolution of quotations. Such attractors have been proposed as a useful concept for understanding cultural evolution in relation with individual cognition, but their existence has been hard to test. We focus on the transformation of quotations when they are copied from blog to blog or media website: by coding words with a number of well‐studied lexical features, we show that the way words are substituted in quotations is consistent (a) with the hypothesis of cultural attractors and (b) with known effects of the word features. In particular, words known to be harder to recall in lists have a higher tendency to be substituted, and words easier to recall are produced instead. Our results support the hypothesis that cultural attractors can result from the combination of individual cognitive biases in the interpretation and reproduction of representations.     

21% versus 79%: Explaining philosophy’s gender disparities with stereotyping and identification

This study tests the hypothesis that the perception of philosophy as a male-oriented discipline contributes to the pronounced gender disparity within the field. To assess the hypothesis, we determined the extent to which individuals view philosophy as masculine, and whether individual differences in this correspond with greater identification with philosophy. We also tested whether identification with philosophy correlated to interest in it. We discovered, first, that the more women view philosophy as masculine, the less they identify with it, and second, that the less women identify with philosophy, the less they want to major in it. Interestingly, this result does not hold for men—their viewing philosophy as masculine does not correspond to their identification with it, nor does it correlate with their likelihood of majoring in it. We also discovered that the typical student does not have a preconceived notion of philosophy as masculine; this suggests that they come to view philosophy as masculine the more they do it, which in turn supports the possibility that teaching the discipline differently may prevent students from conceiving of philosophy as masculine, thus allowing a path to reducing the gender disparity.     

Who can escape the natural number bias in rational number tasks? A study involving students and experts

Many learners have difficulties with rational number tasks because they persistently rely on their natural number knowledge, which is not always applicable. Studies show that such a natural number bias can mislead not only children but also educated adults. It is still unclear whether and under what conditions mathematical expertise enables people to be completely unaffected by such a bias on tasks in which people with less expertise are clearly biased. We compared the performance of eighth‐grade students and expert mathematicians on the same set of algebraic expression problems that addressed the effect of arithmetic operations (multiplication and division). Using accuracy and response time measures, we found clear evidence for a natural number bias in students but no traces of a bias in experts. The data suggested that whereas students based their answers on their intuitions about natural numbers, expert mathematicians relied on their skilled intuitions about algebraic expressions. We conclude that it is possible for experts to be unaffected by the natural number bias on rational number tasks when they use strategies that do not involve natural numbers.     

Role of Hindsight Bias,Ethics, and Self-Other Judgments in Students’ Evaluation of an Animal Experiment

Does hindsight knowledge make research seem more ethical and predictable? In line with the notion of hindsight bias, students in 3 experiments knowing the outcome of an animal experiment judged the results as more foreseeable and ethical relative to students who did not know the outcome. Via self to other comparisons, students evaluate themselves more favorably compared to a peer but exhibited hindsight bias in doing so. Uniquely, the findings reveal the possibility that students deem themselves to be more skeptical and objective than their peers. Implications for teaching animal ethics and for Institutional Review Boards are discussed.