Exploring the enactment effect from an information processing view: What can we learn from serial position analyses?

The focus of the present article was to analyze processes that determine the enactment and age effect in a multi-trial free recall paradigm by looking at the serial position effects. In an experimental study (see Schatz et al 2010), the performance-enhancing effect of enactive encoding and repeated learning was tested with older and younger participants. As expected, there was a steady improvement of memory performance as a function of repeated learning regardless of age. In addition, enactive encoding led to a better memory performance than verbal encoding in both age groups. Furthermore, younger adults outperformed the elderly regardless of type of encoding. Analyses in the present article show that encoding by enacting seems to profit especially from remembering the last items of a presented list. Regarding age differences, younger outperformed older participants in nearly all item positions. The performance enhancement after task repetition is due to a higher amount of recalled items in the middle positions in a subject performed task (SPT) and a verbal task (VT) as well as the last positions of a learned list in VT.     

A model-based cluster analysis of social experiences in clinically anxious youth: links to emotional functioning

Social difficulties are commonly associated with anxiety disorders in youth, yet are not well specified in the literature. The aim of this study was to identify patterns of social experiences in clinically anxious children and examine the associations with indices of emotional functioning. A model-based cluster analysis was conducted on parent-, teacher-, and child-reports of social experiences with 64 children, ages 7–12 years (M = 8.86 years, SD = 1.59 years; 60.3% boys; 85.7% Caucasian) with a primary diagnosis of separation anxiety disorder, social phobia, and/or generalized anxiety disorder. Follow-up analyses examined cluster differences on indices of emotional functioning. Findings yielded three clusters of social experiences that were unrelated to diagnosis: (1) Unaware Children (elevated scores on parent- and teacher-reports of social difficulties but relatively low scores on child-reports, n = 12), (2) Average Functioning (relatively average scores across all informants, n = 44), and (3) Victimized and Lonely (elevated child-reports of overt and relational victimization and loneliness and relatively low scores on parent- and teacher-reports of social difficulties, n = 8). Youth in the Unaware Children cluster were rated as more emotionally dysregulated by teachers and had a greater number of diagnoses than youth in the Average Functioning group. In contrast, the Victimized and Lonely group self-reported greater frequency of negative affect and reluctance to share emotional experiences than the Average Functioning cluster. Overall, this study demonstrates that social maladjustment in clinically anxious children can manifest in a variety of ways and assessment should include multiple informants and methods.     

不同抑郁症状青少年调节不同强度情绪时策略选择的差异

最新研究发现,情绪强度会影响健康个体的情绪调节策略选择。然而,至今尚未有研究考察情绪强度对不同抑郁症状青少年策略选择的影响。对此,本研究通过流调中心用抑郁量表划分出无抑郁、阈下抑郁和抑郁症青少年,进而考察其在面对高-低强度积极-消极日常情绪事件时选择认知重评和认知沉浸的差异。结果发现：当面对高强度积极情绪、低强度积极情绪和低强度消极情绪时,三组被试的策略选择均无显著差异;当面对高强度消极情绪时,无抑郁青少年比阈下抑郁和抑郁症青少年更多选择认知重评而更少选择认知沉浸,但阈下抑郁和抑郁症青少年之间无显著差异。结果表明：不同抑郁症状青少年在面对不同强度和效价情绪时的情绪调节策略选择存在差异,表现为高强度消极情绪下抑郁症状越多的青少年越少选择认知重评而越多选择认知沉浸。这一发现有助于识别和干预青少年的抑郁症状。     

Impaired semantic memory during acute transient global amnesia

As a clinical model of hippocampal dysfunction, transient global amnesia (TGA) causes reversible memory disturbance. While episodic memory deficits in TGA patients have been extensively described, data regarding semantic memory involvement are sparse and contradictory. We report impaired semantic fluency performance in 16 patients with hippocampal lesions on MRI during acute TGA compared to their performance one day later and to that of 20 healthy subjects. Our findings support the involvement of the hippocampus in semantic retrieval.     

Attention to Emotion and Non-Western Faces: Revisiting the Facial Feedback Hypothesis

In a modified replication of Strack, Martin, and Stepper's demonstration of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis (1988), we investigated the effect of attention to emotion on the facial feedback process in a non-western cultural setting. Participants, recruited from two universities in Ghana, West Africa, gave self-reports of their perceived levels of attention to emotion, and then completed cartoon-rating tasks while randomly assigned to smiling, frowning, or neutral conditions. While participants with low Attention to Emotion scores displayed the usual facial feedback effect (rating cartoons as funnier when in the smiling compared to the frowning condition), the effect was not present in individuals with high Attention to Emotion. The findings indicate that (1) the facial feedback process can occur in contexts beyond those in which the phenomenon has previously been studied, and (2) aspects of emotion regulation, such as Attention to Emotion can interfere with the facial feedback process.     

Is Disgust Prepared? A Preliminary Examination in Young Children

Children may be prepared to associate adult disgust reactions with adult disgust elicitors. To test this, three-year olds (and adults) were presented with two images and an emotive vocalization. The images and vocalizations included stimuli adults found disgusting, fear-provoking, and sad. On one set of trials, the main dependent variable (DV) was time spent looking at each image and on a second set of repeat trials the DV was knowledge of image-sound matches. Fear and disgust vocalizations were both more effective at orienting a child's attention to adult fear and disgust images, than sad vocalizations. Parental disgust sensitivity was associated with this effect, moderated by explicit matching knowledge. Matching knowledge was poor in children and good in adults. These data suggest that in children, fear and disgust vocalizations may both promote attention to stimuli that adults find disgusting and/or fear-provoking, suggesting that “preparedness” may not be wholly emotion-specific.     

Anxiety,Immigration, and the Search for Information

In this article, we use the issue of immigration to explore the role of anxiety in responses to political appeals. According to previous literature, anxiety motivates citizens to learn and pay more attention to news coverage. Literature in psychology demonstrates that anxiety is associated with a tendency to pay closer attention to threatening information. We predict that anxious citizens will seek more information but that they will seek out and be attracted to threatening information. In an experiment, we induce anxiety about immigration and then subjects have the opportunity to search for additional information in a website designed to mimic online news sources. The website has both immigration and nonimmigration stories, and the immigration stories are split between threatening coverage and nonthreatening coverage. We find that anxious subjects exhibit biased information processing; they read, remember, and agree with threatening information.     

Personalization in Mother–Child Emotion Talk Across Three Contexts

An unexplored aspect of contextual variation in emotion talk is the extent to which the emotions mothers and children discuss relate to the child, mother, or another self. To establish the extent to which mothers and children personalize the emotions they discuss, we examined the emotion talk of 40 American mother–child dyads in three conversational contexts: reminiscing, book reading, and play. We found that both mothers and children talked about emotions directly relevant to the child mostly in the reminiscing context and about emotions relating to another self mostly in the book context. Interestingly, the discussion of personalized emotions did not significantly differ between the book and play contexts, but did for the independent emotions. The discussion of mothers' own emotions occurred with almost the same frequency in all three contexts. In addition, within‐context analyses revealed that while mothers discussed the child's and their own emotions in the book and play contexts at about the same rate, children focused on their own emotions significantly more than on mothers' emotions in all three contexts. We contextualize the significance of the results in light of intervention programmes and future research. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.