ORCID Profile
0000-0001-6734-8608
Current Organisations
Curtin University
,
Queensland University of Technology
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Research Topics
In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Top 5 Research Topics
ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)
Psychology | Learning, Memory, Cognition And Language | Biological Psychology (Neuropsychology, Psychopharmacology, Physiological Psychology) | Biological Psychology (Neuropsychology, Psychopharmacology, | Health, Clinical and Counselling Psychology | Neurosciences Not Elsewhere Classified | Sensory Processes, Perception And Performance | Social And Community Psychology | Sensory Processes, Perception and Performance | Social and Community Psychology | Learning Sciences | Health, Clinical And Counselling Psychology | Educational Psychology | Biophysics | Interfaces And Presentation (Excl. Computer-Human Interaction) | Specialist Studies in Education | Neurosciences | Central Nervous System | Motor Control |
ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)
Behavioural and cognitive sciences | Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences | Biological sciences | Expanding Knowledge in Education | Mental Health | Road safety | Physical sciences | Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences
Related Links
Publications
Searching for emotion: A top-down set governs attentional orienting to facial expressions
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2020
Effects of miscuing on pavlovian conditioned responding and on probe reaction time
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-1993
The effect of startle reflex habituation on cardiac defense: Interference between two protective reflexes
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2008
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPSYCHO.2008.02.007
Abstract: The present study investigated the relationship between blink startle and cardiac defense, two protective reflexes that are said to be elicited by the transient and the sustained components, respectively, of high intensity stimuli. Three groups of participants were presented with three intense long lasting noise stimuli (500ms) after habituation training with 12 brief (50ms) high intensity noise bursts (High group), low intensity noise bursts (Low group) or high intensity visual stimuli (Light group). The transition from habituation to defense stimuli resulted in increased blink startles in groups Low and Light, but not in group High. A cardiac defense reflex, characterised by a short and long delayed increase in heart rate, was observed in group Light, but not in groups Low and High. This pattern of results indicates that habituation to startle eliciting stimuli will impair defense reflexes elicited on subsequent test trials and suggests some interrelation between the two reflex systems.
Enhanced sensitization to animal, interpersonal, and intergroup fear‐relevant stimuli (but no evidence for selective one‐trial fear learning)
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-08-2015
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.12513
Abstract: Selective sensitization has been proposed as an alternative explanation for enhanced responding to animal fear-relevant stimuli--snakes and spiders--during extinction of Pavlovian fear conditioning. The current study sought to replicate the phenomenon using a shock workup procedure as the sensitizing manipulation and to extend it to interpersonal and intergroup fear-relevant stimuli--angry faces and other-race faces. Assessment of selective sensitization was followed by a one-trial fear learning procedure. Selective sensitization, larger electrodermal responses to fear-relevant than to control stimuli after sensitization, or a larger increase in electrodermal responding to fear-relevant than to control stimuli after sensitization was observed across stimulus domains. However, the one-trial fear learning procedure failed to provide evidence for enhanced fear conditioning to fear-relevant stimuli. One-trial fear learning was either absent or present for fear-relevant and nonfear-relevant stimuli. The current study confirms that electrodermal responses to fear-relevant stimuli across stimulus domains are subject to selective sensitization.
Affect, attention, or anticipatory arousal? Human blink startle modulation in forward and backward affective conditioning
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2008
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPSYCHO.2008.02.005
Abstract: Affect modulates the blink startle reflex in the picture-viewing paradigm, however, the process responsible for reflex modulation during conditional stimuli (CSs) that have acquired valence through affective conditioning remains unclear. In Experiment 1, neutral shapes (CSs) and valenced or neutral pictures (USs) were paired in a forward (CS-->US) manner. Pleasantness ratings supported affective learning of positive and negative valence. Post-acquisition, blink reflexes were larger during the pleasant and unpleasant CSs than during the neutral CS. Rather than affect, attention or anticipatory arousal were suggested as sources of startle modulation. Experiment 2 confirmed that affective learning in the picture-picture paradigm was not affected by whether the CS preceded the US. Pleasantness ratings and affective priming revealed similar extents of affective learning following forward, backward or simultaneous pairings of CSs and USs. Experiment 3 utilized a backward conditioning procedure (US-->CS) to minimize effects of US anticipation. Again, blink reflexes were larger during CSs paired with valenced USs regardless of US valence implicating attention rather than anticipatory arousal or affect as the process modulating startle in this paradigm.
Engagement of the contralateral limb can enhance the facilitation of motor output by loud acoustic stimuli
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 27-04-2021
DOI: 10.1101/2021.04.26.441558
Abstract: When intense sound is presented during light muscle contraction, inhibition of the corticospinal tract is observed. During action preparation, this effect is reversed, with sound resulting in excitation of the corticospinal tract. We investigated how the combined maintenance of a muscle contraction during preparation for a ballistic action impacts the magnitude of the facilitation of motor output by a loud acoustic stimulus (LAS) – a phenomenon known as the StartReact effect. Participants executed ballistic wrist flexion movements and a LAS was presented simultaneously with the imperative signal in a subset of trials. We examined whether the force level or muscle used to maintain a contraction during preparation for the ballistic response impacted reaction time and/or the force of movements triggered by the LAS. These contractions were sustained either ipsilaterally or contralaterally to the ballistic response. The magnitude of facilitation by the LAS was greatest when low force flexion contractions were maintained in the limb contralateral to the ballistic response during preparation. There was little change in facilitation when contractions recruited the contralateral extensor muscle, or when they were sustained in the same limb that executed the ballistic response. We conclude that a larger network of neurons which may be engaged by a contralateral sustained contraction prior to initiation may be recruited by the LAS, further contributing to the motor output of the response. These findings may be particularly applicable in stroke rehabilitation where engagement of the contralesional side may increase the benefits of a LAS to the functional recovery of movement.
Competing for consciousness: Prolonged mask exposure reduces object substitution masking.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 04-2011
DOI: 10.1037/A0018740
Abstract: In object substitution masking (OSM) a sparse, temporally trailing 4-dot mask impairs target identification, even though it has different contours from, and does not spatially overlap with the target. Here, we demonstrate a previously unknown characteristic of OSM: Observers show reduced masking at prolonged (e.g., 640 ms) relative to intermediate mask durations (e.g., 240 ms). We propose that with prolonged exposure, the mask's visual representation is consolidated, which allows processing of the lingering target icon to be reinitiated, thereby improving performance. Our findings suggest that when the visual system is confronted with 2 temporally contiguous stimuli, although one may initially gain access to consciousness above the other, the "losing" stimulus is not irreversibly lost to awareness.
The effects of presenting additional stimuli resembling the CS+ during extinction on extinction retention and generalisation to novel stimuli
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2021
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2021.103921
Abstract: Recent studies have shown that extinction training including the conditional stimulus (CS+) and stimuli similar to the CS + enhances extinction retention and generalisation to novel stimuli. The aim of the present study was to confirm that these effects are specific to presenting stimuli similar to the CS+ during extinction and not merely an effect of additional trials or additional stimuli unrelated to the CS+. In an experiment conducted in a single session on the same day, participants (134 adults 70.7% female 17-40 years of age, M = 20.04, SD = 4.36) completed a habituation phase followed by an acquisition phase using dog images presented with (CS+) and without (CS-) a dog growl paired with a scream unconditional stimulus (US). Participants were randomly allocated to four extinction conditions: Multiple exemplar extinction comprising the CSs and two novel dog images similar to the CS+ Standard extinction control matched for the number of CS+ and CS- presentations Extended extinction control matched for the total number extinction trials, and Other stimuli extinction control comprising the CSs and two novel stimuli unrelated to the CS+. All participants completed an extinction test with the original CSs followed by a generalisation test with two novel dog images. Multiple, Standard and Other stimuli extinction groups exhibited larger skin conductance responses (SCRs) during extinction to the CSs compared to the Extended extinction group. SCRs to the additional dog images in the Multiple group were larger than SCRs to the additional CSs in the Extended group and the novel images in the Other stimuli group. There were no group differences in responses to the CSs during extinction test. Unlike the other groups, SCRs to the first presentation of the novel generalisation dogs did not differ from those to the last CS trials in extinction in the Multiple group. However, this group difference did not persist beyond the initial generalisation trial. Finally, the Multiple, Extended, and Other stimuli groups exhibited more negative CS evaluations after extinction, extinction test, and generalisation test than the Standard extinction group. The results suggest that extinction with the original CSs and additional stimuli resembling the CS + elevated physiological responses during extinction and reduced physiological responses to novel stimuli similar to the CSs. Further studies are needed including clinical s les and trial-by-trial evaluations of the stimuli presented.
Effects of intermodality change and number of training trials on electrodermal orienting and on the allocation of processing resources
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-1996
DOI: 10.1016/0301-0511(95)05143-0
Abstract: The present experiments examined the hypothesis that the electrodermal orienting response elicited by and the processing resources allocated to an intermodality change stimulus will vary as a function of the amount of pre-change habituation training. Experiment 1 (N = 64) employed a 2 x 2 design in which subjects received either 6 or 24 training trials followed by either an intermodality change trial or a further trial with the training stimulus. Skin conductance responses were measured throughout. Training and test stimuli (visual and vibrotactile) were counterbalanced within groups. Intermodality change elicited larger responses than did no-change, and in the 24-trial condition, test trial responses were larger than those on trial 1 of the habituation series. Experiment 2 (N = 64) employed the same design and procedure except that reaction time to auditory probes presented 300 ms following the onset of some stimuli and during some of the intertrial intervals was also measured. The results indicated that in the 24-trial condition, but not in the 6-trial condition, probe reaction time on the test trial was slower in the Change group than in the No Change group. Probe reaction time on the test trial did not exceed reaction time on the first trial of habituation. The results are consistent with the view that development of a stimulus expectancy is one important factor in producing the intermodality change effect.
Different faces in the crowd: A happiness superiority effect for schematic faces in heterogeneous backgrounds
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2014
DOI: 10.1037/A0036043
Abstract: Recently, D.V. Becker, Anderson, Mortensen, Neufeld, and Neel (2011) proposed recommendations to avoid methodological confounds in visual search studies using emotional photographic faces. These confounds were argued to cause the frequently observed Anger Superiority Effect (ASE), the faster detection of angry than happy expressions, and conceal a true Happiness Superiority Effect (HSE). In Experiment 1, we applied these recommendations (for the first time) to visual search among schematic faces that previously had consistently yielded a robust ASE. Contrary to the prevailing literature, but consistent with D.V. Becker et al. (2011), we observed a HSE with schematic faces. The HSE with schematic faces was replicated in Experiments 2 and 3 using a similar method in discrimination tasks rather than fixed target searches. Experiment 4 isolated background heterogeneity as the key determinant leading to the HSE.
Evolving changes in cortical and subcortical excitability during movement preparation: A study of brain potentials and eye‐blink reflexes during loud acoustic stimulation
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-02-2023
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.14267
Abstract: During preparation for action, the presentation of loud acoustic stimuli (LAS) can trigger movements at very short latencies in a phenomenon called the StartReact effect. It was initially proposed that a special, separate subcortical mechanism that bypasses slower cortical areas could be involved. We sought to examine the evidence for a separate mechanism against the alternative that responses to LAS can be explained by a combination of stimulus intensity effects and preparatory states. To investigate whether cortically mediated preparatory processes are involved in mediating reactions to LAS, we used an auditory reaction task where we manipulated the preparation level within each trial by altering the conditional probability of the imperative stimulus. We contrasted responses to non‐intense tones and LAS and examined whether cortical activation and subcortical excitability and motor responses were influenced by preparation levels. Increases in preparation levels were marked by gradual reductions in reaction time (RT) coupled with increases in cortical activation and subcortical excitability – at both condition and trial levels. Interestingly, changes in cortical activation influenced motor and auditory but not visual areas – highlighting the widespread yet selective nature of preparation. RTs were shorter to LAS than tones, but the overall pattern of preparation level effects was the same for both stimuli. Collectively, the results demonstrate that LAS responses are indeed shaped by cortically mediated preparatory processes. The concurrent changes observed in brain and behavior with increasing preparation reinforce the notion that preparation is marked by evolving brain states which shape the motor system for action.
No support for dual process accounts of human affective learning in simple Pavlovian conditioning
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2005
DOI: 10.1080/02699930441000319
Abstract: Dual process accounts of affective learning state that the learning of likes and dislikes reflects a learning mechanism that is distinct from the one reflected in expectancy learning, the learning of signal relationships, and has different empirical characteristics. Affective learning, for ex le, is said not to be affected by: (a) extinction training (b) occasion setting (c) cue competition and (d) awareness of the CS-US contingencies. These predictions were tested in a series of experiments that employed simple Pavlovian conditioning procedures. Neutral visual pictures of geometric shapes, or tactile conditional stimuli (CS) were paired with aversive electrotactile unconditional stimuli (US). Dependent measures were physiological (skin conductance, blink startle modulation) or verbal (US expectancy, on-line and off-line ratings of CS pleasantness). Different combinations of these dependent measures were employed across different experiments in an attempt to assess affective and expectancy learning simultaneously. Changes in CS pleasantness as indexed by ratings or blink startle modulation were readily observed. However, contrary to the predictions from dual-process accounts, results indicated that acquired CS unpleasantness is subject to extinction, occasion setting, cue competition, and not found in absence of CS-US contingency awareness.
Preparatory suppression and facilitation of voluntary and involuntary responses to loud acoustic stimuli in an anticipatory timing task
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-11-2020
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.13730
A potential pathway to the relapse of fear? Conditioned negative stimulus evaluation (but not physiological responding) resists instructed extinction
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2015.01.001
Abstract: Relapse of fear after successful intervention is a major problem in clinical practice. However, little is known about how it is mediated. The current study investigated the effects of instructed extinction and removal of the shock electrode on electrodermal responding (Experiment 1), fear potentiated startle (Experiment 2), and a continuous self-report measure of conditional stimulus valence (Experiments 1 and 2) in human differential fear conditioning. Instructed extinction and removal of the shock electrode resulted in the immediate reduction of differential fear potentiated startle and second interval electrodermal responding, but did not affect self-reported conditional stimulus valence. A separate s le of participants (Experiment 3) who were provided with a detailed description of the experimental scenario predicted the inverse outcome, reduced differential stimulus evaluations and continued differential physiological responding, rendering it unlikely that the current results reflect on demand characteristics. These results suggest that the negative valence acquired during fear conditioning is less sensitive to cognitive interventions than are the physiological indices of human fear learning and that valence reduction requires extended exposure training. Persisting negative valence after cognitive intervention may contribute to fear relapse after successful treatment.
Individual differences in higher-level cognitive abilities do not predict overconfidence in complex task performance
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2019
DOI: 10.1016/J.CONCOG.2019.102777
Abstract: Even when people perform tasks poorly, they often report unrealistically positive estimates of their own abilities in these situations. To better understand the origins of such overconfidence, we investigated whether it could be predicted by in idual differences in working memory, attentional control, and self-reported trait impulsivity. Overconfidence was estimated by contrasting objective and subjective measures of situation awareness (the ability to perceive and understand task-relevant information in the environment), acquired during a challenging air traffic control simulation. We found no significant relationships between overconfidence and either working memory or attentional control. However, increased impulsivity significantly predicted greater overconfidence. In addition, overall levels of overconfidence were lower in our complex task than in previous studies that used less-complex lab-based tasks. Our results suggest that overconfidence may not be linked to high-level cognitive abilities, but that dynamic tasks with frequent opportunities for performance feedback may reduce misconceptions about personal performance.
When danger lurks in the background: Attentional capture by animal fear-relevant distractors is specific and selectively enhanced by animal fear.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2007
DOI: 10.1037/1528-3542.7.1.192
Abstract: Across 2 experiments, a new experimental procedure was used to investigate attentional capture by animal fear-relevant stimuli. In Experiment 1 (N=34), unselected participants were slower to detect a neutral target animal in the presence of a spider than a cockroach distractor and in the presence of a snake than a large lizard distractor. This result confirms that phylogenetically fear-relevant animals capture attention specifically and to a larger extent than do non-fear-relevant animals. In Experiment 2 (N=86), detection of a neutral target animal was slowed more in the presence of a feared fear-relevant distractor (e.g., a snake for snake-fearful participants) than in presence of a not-feared fear-relevant distractor (e.g., a spider for snake-fearful participants). These results indicate preferential attentional capture that is specific to phylogenetically fear-relevant stimuli and is selectively enhanced in in iduals who fear these animals.
Visual search for animal fear-relevant stimuli in children
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-06-2008
Emotion malleability beliefs predict daily positive and negative affect in adolescents
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-06-2023
Increased corticospinal excitability induced by unpleasant visual stimuli
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2010
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEULET.2010.03.027
Abstract: Pleasant and unpleasant emotional stimuli are frequently conceptualized as motivators for action. This notion was examined using focal transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Ten healthy participants viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). During picture viewing, focal TMS was applied to the right motor cortex over the area innervating the first dorsal interosseous muscle of the left hand. Corticomotor excitability was larger while viewing negative pictures than while viewing neutral or positive images, as evidenced by greater motor evoked potentials. No difference was found between pleasant and neutral pictures. These results are consistent with models of emotion in which the neural networks underlying negative emotions have selective, direct connections to brain structures that mediate motor responses.
Verbal instruction abolishes fear conditioned to racial out-group faces
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2009
Visual search for emotional expressions: Effect of stimulus set on anger and happiness superiority
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-04-2015
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2015.1027663
Abstract: Prior reports of preferential detection of emotional expressions in visual search have yielded inconsistent results, even for face stimuli that avoid obvious expression-related perceptual confounds. The current study investigated inconsistent reports of anger and happiness superiority effects using face stimuli drawn from the same database. Experiment 1 excluded procedural differences as a potential factor, replicating a happiness superiority effect in a procedure that previously yielded an anger superiority effect. Experiments 2a and 2b confirmed that image colour or poser gender did not account for prior inconsistent findings. Experiments 3a and 3b identified stimulus set as the critical variable, revealing happiness or anger superiority effects for two partially overlapping sets of face stimuli. The current results highlight the critical role of stimulus selection for the observation of happiness or anger superiority effects in visual search even for face stimuli that avoid obvious expression related perceptual confounds and are drawn from a single database.
Attentional modulation of blink startle at long, short, and very short lead intervals
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2001
DOI: 10.1016/S0301-0511(01)00109-0
Abstract: The present research investigated attentional blink startle modulation at lead intervals of 60, 240 and 3500 ms. Letters printed in Gothic or standard fonts, which differed in rated interest, but not valence, served as lead stimuli. Experiment 1 established that identifying letters as vowels/consonants took longer than reading the letters and that performance in both tasks was slower if letters were printed in Gothic font. In Experiment 2, acoustic blink eliciting stimuli were presented 60, 240 and 3500 ms after onset of the letters in Gothic and in standard font and during intertrial intervals. Half the participants (Group Task) were asked to identify the letters as vowels/consonants whereas the others (Group No-Task) did not perform a task. Relative to control responses, blinks during letters were facilitated at 60 and 3500 ms lead intervals and inhibited at the 240 ms lead interval for both conditions in Group Task. Differences in blink modulation across lead intervals were found in Group No-Task only during Gothic letters with blinks at the 3500 ms lead interval facilitated relative to control blinks. The present results confirm previous findings indicating that attentional processes can modulate startle at very short lead intervals.
An increase in stimulus arousal has differential effects on the processing speed of pleasant and unpleasant stimuli
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 03-2019
Reaction time facilitation by acoustic task-irrelevant stimuli is not related to startle
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2006
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEULET.2006.09.025
Abstract: Previous research has been interpreted to suggest that the startle reflex mediates the RT facilitation observed if intense, accessory acoustic stimuli are presented coinciding with the onset of a visual imperative stimulus in a forewarned simple RT task. The present research replicated this finding as well as the facilitation of startle observed during the imperative stimulus. It failed, however, to find any relationship between the size of the blink startle reflex elicited by the accessory acoustic stimuli, which differed in intensity and rise time, and RT or RT facilitation observed on trials with accessory acoustic stimuli. This finding suggests that the RT facilitation is not mediated by the startle reflex elicited by the accessory acoustic stimuli.
The effect of stimulus modality and task difficulty on attentional modulation of blink startle
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-04-2004
The effects of unconditional stimulus valence and conditioning paradigm on verbal, skeleto-motor, and autonomic indices of human Pavlovian conditioning
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2003
Data from Gene-Expression Profiling of Mucinous Ovarian Tumors and Comparison with Upper and Lower Gastrointestinal Tumors Identifies Markers Associated with Adverse Outcomes
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Date: 04-2023
DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.C.6532782.V1
Abstract: AbstractPurpose: Advanced-stage mucinous ovarian carcinoma (MOC) has poor chemotherapy response and prognosis and lacks biomarkers to aid stage I adjuvant treatment. Differentiating primary MOC from gastrointestinal (GI) metastases to the ovary is also challenging due to phenotypic similarities. Clinicopathologic and gene-expression data were analyzed to identify prognostic and diagnostic features. Experimental Design: Discovery analyses selected 19 genes with prognostic/diagnostic potential. Validation was performed through the Ovarian Tumor Tissue Analysis consortium and GI cancer biobanks comprising 604 patients with MOC ( i n /i = 333), mucinous borderline ovarian tumors (MBOT, i n /i = 151), and upper GI ( i n /i = 65) and lower GI tumors ( i n /i = 55). Results: Infiltrative pattern of invasion was associated with decreased overall survival (OS) within 2 years from diagnosis, compared with expansile pattern in stage I MOC [hazard ratio (HR), 2.77 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.04–7.41, i P /i = 0.042]. Increased expression of i THBS2 /i and i TAGLN /i was associated with shorter OS in MOC patients (HR, 1.25 95% CI, 1.04–1.51, i P /i = 0.016) and (HR, 1.21 95% CI, 1.01–1.45, i P /i = 0.043), respectively. i ERBB2 /i (HER2) lification or high mRNA expression was evident in 64 of 243 (26%) of MOCs, but only 8 of 243 (3%) were also infiltrative (4/39, 10%) or stage III/IV (4/31, 13%). Conclusions: An infiltrative growth pattern infers poor prognosis within 2 years from diagnosis and may help select stage I patients for adjuvant therapy. High expression of i THBS2 /i and i TAGLN /i in MOC confers an adverse prognosis and is upregulated in the infiltrative subtype, which warrants further investigation. Anti-HER2 therapy should be investigated in a subset of patients. MOC s les clustered with upper GI, yet markers to differentiate these entities remain elusive, suggesting similar underlying biology and shared treatment strategies. /
Physiotherapists implicitly evaluate bending and lifting with a round back as dangerous
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2019
DOI: 10.1016/J.MSKSP.2018.12.002
Abstract: Beliefs can be assessed using explicit measures (e.g. questionnaires) that rely on information of which the person is 'aware' and willing to disclose. Conversely, implicit measures evaluate beliefs using computer-based tasks that allow reduced time for introspection thus reflecting 'automatic' associations. Thus far, physiotherapists' beliefs about back posture and safety have not been evaluated with implicit measures. (1) Evaluate implicit associations between bending lifting back posture (straight-back vs round-back) and safety (safe vs danger) (2) Explore correlations between implicit and explicit measures of beliefs towards vulnerability of the back. Exploratory cross-sectional quantitative study. 47 musculoskeletal physiotherapists completed explicit measures of fear of movement (TSK-HC), back beliefs (BackPAQ The s le displayed an implicit association between 'round-back' and 'danger' (μ = 0.213, 95% CI [0.075-0.350], p = .003), with an effect size magnitude of 0.45. There were fair to moderate correlations between IAT and BSB (r = 0.320, 95% CI [0.036-0.556], p = .029) and, IAT and BackPAQ Physiotherapists displayed an implicit bias towards bending and lifting with a round-back as dangerous.
Differentiation between protective reflexes: Cardiac defense and startle
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-2005
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.2005.00362.X
Abstract: Rise time and duration are two parametric characteristics of the eliciting stimulus frequently used to differentiate among psychophysiological reflexes. The present research varied the duration (study 1) and rise time (study 2) of an intense acoustic stimulus to dissociate cardiac defense and cardiac startle using the eyeblink response as the external criterion of startle. In each study, 100 participants were presented with five white noise stimuli of 105 dB under one of five duration (50, 100, 250, 500, and 1000 ms) or rise time (0, 24, 48, 96, and 240 ms) conditions. Cardiac defense was affected by stimulus duration, present only in the 500- and 1000-ms conditions, but not by stimulus rise time, present in all rise time conditions. Rise time affected blink startle, but did not selectively alter the short latency accelerative component of the heart rate response, thus questioning whether it reflects startle.
Conditioned inhibition of autonomic Pavlovian conditioning in humans
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-1997
DOI: 10.1016/S0301-0511(97)05248-4
Abstract: The present study aimed to demonstrate conditioned inhibition of Pavlovian conditioning of autonomic responses in humans. Subjects (N = 21) were presented initially with four geometric shapes (A, B, C and D). An electric shock served as the unconditioned stimulus (US) during acquisition. Conditional stimuli lasted for 8 s and US onset coincided with CS offset. Subjects were trained with A-US, C-US, and AC-US pairings and AB alone and B alone presentations. The subsequent summation test consisted of C-US pairings and CB alone and CD alone presentations. Conditioning was evident in self-reported US expectancy and first and second interval electrodermal responses. Evidence for conditioned inhibition during the summation test was found in US expectancy and second interval electrodermal responses.
Latent inhibition in humans: Single-cue conditioning revisited.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 04-1992
The effects of lead stimulus and reflex stimulus modality on modulation of the blink reflex at very short, short, and long lead intervals
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2004
DOI: 10.3758/BF03194868
Abstract: The blink reflex is modulated if a weak lead stimulus precedes the blink-eliciting stimulus. In two experiments, we examined the effects of the sensory modality of the lead and blink-eliciting stimuli on blink modulation. Acoustic, visual, or tactile lead stimuli were followed by an acoustic (Experiment 1) or an electrotactile (Experiment 2) blink-eliciting stimulus at lead intervals of -30, 0, 30, 60, 120, 240, 360, and 4,500 msec. The inhibition of blink magnitude at the short (60- to 360-msec) lead intervals and the facilitation of blink magnitude at the long (4,500-msec) lead interval observed for each lead stimulus modality was relatively unaffected by the blink-eliciting stimulus modality. The facilitation of blink magnitude at the very short (-30- to 30-msec) lead intervals was dependent on the combination of the lead and the blink-eliciting stimulus modalities. Modality specific and nonspecific processes operate at different levels of perceptual processing.
No effect of inversion on attentional and affective processing of facial expressions.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2009
DOI: 10.1037/A0014715
Abstract: The decrease in recognition performance after face inversion has been taken to suggest that faces are processed holistically. Three experiments, 1 with schematic and 2 with photographic faces, were conducted to assess whether face inversion also affected visual search for and implicit evaluation of facial expressions of emotion. The 3 visual search experiments yielded the same differences in detection speed between different facial expressions of emotion for upright and inverted faces. Threat superiority effects, faster detection of angry than of happy faces among neutral background faces, were evident in 2 experiments. Face inversion did not affect explicit or implicit evaluation of face stimuli as assessed with verbal ratings and affective priming. Happy faces were evaluated as more positive than angry, sad, or fearful/scheming ones regardless of orientation. Taken together these results seem to suggest that the processing of facial expressions of emotion is not impaired if holistic processing is disrupted.
Evaluative conditioning affects the subsequent acquisition of differential fear conditioning as indexed by electrodermal responding and stimulus evaluations
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 17-11-2019
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.13505
Abstract: It is currently unclear whether the acquisition of negative stimulus valence in evaluative and fear conditioning paradigms is interrelated or independent. The present study used a transfer paradigm to address this question. Three groups of participants were trained in a picture-picture evaluative conditioning paradigm before completing acquisition of differential fear conditioning using graphical shapes as conditional stimuli (CSs). In group congruent, the shape used as CS+ (paired with the US during fear conditioning) was paired with negative pictures, whereas the shape used as CS- (presented alone during fear conditioning) was paired with positive pictures. In group incongruent, the shape used as CS+ was paired with positive pictures, whereas the shape used as CS- was paired with negative pictures. In group different, different shapes were employed in evaluative and fear conditioning. Acquisition of differential electrodermal responses emerged within fewer acquisition trials in groups congruent and different than in group incongruent. Transfer of evaluative learning across paradigms was evident only after removal of participants who failed to display evaluative conditioning. The current research indicates that stimulus valence acquired during evaluative conditioning transfers to fear conditioning and will differentially affect the acquisition of fear learning as indexed by subjective evaluations and electrodermal responses. The findings suggest that evaluative and fear conditioning are not independent.
Facial age cues and emotional expression interact asymmetrically: age cues moderate emotion categorisation
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-04-2017
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2017.1310087
Abstract: Facial attributes such as race, sex, and age can interact with emotional expressions however, only a couple of studies have investigated the nature of the interaction between facial age cues and emotional expressions and these have produced inconsistent results. Additionally, these studies have not addressed the mechanism/s driving the influence of facial age cues on emotional expression or vice versa. In the current study, participants categorised young and older adult faces expressing happiness and anger (Experiment 1) or sadness (Experiment 2) by their age and their emotional expression. Age cues moderated categorisation of happiness vs. anger and sadness in the absence of an influence of emotional expression on age categorisation times. This asymmetrical interaction suggests that facial age cues are obligatorily processed prior to emotional expressions. Finding a categorisation advantage for happiness expressed on young faces relative to both anger and sadness which are negative in valence but different in their congruence with old age stereotypes or structural overlap with age cues suggests that the observed influence of facial age cues on emotion perception is due to the congruence between relatively positive evaluations of young faces and happy expressions.
The influence of facial sex cues on emotional expression categorization is not fixed.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2017
DOI: 10.1037/EMO0000208
Abstract: The speed of recognizing facial expressions of emotion is influenced by a range of factors including other concurrently present facial attributes, like a person's sex. Typically, when participants categorize happy and angry expressions on male and female faces, they are faster to categorize happy than angry expressions displayed by females, but not displayed by males. Using the same emotional faces across tasks, we demonstrate that this influence of sex cues on emotion categorization is dependent on the other faces recently encountered in an experiment. Altering the salience of gender by presenting male and female faces in separate emotion categorization tasks rather than together in a single task changed the influence of sex cues on emotion categorization, whereas changing the evaluative dimension by presenting happy and angry expressions in separate tasks alongside neutral faces rather than together within 1 task did not. These results suggest that the way facial attributes influence emotion categorization depends on the situation in which the faces are encountered and specifically on what information is made salient within or across tasks by other recently encountered faces. (PsycINFO Database Record
Latent inhibition in human Pavlovian differential conditioning: Effect of additional stimulation after preexposure and relation to schizotypal traits
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-1992
University Students' Views on the Nature of Science and Psychology
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 2011
DOI: 10.2304/PLAT.2011.10.2.128
Abstract: Students' understanding of the nature of science (NOS), and the degree to which they perceive their discipline to be part of science, are critical to their academic development in psychology. In Study 1, 650 first-year psychology students from three universities in Australia completed the Psychology as a Science (PAS) questionnaire, an adjective checklist relating to science and psychology, and the Science Knowledge and Attitudes (SKA) scale. Results confirmed the limited value of the PAS to identify components of the NOS, but indicated that students view psychology to be a science within a few weeks of the commencement of their study at university. Three factors underlying the SKA scale were identified: naïve view of science (NVS), social and cultural perspective (SCP), and knowledge of refutability (KR). In Study 2, 622 students at the University of Tasmania completed the SKA and items relating to their beliefs about studying. Scores on the three factors were correlated with beliefs about studying, scores on KR increased with years of study, and scores on NVS decreased with years of study. These data suggest that our educational practices do in fact lead to appropriate changes in students' NOS understanding in a manner consistent with the learning outcomes underpinning psychology graduate attributes.
The influence of instructions on generalised valence – conditional stimulus instructions after evaluative conditioning update the explicit and implicit evaluations of generalisation stimuli
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 26-03-2023
The processing of invariant and variant face cues in the Garner Paradigm.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2011
DOI: 10.1037/A0021333
Abstract: Faces provide a complex source of information via invariant (e.g., race, sex and age) and variant (e.g., emotional expressions) cues. At present, it is not clear whether these different cues are processed separately or whether they interact. Using the Garner Paradigm, Experiment 1 confirmed that race, sex, and age cues affected the categorization of faces according to emotional expression whereas emotional expression had no effect on the categorization of faces by sex, age, or race. Experiment 2 used inverted faces and replicated this pattern of asymmetrical interference for race and age cues, but not for sex cues for which no interference on emotional expression categorization was observed. Experiment 3 confirmed this finding with a more stringently matched set of facial stimuli. Overall, this study shows that invariant cues interfere with the processing of emotional expressions. It indicates that the processing of invariant cues, but not of emotional expressions, is obligatory and that it precedes that of emotional expressions.
Combining the trauma film and fear conditioning paradigms: A theoretical review and meta-analysis with relevance to PTSD
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2022.104081
Abstract: A growing literature has sought to combine fear conditioning paradigms with the trauma film paradigm to study the associative learning properties of intrusive re-experiencing in PTSD. We review this innovative approach and the recent findings by highlighting their relevance to cognitive and conditioning theories of PTSD. We also conduct a meta-analysis of the available studies to demonstrate that, for most outcome measures, fear learning using a traumatic film clip unconditional stimulus yields results similar to those seen with an electro-tactile unconditional stimulus, which implies that the combined paradigm shares at least some properties of more standard fear conditioning paradigms. We argue that careful use of this combined paradigm will provide important new insights into the mechanisms underlying memory symptoms of PTSD and will allow rigorous testing of cognitive theories of the disorder.
Group mindfulness based cognitive therapy vs group support for self-injury among young people: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-07-2015
Does emotion modulate the blink reflex in human conditioning? Startle potentiation during pleasant and unpleasant cues in the picture-picture paradigm
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-05-2007
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.2007.00541.X
Abstract: Emotional processes modulate the size of the eyeblink startle reflex in a picture-viewing paradigm, but it is unclear whether emotional processes are responsible for blink modulation in human conditioning. Experiment 1 involved an aversive differential conditioning phase followed by an extinction phase in which acoustic startle probes were presented during CS+, CS-, and intertrial intervals. Valence ratings and affective priming showed the CS+ was unpleasant postacquisition. Blink startle magnitude was larger during CS+ than during CS-. Experiment 2 used the same design in two groups trained with pleasant or unpleasant pictorial USs. Ratings and affective priming indicated that the CS+ had become pleasant or unpleasant in the respective group. Regardless of CS valence, blink startle was larger during CS+ than CS- in both groups. Thus, startle was not modulated by CS valence.
Supplementary Figures S1-S13 from Gene-Expression Profiling of Mucinous Ovarian Tumors and Comparison with Upper and Lower Gastrointestinal Tumors Identifies Markers Associated with Adverse Outcomes
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Date: 04-2023
DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.22488654.V1
Abstract: Supplementary Figures S1-S13
Catching up with wonderful women: The women‐are‐wonderful effect is smaller in more gender egalitarian societies
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-03-2017
DOI: 10.1002/IJOP.12420
Abstract: Inequalities between men and women are common and well-documented. Objective indexes show that men are better positioned than women in societal hierarchies-there is no single country in the world without a gender gap. In contrast, researchers have found that the women-are-wonderful effect-that women are evaluated more positively than men overall-is also common. Cross-cultural studies on gender equality reveal that the more gender egalitarian the society is, the less prevalent explicit gender stereotypes are. Yet, because self-reported gender stereotypes may differ from implicit attitudes towards each gender, we reanalysed data collected across 44 cultures, and (a) confirmed that societal gender egalitarianism reduces the women-are-wonderful effect when it is measured more implicitly (i.e. rating the personality of men and women presented in images) and (b) documented that the social perception of men benefits more from gender egalitarianism than that of women.
Conducting extinction in multiple contexts does not necessarily attenuate the renewal of shock expectancy in a fear-conditioning procedure with humans
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2007
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2006.02.001
Abstract: The renewal of Pavlovian-conditioned responses may provide a model for the relapse of fear following extinction-based treatments for anxiety disorders. Renewal can be observed if conditional stimulus (CS) and unconditional stimulus (US) pairings are given in one context, extinction trials of CS presentations in a second context, prior to test trials of CS presentations in the original acquisition context (ABA renewal). We examined ABA renewal in humans by using a fear-conditioning procedure with an unpleasant shock US. A renewal of rated shock expectancy was demonstrated with this procedure. Conducting extinction treatment in multiple contexts was expected to attenuate the renewal effect. However, the renewal of shock expectancy persisted when extinction treatment was given across three or five different contexts. With the current renewal design, learning task, and measure of conditioned behaviour, extinction treatment does not appear to readily generalise to the test context. The use of multiple extinction treatments in a clinical setting may not necessarily reduce the likelihood of relapse via a renewal effect.
Latent inhibition and schizophrenia: Pavlovian conditioning of autonomic responses
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2002
DOI: 10.1016/S0920-9964(01)00250-X
Abstract: Latent inhibition (LI) is an important model for understanding cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Disruption of LI is thought to result from an inability to ignore irrelevant stimuli. The study investigated LI in schizophrenic patients by using Pavlovian conditioning of electrodermal responses in a complete within-subject design. Thirty-two schizophrenic patients (16 acute, unmedicated and 16 medicated patients) and 16 healthy control subjects (matched with respect to age and gender) participated in the study. The experiment consisted of two stages: preexposure and conditioning. During preexposure two visual stimuli were presented. one of which served as the to-be-conditioned stimulus (CSp + ) and the other one was the not-to-be-conditioned stimulus (CSp - ) during the following conditioning ( = acquisition). During acquisition, two novel visual stimuli(CSn + and CSn - ) were introduced. A reaction time task was used as the unconditioned stimulus (US). LI was defined as the difference in response differentiation observed between preexposed and non-preexposed sets of CS + and CS - . During preexposure, the schizophrenic patients did not differ in electrodermal responding from the control subjects, neither concerning the extent of orienting nor the course of habituation. The exposure to novel stimuli at the beginning of the acquisition elicited reduced orienting responses in unmedicated patients compared to medicated patients and control subjects. LI was observed in medicated schizophrenic patients and healthy controls, but not in acute unmedicated patients. Furthermore LI was found to be correlated with the duration of illness: it was attenuated in patients who had suffered their first psychotic episode.
Temporal context cues in human fear conditioning: Unreinforced conditional stimuli can segment learning into distinct temporal contexts and drive fear responding
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2018.06.004
Abstract: In associative learning, if stimulus A is presented in the same temporal context as the conditional stimulus (CS) - outcome association (but not in a way that allows an A-CS association to form) it becomes a temporal context cue, acquiring the ability to activate this context and retrieve the CS-outcome association. We examined whether a CS- presented during acquisition or extinction that predicted the absence of the unconditional stimulus (US) could act as a temporal context cue, reducing or enhancing responding, in differential fear conditioning. Two groups received acquisition (CSx-US, CSa-noUS) in phase 1 and extinction (CSx-noUS CSe-noUS) in phase 2 (AE groups), and two groups received extinction in phase 1 and acquisition in phase 2 (EA groups). After a delay, participants were presented with either CSa (AEa and EAa groups) or CSe (AEe and EAe groups). Responding to CSx was enhanced after presentation of CSa but reduced after presentation of CSe, suggesting that training was segmented into two learning episodes and that the unreinforced CS present during an episode retrieved the CSx-US or CSx-noUS association. These findings suggest that temporal context cues may enhance or reduce fear responding, providing an exciting new avenue for relapse prevention research.
Instructed extinction in human fear conditioning: History, recent developments, and future directions
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2016
DOI: 10.1111/AJPY.12135
Human blink startle during aversive and nonaversive Pavlovian conditioning.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 1994
Selective attention for masked and unmasked threatening words in anxiety: Effects of trait anxiety, state anxiety and awareness
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2199
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2009.11.003
Abstract: We investigated the effects of awareness on selective attention for masked and unmasked verbal threat material using a computerised version of the emotional Stroop. Participants were assigned to the high trait anxious (HTA) and low trait anxious (LTA) groups on the basis of questionnaire scores, and state anxiety was manipulated within participants through the threat of electric shock. To investigate the effects of awareness on responses to threat, the mode of exposure was blocked such that half the participants received masked trials before the unmasked trials, whereas the other half received the reverse order. The results revealed that there was no difference between the HTA and LTA groups in responses to threat for those who received the masked trials before the unmasked trials. However, when unmasked trials were presented before the masked trials HTA in iduals were significantly slower to respond to both masked and unmasked threat words compared to the LTA group, and these effects were not further modified by participants' state anxiety status. The results are discussed in terms of the automatic nature of threat processing in anxiety.
The effects of verbal instruction on affective and expectancy learning
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2010
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2009.11.002
Abstract: The current research assessed the effects of verbal instruction on affective and expectancy learning during repeated contingency reversals (Experiment 1) and during extinction (Experiment 2) in a picture-picture paradigm. Affective and expectancy learning displayed contingency reversal and extinction, but changes were slower for affective learning. Instructions facilitated reversal and extinction of expectancy learning but did not impact on affective learning. These findings suggest a differential susceptibility of affective and expectancy learning to verbal instruction and question previous reports that verbal instructions can accelerate the extinction of non-prepared fear learning in humans.
Evidence for retarded extinction of aversive learning in anxious children
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2006
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2005.11.004
Abstract: The habituation to intense acoustic stimuli and the acquisition of differentially conditioned fear were assessed in 53 clinically anxious and 30 non-anxious control children and young adolescents. Anxious children tended to show larger electrodermal responses during habituation, but did not differ in blink startle latency or magnitude. After acquisition training, non-anxious children rated the CS+ as more fear provoking and arousing than the CS- whereas the ratings of anxious children did not differ. However, anxious children rated the CS+ as more fear provoking after extinction, a difference that was absent in non-anxious children. During extinction training, anxious children displayed larger blink magnitude facilitation during CS+ and a trend towards larger electrodermal responses, a tendency not seen in non-anxious children. These data suggest that extinction of fear learning is retarded in anxious children.
Psychosis proneness in a non-clinical sample I: A psychometric study
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-1994
The influence of cross unconditional stimulus reinstatement on electrodermal responding and conditional stimulus valence in differential fear conditioning
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 16-03-2023
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.14278
Abstract: We examined whether the inhibitory Conditional Stimulus (CS)—no Unconditional Stimulus (US) association formed during extinction can be triggered by a novel US during the reinstatement of conditional electrodermal responding and self‐reported CS valence in human differential fear conditioning. Participants were trained with either a shock or an aversive scream US before undergoing extinction. Participants then received either the same (i.e., shock_shock or scream_scream) or a different US during reinstatement (i.e., shock_scream, scream_shock). Differential conditioning across all indices was stronger when a shock US was used during acquisition. After reinstatement, electrodermal responding to both the CS+ and the CS− increased regardless of the type of US used during reinstatement (non‐differential reinstatement). Differential CS valence evaluations were larger after reinstatement in the groups that received the same US during acquisition and reinstatement (differential reinstatement), but differential evaluations did not increase in the groups receiving a different US at reinstatement. This dissociation suggests that the reinstatement of negative stimulus valence and the reinstatement of expectancy learning may differ.
The absence of differential electrodermal responding in the second half of acquisition does not indicate the absence of fear learning
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 30-11-2021
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.13982
Abstract: Many contemporary studies of human fear conditioning exclude participants who fail to show differential electrodermal responding during late stages of acquisition training, deeming them to be non‐Learners. The current study examined whether non‐Learners, defined as those who fail to show larger electrodermal first interval responses to CS+ than to CS− in the second half of acquisition, show differential electrodermal responding early during acquisition or during extinction or evidence of fear‐learning on other measures, including rated CS valence and contingency report. In a s le of 351 participants who completed a standard differential fear‐conditioning paradigm that employed electrodermal first and second interval responses (FIR, SIR), continuous CS evaluations, and post‐experimental contingency reports to assess fear‐learning, 74 participants were identified as non‐Learners. These non‐Learners displayed overall smaller electrodermal responses but showed evidence for differential conditioning during acquisition in electrodermal FIR (block1) and SIR (blocks 2–3) and in CS evaluations during acquisition (blocks 2–4) and extinction (blocks 1–4). Fifty‐nine non‐Learners correctly reported the contingencies. A lack of differential electrodermal first interval responding during the second half of acquisition does not indicate the absence of fear‐learning. Rather, this criterion appears to capture participants who exhibit low physiological arousal and performance decrements toward the end of acquisition. Applying criteria based on “end of acquisition” electrodermal responding to determine “non‐learning” results in the exclusion of participants who display fear‐learning at other experimental stages or in other measures.
The spider does not always win the fight for attention: Disengagement from threat is modulated by goal set
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 20-10-2014
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2014.969198
Abstract: Stimulus-driven preferential attention to threat can be modulated by goal-driven attention. However, it remains unclear how this goal-driven modulation affects specific attentional components implied in threat interference. We hypothesise that goal-driven modulation most strongly impacts delayed disengagement from threat. A spatial cueing task was used that disentangles delayed disengagement from attentional capture by tightly manipulating the locus of attention at the time of target onset. Different top-down goals were induced by instructing participants to identify bird/fish targets (Experiment 1) or spider/cat targets (Experiment 2) among animal non-targets. Delayed disengagement from a non-target spider was observed only when the spider was part of the target set, not when it was task-irrelevant. This corroborates evidence that threat stimuli do not necessarily override goal-driven attentional control and that extended processing of threatening distractors is not obligatory.
Automatic attention does not equal automatic fear: Preferential attention without implicit valence.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2007
DOI: 10.1037/1528-3542.7.2.314
Abstract: Theories of nonassociative fear acquisition hold that humans have an innate predisposition for some fears, such as fear of snakes and spiders. This predisposition may be mediated by an evolved fear module (Ohman & Mineka, 2001) that responds to basic perceptual features of threat stimuli by directing attention preferentially and generating an automatic fear response. Visual search and affective priming tasks were used to examine attentional processing and implicit evaluation of snake and spider pictures in participants with different explicit attitudes controls (n = 25) and snake and spider experts (n = 23). Attentional processing and explicit evaluation were found to erge snakes and spiders were preferentially attended to by all participants however, they were negative only for controls. Implicit evaluations of dangerous and nondangerous snakes and spiders, which have similar perceptual features, differed for expert participants, but not for controls. The authors suggest that although snakes and spiders are preferentially attended to, negative evaluations are not automatically elicited during this processing.
RWMODEL II: computer simulation of the Rescorla-Wagner model of Pavlovian conditioning
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-1999
DOI: 10.3758/BF03200756
Abstract: RWMODEL II simulates the Rescorla-Wagner model of Pavlovian conditioning. It is written in Delphi and runs under Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. The program was designed for novice and expert users and can be employed in teaching, as well as in research. It is user friendly and requires a minimal level of computer literacy but is sufficiently flexible to permit a wide range of simulations. It allows the display of empirical data, against which predictions from the model can be validated.
Verbal instructions targeting valence alter negative conditional stimulus evaluations (but do not affect reinstatement rates)
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 31-01-2017
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2017.1280449
Abstract: Negative conditional stimulus (CS) valence acquired during fear conditioning may enhance fear relapse and is difficult to remove as it extinguishes slowly and does not respond to the instruction that unconditional stimulus (US) presentations will cease. We examined whether instructions targeting CS valence would be more effective. In Experiment 1, an image of one person (CS+) was paired with an aversive US, while another (CS-) was presented alone. After acquisition, participants were given positive information about the CS+ poser and negative information about the CS- poser. Instructions reversed the pattern of differential CS valence present during acquisition and eliminated differential electrodermal responding. In Experiment 2, we compared positive and negative CS revaluation by providing positive/negative information about the CS+ and neutral information about CS-. After positive revaluation, differential valence was removed and differential electrodermal responding remained intact. After negative revaluation, differential valence was strengthened and differential electrodermal responding was eliminated. Unexpectedly, the instructions did not affect the reinstatement of differential electrodermal responding.
The effects of assessment type on verbal ratings of conditional stimulus valence and contingency judgments: Implications for the extinction of evaluative learning.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2006
DOI: 10.1037/0097-7403.32.4.431
Abstract: Recent research on causal learning found (a) that causal judgments reflect either the current predictive value of a conditional stimulus (CS) or an integration across the experimental contingencies used in the entire experiment and (b) that postexperimental judgments, rather than the CS's current predictive value, are likely to reflect this integration. In the current study, the authors examined whether verbal valence ratings were subject to similar integration. Assessments of stimulus valence and contingencies responded similarly to variations of reporting requirements, contingency reversal, and extinction, reflecting either current or integrated values. However, affective learning required more trials to reflect a contingency change than did contingency judgments. The integration of valence assessments across training and the fact that affective learning is slow to reflect contingency changes can provide an alternative interpretation for researchers' previous failures to find an effect of extinction training on verbal reports of CS valence.
The relationship between visual search and categorization of own‐ and other‐age faces
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-03-2018
DOI: 10.1111/BJOP.12297
Abstract: Young adult participants are faster to detect young adult faces in crowds of infant and child faces than vice versa. These findings have been interpreted as evidence for more efficient attentional capture by own-age than other-age faces, but could alternatively reflect faster rejection of other-age than own-age distractors, consistent with the previously reported other-age categorization advantage: faster categorization of other-age than own-age faces. Participants searched for own-age faces in other-age backgrounds or vice versa. Extending the finding to different other-age groups, young adult participants were faster to detect young adult faces in both early adolescent (Experiment 1) and older adult backgrounds (Experiment 2). To investigate whether the own-age detection advantage could be explained by faster categorization and rejection of other-age background faces, participants in experiments 3 and 4 also completed an age categorization task. Relatively faster categorization of other-age faces was related to relatively faster search through other-age backgrounds on target absent trials but not target present trials. These results confirm that other-age faces are more quickly categorized and searched through and that categorization and search processes are related however, this correlational approach could not confirm or reject the contribution of background face processing to the own-age detection advantage.
Visual search for emotional faces in children
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 11-2008
Examination of Affective Responses to Images in Sponsorship-Linked Marketing
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-2016
Attentional blink reflex modulation in a continuous performance task is modality specific
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 26-02-2004
Psychosis proneness in a non-clinical sample II: A multi-experimental study of “Attentional malfunctioning”
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-1994
Contrast effects in backward evaluative conditioning: Exploring effects of affective relief/disappointment versus instructional information.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 03-2021
DOI: 10.1037/EMO0000701
Abstract: Past studies of backward evaluative conditioning (EC) have found an assimilation effect, in that neutral conditional stimuli (conditional stimulus [CS]) were found to acquire the valence of co-occurring unconditional stimuli (US). Recent studies employing a concurrent forward and backward conditioning paradigm with instructions suggesting a contrastive relation between the US and the backward CS have resulted in contrast effects, in that backward CSs acquired valence opposite to the US. The current research investigated whether these effects were in fact due to the instructions highlighting the contrastive relation between the US and CS, or whether affective relief/disappointment experienced at US offset could account for this result. Consistent with the hypothesized role of instructions, backward CS contrast effects occurred only when instructions highlighted the valence of the US and attributed control of that US to the CSs. In contrast to the affective relief/disappointment hypothesis, no backward CS contrast effects were found without such instructions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Conditional stimulus choices affect fear learning: Comparing fear conditioning with neutral faces and shapes or angry faces
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-04-2022
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.14068
Abstract: Past fear conditioning studies have used different types of conditional stimuli (CSs). Whether this choice affects learning outcomes in particular when neutral stimuli (e.g., neutral faces vs. shapes) are used is unclear. Data were aggregated across nine studies using an electric shock unconditional stimulus to test for differences in acquisition and extinction of electrodermal responses and self‐reported CS pleasantness when CSs were neutral faces or shapes (Experiment 1, N = 594) and when CSs were angry or neutral faces (Experiment 2, N = 157). Reliable electrodermal conditioning was observed in all stimulus conditions. We found stronger differential conditioning in electrodermal second interval responses and CS pleasantness and more pronounced extinction in CS pleasantness for neutral shape than neutral face CSs, but no differences in electrodermal first interval responses, the most frequently reported index of fear conditioning. For angry and neutral face CSs, there were no differences during acquisition, but the extinction of first and second interval electrodermal conditioning to angry faces was retarded relative to neutral faces. Acquisition of differential CS pleasantness, which was reliably observed for neutral face CSs, was absent for angry face CSs. The current results suggest that fear conditioning with a neutral face and shape CSs yields broadly similar results with differences limited to second interval electrodermal responses and CS pleasantness ratings. Using angry face CSs resulted in impaired extinction of electrodermal indices and no differential CS pleasantness ratings and should only be considered in studies designed to address questions about these specific CS materials.
The subjective experience of habit captured by self-report indexes may lead to inaccuracies in the measurement of habitual action
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 18-12-2014
Searching for emotion or race: Task-irrelevant facial cues have asymmetrical effects
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 18-12-2013
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2013.867831
Abstract: Facial cues of threat such as anger and other race membership are detected preferentially in visual search tasks. However, it remains unclear whether these facial cues interact in visual search. If both cues equally facilitate search, a symmetrical interaction would be predicted anger cues should facilitate detection of other race faces and cues of other race membership should facilitate detection of anger. Past research investigating this race by emotional expression interaction in categorisation tasks revealed an asymmetrical interaction. This suggests that cues of other race membership may facilitate the detection of angry faces but not vice versa. Utilising the same stimuli and procedures across two search tasks, participants were asked to search for targets defined by either race or emotional expression. Contrary to the results revealed in the categorisation paradigm, cues of anger facilitated detection of other race faces whereas differences in race did not differentially influence detection of emotion targets.
A Happy Face Advantage With Male Caucasian Faces
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 04-08-2014
Abstract: Happy faces are categorized faster as “happy” than angry faces as “angry,” the happy face advantage. Here, we show across three experiments that the size of the happy face advantage for male Caucasian faces varies as a function of the other faces they are presented with. A happy face advantage was present if the male Caucasian faces were presented among male African American faces, but absent if the same faces were presented among female faces, Caucasian or African American. The modulation of the happy face advantage for male Caucasian faces was observed even if the female Caucasian/male African American faces had neutral expressions. This difference in the happy face advantage for a constant set of faces as a function of the other faces presented indicates that it does not reflect on a stimulus-dependent bottom-up process but on the evaluation of the expressive faces within a specific context.
Selective attention for masked and unmasked emotionally toned stimuli: Effects of trait anxiety, state anxiety, and test order
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-0006
“Prepared” fear or socio‐cultural learning? Fear conditioned to guns, snakes, and spiders is eliminated by instructed extinction in a within‐participant differential fear conditioning paradigm
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 12-12-2019
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.13516
Abstract: Across three experiments, we investigated whether electrodermal responses conditioned to ontogenetic fear-relevant (pointed guns) and phylogenetic fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders) would resist instructed extinction in a within-participant differential fear conditioning paradigm. Instructed extinction involves informing participants before extinction that the unconditional stimulus (US) will no longer be presented. This manipulation has been shown to abolish fear conditioned to fear-irrelevant conditional stimuli, but is said to leave fear conditioned to images of snakes and spiders intact. The latter finding, however, has only been demonstrated when fear-relevance is manipulated between-groups. It is also not known whether instructed extinction affects fear conditioned to ontogenetic fear-relevant stimuli, such as pointed guns. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that fear conditioned to images of pointed guns does not resist instructed extinction. In Experiment 2, we detected some evidence to suggest that fear conditioned to images of snakes and spiders survives instructed extinction but this evidence was not conclusive. In Experiment 3, we directly compared the effects of instructed extinction on fear conditioned to snakes and spiders and to guns and provide strong evidence that fear conditioned to both classes of stimuli is reduced after instructed extinction with no differences between ontogenetic and phylogenetic stimuli. The current results suggest that when fear relevance is manipulated within-participants fear conditioned to both phylogenetic and ontogenetic, fear-relevant stimuli responds to instructed extinction providing evidence in favor of a socio-cultural explanation for "preparedness" effects.
Attenuated psychophysiological reactivity following single-session group imagery rescripting versus verbal restructuring in social anxiety disorder
Publisher: S. Karger AG
Date: 2018
DOI: 10.1159/000493897
Abstract: b i Background: /i /b The effectiveness of psychotherapies for social anxiety disorder (SAD) is typically evaluated using self- and clinician-reported symptom change, while biomarkers of treatment response are rarely measured. The current study aimed to compare biomarkers of response following two brief group interventions for SAD. b i Methods: /i /b This randomized controlled trial evaluated the effectiveness of single-session group interventions for SAD ( i n /i = 58) – imagery rescripting (IR) and verbal restructuring (VR) versus waitlist control (WC). The IR intervention guided participants to rescript autobiographical memories through visualization whilst the VR intervention focused on thought challenging. Trial outcomes included change in psychophysiological reactivity (heart rate variability (HRV) and electrodermal responding) to social stress, and symptom-based measures (social interaction anxiety, negative self-portrayal, cognitive avoidance, repetitive negative thinking, memory modification, anxious behaviors). b i Results: /i /b Psychophysiological reactivity was selectively attenuated following IR treatment, compared to VR and WC groups. The specific influence of the imagery-based intervention in modulating autonomic reactivity was evident across HRV parameters, including the standard deviation of intervals between heartbeats (IR vs. WC, i d /i = 0.67, i /i = 0.021 IR vs. VR, i d /i = 0.58, i /i = 0.041), and high frequency power – an indicator of parasympathetically mediated emotion regulation (IR vs. WC, i d /i = 0.75, i /i = 0.034 IR vs. VR, i d /i = 0.95, i /i = 0.006). Few group differences were observed across self-report measures. b i Conclusion: /i /b The current study highlights the specificity of brief imagery-based interventions in influencing psychophysiological reactivity in SAD and establishes the sensitivity of objective markers of treatment response in quantifying change over symptom-based measurements.
Be Careful Where You Smile: Culture Shapes Judgments of Intelligence and Honesty of Smiling Individuals
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-12-2015
Understanding and addressing mathematics anxiety using perspectives from education, psychology and neuroscience
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 30-06-2016
Abstract: Mathematics anxiety is a significant barrier to mathematical learning. In this article, we propose that state or on-task mathematics anxiety impacts on performance, while trait mathematics anxiety leads to the avoidance of courses and careers involving mathematics. We also demonstrate that integrating perspectives from education, psychology and neuroscience contributes to a greater understanding of mathematics anxiety in its state and trait forms. Research from cognitive psychology and neuroscience illustrates the effect of state mathematics anxiety on performance and research from cognitive, social and clinical psychology, and education can be used to conceptualise the origins of trait mathematics anxiety and its impact on avoidant behaviour. We also show that using this transdisciplinary framework to consider state and trait mathematics anxiety separately makes it possible to identify strategies to reduce the negative effects of mathematics anxiety. Implementation of these strategies among particularly vulnerable groups, such as pre-service teachers, could be beneficial.
Fear conditioning depends on the nature of the unconditional stimulus and may be related to hair levels of endocannabinoids
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-03-2023
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.14297
Abstract: The replicability of fear conditioning research has come under recent scrutiny, with increasing acknowledgment that the use of differing materials and methods may lead to incongruent results. Direct comparisons between the main two unconditional stimuli used in fear conditioning – an electric shock or a loud scream—are scarce, and yet these stimuli are usually used interchangeably. In the present study, we tested whether a scream, a shock, or an unpredictable combination of the two affected fear acquisition, extinction, and return of fear amongst healthy participants ( N = 109, 81 female). We also collected hair s les and tested the relationship between fear conditioning and hair endocannabinoid levels. Our findings suggest that, although subjective ratings of pleasantness, arousal, and anxiety were similar regardless of the unconditional stimuli used, skin conductance responses were significantly lower for stimuli paired with the scream compared to a shock alone. Further, reducing the predictability of the unconditional stimulus reduced habituation of skin conductance responses during acquisition and reacquisition, but did not produce stronger conditioning compared to shock alone. Exploratory analyses suggested that hair endocannabinoids were associated with overall physiological arousal during fear conditioning, as well as higher return of fear to the threat cue, but not to the safety cue. These findings have multiple implications for the design and replicability of fear conditioning research and provide the first evidence for an association between hair levels of endocannabinoids and human fear conditioning.
Novel approaches for strengthening human fear extinction: The roles of novelty, additional USs, and additional GSs
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2020
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2019.103529
Abstract: Since Watson and Rayner's (1920) initial demonstration that human fear can be learned by means of Pavlovian conditioning, neuroscientific and behavioral studies have provided a thorough understanding of fear acquisition. Less is known about the manner in which we can harness insights from Pavlovian conditioning research to reduce fears and, most importantly, make the reduction of fear lasting and resistant against relapse. The current paper reviews three manipulations that have shown promise in achieving a reduction of conditional fear that is more resistant to relapse than is the reduction of conditional fear after standard extinction: novelty-facilitated extinction training, presentation of conditional-unconditional stimulus pairings or of unpaired unconditional stimuli during extinction, and extinction with additional stimuli that are similar to the original conditional stimuli. It summarizes past research involving human and non-human animal subjects and highlights knowledge gaps in the current literature. Moreover, it discusses potential mechanisms that mediate the reduction of fear seen as a result of these manipulations in an attempt to enhance our understanding of what renders fear extinction less vulnerable to the known pathways to fear relapse. It is hoped that this review will contribute to the achievement of the goal that was denied to Watson and Rayner, the development of experimental techniques that can be utilized to remove conditioned emotional responses permanently.
Attentional bias toward fear-related stimuli:
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2004
DOI: 10.1016/J.JECP.2004.06.003
Abstract: Research investigating anxiety-related attentional bias for emotional information in anxious and nonanxious children has been equivocal with regard to whether a bias for fear-related stimuli is unique to anxious children or is common to children in general. Moreover, recent cognitive theories have proposed that an attentional bias for objectively threatening stimuli may be common to all in iduals, with this effect enhanced in anxious in iduals. The current study investigated whether an attentional bias toward fear-related pictures could be found in nonselected children (n=105) and adults (n=47) and whether a s le of clinically anxious children (n=23) displayed an attentional bias for fear-related pictures over and above that expected for nonselected children. Participants completed a dot-probe task that employed fear-related, neutral, and pleasant pictures. As expected, both adults and children showed a stronger attentional bias toward fear-related pictures than toward pleasant pictures. Consistent with some findings in the childhood domain, the extent of the attentional bias toward fear-related pictures did not differ significantly between anxious children and nonselected children. However, compared with nonselected children, anxious children showed a stronger attentional bias overall toward affective picture stimuli.
Better safe than sorry: Simplistic fear-relevant stimuli capture attention
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 08-2011
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2010.514710
Abstract: It has been consistently demonstrated that fear-relevant images capture attention preferentially over fear-irrelevant images. Current theory suggests that this faster processing could be mediated by an evolved module that allows certain stimulus features to attract attention automatically, prior to the detailed processing of the image. The present research investigated whether simplified images of fear-relevant stimuli would produce interference with target detection in a visual search task. In Experiment 1, silhouettes and degraded silhouettes of fear-relevant animals produced more interference than did the fear-irrelevant images. Experiment 2, compared the effects of fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant distracters and confirmed that the interference produced by fear-relevant distracters was not an effect of novelty. Experiment 3 suggested that fear-relevant stimuli produced interference regardless of whether participants were instructed as to the content of the images. The three experiments indicate that even very simplistic images of fear-relevant animals can ert attention.
Correction to: Predictable events elicit less visual and temporal information uptake in an oddball paradigm
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-07-2020
No evidence for subliminal affective priming with emotional facial expression primes
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 28-11-2011
In search of the emotional face: Anger versus happiness superiority in visual search
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 08-2013
DOI: 10.1037/A0031970
Abstract: Previous research has provided inconsistent results regarding visual search for emotional faces, yielding evidence for either anger superiority (i.e., more efficient search for angry faces) or happiness superiority effects (i.e., more efficient search for happy faces), suggesting that these results do not reflect on emotional expression, but on emotion (un-)related low-level perceptual features. The present study investigated possible factors mediating anger/happiness superiority effects specifically search strategy (fixed vs. variable target search Experiment 1), stimulus choice (Nimstim database vs. Ekman & Friesen database Experiments 1 and 2), and emotional intensity (Experiment 3 and 3a). Angry faces were found faster than happy faces regardless of search strategy using faces from the Nimstim database (Experiment 1). By contrast, a happiness superiority effect was evident in Experiment 2 when using faces from the Ekman and Friesen database. Experiment 3 employed angry, happy, and exuberant expressions (Nimstim database) and yielded anger and happiness superiority effects, respectively, highlighting the importance of the choice of stimulus materials. Ratings of the stimulus materials collected in Experiment 3a indicate that differences in perceived emotional intensity, pleasantness, or arousal do not account for differences in search efficiency. Across three studies, the current investigation indicates that prior reports of anger or happiness superiority effects in visual search are likely to reflect on low-level visual features associated with the stimulus materials used, rather than on emotion.
Implicit semantic perception in object substitution masking
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2011
DOI: 10.1016/J.COGNITION.2010.10.013
Abstract: Decades of research on visual perception has uncovered many phenomena, such as binocular rivalry, backward masking, and the attentional blink, that reflect 'failures of consciousness'. Although stimuli do not reach awareness in these paradigms, there is evidence that they nevertheless undergo semantic processing. Object substitution masking (OSM), however, appears to be the exception to this rule. In OSM, a temporally-trailing four-dot mask interferes with target perception, even though it has different contours from and does not spatially overlap with the target. Previous research suggests that OSM has an early locus, blocking the extraction of semantic information. Here, we refute this claim, showing implicit semantic perception in OSM using a target-mask priming paradigm. We conclude that semantic information suppressed via OSM can nevertheless guide behavior.
Engagement of the contralateral limb can enhance the facilitation of motor output by loud acoustic stimuli.
Publisher: American Physiological Society
Date: 04-2022
Abstract: When intense sound is presented during light muscle contraction, inhibition of the corticomotoneuronal pathway is observed. During action preparation, this effect is reversed, with sound resulting in excitation of the corticomotoneuronal pathway. We investigated how the combined maintenance of a muscle contraction during preparation for a ballistic action impacts the magnitude of the facilitation of motor output by a loud acoustic stimulus (LAS), a phenomenon known as the StartReact effect. Participants executed ballistic wrist flexion movements and a LAS was presented simultaneously with the imperative signal in a subset of trials. We examined whether the force level or muscle used to maintain a contraction during preparation for the ballistic response impacted reaction time and/or the force of movements triggered by the LAS. These contractions were sustained either ipsilaterally or contralaterally to the ballistic response. The magnitude of facilitation by the LAS was greatest when low-force flexion contractions were maintained in the limb contralateral to the ballistic response during preparation. There was little change in facilitation when contractions recruited the contralateral extensor muscle or when they were sustained in the same limb that executed the ballistic response. We conclude that a larger network of neurons that may be engaged by a contralateral sustained contraction prior to initiation may be recruited by the LAS, further contributing to the motor output of the response. These findings may be particularly applicable in stroke rehabilitation, where engagement of the contralesional side may increase the benefits of a LAS to the functional recovery of movement.
Attentional blink modulation in a reaction time task: performance feedback, warning stimulus modality, and task difficulty
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2003
DOI: 10.1016/S0301-0511(02)00115-1
Abstract: The present research investigated the effect of performance feedback on the modulation of the acoustic startle reflex in a Go/NoGo reaction time task. Experiment 1 (n = 120) crossed warning stimulus modality (acoustic, visual, and tactile) with the provision of feedback in a between subject design. Provision of performance feedback increased the number of errors committed and reduced reaction time, but did not affect blink modulation significantly. Attentional blink latency and magnitude modulation was larger during acoustic than during visual and larger during visual than during tactile warning stimuli. In comparison to control blinks, latency shortening was significant in all modality conditions whereas magnitude facilitation was not significant during tactile warning stimuli. Experiment 2 (n = 80) employed visual warning stimuli only and crossed the provision of feedback with task difficulty. Feedback and difficulty affected accuracy and reaction time. Whereas blink latency shortening was not affected, blink magnitude modulation was smallest in the Easy/No Feedback and the Difficult/Feedback conditions.
Faster acquisition of conditioned fear to fear‐relevant than to nonfear‐relevant conditional stimuli
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-04-2014
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.12223
Abstract: Prepared learning theory posits that prepared associations are acquired rapidly and resist extinction. Although it has been shown repeatedly that prepared associations resist extinction, there is currently little evidence to support the proposal of faster acquisition. The current study provides such evidence using a within-subjects conditioning procedure with a 50% reinforcement schedule. Participants were presented with pictures of four animals, two fear-relevant (snake, spider) and two nonfear-relevant (fish, bird), one of each paired with an unpleasant electrotactile stimulus on 50% of the trials during acquisition. Differential electrodermal responding was observed within the first two blocks of acquisition for fear-relevant but not for nonfear-relevant conditional stimuli, confirming the prediction that prepared associations are acquired faster than nonprepared associations.
A.O. Re. Hamm, A.I. Weike, 2005. The neuropsychology of fear-learning and fear regulation. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 57, 5–14
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2006
Emotional expressions preferentially elicit implicit evaluations of faces also varying in race or age
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2014
DOI: 10.1037/A0037270
Abstract: Both facial cues of group membership (race, age, and sex) and emotional expressions can elicit implicit evaluations to guide subsequent social behavior. There is, however, little research addressing whether group membership cues or emotional expressions are more influential in the formation of implicit evaluations of faces when both cues are simultaneously present. The current study aimed to determine this. Emotional expressions but not race or age cues elicited implicit evaluations in a series of affective priming tasks with emotional Caucasian and African faces (Experiments 1 and 2) and young and old faces (Experiment 3). Spontaneous evaluations of group membership cues of race and age only occurred when those cues were task relevant, suggesting the preferential influence of emotional expressions in the formation of implicit evaluations of others when cues of race or age are not salient. Implications for implicit prejudice, face perception, and person construal are discussed.
Individual Differences in Automatic Emotion Regulation Interact with Primed Emotion Regulation during an Anger Provocation
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 21-04-2017
Attentional blink modulation during sustained and after discrete lead stimuli presented in three sensory modalities
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 25-02-2003
Abstract: Previous studies found larger attentional modulation of acoustic blinks during task-relevant than during task-irrelevant acoustic or visual, but not tactile, lead stimuli. Moreover, blink modulation was larger overall during acoustic lead stimuli. The present experiment investigated whether these results reflect modality specificity of attentional blink modulation or effects of continuous stimulation. Participants performed a discrimination and counting task with acoustic, visual, or tactile lead stimuli. Stimuli were presented sustained or consisted of two short discrete stimuli. The sustained condition replicated previous results. In the discrete condition, blinks were larger during task-relevant than during task-irrelevant stimuli in all groups regardless of lead stimulus modality. Thus, previous results that seemed consistent with modality-specific accounts of attentional blink modulation reflect effects of continuous stimulus input.
The influence of animal fear on attentional capture by fear-relevant animal stimuli in children
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2008
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2007.11.002
Abstract: The present study demonstrated that pictures of fear-relevant animals, snakes and spiders, presented among backgrounds of other animal stimuli captured attention and interfered in the detection of a neutral target to the same extent in a large s le of unselected children (N=81). Moreover, detection of a neutral target animal was slowed more in the presence of a feared fear-relevant distracter, e.g., a snake for snake fearful children, than in the presence of a not feared fear-relevant distracter, e.g., a spider for snake fearful children. These results indicate attentional capture by phylogenetically fear-relevant animal stimuli in children and the selective enhancement of this effect by fear of these animals. These findings are consistent with current models of preferential processing of phylogenetically prepared threat stimuli and with cognitive models of anxiety that propose an enhancing effect of fear in the processing of fear-related stimuli.
Premovement inhibition can protect motor actions from interference by response‐irrelevant sensory stimulation
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-08-2021
DOI: 10.1113/JP281849
Abstract: Suppression of corticospinal excitability is reliably observed during preparation for a range of motor actions, leading to the belief that this preparatory inhibition is a physiologically obligatory component of motor preparation. The neurophysiological function of this suppression is uncertain. We restricted the time available for participants to engage in preparation and found no evidence for preparatory inhibition. The function of preparatory inhibition can be inferred from our findings that sensory stimulation can disrupt motor output in the absence of preparatory inhibition, but enhance motor output when inhibition is present. These findings suggest preparatory inhibition may be a strategic process which acts to protect prepared actions from external interference. Our findings have significant theoretical implications for preparatory processes. Findings may also have a pragmatic benefit in that acoustic stimulation could be used therapeutically to facilitate movement, but only if the action can be prepared well in advance. Shortly before movement initiation, the corticospinal system undergoes a transient suppression. This phenomenon has been observed across a range of motor tasks, suggesting that it may be an obligatory component of movement preparation. We probed whether this was also the case when the urgency to perform a motor action was high, in a situation where little time was available to engage in preparatory processes. We controlled the urgency of an impending motor action by increasing or decreasing the foreperiod duration in an anticipatory timing task. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS experiment 1) or a loud acoustic stimulus (LAS experiment 2) were used to examine how corticospinal and subcortical excitability were modulated during motor preparation. Preparatory inhibition of the corticospinal tract was absent when movement urgency was high, though motor actions were initiated on time. In contrast, subcortical circuits were progressively inhibited as the time to prepare increased. Interestingly, movement force and vigour were reduced by both TMS and the LAS when movement urgency was high, and enhanced when movement urgency was low. These findings indicate that preparatory inhibition may not be an obligatory component of motor preparation. The behavioural effects we observed in the absence of preparatory inhibition were induced by both TMS and the LAS, suggesting that accessory sensory stimulation may disrupt motor output when such stimulation is presented in the absence of preparatory inhibition. We conclude that preparatory inhibition may be an adaptive strategy which can serve to protect the prepared motor action from external interference.
Presentation of unpaired unconditional stimuli during extinction reduces renewal of conditional fear and slows re‐acquisition
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-07-2021
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.13899
Abstract: Past research has shown that presenting unconditional stimuli (US) during extinction training, either paired with the conditional stimulus (CS) or explicitly unpaired, can reduce spontaneous recovery and slow the re‐acquisition of conditional fear. Whether contextual renewal of conditioned fear as indexed by electrodermal responses and self‐report measures of anxiety and CS evaluations is also reduced after presentation of paired or unpaired USs during extinction training is currently unclear. Three groups of participants (Paired, Unpaired, Standard Extinction) completed a sequence of habituation, acquisition, extinction, renewal, and re‐acquisition phases. During extinction, five CS–US pairings were presented in group Paired, whereas five US were presented alone in group Unpaired. No US were presented during standard extinction. For all groups, extinction was conducted in a context that was different from that of the other phases. Extinction of differential electrodermal responding was evident in groups Unpaired and Standard, but not in group Paired. Contextual renewal and fast re‐acquisition, as indexed by differential electrodermal responding, were evident in group Standard, but not in group Unpaired and differential electrodermal responding persisted in group Paired. After extinction, self‐reported anxiety was higher in groups Paired and Unpaired, but differential CS evaluations were evident in group Paired only. The current results suggest that presenting additional unpaired USs during extinction training strengthens extinction and protects against the renewal of differential electrodermal responding.
Puzzle-Solving Activity as an Indicator of Epistemic Confusion
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 31-01-2019
Triggering mechanisms for motor actions: A mini meta-analysis and experimental data
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 03-07-2018
DOI: 10.1101/360297
Abstract: Motor actions can be released much sooner than normal when the go-signal is of very high intensity ( 100dBa). Although statistical evidence from in idual studies has been mixed, it has been assumed that sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscle activity could be used to distinguish between two neural circuits involved in movement triggering. We summarized meta-analytically the available evidence for this hypothesis, comparing the difference in premotor reaction time (RT) of actions where SCM activity was elicited (SCM+ trials) by loud acoustic stimuli against trials in which it was absent (SCM- trials). We found ten studies, all reporting comparisons between SCM+ and SCM- trials. Our mini meta-analysis showed that premotor RTs are faster in SCM+ than in SCM- trials. We also present experimental data showing the effects of foreperiod predictability can induce differences in RT that would be of similar size to those attributed to the activation of different neurophysiological pathways to trigger prepared actions. We discuss plausible physiological mechanisms that would explain differences in premotor RTs between SCM+ and SCM-trials.
Snakes and Cats in the Flower Bed: Fast Detection Is Not Specific to Pictures of Fear-Relevant Animals.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2004
Data from Gene-Expression Profiling of Mucinous Ovarian Tumors and Comparison with Upper and Lower Gastrointestinal Tumors Identifies Markers Associated with Adverse Outcomes
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Date: 04-2023
DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.C.6532782
Abstract: AbstractPurpose: Advanced-stage mucinous ovarian carcinoma (MOC) has poor chemotherapy response and prognosis and lacks biomarkers to aid stage I adjuvant treatment. Differentiating primary MOC from gastrointestinal (GI) metastases to the ovary is also challenging due to phenotypic similarities. Clinicopathologic and gene-expression data were analyzed to identify prognostic and diagnostic features. Experimental Design: Discovery analyses selected 19 genes with prognostic/diagnostic potential. Validation was performed through the Ovarian Tumor Tissue Analysis consortium and GI cancer biobanks comprising 604 patients with MOC ( i n /i = 333), mucinous borderline ovarian tumors (MBOT, i n /i = 151), and upper GI ( i n /i = 65) and lower GI tumors ( i n /i = 55). Results: Infiltrative pattern of invasion was associated with decreased overall survival (OS) within 2 years from diagnosis, compared with expansile pattern in stage I MOC [hazard ratio (HR), 2.77 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.04–7.41, i P /i = 0.042]. Increased expression of i THBS2 /i and i TAGLN /i was associated with shorter OS in MOC patients (HR, 1.25 95% CI, 1.04–1.51, i P /i = 0.016) and (HR, 1.21 95% CI, 1.01–1.45, i P /i = 0.043), respectively. i ERBB2 /i (HER2) lification or high mRNA expression was evident in 64 of 243 (26%) of MOCs, but only 8 of 243 (3%) were also infiltrative (4/39, 10%) or stage III/IV (4/31, 13%). Conclusions: An infiltrative growth pattern infers poor prognosis within 2 years from diagnosis and may help select stage I patients for adjuvant therapy. High expression of i THBS2 /i and i TAGLN /i in MOC confers an adverse prognosis and is upregulated in the infiltrative subtype, which warrants further investigation. Anti-HER2 therapy should be investigated in a subset of patients. MOC s les clustered with upper GI, yet markers to differentiate these entities remain elusive, suggesting similar underlying biology and shared treatment strategies. /
Inside out: ways of detecting learners’ confusion for successful e-learning
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 21-10-2017
Abstract: Confusion is an emotion that is likely to occur while learning complex information. This emotion can be beneficial to learners in that it can foster engagement, leading to deeper understanding. However, if learners fail to resolve confusion, its effect can be detrimental to learning. Such detrimental learning experiences are particularly concerning within digital learning environments (DLEs), where a teacher is not physically present to monitor learner engagement and adapt the learning experience accordingly. However, with better information about a learner’s emotion and behavior, it is possible to improve the design of interactive DLEs (IDLEs) not only in promoting productive confusion but also in preventing overwhelming confusion. This article reviews different methodological approaches for detecting confusion, such as self-report and behavioral and physiological measures, and discusses their implications within the theoretical framework of a zone of optimal confusion. The specificities of several methodologies and their potential application in IDLEs are discussed.
Does Affective Learning Exist in the Absence of Contingency Awareness?
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2001
To remove or not to remove? Removal of the unconditional stimulus electrode does not mediate instructed extinction effects
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-2015
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.12452
Abstract: Following differential fear conditioning, the instruction that the unconditional stimulus will no longer be presented (instructed extinction) reduces differential electrodermal responding to CS+ and CS-, but does not affect differential conditional stimulus valence evaluations. Reductions in differential electrodermal responding have been attributed to the provision of verbal instructions however, during instructed extinction the unconditional stimulus electrode is often removed as well. This removal could reduce the participants' general arousal levels rendering the detection of differential electrodermal responding difficult. The current study examined this alternative interpretation by comparing the electrodermal responses and conditional stimulus valence evaluations of an instruction/electrode-on group, an instruction/electrode-off group, and a control group who were not instructed. Following instructed extinction, differential electrodermal responding was eliminated in both instruction groups, an effect that was not influenced by the attachment/removal of the electrode. Replicating previous findings, conditional stimulus valence was not affected by instructed extinction. The results suggest that verbal instructions, not unconditional stimulus electrode removal, reduce differential electrodermal responding during instructed extinction manipulations.
Object ownership and action: the influence of social context and choice on the physical manipulation of personal property
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 20-08-2014
DOI: 10.1007/S00221-014-4063-1
Abstract: Understanding who owns what is important for guiding appropriate action in a social context. Previously, we demonstrated that ownership influences our kinematic patterns associated with hand-object interactions (Constable et al. in Cognition 119(3):430-437, 2011). Here, we present a series of experiments aimed at determining the underlying mechanisms associated with this effect. We asked participants to lift mugs that differed in terms of ownership status (Experiments 1 and 2) and personal preference (Experiment 3) while recording spatial and acceleration measures. In Experiment 1, participants lifted their own mug with greater acceleration and drew it closer to themselves than they did the experimenter's mug. They also lifted the experimenter's mug further to the right compared with other mugs. In Experiment 2, spatial trajectory effects were preserved, but the acceleration effect abolished, when the owner of the 'other-owned' mug was a known-but absent-confederate. Experiment 3 demonstrated that merely choosing to use a mug was not sufficient to elicit rightward drift or acceleration effects. We suggest that these findings reflect separate and distinct mechanisms associated with socially related visuomotor processing.
The effect of stimulus specificity and number of pre-exposures on latent inhibition in an instrumental trials-to-criterion task
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 08-1999
The influence of multiple social categories on emotion perception
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2018
Imagery-enhanced v. verbally-based group cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 11-09-2022
DOI: 10.1017/S0033291720003001
Abstract: Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is effective for most patients with a social anxiety disorder (SAD) but a substantial proportion fails to remit. Experimental and clinical research suggests that enhancing CBT using imagery-based techniques could improve outcomes. It was hypothesized that imagery-enhanced CBT (IE-CBT) would be superior to verbally-based CBT (VB-CBT) on pre-registered outcomes. A randomized controlled trial of IE-CBT v. VB-CBT for social anxiety was completed in a community mental health clinic setting. Participants were randomized to IE ( n = 53) or VB ( n = 54) CBT, with 1-month (primary end point) and 6-month follow-up assessments. Participants completed 12, 2-hour, weekly sessions of IE-CBT or VB-CBT plus 1-month follow-up. Intention to treat analyses showed very large within-treatment effect sizes on the social interaction anxiety at all time points ( d s = 2.09–2.62), with no between-treatment differences on this outcome or clinician-rated severity [1-month OR = 1.45 (0.45, 4.62), p = 0.53 6-month OR = 1.31 (0.42, 4.08), p = 0.65], SAD remission (1-month: IE = 61.04%, VB = 55.09%, p = 0.59) 6-month: IE = 58.73%, VB = 61.89%, p = 0.77), or secondary outcomes. Three adverse events were noted (substance abuse, n = 1 in IE-CBT temporary increase in suicide risk, n = 1 in each condition, with one being withdrawn at 1-month follow-up). Group IE-CBT and VB-CBT were safe and there were no significant differences in outcomes. Both treatments were associated with very large within-group effect sizes and the majority of patients remitted following treatment.
Face age and sex modulate the other-race effect in face recognition
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-08-2012
DOI: 10.3758/S13414-012-0359-Z
Abstract: Faces convey a variety of socially relevant cues that have been shown to affect recognition, such as age, sex, and race, but few studies have examined the interactive effect of these cues. White participants of two distinct age groups were presented with faces that differed in race, age, and sex in a face recognition paradigm. Replicating the other-race effect, young participants recognized young own-race faces better than young other-race faces. However, recognition performance did not differ across old faces of different races (Experiments 1, 2A). In addition, participants showed an other-age effect, recognizing White young faces better than White old faces. Sex affected recognition performance only when age was not varied (Experiment 2B). Overall, older participants showed a similar recognition pattern (Experiment 3) as young participants, displaying an other-race effect for young, but not old, faces. However, they recognized young and old White faces on a similar level. These findings indicate that face cues interact to affect recognition performance such that age and sex information reliably modulate the effect of race cues. These results extend accounts of face recognition that explain recognition biases (such as the other-race effect) as a function of dichotomous ingroup/outgroup categorization, in that outgroup characteristics are not simply additive but interactively determine recognition performance.
Fear of Wolves and Bears: Physiological Responses and Negative Associations in a Swedish Sample
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 11-2013
Lead stimulus modality change and the attentional modulation of the acoustic and electrical blink reflex
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2003
DOI: 10.1016/S0301-0511(02)00087-X
Abstract: Two experiments investigated the effects of the sensory modality of the lead and of the blink-eliciting stimulus during lead stimulus modality change on blink modulation at lead intervals of 2500 and 3500 ms. Participants were presented with acoustic, visual, or tactile change stimuli after habituation training with lead stimuli from the same or a different sensory modality. In Experiment 1, latency and magnitude of the acoustic blink were facilitated during a change to acoustic or visual lead stimuli, but not during a change to tactile lead stimuli. After habituation to acoustic lead stimuli, blink magnitude was smaller during tactile change stimuli than during habituation stimuli. The latter finding was replicated in Experiment 2 in which blink was elicited by electrical stimulation of the trigeminal nerve. The consistency of the findings across different combinations of lead stimulus and blink-eliciting stimulus modalities does not support a modality-specific account of attentional blink modulation. Rather, blink modulation during generalized orienting reflects modality non-specific processes, although modulation may not always be found during tactile lead stimuli.
Supplementary Methods 1 from Gene-Expression Profiling of Mucinous Ovarian Tumors and Comparison with Upper and Lower Gastrointestinal Tumors Identifies Markers Associated with Adverse Outcomes
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Date: 04-2023
DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.22488651
Abstract: Supplementary Methods
Supplementary Figures S1-S13 from Gene-Expression Profiling of Mucinous Ovarian Tumors and Comparison with Upper and Lower Gastrointestinal Tumors Identifies Markers Associated with Adverse Outcomes
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Date: 04-2023
DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.22488654
Abstract: Supplementary Figures S1-S13
Spontaneous and reflexive eye activity measures of mental workload
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2002
The effects of task type and task requirements on the dissociation of skin conductance responses and secondary task probe reaction time
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 1996
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.1996.TB02110.X
Abstract: Although task-irrelevant events elicit smaller skin conductance responses (SCRs) than do task-relevant events, secondary task probe reaction time (RT) is often slower during the former. Three experiments (N = 48 in each) examined the effects of task demands, instructions, and stimulus discriminability on this dissociation effect. SCRs were larger to task-relevant stimuli in all experiments regardless of experimental manipulation. Subjects in Experiment 1 counted either all tones of one pitch (high/low group) or longer-than-usual tones of one pitch (longer group). There was more RT slowing during task-irrelevant tones at a 250-ms probe position in the high/low group and at a 150-ms probe position in the longer group. Experiment 2 employed differential Pavlovian conditioning in which the offset of task-relevant stimuli (CS+) coincided with the onset of a shock stimulus. Half the subjects were told which stimulus would be followed by shock (information group), whereas the others received no information (no-information group). Increased RT slowing during CS- was restricted to the no-information group. Experiment 3 employed visual conditioned stimuli that were easy or difficult to discriminate. RT slowing at 4,000 ms was greater during CS+, whereas there was a tendency for more RT slowing during CS- at 150 ms. There was no effect for CS discriminability. The results suggest that during both simple discrimination and during Pavlovian conditioning, task-irrelevant stimuli are more actively processed than task-relevant stimuli within the first 250 ms of stimulus presentation.
Implicit evaluations and physiological threat responses in people with persistent low back pain and fear of bending
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 10-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.SJPAIN.2017.09.012
Abstract: Pain and protective behaviour are dependent on implicit evaluations of danger to the body. However, current assessment of perceived danger relies on self-report, on information of which the person is aware and willing to disclose. To overcome this limitation, attempts have been made to investigate implicit evaluation of movement-related threatening images in people with persistent low back pain (PLBP) and pain-related fear. Lack of specificity of the s le and stimuli limited those explorations. This study investigated implicit evaluations and physiological responses to images of tasks commonly reported as threatening by people with PLBP: bending and lifting. We hypothesized that people who differ in self-reported fear of bending with a flexed lumbar spine ( fear of bending ) would also differ in implicit evaluations and physiological responses. This study used a convenience s le of 44 people (54% female) with PLBP, who differed in selfreported fear of bending . Participants completed a picture-viewing paradigm with pleasant, neutral and unpleasant images, and images of people bending and lifting with a flexed lumbar spine (‘round-back’) to assess physiological responses (eye-blink startle modulation, skin conductance). They also completed an implicit association test (IAT) and an affective priming task (APT). Both assessed implicit associations between (i) images of people bending/lifting with a flexed lumbar spine posture (‘round-back’ posture) or bending/lifting with a straight lumbar spine posture (‘straight-back’ posture), and (ii) perceived threat (safe vs. dangerous). An implicit association between ‘danger’ and ‘round-back’ bending/lifting was evident in all participants (IAT (0.5, CI [0.3 0.6] p .001) and APT (24.2, CI [4.2 44.3] p = 0.019)), and unrelated to self-reported fear of bending (IAT ( r = -0.24, 95% CI [-0.5, 0.04], p = 0.117) and APT ( r = -0.00, 95% CI [-0.3, 0.3], p = 0.985)). Levels of self-reported fear of bending were not associated with eye-blink startle ( F (3,114) = 0.7, p = 0.548) or skin conductance responses ( F (3,126) = 0.4, p = 0.780) to pictures of bending/lifting. Contrary to our expectation, self-reported fear of bending was not related to physiological startle response or implicit measures. People with PLBP as a group (irrespective of fear levels) showed an implicit association between images of a round-back bending/lifting posture and danger, but did not display elevated physiological responses to these images. These results provide insight to the understanding of the relationship between pain and fear of movement. The potential clinical implications of our findings are twofold. First, these results indicate that self-report measures do not always reflect implicit associations between particular movements and threat. Implicit association tasks may help overcome this limitation. Second, a lack of the predicted physiological and behavioural responses may reflect that the visualization of a threatening task by people in pain does not elicit the same physiological defensive responses measured in people with fear of specific objects. It may be necessary to expose the person to the actual movement to elicit threat-responses. Together, these results are consistent with current views of the role of ‘fear’ in the fear-avoidance model, in which a fear response may only be elicited when the threat is unavoidable.
The effect of repeated prepulse and reflex stimulus presentations on startle prepulse inhibition
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 1998
DOI: 10.1016/S0301-0511(97)00019-7
Abstract: The magnitude of a startle reflex is inhibited if the reflex-eliciting stimuli is preceded by a prepulse stimulus at a short lead interval. Previous research in humans has shown that the extent of prepulse inhibition decreases over repeated presentations of reflex stimuli and prepulse-reflex stimulus pairings. The present study (N = 70) investigated the effect of repeated presentations of prepulse stimuli, reflex stimuli, or prepulse-reflex stimulus pairings on prepulse inhibition. Five groups of subjects were presented during habituation training with either (a) reflex stimuli, (b) prepulse-reflex stimulus pairings, (c) a random sequence of prepulse and reflex stimuli, (d) prepulse stimuli, or (e) experimentally irrelevant light stimuli. Prepulse inhibition was reduced if startle stimuli were presented during habituation ((a), (b), (c)), but not after repeated presentation of the prepulse or the light stimulus ((d), (e)). The reduction in prepulse inhibition was abolished after dishabituation of the startle reflex. The present results indicate that habituation of the startle reflex can result in a reduction of prepulse inhibition.
Altered Connectivity in Autistic Adults during Complex Facial Emotion Recognition: A Study of EEG Imaginary Coherence
Publisher: IEEE
Date: 07-2018
Be careful what you say! – Evaluative change based on instructional learning generalizes to other similar stimuli and to the wider category
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-09-2020
Preferential attentional engagement drives attentional bias to snakes in Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) and humans (Homo sapiens)
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-12-2018
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-018-36108-6
Abstract: In humans, attentional biases have been shown to negative (dangerous animals, physical threat) and positive (high caloric food, alcohol) stimuli. However, it is not clear whether these attentional biases reflect on stimulus driven, bottom up, or goal driven, top down, attentional processes. Here we show that, like humans, Japanese macaques show an attentional bias to snakes in a dot probe task (Experiment 1). Moreover, this attentional bias reflects on bottom up driven, preferential engagement of attention by snake images (Experiment 2a), a finding that was replicated in a study that used the same methodology in humans (Experiment 2b). These results are consistent with the notion that attentional bias to snakes reflects on an evolutionarily old, stimulus driven threat detection mechanism which is found in both species.
Stimulus competition in pre/post and online ratings in an evaluative learning design
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2010
Stable middle‐aged face recognition: No moderation of the own‐age bias across contexts
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 19-11-2020
DOI: 10.1111/BJOP.12481
Abstract: The own‐age bias (OAB) has been proposed to be caused by perceptual expertise and/or social‐cognitive mechanisms. Investigations into the role of social cognition have, however, yielded mixed results. One reason for this might be the tendency for research to focus on the OAB in young adults, between young and older adult faces where other‐age in iduation experience is low. To explore whether social‐cognitive manipulations may be successful when observers have sufficient other‐age in iduation experience, we examined biases involving middle‐aged other‐age faces and the influence of a context manipulation. Across four experiments, young adult participants were presented with middle‐aged faces alongside young or older adult faces to remember. We predicted that in contexts where middle‐aged faces were positioned as other‐age faces (alongside young adult faces), recognition performance would be worse than when they were positioned as relative own‐age faces (alongside older adult faces). However, the context manipulations did not moderate middle age face recognition. This suggests that past findings that context does not change other‐age face recognition holds for other‐age faces for which observers have higher in iduation experience. These findings are consistent with a perceptual expertise account of the OAB but more investigation of the generality of these results is required.
The effects of affective picture stimuli on blink modulation in adults and children
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2005
DOI: 10.1016/J.BIOPSYCHO.2004.05.002
Abstract: Two experiments examined blink modulation during viewing of pleasant, neutral and unpleasant picture stimuli in non-selected adults (N = 21) and children (N = 60) and children with anxiety disorders (N = 12). Blink reflexes were elicited by a white noise probe of 105 dB at lead stimulus intervals of 60, 240, 3500, and 5000 ms and during intertrial intervals. Blink modulation during unpleasant pictures was significantly different from blink modulation during neutral pictures at the 60 ms lead interval in children whereas adults showed no significant differences. Picture content had no differential effect on the extent of blink modulation for adults or children at the 240 ms lead interval. At the long lead intervals, blink modulation during unpleasant and pleasant pictures was significantly larger than during neutral pictures in adults. Picture valence did not differentially affect the extent of blink modulation at long lead intervals in children. Comparing the extent of blink modulation in anxious and non-selected children, blinks were significantly modulated during unpleasant pictures at the 60 ms lead interval for both groups. However, the extent of blink modulation was larger overall at this very short lead interval in anxious children. Children did not differ at other lead intervals.
Motor output matters: Evidence of a continuous relationship between Stop/No‐go P300 amplitude and peak force on failed inhibitions at the trial‐level
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-03-2020
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.13558
Startle during backward evaluative conditioning is not modulated by instructions
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-2020
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.13679
Modulation of Affective Learning: An Occasion for Evaluative Conditioning?
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2000
Delayed reentrant processing impairs visual awareness
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 09-08-2010
Abstract: In object-substitution masking (OSM), a sparse, common-onset mask impairs perception of a target when the mask’s offset is later than the target’s offset and spatial attention is dispersed. OSM is thought to reflect the interaction of feed-forward and reentrant processes in the brain: Upon stimulus presentation, a low-resolution representation of the target and mask progresses from sensory to anterior brain regions, triggering reentrant processing to confirm stimulus identity. It is hypothesized that dispersing spatial attention prolongs the required reentrant iterations, increasing the likelihood that only the lingering mask stimulus will remain physically present and thus substitute for the target in consciousness. However, empirically, it remains unclear whether substitution stems from delayed feed-forward or reentrant processing. Here, we demonstrate that delayed reentrant processing causes OSM, by showing that a task tapping high-level brain regions involved in reentrant processing leads to a spatially attended target being replaced by the mask. Our results confirm a key role for reentrant processing in conscious perception.
Stimulus set size modulates the sex–emotion interaction in face categorization
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-03-2015
DOI: 10.3758/S13414-015-0849-X
Abstract: Previous research has shown that invariant facial features-for ex le, sex-and variant facial features-for ex le, emotional expressions-interact during face categorization. The nature of this interaction is a matter of dispute, however, and has been reported as either asymmetrical, such that sex cues influence emotion perception but emotional expressions do not affect the perception of sex, or symmetrical, such that sex and emotion cues each reciprocally influence the categorization of the other. In the present research, we identified stimulus set size as the critical factor leading to this disparity. Using faces drawn from different databases, in two separate experiments we replicated the finding of a symmetrical interaction between face sex and emotional expression when larger sets of posers were used. Using a subset of four posers, in the same setups, however, did not provide evidence for a symmetrical interaction, which is also consistent with prior research. This pattern of results suggests that different strategies may be used to categorize aspects of faces that are encountered repeatedly.
Supplementary Tables S1-S11 from Gene-Expression Profiling of Mucinous Ovarian Tumors and Comparison with Upper and Lower Gastrointestinal Tumors Identifies Markers Associated with Adverse Outcomes
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Date: 04-2023
DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.22488645
Abstract: Supplementary Tables S1-S11
How disappointing: Startle modulation reveals conditional stimuli presented after pleasant unconditional stimuli acquire negative valence
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-03-2020
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.13563
The effect of emotional and attentional load on attentional startle modulation
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2009
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPSYCHO.2009.09.011
Abstract: The interactive effects of emotion and attention on attentional startle modulation were investigated in two experiments. Participants performed a discrimination and counting task with two visual stimuli during which acoustic eyeblink startle-eliciting probes were presented at long lead intervals. In Experiment 1, this task was combined with aversive Pavlovian conditioning. In Group Attend CS+, the attended stimulus was followed by an aversive unconditional stimulus (US) and the ignored stimulus was presented alone whereas the ignored stimulus was paired with the US in Group Attend CS-. In Experiment 2, a non-aversive reaction time task US replaced the aversive US. Regardless of the conditioning manipulation and consistent with a modality non-specific account of attentional startle modulation, startle magnitude was larger during attended than ignored stimuli in both experiments. Blink latency shortening was differentially affected by the conditioning manipulations suggesting additive effects of conditioning and discrimination and counting task on blink startle.
The effect of prepulse amplitude and timing on the perception of an electrotactile pulse
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 16-11-2022
DOI: 10.3758/S13414-022-02597-X
Abstract: The perceived intensity of an intense stimulus as well as the startle reflex it elicits can both be reduced when preceded by a weak stimulus (prepulse). Both phenomena are used to characterise the processes of sensory gating in clinical and non-clinical populations. The latter phenomenon, startle prepulse inhibition (PPI), is conceptualised as a measure of pre-attentive sensorimotor gating due to its observation at short latencies. In contrast, the former, prepulse inhibition of perceived stimulus intensity (PPIPSI), is believed to involve higher-order cognitive processes (e.g., attention), which require longer latencies. Although conceptually distinct, PPIPSI is often studied using parameters that elicit maximal PPI, likely limiting what we can learn about sensory gating’s influence on conscious perception. Here, we tested an array of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs 0–602 ms) and prepulse intensities (0–3× perceptual threshold) to determine the time course and sensitivity to the intensity of electrotactile PPIPSI. Participants were required to compare an ‘unpleasant but not painful’ electric pulse to their left wrist that was presented alone with the same stimulus preceded by an electric prepulse, and report which pulse stimulus felt more intense. Using a 2× perceptual threshold prepulse, PPIPSI emerged as significant at SOAs from 162 to 602 ms. We conclude that evidence of electrotactile PPIPSI at SOAs of 162 ms or longer is consistent with gating of perception requiring higher-level processes, not measured by startle PPI. The possible role of attentional processes, stimuli intensity, modality-specific differences, and methods of investigating PPIPSI further are discussed.
Intolerance of uncertainty affects electrodermal responses during fear acquisition: Evidence from electrodermal responses to unconditional stimulus omission
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPSYCHO.2022.07.005
Abstract: Past research has shown that Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) affects Pavlovian fear conditioning processes. In particular, extinction of learned fear is delayed in those reporting high IU. Reports of differences during acquisition are less consistent with most of the studies reporting no evidence for effects of IU. This may be due to past studies' focus on first interval electrodermal responses or fear potentiated startle, rather than on indices that may better capture uncertainty - like the response to the absence of a probabilistic unconditional stimulus. The current analysis combined data across three experiments that employed a 50 % reinforcement schedule and assessed electrodermal responses and (in two experiments) ratings of conditional stimulus pleasantness. Participants scoring high on IU showed overall larger electrodermal first interval responses during habituation and acquisition but did not differ from those scoring low on IU in differential conditioning (the difference between CS+ and CS-), as indicated by electrodermal first or second interval responses or ratings of CS pleasantness. However, participants high in IU showed larger differential third interval electrodermal responses to the omission of the electro-tactile unconditional stimulus during acquisition. Some evidence for this difference emerged in each experiment, supporting the reliability of the result. The current results suggest that effects of IU emerge in conditions of high uncertainty in Pavlovian fear learning tasks, such as during the omission of probabilistic unconditional stimuli.
Fear conditioning to subliminal fear relevant and non fear relevant stimuli
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 08-09-2014
Emotional responding in NSSI: examinations of appraisals of positive and negative emotional stimuli, with and without acute stress
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-12-2018
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2017.1411785
Abstract: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is commonly used by young adults to regulate emotional responses. Yet, experimental examination of how people who self-injure appraise and respond to emotional stimuli is limited. We examined appraisals of, and responses to, emotive images in young adults who did and did not self-injure, and assessed whether these were impacted by exposure to a stressor. Study 1 (N = 51) examined whether participants differed in their appraisals of emotional images. Study 2 (N = 78) assessed whether appraisals of images changed after exposure to the Trier Social Stress Test. Ratings of emotional valence and arousal were collected in both studies skin conductance was measured as an indicator of physiological arousal in Study 2. In Study 1 participants reporting NSSI rated positively valenced images as less pleasant than participants not reporting NSSI. In Study 2, after acute stress, participants reporting NSSI displayed d ened physiological reactions to positive images whereas participants who did not self-injure displayed heightened physiological reactions to these and rated them as more pleasant. In iduals who self-injure seem less able to engage in strategic mood repair after exposure to stress compared to people who do not self-injure.
Slithering snakes, angry men and out-group members: What and whom are we evolved to fear?
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 11-2013
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2013.778195
Abstract: The preparedness theory of classical conditioning proposed by Seligman (1970, 1971) has been applied extensively over the past 40 years to explain the nature and "source" of human fear and phobias. In this review we examine the formative studies that tested the four defining characteristics of prepared learning with animal fear-relevant stimuli (typically snakes and spiders) and consider claims that fear of social stimuli, such as angry faces, or faces of racial out-group members, may also be acquired utilising the same preferential learning mechanism. Exposition of critical differences between fear learning to animal and social stimuli suggests that a single account cannot adequately explain fear learning with animal and social stimuli. We demonstrate that fear conditioned to social stimuli is less robust than fear conditioned to animal stimuli as it is susceptible to cognitive influence and propose that it may instead reflect on negative stereotypes and social norms. Thus, a theoretical model that can accommodate the influence of both biological and cultural factors is likely to have broader utility in the explanation of fear and avoidance responses than accounts based on a single mechanism.
Of hissing snakes and angry voices: human infants are differentially responsive to evolutionary fear‐relevant sounds
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-08-2013
DOI: 10.1111/DESC.12091
Abstract: Adult humans demonstrate differential processing of stimuli that were recurrent threats to safety and survival throughout evolutionary history. Recent studies suggest that differential processing of evolutionarily ancient threats occurs in human infants, leading to the proposal of an inborn mechanism for rapid identification of, and response to, evolutionary fear-relevant stimuli. The current study provides novel data in support of this proposal, showing for the first time that human infants differentially process evolutionary threats presented in the auditory modality. Sixty-one 9-month-olds listened to evolutionary fear-relevant, modern fear-relevant, and pleasant sounds, while their heart rate, startle, and visual orienting behaviours were measured. Infants demonstrated significantly enhanced heart rate deceleration, larger eye-blinks, and more visual orienting when listening to evolutionary fear-relevant sounds compared to sounds from the other two categories. These results support the proposal that human infants possess evolved mechanisms for the differential processing of a range of ancient environmental threats.
Is the devil in the detail? Evidence for S-S learning after unconditional stimulus revaluation in human evaluative conditioning under a broader set of experimental conditions
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 28-11-2017
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2017.1408573
Abstract: Whether valence change during evaluative conditioning is mediated by a link between the conditional stimulus (CS) and the unconditional stimulus (US S-S learning) or between the CS and the unconditional response (S-R learning) is a matter of continued debate. Changing the valence of the US after conditioning, known as US revaluation, can be used to dissociate these accounts. Changes in CS valence after US revaluation provide evidence for S-S learning but if CS valence does not change, evidence for S-R learning is found. Support for S-S learning has been provided by most past revaluation studies, but typically the CS and US have been from the same stimulus category, the task instructions have suggested that judgements of the CS should be based on the US, and USs have been mildly valenced stimuli. These factors may bias the results in favour of S-S learning. We examined whether S-R learning would be evident when CSs and USs were taken from different categories, the task instructions were removed, and more salient USs were used. US revaluation was found to influence explicit US evaluations and explicit and implicit CS evaluations, supporting an S-S learning account and suggesting that past results are stable across procedural changes.
Multiple fear-related stimuli enhance physiological arousal during extinction and reduce physiological arousal to novel stimuli and the threat conditioned stimulus
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2018
Probing the Time Course of Nonlinear Discriminations during Human Electrodermal Conditioning
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2002
Attentional bias to pictures of fear-relevant animals in a dot probe task.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2005
DOI: 10.1037/1528-3542.5.3.365
Abstract: Attentional bias to fear-relevant animals was assessed in 69 participants not preselected on self-reported anxiety with the use of a dot probe task showing pictures of snakes, spiders, mushrooms, and flowers. Probes that replaced the fear-relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders) were found faster than probes that replaced the non-fear-relevant stimuli, indicating an attentional bias in the entire s le. The bias was not correlated with self-reported state or trait anxiety or with general fearfulness. Participants reporting higher levels of spider fear showed an enhanced bias to spiders, but the bias remained significant in low scorers. The bias to snake pictures was not related to snake fear and was significant in high and low scorers. These results indicate preferential processing of fear-relevant stimuli in an unselected s le.
Emotional faces in neutral crowds
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-08-2009
Discrepant integration times for upright and inverted faces
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 2011
DOI: 10.1068/P6955
Abstract: Judgments of upright faces tend to be more rapid than judgments of inverted faces. This is consistent with encoding at different rates via discrepant mechanisms, or via a common mechanism that is more sensitive to upright input. However, to the best of our knowledge no previous study of facial coding speed has tried to equate sensitivity across the characteristics under investigation (eg emotional expression, facial gender, or facial orientation). Consequently we cannot tell whether different decision speeds result from mechanisms that accrue information at different rates, or because facial images can differ in the amount of information they make available. To address this, we examined temporal integration times, the times across which information is accrued toward a perceptual decision. We examined facial gender and emotional expressions. We first identified image pairs that could be differentiated on 80% of trials with protracted presentations (1 s). We then presented these images at a range of brief durations to determine how rapidly performance plateaued, which is indicative of integration time. For upright faces gender was associated with a protracted integration relative to expression judgments. This difference was eliminated by inversion, with both gender and expression judgments associated with a common, rapid, integration time. Overall, our data suggest that upright facial gender and expression are encoded via distinct processes and that inversion does not just result in impaired sensitivity. Rather, inversion caused gender judgments, which had been associated with a protracted integration, to become associated with a more rapid process.
Of toothy grins and angry snarls-open mouth displays contribute to efficiency gains in search for emotional faces
Publisher: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO)
Date: 25-05-2012
DOI: 10.1167/12.5.7
Abstract: The emotional face-in-a-crowd effect is widely cited, but its origin remains controversial, particularly with photorealistic stimuli. Recently, it has been suggested that one factor underlying the guidance of attention by a photorealistic emotional face in visual search might be the visibility of teeth, a hypothesis, however, that has not been studied systematically to date. The present experiments manipulate the visibility of teeth experimentally and orthogonally to facial emotion. Results suggest that much of the face-in-a-crowd effect with photorealistic emotional faces is due to visible teeth, and that the visibility of teeth can create a search advantage for either a happy or an angry target face when teeth visibility and facial emotion are confounded. Further analyses clarify that the teeth visibility primarily affects the speed with which neutral crowds are scanned, shedding new light on the mechanism that evokes differences in search efficiency for different emotional expressions.
Premovement inhibition protects motor actions from interference
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 27-04-2021
DOI: 10.1101/2021.04.26.441384
Abstract: Shortly before movement initiation, the corticospinal system undergoes a transient suppression. This phenomenon has been observed across a range of motor tasks, suggesting that it may be a obligatory component of movement preparation. We probed whether this was also the case when the urgency to perform a motor action was high, in a situation where little time was available to engage in preparatory processes. We controlled the urgency of an impending motor action by increasing or decreasing the foreperiod duration in an anticipatory timing task. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS experiment one) or a loud acoustic stimulus (LAS experiment two) were used to examine how corticospinal and subcortical excitability were modulated during motor preparation. Preparatory inhibition of the corticospinal tract was absent when movement urgency was high, though motor actions were initiated on time. In contrast, subcortical circuits were progressively inhibited as the time to prepare increased. Interestingly, movement force and vigour were reduced by both TMS and the LAS when movement urgency was high, and enhanced when movement urgency was low. Our findings indicate that preparatory inhibition may not be a obligatory component of motor preparation. The behavioural effects we observed in the absence of preparatory inhibition were induced by both TMS and the LAS, suggesting that accessory sensory stimulation may disrupt motor output when such stimulation is presented in the absence of preparatory inhibition. We conclude that preparatory inhibition may be an adaptive strategy which can serve to protect the prepared motor action from external interference.
On the resistance to extinction of fear conditioned to angry faces
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 04-11-2012
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.2011.01308.X
Abstract: The present study investigated whether, like fear conditioned to pictures of snakes and spiders, fear conditioned to angry faces resists extinction even after verbal instruction and removal of the shock electrode. Participants were trained in a differential Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure with angry face or happy face conditional stimuli (CSs). Prior to extinction, half the participants in each group were informed that no more unconditional stimuli would be presented and the shock electrode was removed. In the absence of this manipulation, participants showed resistance to extinction after training with angry face CSs, but not after training with happy face CSs. Instructed extinction and electrode removal abolished fear conditioning regardless of the emotion expressed by the CS faces. This finding suggests that fear conditioned to angry faces, like fear conditioned to racial out-group faces, is more malleable than fear conditioned to snakes and spiders.
Understanding recovery from object substitution masking
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.COGNITION.2011.11.010
Abstract: When we look at a scene, we are conscious of only a small fraction of the available visual information at any given point in time. This raises profound questions regarding how information is selected, when awareness occurs, and the nature of the mechanisms underlying these processes. One tool that may be used to probe these issues is object-substitution masking (OSM). In OSM, a sparse, temporally-trailing four dot mask can interfere with target perception, even though the target and mask have different contours and do not spatially overlap (Enns & Di Lollo, 1997). Here, we investigate the mechanisms underlying the recently discovered recovery from OSM observed with prolonged mask exposure (Goodhew, Visser, Lipp, & Dux, 2011). In three experiments, we demonstrate that recovery is unaffected by mask offset, and that prolonged physical exposure of the mask is not necessary for recovery. These findings confirm that recovery is not due to: (a) an offset transient impairing the visibility of other stimuli that are nearby in space and time, or (b) mask adaptation or temporal object-in iduation cues resulting from prolonged mask exposure. Instead, our results confirm recovery as a high-level visual-cognitive phenomenon, which is inherently tied to target-processing time. This reveals the prolonged iterative temporal dynamics of conscious object perception.
Complex facial emotion recognition and atypical gaze patterns in autistic adults
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 19-06-2019
Abstract: While altered gaze behaviour during facial emotion recognition has been observed in autistic in iduals, there remains marked inconsistency in findings, with the majority of previous research focused towards the processing of basic emotional expressions. There is a need to examine whether atypical gaze during facial emotion recognition extends to more complex emotional expressions, which are experienced as part of everyday social functioning. The eye gaze of 20 autistic and 20 IQ-matched neurotypical adults was examined during a facial emotion recognition task of complex, dynamic emotion displays. Autistic adults fixated longer on the mouth region when viewing complex emotions compared to neurotypical adults, indicating that altered prioritization of visual information may contribute to facial emotion recognition impairment. Results confirm the need for more ecologically valid stimuli for the elucidation of the mechanisms underlying facial emotion recognition difficulty in autistic in iduals.
Anticipation of a non-aversive reaction time task facilitates the blink startle reflex
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2002
DOI: 10.1016/S0301-0511(02)00003-0
Abstract: The conditions under which blink startle facilitation can be found in anticipation of a reaction time task were investigated to resolve inconsistent findings across previous studies. Four groups of participants (n=64) were presented with two visual stimuli, one predicting a reaction time task (S+) and the second presented alone (S-). Participants were asked to make a speeded response to the offset of the S+ (S1 paradigm) or were asked to respond to a tactile stimulus presented at the offset of the S+ (S1-S2 paradigm). Half of the participants in each paradigm condition received performance feedback. Overall, blink latency shortening and magnitude facilitation were larger during S+ than during S-. More detailed analyses, however, found these differences to be reliable only in the Feedback conditions. Ratings of S+ pleasantness did not change across the experiment. Electrodermal responses to S+ were larger than to S- in all groups with differential electrodermal responding emerging earlier in the S1 paradigm. Taken together, the data support the notion that startle facilitation can occur during non-aversive Pavlovian conditioning.
Of snakes and flowers: Does preferential detection of pictures of fear-relevant animals in visual search reflect on fear-relevance?
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2006
DOI: 10.1037/1528-3542.6.2.296
Abstract: Previous research in visual search indicates that animal fear-relevant deviants, snakes/spiders, are found faster among non fear-relevant backgrounds, flowers/mushrooms, than vice versa. Moreover, deviant absence was indicated faster among snakes/spiders and detection time for flower/mushroom deviants, but not for snake/spider deviants, increased in larger arrays. The current research indicates that the latter 2 results do not reflect on fear-relevance, but are found only with flower/mushroom controls. These findings may reflect on factors such as background homogeneity, deviant homogeneity, or background-deviant similarity. The current research removes contradictions between previous studies that used animal and social fear-relevant stimuli and indicates that apparent search advantages for fear-relevant deviants seem likely to reflect on delayed attentional disengagement from fear-relevance on control trials.
The influence of instructions on reversing the generalization of valence, US expectancy, and electrodermal responding in fear conditioning
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-09-2023
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.14429
Hair endocannabinoids predict physiological fear conditioning and salivary endocannabinoids predict subjective stress reactivity in humans
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2023
Effects of reflex stimulus intensity and stimulus onset asynchrony on prepulse inhibition and perceived intensity of the blink-eliciting stimulus
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2006
Novelty-facilitated extinction and the reinstatement of conditional human fear
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2018.08.002
Abstract: Although contemporary treatments for anxiety disorders are very efficient in reducing anxiety, return of fear after successful treatment is common which signifies a need for interventions that have a more enduring outcome. A recent laboratory study suggested that novelty-facilitated extinction, a simple modification of standard extinction which involves presenting a novel non-aversive stimulus during extinction, prevents spontaneous recovery, one laboratory analogue of return of fear. The current study assessed whether novelty-facilitated extinction can also prevent reinstatement, a second laboratory analogue of return of fear. Following differential fear conditioning, one group of participants underwent standard extinction training whereas the second was presented with a novel tone after the conditional stimulus that previously predicted the aversive unconditional stimulus (US). Three presentations of the USs alone reinstated differential electrodermal fear responses after standard extinction, but not after novelty-facilitated extinction. Moreover, replicating previous findings, the extent of return of fear was correlated with self-reported intolerance of uncertainty after standard extinction, but not after novelty-facilitated extinction. These results support the proposal that novelty-facilitated extinction training can reduce the extent of return of fear.
Modality‐specific attentional startle modulation during continuous performance tasks: A brief time is sufficient
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 15-10-2008
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.2008.00705.X
Abstract: Attentional startle modulation has been found to be modality specific in continuous performance tasks (CPTs) and modality nonspecific in trial-structured tasks. Experiment 1 investigated whether attentional blink modulation in a CPT would change if a trial structure was imposed. Participants performed a visual CPT either continuously (CONT), or during brief periods of time signaled by a change in screen color with stimuli either presented all the time (MIXED) or only during the trial segments (DISC). Contrary to expectation, evidence for modality-specific attentional startle modulation-smaller acoustic startle during targets than during nontargets-was strongest in Groups MIXED and DISC. Experiment 2 confirmed that this pattern of results was present during the first stimulus of the task period in group DISC. This suggests that the continuous nature of a task is not critical in determining the attentional mechanisms engaged.
The effect of unconditional stimulus modality and intensity on blink startle and electrodermal responses
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-1997
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.1997.TB02384.X
Abstract: Attentional accounts of blink facilitation during Pavlovian conditioning predict enhanced reflexes if reflex and unconditional stimuli (US) are from the same modality. Emotional accounts emphasize the importance of US intensity. In Experiment 1, we crossed US modality (tone vs. shock) and intensity in a 2 x 2 between-subjects design. US intensity but not US modality affected blink facilitation. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that the results from Experiment 1 were not due to the motor task requirements employed. In Experiment 3, we used a within-subjects design to investigate the effects of US modality and intensity. Contrary to predictions derived from an attentional account, blink facilitation was larger during conditional stimuli that preceded shock than during those that preceded tones. The present results are not consistent with an attentional account of blink facilitation during Pavlovian conditioning in humans.
The effect of face inversion on the detection of emotional faces in visual search
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 17-09-2014
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2014.958981
Abstract: Past literature has indicated that face inversion either attenuates emotion detection advantages in visual search, implying that detection of emotional expressions requires holistic face processing, or has no effect, implying that expression detection is feature based. Across six experiments that utilised different task designs, ranging from simple (single poser, single set size) to complex (multiple posers, multiple set sizes), and stimuli drawn from different databases, significant emotion detection advantages were found for both upright and inverted faces. Consistent with past research, the nature of the expression detection advantage, anger superiority (Experiments 1, 2 and 6) or happiness superiority (Experiments 3, 4 and 5), differed across stimulus sets. However both patterns were evident for upright and inverted faces. These results indicate that face inversion does not interfere with visual search for emotional expressions, and suggest that expression detection in visual search may rely on feature-based mechanisms.
Measuring unconditional stimulus expectancy during evaluative conditioning strengthens explicit conditional stimulus valence
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-03-2020
Bodily cues of sex and emotion can interact symmetrically: Evidence from simple categorization and the garner paradigm.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 05-2023
DOI: 10.1037/EMO0001243
Committee report: Guidelines for human startle eyeblink electromyographic studies
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 2005
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.2005.00271.X
Abstract: The human startle response is a sensitive, noninvasive measure of central nervous system activity that is currently used in a wide variety of research and clinical settings. In this article, we raise methodological issues and present recommendations for optimal methods of startle blink electromyographic (EMG) response elicitation, recording, quantification, and reporting. It is hoped that this report will foster more methodological validity and reliability in research using the startle response, as well as increase the detail with which relevant methodology is reported in publications using this measure.
Latent inhibition and autonomic respones: a psychophysiological approach
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-1997
DOI: 10.1016/S0166-4328(97)02310-3
Abstract: Latent inhibition, retarded learning after preexposure to the to-be-conditioned stimulus, has been implied as a tool for the investigation of attentional deficits in schizophrenia and related disorders. The present paper reviews research that used Pavlovian conditioning as indexed by autonomic responses (electrodermal, vasomotor, cardiac) to investigate latent inhibition in adult humans. Latent inhibition has been demonstrated repeatedly in healthy subjects in absence of a masking task that is required in other latent inhibition paradigms. Moreover, latent inhibition of Pavlovian conditioning is stimulus-specific and increases with an increased number of preexposure trials which mirrors results from research in animals. A reduction of latent inhibition has been shown in healthy subjects who score high on questionnaire measures of psychosis proneness and in unmedicated schizophrenic patients. The latter result was obtained in a within-subject paradigm that holds promise for research with patient s les.
Evaluation of implicit associations between back posture and safety of bending and lifting in people without pain
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 09-07-2018
Abstract: Despite lack of support from recent in vivo studies, bending and lifting (especially with a round-back posture) are perceived as dangerous to the back. In light of this view, it has been proposed that pain-free people may hold a common implicit belief that is congruent with the idea that bending and lifting with a round-back represents danger to a person’s back, however this has not been evaluated. The aims of this study were: (1) to evaluate implicit associations between back posture and safety related to bending and lifting in pain-free people (2) to explore correlations between the implicit measure and explicit measures of back beliefs, fear of movement and safety of bending (3) to investigate self-reported qualitative appraisal of safe lifting. Exploratory cross-sectional study including 67 pain-free participants (no pain, or average pain ≤3/10 for less than one week over the previous 12 months) (52% male), who completed an online survey containing demographic data and self-reported measures of: fear of movement (T a Scale for Kinesiophobia for General population – TSK-G), back beliefs (Back Pain Attitudes Questionnaire BackPAQ), and bending beliefs (Bending Safety Belief – BSB – a pictorial scale with images of a person bending/lifting with round and straight back postures). Implicit associations between back posture and safety related to bending and lifting were evaluated with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). A qualitative assessment of descriptions of safe lifting was performed. An implicit association between “danger” and “round-back” bending/lifting was evident in all participants (IAT D-score =0.65 (SD=0.45 95% CI [0.54, 0.76]). Participants’ profile indicated high fear of movement, unhelpful back beliefs, and perceived danger to round-back bending and lifting (BSB Thermometer : 5.2 (SD=3.8 95% CI [4.26, 6.13] range −10 to 10 t (67) =11.09, p .001). There was a moderate correlation between IAT and BSB Thermometer (r=0.38, 95% CI [0.16, 0.62]). There were weaker and non-statistically significant correlations between IAT and TSK-G (r=0.28, 95% CI [−0.02, 0.47]), and between IAT and BackPAQ Danger (r=0.21, 95% CI [−0.03, 0.45]). Qualitative assessment of safe lifting descriptions indicated that keeping a “straight back” and “squatting” when lifting were the most common themes. Pain-free people displayed an implicit bias towards bending and lifting with a “round-back” as dangerous. Our findings support the idea that pain-free people may have a pre-existing belief about lifting, that the back is in danger when rounded. Research to evaluate the relationship between this implicit bias and lifting behaviour is indicated. The findings of this study may have implications for ergonomic guidelines and public health information related to bending and lifting back postures. Additionally, clinicians may need to be aware of this common belief, as this may be reflected in how a person responds when they experience pain.
Effect of probe stimulus intensity on the dissociation between autonomic orienting and secondary probe reaction time
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 08-2001
Impacts of imagery-enhanced versus verbally-based cognitive behavioral group therapy on psychophysiological parameters in social anxiety disorder
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2022.104131
Abstract: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with marked physiological reactivity in social-evaluative situations. However, objective measurement of biomarkers is rarely evaluated in treatment trials, despite potential utility in clarifying disorder-specific physiological correlates. This randomized controlled trial sought to examine the differential impact of imagery-enhanced vs. verbal-based cognitive behavioral group therapy (IE-CBGT, n = 53 VB-CBGT, n = 54) on biomarkers of emotion regulation and arousal during social stress in people with SAD (pre- and post-treatment differences in heart rate variability (HRV) and skin conductance). We acquired psychophysiological data from randomized participants across four social stress test phases (baseline, speech preparation, speech, interaction) at pre-treatment, and 1- and 6-months post-treatment. Analyses revealed that IE-CBGT selectively attenuated heart rate as indexed by increases in median heart rate interval (median-RR) compared to VB-CBGT at post-treatment, whereas one HRV index showed a larger increase in the VB-CBGT condition before but not after controlling for median-RR. Other psychophysiological indices did not differ between conditions. Lower sympathetic arousal in the IE-CBGT condition may have obviated the need for parasympathetic downregulation, whereas the opposite was true for VB-CBGT. These findings provide preliminary insights into the impact of imagery-enhanced and verbally-based psychotherapy for SAD on emotion regulation biomarkers.
Cumulative distribution functions: An alternative approach to examine the triggering of prepared motor actions in the StartReact effect
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 30-09-2020
DOI: 10.1111/EJN.14973
Abstract: There has been much debate concerning whether startling sensory stimuli can activate a fast‐neural pathway for movement triggering (StartReact) which is different from that of voluntary movements. Activity in sternocleidomastoid (SCM) electromyogram is suggested to indicate activation of this pathway. We evaluated whether SCM activity can accurately identify trials which may differ in their neurophysiological triggering and assessed the use of cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) of reaction time (RT) data to identify trials with the shortest RTs for analysis. Using recent data sets from the StartReact literature, we examined the relationship between RT and SCM activity. We categorised data into short/longer RT bins using CDFs and used linear mixed‐effects models to compare potential conclusions that can be drawn when categorising data on the basis of RT versus on the basis of SCM activity. The capacity of SCM to predict RT is task‐specific, making it an unreliable indicator of distinct neurophysiological mechanisms. Classification of trials using CDFs is capable of capturing potential task‐ or muscle‐related differences in triggering whilst avoiding the pitfalls of the traditional SCM activity‐based classification method. We conclude that SCM activity is not always evident on trials that show the early triggering of movements seen in the StartReact phenomenon. We further propose that a more comprehensive analysis of data may be achieved through the inclusion of CDF analyses. These findings have implications for future research investigating movement triggering as well as for potential therapeutic applications of StartReact.
Startle modulation and explicit valence evaluations dissociate during backward fear conditioning
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-02-2017
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.12834
Abstract: Blink startle magnitude is linearly modulated by affect such that, relative to neutral stimuli, startle magnitude is inhibited during pleasant stimuli and potentiated during unpleasant stimuli. Andreatta, Mühlberger, Yarali, Gerber, and Pauli (2010), however, report a dissociation between startle modulation and explicit valence evaluations during backward conditioning, a procedure in which the unconditional stimulus precedes the conditional stimulus (CS). Relative to controls, startles elicited during the CS were inhibited, suggesting that the CS had acquired positive valence, but participants still evaluated the CS as unpleasant after the experiment. In Experiment 1, we aimed to replicate this dissociation using a trial-by-trial measure of CS valence to measure startle modulation and CS valence simultaneously during forward and backward differential fear conditioning. In Experiment 2, we examined whether early and late portions of the CS could acquire differential valence by presenting startle probes at early and late probe positions during the CS. In both experiments, the dissociation between startle modulation and explicit valence evaluations in backward conditioning replicated, with CS+ evaluated as less pleasant than CS-, but startles elicited during CS+ inhibited relative to CS-. In Experiment 2, we provide preliminary evidence that this inhibition was present early, but not late, during the CS+. The results replicate the dissociation between implicit and explicit CS valence reported by Andreatta et al. (2010) using a trial-by-trial measure of valence. We also provide preliminary evidence that this dissociation may occur because the implicit and explicit measures are recorded at different times during the CS presentation.
Reply to Maslovat et al.
Publisher: American Physiological Society
Date: 05-2015
The effect of poser race on the happy categorization advantage depends on stimulus type, set size, and presentation duration
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2012
DOI: 10.1037/A0028622
Abstract: The question as to whether poser race affects the happy categorization advantage, the faster categorization of happy than of negative emotional expressions, has been answered inconsistently. Hugenberg (2005) found the happy categorization advantage only for own race faces whereas faster categorization of angry expressions was evident for other race faces. Kubota and Ito (2007) found a happy categorization advantage for both own race and other race faces. These results have vastly different implications for understanding the influence of race cues on the processing of emotional expressions. The current study replicates the results of both prior studies and indicates that face type (computer-generated vs. photographic), presentation duration, and especially stimulus set size influence the happy categorization advantage as well as the moderating effect of poser race.
Stimulus competition in affective and relational learning
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2001
Food healthiness versus tastiness: Contrasting their impact on more and less successful healthy shoppers within a virtual food shopping task
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2019
DOI: 10.1016/J.APPET.2018.11.029
Abstract: A virtual shopping task was employed to illuminate why women who intend to shop healthily are differentially successful in doing so. Female undergraduates (N = 68) performed a modified approach and avoidance task that employed food items differing in healthiness and tastiness, and yielded relative speed to select and reject food items in a stylised supermarket. Participants categorised a food item either in terms of healthiness or tastiness, then pulled (selected) or pushed (rejected) the item using a joystick. Participants showed faster selection of tasty food after categorisation in terms of tastiness, irrespective of the food's healthiness. However, after categorisation in terms of healthiness, only more successful healthy food shoppers showed faster selection of healthy items regardless of tastiness. Less successful healthy food shoppers showed this effect only for tasty food, and displayed faster rejection of food items not considered tasty, regardless of their assessed healthiness. Thus, when participants who reported the greatest gap between their shopping intention and shopping behaviour were judging the healthiness of food items, their speed to select and reject items continued to be influenced by tastiness. This suggests that reducing incidental processing of food tastiness may reduce the intention-behaviour gap in healthy food shopping.
Visual search with animal fear-relevant stimuli: A tale of two procedures
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 25-09-2010
Facial race and sex cues have a comparable influence on emotion recognition in Chinese and Australian participants
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-07-2017
DOI: 10.3758/S13414-017-1364-Z
Abstract: The magnitude of the happy categorisation advantage, the faster recognition of happiness than negative expressions, is influenced by facial race and sex cues. Previous studies have investigated these relationships using racial outgroups stereotypically associated with physical threat in predominantly Caucasian s les. To determine whether these influences generalise to stimuli representing other ethnic groups and to participants of different ethnicities, Caucasian Australian (Experiments 1 and 2) and Chinese participants (Experiment 2) categorised happy and angry expressions displayed on own-race male faces presented with emotional other-race male, own-race female, and other-race female faces in separate tasks. The influence of social category cues on the happy categorisation advantage was similar in the Australian and Chinese s les. In both s les, the happy categorisation advantage was present for own-race male faces when they were encountered with other-race male faces but reduced when own-race male faces were categorised along with female faces. The happy categorisation advantage was present for own-race and other-race female faces when they were encountered with own-race male faces in both s les. Results suggest similarity in the influence of social category cues on emotion categorisation.
Using Situation Awareness and Workload to Predict Performance in Submarine Track Management: A Multilevel Approach
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 05-07-2018
Abstract: Examine the extent to which subjective workload and situation awareness (SA) can predict variance in performance at the between- and within-person levels of analysis in a simulated submarine track management task. SA and workload are crucial constructs in human factors that are conceptualized as states that change within in iduals over time. Thus, a change in an in idual’s subjective workload or SA over the course of performing a task should be predictive of their subsequent performance (within-person effects). However, there is little empirical evidence for this. Participants monitored displays to track the behaviors of contacts in relationship to their own ship (Ownship) and landmarks. The Situational Awareness Global Assessment Technique measured SA, and the Air Traffic Workload Input Technique measured subjective workload. When a participant’s subjective workload rating increased, their subsequent performance decreased, but there was no evidence for within-person effects of SA on performance. We replicated prior between-person level effects of SA participants with higher SA performed better than those with lower SA. Change in an in idual’s subjective workload rating (but not SA) was predictive of their subsequent performance. Because an increase in SA should increase the extent to which operators hold the knowledge required to perform subsequent tasks, further research is required to examine SA effects on performance at the within-person level. Adapting automation is more likely to produce optimal outcomes if based on measurement of operator states that predict future task performance, such as workload.
The influence of social category cues on the happy categorisation advantage depends on expression valence
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 08-08-2016
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2016.1215293
Abstract: Facial race and sex cues can influence the magnitude of the happy categorisation advantage. It has been proposed that implicit race or sex based evaluations drive this influence. Within this account a uniform influence of social category cues on the happy categorisation advantage should be observed for all negative expressions. Support has been shown with angry and sad expressions but evidence to the contrary has been found for fearful expressions. To determine the generality of the evaluative congruence account, participants categorised happiness with either sadness, fear, or surprise displayed on White male as well as White female, Black male, or Black female faces across three experiments. Faster categorisation of happy than negative expressions was observed for female faces when presented among White male faces, and for White male faces when presented among Black male faces. These results support the evaluative congruence account when both positive and negative expressions are presented.
Emergence of assimilation or contrast effects in backward evaluative conditioning does not depend on US offset predictability
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2021
Evaluative learning in human Pavlovian conditioning: Extinct, but still there?
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2003
Neural gain induced by startling acoustic stimuli is additive to preparatory activation
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-10-2020
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.13493
Abstract: Loud acoustic stimuli presented during movement preparation can shorten reaction time and increase response forcefulness. We examined how efferent connectivity of an agonist muscle to reticulospinal and corticospinal pathways, and the level of prepared movement force, affect reaction time and movement execution when the motor response is triggered by an intense acoustic stimulus. In Experiment 1, participants executed ballistic wrist flexion and extension movements of low and high force in response to visual stimuli. A loud acoustic stimulus (LAS 105 dBa) was presented simultaneously with the visual imperative stimulus in probe trials. In Experiment 2, participants executed ballistic wrist flexion movements ranging from 10%-50% of maximum voluntary contraction with a LAS presented in probe trials. The shortening of response initiation was not affected by movement type (flexion or extension) or prepared movement force. Enhancement of response magnitude, however, was proportionally greater for low force movements and for the flexor muscle. Changes in peak force induced by the intense acoustic stimulus indicated that the neural activity introduced to motor program circuits by acoustic stimulation is additive to the voluntary neural activity that occurs due to movement preparation, rather than multiplicative.
Cue competition between elementary trained stimuli: US miscuing, interference, and US omission
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2002
Relapse of evaluative learning—Evidence for reinstatement, renewal, but not spontaneous recovery, of extinguished evaluative learning in a picture–picture evaluative conditioning paradigm.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 06-2020
DOI: 10.1037/XLM0000785
Abstract: In evaluative conditioning, if one shape (conditional stimulus [CS] CSp) is paired with pleasant unconditional stimulus (US) images and another (CSu) is paired with unpleasant US images differential CS valence and US expectancy develops, such that participants evaluate the CSp as more pleasant and more predictive of pleasant images than the CSu. This conditional CS valence and US expectancy can be reduced in an extinction procedure in which the CSs are repeatedly presented alone. We investigated whether evaluative and expectancy learning is subject to relapse (spontaneous recovery, reinstatement, and renewal) after extinction in a picture-picture evaluative conditioning paradigm. In Stream 1, after acquisition and extinction, the spontaneous recovery test was completed after a delay. During the spontaneous recovery test, conditional expectancy learning, but not conditional evaluative learning, returned. In Stream 2, the US pictures were presented in a random stream after extinction (reinstatement manipulation) which led to the return of conditional evaluative and expectancy learning. In Stream 3, after acquisition training in Context A and extinction training in Context B, conditional expectancy and evaluative learning returned when participants completed the renewal test in the acquisition context (Context A ABA renewal). Overall, the results suggest that conditional evaluative learning is subject to reinstatement and renewal, but not to spontaneous recovery, in a picture-picture evaluative conditioning paradigm. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Gene expression profiling of mucinous ovarian tumors and comparison with upper and lower gastrointestinal tumors identifies markers associated with adverse outcomes.
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Date: 07-10-2022
DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-22-1206
Abstract: Advanced-stage mucinous ovarian carcinoma (MOC) has poor chemotherapy response and prognosis and lacks biomarkers to aid stage I adjuvant treatment. Differentiating primary MOC from gastrointestinal (GI) metastases to the ovary is also challenging due to phenotypic similarities. Clinicopathologic and gene-expression data were analyzed to identify prognostic and diagnostic features. Discovery analyses selected 19 genes with prognostic/diagnostic potential. Validation was performed through the Ovarian Tumor Tissue Analysis consortium and GI cancer biobanks comprising 604 patients with MOC (n = 333), mucinous borderline ovarian tumors (MBOT, n = 151), and upper GI (n = 65) and lower GI tumors (n = 55). Infiltrative pattern of invasion was associated with decreased overall survival (OS) within 2 years from diagnosis, compared with expansile pattern in stage I MOC [hazard ratio (HR), 2.77 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.04–7.41, P = 0.042]. Increased expression of THBS2 and TAGLN was associated with shorter OS in MOC patients (HR, 1.25 95% CI, 1.04–1.51, P = 0.016) and (HR, 1.21 95% CI, 1.01–1.45, P = 0.043), respectively. ERBB2 (HER2) lification or high mRNA expression was evident in 64 of 243 (26%) of MOCs, but only 8 of 243 (3%) were also infiltrative (4/39, 10%) or stage III/IV (4/31, 13%). An infiltrative growth pattern infers poor prognosis within 2 years from diagnosis and may help select stage I patients for adjuvant therapy. High expression of THBS2 and TAGLN in MOC confers an adverse prognosis and is upregulated in the infiltrative subtype, which warrants further investigation. Anti-HER2 therapy should be investigated in a subset of patients. MOC s les clustered with upper GI, yet markers to differentiate these entities remain elusive, suggesting similar underlying biology and shared treatment strategies.
The effects of prepulse-blink reflex trial repetition and prepulse change on blink reflex modification at short and long lead intervals
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 1998
DOI: 10.1016/S0301-0511(97)00017-3
Abstract: Prepulse inhibition and facilitation of the blink reflex are said to reflect different responses elicited by the lead stimulus, transient detection and orienting response respectively. Two experiments investigated the effects of trial repetition and lead stimulus change on blink modification. It was hypothesized that these manipulations will affect orienting and thus blink facilitation to a greater extent than they will affect transient detection and thus blink inhibition. In Experiment 1 (N = 64), subjects were trained with a sequence of 12 lead stimulus and 12 blink stimulus alone presentations, and 24 lead stimulus-blink stimulus pairings. Lead interval was 120 ms for 12 of the trials and 2000 ms for the other 12. For half the subjects this sequence was followed by a change in pitch of the lead stimulus. In Experiment 2 (N = 64), subjects were trained with a sequence of 36 blink alone stimuli and 36 lead stimulus-blink stimulus pairings. The lead interval was 120 ms for half the subjects and 2000 ms for the other half. The pitch of the lead stimulus on prestimulus trials 31-33 was changed for half the subjects in each group. In both experiments, the amount of blink inhibition decreased during training whereas the amount of blink facilitation remained unchanged. Lead stimulus change had no effect on blink modification in either experiment although it resulted in enhanced skin conductance responses and greater heart rate deceleration in Experiment 2. The present results are not consistent with the notion that blink facilitation is linked to orienting whereas blink inhibition reflects a transient detection mechanism.
The effect of repeated propulse—blink reflex trials on blink reflex modulation at short lead intervals
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-1994
DOI: 10.1016/0301-0511(94)90047-7
Abstract: The litude of a blink reflex is inhibited if the reflex eliciting stimulus is preceded by a short prestimulus (e.g. < 250 ms). If the prestimulus duration is longer than 1 s, blink reflex litude is facilitated. The present study investigated the effect of repeated presentations of prestimulus-blink eliciting stimulus pairings on blink reflex modulation. Subjects in Experiment 1 (N = 59) were presented with a sequence of 12 blocks of 7 trials. Within each block, one trial was a blink stimulus alone, whereas the blink stimulus was preceded by a prestimulus on the other trials. Prestimulus intervals were 30, 60, 120, 240, 500 and 2000 ms. Prestimuli were presented continuously throughout the prepulse interval. The amount of reflex magnitude inhibition at the 60, 120, 240 and 500 ms lead intervals and reflex latency shortening at 30 and 60 ms decreased over blocks. The amount of reflex facilitation at a lead interval of 2000 ms was not reduced. In Experiment 2 (N = 22), two groups of subjects were presented with a sequence of blink stimulus alone presentations and prestimulus-blink stimulus pairings. The prestimulus lasted for 120 ms in one group and for 200 ms in the second. Blink reflex magnitude inhibition declined in both groups over blocks of trials. However, the groups also differed in responding on the blink stimulus alone control trials. Experiment 3 (N = 24) employed the same design as did Experiment 2. No difference in control responding was found. Similar to Experiment 2, blink inhibition decreased over repeated trials in both groups. The present results indicate that prepulse inhibition reflects a process which is affected by repeated presentation of prestimulus-reflex stimulus pairings. However, the conclusion that the reduction of prestimulus effects reflects habituation seems to be premature.
Supplementary Methods 1 from Gene-Expression Profiling of Mucinous Ovarian Tumors and Comparison with Upper and Lower Gastrointestinal Tumors Identifies Markers Associated with Adverse Outcomes
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Date: 04-2023
DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.22488651.V1
Abstract: Supplementary Methods
The role of anxiety and perspective-taking strategy on affective empathic responses
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2011
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2011.09.008
Abstract: Empathy is an important pro-social behaviour critical to a positive client-therapist relationship. Therapist anxiety has been linked to reduced ability to empathise and lower client satisfaction with therapy. However, the nature of the relationship between anxiety and empathy is currently unclear. The current study investigated the effect of experimentally-induced anxiety on empathic responses elicited during three different perspective-taking tasks. Perspective-taking was manipulated within-subjects with all participants (N=52) completing imagine-self, imagine-other and objective conditions. A threat of shock manipulation was used to vary anxiety between-subjects. Participants in the threat of shock condition reported higher levels of anxiety during the experiment and lower levels of empathy-related distress for the targets than participants in the control condition. Perspective-taking was associated with higher levels of empathy-related distress and concern compared to the objective condition. The present results suggest that perspective-taking can to a large extent mitigate the influence of heightened anxiety on an in idual's ability to empathise.
Is aversive learning a marker of risk for anxiety disorders in children?
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2008
Temporal contexts: Filling the gap between episodic memory and associative learning.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2011
DOI: 10.1037/A0023862
Abstract: People can create temporal contexts, or episodes, and stimuli that belong to the same context can later be used to retrieve the memory of other events that occurred at the same time. This can occur in the absence of direct contingency and contiguity between the events, which poses a challenge to associative theories of learning and memory. Because this is a learning and memory problem, we propose an integrated approach. Theories of temporal contexts developed in the memory tradition provide interesting predictions that we test using the methods of associative learning to assess their generality and applicability to different settings and dependent variables. In 4 experiments, the integration of these 2 areas allows us to show that (a) participants spontaneously create temporal contexts in the absence of explicit instructions (b) cues can be used to retrieve an old temporal context and the information associated with other cues that were trained in that context and (c) the memory of a retrieved temporal context can be updated with information from the current situation that does not fit well with the retrieved memory, thereby helping participants to best adapt their behavior to the future changes of the environment.
Electro-cortical implicit race bias does not vary with participants' race or sex
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 20-11-2011
DOI: 10.1093/SCAN/NSQ089
Visual search for schematic emotional faces: Angry faces are more than crosses
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 08-07-2013
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2013.809331
Abstract: Recent studies of the face in the crowd effect, the faster detection of angry than of happy faces in visual search, suggest that for schematic faces it reflects on perceptual features like inward pointing lines rather than on emotional expressions. Removing a potential confound, Experiments 1-2 replicate the preferential detection of stimuli with inward pointing lines, but Experiment 2a indicates that a surrounding circle is required for the effect to emerge. Experiments 3-7 failed to find evidence for faster detection of schematic faces comprising only the elements critical for the faster detection of angry faces according to a low level visual feature account, inward tilted brows and upturned mouth. Faster detection of anger was evident if eyes or eyes and noses were added, but only if their placement was consistent with the first order relations among these elements in a human face. Drawing the critical elements in thicker, higher contrast lines also led to an anger advantage, but this was smaller than that seen for the complete faces. The present results suggest that, while able to support faster target detection, a prevalence of inward pointing lines is not sufficient to explain the detection advantage of angry schematic faces.
Assessing the efficacy of imagery-enhanced cognitive behavioral group therapy for social anxiety disorder
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.CCT.2017.06.010
Abstract: Cognitive behavior group therapy (CBGT) is effective for social anxiety disorder (SAD), but a substantial proportion of patients do not typically achieve normative functioning. Cognitive behavioral models of SAD emphasize negative self-imagery as an important maintaining factor, and evidence suggests that imagery is a powerful cognitive mode for facilitating affective change. This study will compare two group CBGT interventions, one that predominantly uses verbally-based strategies (VB-CBGT) and another that predominantly uses imagery-enhanced strategies (IE-CBGT), in terms of (a) efficacy, (b) mechanisms of change, and (c) cost-effectiveness. This study is a parallel groups (two-arm) single-blind randomized controlled trial. A minimum of 96 patients with SAD will be recruited within a public outpatient community mental health clinic in Perth, Australia. The primary outcomes will be self-reported symptom severity, caseness (SAD present: yes/no) based on a structured diagnostic interview, and clinician-rated severity and life impact. Secondary outcomes and mechanism measures include blind observer-rated use of safety behaviors, physiological activity (heart rate variability and skin conductance level) during a standardized speech task, negative self-beliefs, imagery suppression, fear of negative and positive evaluation, repetitive negative thinking, anxiety, depression, self-consciousness, use of safety behaviors, and the EQ-5D-5L and TiC-P for the health economic analysis. Homework completion, group cohesion, and working alliance will also be monitored. The outcomes of this trial will inform clinicians as to whether integrating imagery-based strategies in cognitive behavior therapy for SAD is likely to improve outcomes. Common and distinct mechanisms of change might be identified, along with relative cost-effectiveness of each intervention.
Cumulative distribution functions: An alternative approach to examine the triggering of prepared motor actions in the StartReact effect
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 25-04-2020
DOI: 10.1101/2020.04.23.056929
Abstract: There has been much debate concerning whether startling sensory stimuli can activate a fast-neural pathway for movement triggering (StartReact) which is different from that of voluntary movements. Activity in sternocleidomastoid (SCM) electromyogram is suggested to indicate activation of this pathway. We evaluated whether SCM activity can accurately identify trials which may differ in their neurophysiological triggering and assessed the use of cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) of reaction time (RT) data to identify trials with the shortest RTs for analysis. Using recent datasets from the StartReact literature, we examined the relationship between RT and SCM activity. We categorised data into short/longer RT bins using CDFs and used linear mixed effects models to compare potential conclusions that can be drawn when categorising data on the basis of RT versus on the basis of SCM activity. The capacity of SCM to predict RT is task-specific, making it an unreliable indicator of distinct neurophysiological mechanisms. Classification of trials using CDFs is capable of capturing potential task- or muscle-related differences in triggering whilst avoiding the pitfalls of the traditional SCM activity based classification method. We conclude that SCM activity is not always evident on trials that show the early triggering of movements seen in the StartReact phenomenon. We further propose that a more comprehensive analysis of data may be achieved through the inclusion of CDF analyses. These findings have implications for future research investigating movement triggering as well as for potential therapeutic applications of StartReact.
Reaction time as an outcome measure during online fear conditioning: Effects of number of trials, age, and levels of processing
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2023
When orienting and anticipation dissociate — a case for scoring electrodermal responses in multiple latency windows in studies of human fear conditioning
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2016
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPSYCHO.2015.12.003
Abstract: Electrodermal activity in studies of human fear conditioning is often scored by distinguishing two electrodermal responses occurring during the conditional stimulus-unconditional stimulus interval. These responses, known as first interval responding (FIR) and second interval responding (SIR), are reported to be differentially sensitive to the effects of orienting and anticipation. Recently, the FIR/SIR scoring convention has been questioned, with some arguing in favor of scoring a single response within the entire conditional stimulus-unconditional stimulus interval (entire interval responding, EIR). EIR can be advantageous in practical terms but may fail to capture experimental effects when manipulations produce dissociations between orienting and anticipation. As an illustration, we rescored the data reported by Luck and Lipp (2015b) using both FIR/SIR and EIR scoring techniques and provide evidence that the EIR scoring technique fails to detect the effects of instructed extinction, an experimental manipulation which produces a dissociation between orienting and anticipation. Thus, using a technique that scores electrodermal response indices of fear conditioning in multiple latency windows is recommended.
Responses to loud auditory stimuli indicate that movement-related activation builds up in anticipation of action
Publisher: American Physiological Society
Date: 15-02-2013
Abstract: Previous research using a loud acoustic stimulus (LAS) to investigate motor preparation in reaction time (RT) tasks indicates that responses can be triggered well in advance of the presentation of an imperative stimulus (IS). This is intriguing given that high levels of response preparation cannot be maintained for long periods (≈ 200 ms). In the experiments reported here we sought to assess whether response-related activation increases gradually over time in simple RT tasks. In experiment 1, a LAS was presented at different times just prior to the presentation of the IS to probe the level of activation for the motor response. In experiment 2, the same LAS was presented at different times after the presentation of the IS. The results provide evidence that response-related activation does increase gradually in anticipation of the IS, but it remains stable for a short time after this event. The data display a pattern consistent with the response being triggering by the LAS, rather than a reaction to the IS.
Searching for Differences in Race: Is There Evidence for Preferential Detection of Other-Race Faces?
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2009
DOI: 10.1037/A0015530
Abstract: Previous research has suggested that like animal and social fear-relevant stimuli, other-race faces (African American) are detected preferentially in visual search. Three experiments using Chinese or Indonesian faces as other-race faces yielded the opposite pattern of results: faster detection of same-race faces among other-race faces. This apparently inconsistent pattern of results was resolved by showing that Asian and African American faces are detected preferentially in tasks that have small stimulus sets and employ fixed target searches. Asian and African American other-race faces are found slower among Caucasian face backgrounds if larger stimulus sets are used in tasks with a variable mapping of stimulus to background or target. Thus, preferential detection of other-race faces was not found under task conditions in which preferential detection of animal and social fear-relevant stimuli is evident. Although consistent with the view that same-race faces are processed in more detail than other-race faces, the current findings suggest that other-race faces do not draw attention preferentially.
Supplementary Tables S1-S11 from Gene-Expression Profiling of Mucinous Ovarian Tumors and Comparison with Upper and Lower Gastrointestinal Tumors Identifies Markers Associated with Adverse Outcomes
Publisher: American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Date: 04-2023
DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.22488645.V1
Abstract: Supplementary Tables S1-S11
The feasibility and outcome of clinic plus Internet delivery of cognitive-behavior therapy for childhood anxiety.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2006
2:0 for the good guys: Character information influences emotion perception.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 12-2019
DOI: 10.1037/EMO0000530
Abstract: Previous research has demonstrated that facial social category cues influence emotion perception such that happy expressions are categorized faster than negative expressions on faces belonging to positively evaluated social groups. We examined whether character information that is experimentally manipulated can also influence emotion perception. Across two experiments, participants learned to associate in iduals posing neutral expressions with positive or negative acts. In a subsequent task, participants categorized happy and angry expressions of these same in iduals as quickly and accurately as possible. As predicted, a larger happy face advantage emerged for in iduals associated with positive character information than for in iduals associated with negative character information. These results demonstrate that experimentally manipulated evaluations of an in idual's character are available quickly and affect early stages of face processing. Emotion perception is not only influenced by preexisting attitudes based on facial attributes, but also by information about a person that has been recently acquired. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Are two threats worse than one? The effects of face race and emotional expression on fear conditioning
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 22-10-2014
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.12155
Abstract: Facial cues of racial outgroup or anger mediate fear learning that is resistant to extinction. Whether this resistance is potentiated if fear is conditioned to angry, other race faces has not been established. Two groups of Caucasian participants were conditioned with two happy and two angry face conditional stimuli (CSs). During acquisition, one happy and one angry face were paired with an aversive unconditional stimulus whereas the second happy and angry faces were presented alone. CS face race (Caucasian, African American) was varied between groups. During habituation, electrodermal responses were larger to angry faces regardless of race and declined less to other race faces. Extinction was immediate for Caucasian happy faces, delayed for angry faces regardless of race, and slowest for happy racial outgroup faces. Combining the facial cues of other race and anger does not enhance resistance to extinction of fear.
The perceived duration of expected events depends on how the expectation is formed
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 14-06-2022
DOI: 10.3758/S13414-022-02519-X
Abstract: Repeated events can seem shortened. It has been suggested that this results from an inverse relationship between predictability and perceived duration, with more predictable events seeming shorter. Some evidence disputes this generalisation, as there are cases where this relationship has been nullified, or even reversed. This study sought to combine different factors that encourage expectation into a single paradigm, to directly compare their effects. We find that when people are asked to declare a prediction (i.e., to predict which colour sequence will ensue), guess-confirming events can seem relatively protracted. This augmented a positive time-order error, with the first of two sequential presentations already seeming protracted. We did not observe a contraction of perceived duration for more probable or for repeated events. Overall, our results are inconsistent with a simple mapping between predictability and perceived duration. Whether the perceived duration of an expected event will seem relatively contracted or expanded seems to be contingent on the causal origin of expectation.
The relationship between self-reported animal fear and ERP modulation: Evidence for enhanced processing and fear of harmless invertebrates in snake- and spider-fearful individuals
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 20-04-2011
Effects of stimulus preexposure and intermodality change on electrodermal orienting
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-1994
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.1994.TB01045.X
Abstract: Previous research has indicated that an intermodality change trial presented after a habituation series elicits larger orienting responses than does the first stimulus of that series. Experiment 1 (N = 48) investigated whether this effect was still present if the change stimulus was not novel but was presented once prior to the habituation series. Two groups of subjects were presented with a series of 24 tones or vibrotactile stimuli. Trial 25 was an intermodality change test trial for half of the subjects in each group (change), whereas the remaining subjects received an additional habituation stimulus (no change). Prior to the habituation trials, each subject was exposed once to the test stimulus used in the change condition. Although response magnitude on the test trial was larger in the change condition than in the no-change condition, test trial response magnitude did not exceed that on the first trial of the habituation series. In Experiment 2 (N = 84), one group was preexposed to the test stimulus, another was preexposed to an experimentally irrelevant stimulus, and a third received no stimulus prior to habituation training. Test trial response magnitude was larger than responses to the first stimulus of habituation in the change group that was not exposed to a stimulus prior to habituation but not in the preexposed groups. Preexposure to a stimulus prior to habituation training abolished the intermodality change effect even when the test stimulus was novel. The present results pose problems for noncomparator theories of habituation and support the notion that anticipatory processes are important in orienting and habituation.
Make a lasting impression: The neural consequences of re‐encountering people who emote inappropriately
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-10-2012
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.2012.01481.X
Abstract: We can learn about the affective content of the environment by observing the behavior of others their responses to stimuli tend to be appropriate to the context. To investigate the impact of observing such appropriate, compared with inappropriate, behaviors, we developed a novel behavioral task where participants observed different faces reacting to emotional scenes. We found that affective categorization of a scene was facilitated when it was presented alongside an appropriate facial expression (Experiment 1). Further, we observed that several brain areas in the right hemisphere-the putamen, insula, orbitofrontal cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex-were more activate when viewing faces that were previously observed emoting inappropriately (Experiment 2). We contend that these areas form a network that codes for the retrieval of affective conflict information generated by observing in iduals producing inappropriate emotions.
Selective processing of masked and unmasked verbal threat material in anxiety: Influence of an immediate acute stressor
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2006
The effects of arousal and valence on facial electromyographic asymmetry during blocked picture viewing
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2011
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPSYCHO.2010.12.005
Abstract: The effect of stimulus valence and arousal on facial electromyographic (EMG) asymmetry was investigated to inform the debate about two contrasting hypotheses of emotion: the right hemisphere dominance hypothesis and the valence hypothesis. EMG was recorded from the left and right corrugator and zygomaticus muscles while participants (N = 21) viewed blocks of negative and positive pictures that were high or low in arousal. Ratings of valence and arousal were taken before and after each of the four emotion blocks. Corrugator muscle activity yielded evidence for left hemi-face dominance during high and low arousal negative picture blocks whereas zygomaticus muscle activity yielded evidence for right hemi-face dominance during high arousal positive picture blocks, especially early during the picture sequence. This pattern of results is consistent with the valence hypothesis.
The effect of emotional and attentional processes on blink startle modulation and on electrodermal responses
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 05-1997
DOI: 10.1111/J.1469-8986.1997.TB02404.X
Abstract: Emotional accounts of startle modulation predict that startle is facilitated if elicited during aversive foreground stimuli. Attentional accounts hold that startle is enhanced if startle-eliciting stimulus and foreground stimulus are in the same modality. Visual and acoustic foreground stimuli and acoustic startle probes were employed in aversive differential conditioning and in a stimulus discrimination task. Differential conditioning was evident in electrodermal responses and blink latency shortening in both modalities, but effects on magnitude facilitation were found only for visual stimuli. In the discrimination task, skin conductance responses, blink latency shortening, and blink magnitude facilitation were larger during to-be-attended stimuli regardless of stimulus modality. The present results support the notion that attention and emotion can affect blink startle modulation during foreground stimuli.
The effect of social anxiety on top-down attentional orienting to emotional faces.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 04-2022
DOI: 10.1037/EMO0000764
Abstract: One of the fundamental factors maintaining social anxiety is biased attention toward threatening facial expressions. Typically, this bias has been conceptualized as driven by an overactive bottom-up attentional system however, this potentially overlooks the role of top-down attention in being able to modulate this bottom-up bias. Here, the role of top-down mechanisms in directing attention toward emotional faces was assessed with a modified dot-probe task, in which participants were given a top-down cue ("happy" or "angry") to attend to a happy or angry face on each trial, and the cued face was either presented with a face of the other emotion (angry, happy) or a neutral face. This study found that social anxiety was not associated with differences in shifting attention toward cued angry faces. However, participants with higher levels of social anxiety were selectively impaired in attentional shifting toward a cued happy face when it was paired with an angry face, but not when paired with a neutral face. The results indicate that top-down attention can be used to orient attention to emotional faces, but that higher levels of social anxiety are associated with selective deficits in top-down control of attention in the presence of threat. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
The effect of emotion counter‐regulation to anger on working memory updating
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 19-06-2023
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.14366
Abstract: Emotion counter‐regulation has been suggested as the core cognitive mechanism of automatic emotion regulation. Emotion counter‐regulation not only induces an unintentional transfer of attention from the current emotional state to stimuli with the opposite valence but also prompts approach to stimuli of the opposite valence and increases response inhibition to stimuli of the same valence. Working memory (WM) updating has been shown to be related to attention selection and response inhibition. However, it remains unclear whether emotion counter‐regulation would affect WM updating with emotional stimuli. In the present study, 48 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to the angry‐priming group that watched highly arousing angry video clips, or the control group that watched neutral video clips. Then participants performed a two‐back face identity matching task with happy and angry face pictures. Behavioral results showed higher accuracy for identity recognition of happy than of angry faces. The event‐related potential (ERP) results revealed smaller P2 to angry faces than to happy faces in the control group. In the angry‐priming group, there was no difference in P2 litude between angry and happy trials. Between groups, P2 to angry faces was larger in the priming group than in the control group. Late positive potential (LPP) was smaller for happy faces than for angry faces in the priming group, but not in the control group. These findings suggest that emotion counter‐regulation affects the onset updating and maintenance of emotional face stimuli in WM.
Startle blink facilitation during the go signal of a reaction time task is not affected by movement preparation or attention to the go signal
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2007
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEULET.2007.09.018
Abstract: Startle reflex eliciting stimuli presented at the onset of the go signal in a simple forewarned reaction time (RT) task (at a SOA of 0 ms) elicit larger blink reflexes than do stimuli presented later (e.g., at a SOA of 150 ms) or during inter trial intervals. The present study investigated whether this facilitation is affected by attention to the go signal or motor preparation. Participants performed a forewarned reaction time task that crossed the requirements for a speeded response (Hold versus Move) and for a discrimination task performed with the go signal (Report versus No report). Relative to control reflexes, blinks elicited at a SOA of 0 ms were facilitated and blinks elicited at a SOA of 150 ms were inhibited. RTs were slower on trials that required attention to the go signal and in both attention conditions and at both SOAs shortened in the presence of a blink-eliciting stimulus. However, neither attention to the go signal nor motor preparation affected blink facilitation at the 0 ms SOA. This finding suggests that the blink reflex facilitation observed at a SOA of 0 ms with the onset of a go signal reflects on the summation of sub- and supra-threshold activations of the startle pathway.
Dissociation Between Skin Conductance Orienting and Secondary Task Reaction Time: Time Course With a Visual Discrimination Task
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-1998
RWMODEL: A program in Turbo Pascal for simulating predictions based on the Rescorla-Wagner model of classical conditioning
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-1988
DOI: 10.3758/BF03202687
An own‐age bias in mixed‐ and pure‐list presentations: No evidence for the social‐cognitive account
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 28-11-2019
DOI: 10.1111/BJOP.12435
Abstract: The own-age bias (OAB) is suggested to be caused by perceptual-expertise and/or social-cognitive mechanisms. Bryce and Dodson (2013, Psychology and Aging, 28, 87, Exp 2) provided support for the social-cognitive account, demonstrating an OAB for participants who encountered a mixed-list of own- and other-age faces, but not for participants who encountered a pure-list of only own- or other-age faces. They proposed that own-age/other-age categorization, and the resulting OAB, only emerge when age is made salient in the mixed-list condition. Our study aimed to replicate this finding using methods typically used to investigate the OAB to examine their robustness and contribution to our understanding of how the OAB forms. Across three experiments that removed theoretically unimportant components of the original paradigm, varied face sex, and included background scenes, the OAB emerged under both mixed-list and pure-list conditions. These results are more consistent with a perceptual-expertise than social-cognitive account of the OAB, but may suggest that manipulating age salience using mixed-list and pure-list presentations is not sufficient to alter categorization processes.
Neural prediction errors depend on how an expectation was formed
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2022
DOI: 10.1016/J.CORTEX.2021.10.012
Abstract: When a visual event is unexpected, because it violates a train of repeated events, it excites a greater positive electrical potential at sensors positioned above occipital-parietal human brain regions (the P300). Such events can also seem to have an increased duration relative to repeated (implicitly expected) events. However, recent behavioural evidence suggests that when events are unexpected because they violate a declared prediction-a guess-there is an opposite impact on duration perception. The neural consequences of incorrect declared predictions have not been examined. We replicated the finding whereby repetition violating events elicit a larger P300 response. However, we found that events that violated a declared prediction entrained an opposite pattern of response-a smaller P300. These data suggest that the neural consequences of a violated prediction are not uniform but depend on how the prediction was formed.
Featural vs. Holistic processing and visual sampling in the influence of social category cues on emotion recognition
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 30-03-2022
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2022.2057442
Abstract: Past research demonstrates that emotion recognition is influenced by social category cues present on faces. However, little research has investigated whether holistic processing is required to observe these influences of social category information on emotion perception, and no studies have investigated whether different visual s ling strategies (i.e. differences in the allocation of attention to different regions of the face) contribute to the interaction between social cues and emotional expressions. The current study aimed to address this. Participants categorised happy and angry expressions on own- and other-race faces, and male and female faces. In Experiments 1 and 2, holistic processing was disrupted by presenting inverted faces (Experiment 1) or part faces (Experiment 2). In Experiments 3 and 4 participants' eye-gaze to eye and mouth regions was also tracked. Disrupting holistic processing did not alter the moderating influence of sex and race cues on emotion recognition (Experiments 1, 2, 4). Gaze patterns differed as a function of emotional expression, and social category cues, however, eye-gaze patterns did not reflect response time patterns (Experiments 3 and 4). Results indicate that the interaction between social category cues and emotion does not require holistic processing and is not driven by differences in visual s ling.
An investigation of implicit bias about bending and lifting
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 24-11-2021
Abstract: Previous studies in a high-income country have demonstrated that people with and without low back pain (LBP) have an implicit bias that bending and lifting with a flexed lumbar spine is dangerous. These studies present two key limitations: use of a single group per study people who recovered from back pain were not studied. Our aims were to evaluate: implicit biases between back posture and safety related to bending and lifting in people who are pain-free, have a history of LBP or have current LBP in a middle-income country, and to explore correlations between implicit and explicit measures within groups. Exploratory cross-sectional study including 174 participants (63 pain-free, 57 with history of LBP and 54 with current LBP). Implicit biases between back posture and safety related to bending and lifting were assessed with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Participants completed paper-based (Bending Safety Belief [BSB]) and online questionnaires (T a Scale of Kinesiophobia Back Pain Attitudes Questionnaire). Participants displayed significant implicit bias between images of round-back bending and lifting and words representing “danger” (IAT D-SCORE : Pain-free group: 0.56 (IQR=0.31–0.91 95% CI [0.47, 0.68]) history of LBP group: 0.57 (IQR=0.34–0.84 95% CI [0.47, 0.67]) current LBP group: 0.56 (IQR=0.24–0.80 95% CI [0.39, 0.64])). Explicit measures revealed participants hold unhelpful beliefs about the back, perceiving round-back bending and lifting as dangerous (BSB thermometer: Pain-free group: 8 (IQR=7–10 95% CI [7.5, 8.5]) history of LBP group: 8 (IQR=7–10 95% CI [7.5, 9.0]) current LBP group: 8.5 (IQR=6.75–10 [7.5, 9.0])). There was no correlation between implicit and explicit measures within the groups. In a middle-income country, people with and without LBP, and those who recovered from LBP have an implicit bias that round-back bending and lifting is dangerous.
Examination of emotional priming among children and young adolescents: Developmental issues and its association with anxiety
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2006
Triggering Mechanisms for Motor Actions
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROSCIENCE.2018.10.008
Abstract: Motor actions can be released much sooner than normal when the go-signal is of very high intensity (>100 dBa). Although statistical evidence from in idual studies has been mixed, it has been assumed that sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscle activity could be used to distinguish between two neural circuits involved in movement triggering. We summarized meta-analytically the available evidence for this hypothesis, comparing the difference in premotor reaction time (RT) of actions where SCM activity was elicited (SCM+ trials) by loud acoustic stimuli against trials in which it was absent (SCM- trials). We found ten studies, all reporting comparisons between SCM+ and SCM- trials. Our mini meta-analysis showed that premotor RTs are faster in SCM+ than in SCM- trials, but the effect can be confounded by the variability of the foreperiods employed. We present experimental data showing that foreperiod predictability can induce differences in RT that would be of similar size to those attributed to the activation of different neurophysiological pathways to trigger prepared actions. We discuss plausible physiological mechanisms that would explain differences in premotor RTs between SCM+ and SCM- trials.
Emotional expressions reduce the own-age bias.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 10-2019
DOI: 10.1037/EMO0000517
Abstract: We are better at recognizing faces of our own age group compared to faces of other age groups. It has been suggested that this own-age bias (OAB) might occur because of perceptual-expertise and/or social-cognitive mechanisms. Although there is evidence to suggest effects of perceptual-expertise, little research has explored the role of social-cognitive factors. To do so, we looked at how the presence of an emotional expression on the face changes the magnitude of the OAB. Across 3 experiments, young adult participants were presented with young and older adult faces to remember. Neutral faces were first presented alone (Experiment 1) to validate the proposed paradigm and then presented along with angry (Experiment 2) and sad or happy faces (Experiment 3). The presence of an emotional expression improved the recognition of older adult faces, reducing the OAB which was evident for neutral faces. These results support the involvement of social-cognitive factors in the OAB, suggesting that a perceptual-expertise account cannot fully explain this face recognition bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Threat captures attention, but not automatically: Top-down goals modulate attentional orienting to threat distractors
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 27-05-2016
DOI: 10.3758/S13414-016-1142-3
Abstract: The rapid orienting of attention to potential threats has been proposed to proceed outside of top-down control. However, paradigms that have been used to investigate this have struggled to separate the rapid orienting of attention (i.e. capture) from the later disengagement of focal attention that may be subject to top-down control. Consequently, it remains unclear whether and to what extent orienting to threat is contingent on top-down goals. The current study manipulated the goal-relevance of threat distractors (spiders), whilst a strict top-down attentional set was encouraged by presenting the saliently colored target and the threat distracter simultaneously for a limited time. The goal-relevance of threatening distractors was manipulated by including a spider amongst the possible target stimuli (Experiment 1: spider/cat targets) or excluding it (Experiment 2: bird/fish targets). Orienting and disengagement were disentangled by cueing attention away from or towards the threat prior to its onset. The results indicated that the threatening spider distractors elicited rapid orienting of attention when spiders were potentially goal-relevant (Experiment 1) but did so much less when they were irrelevant to the task goal (Experiment 2). Delayed disengagement from the threat distractors was even more strongly contingent on the task goal and occurred only when a spider was a possible target. These results highlight the role of top-down goals in attentional orienting to and disengagement from threat.
You look pretty happy: Attractiveness moderates emotion perception.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 09-2019
DOI: 10.1037/EMO0000513
Abstract: A happy face advantage has consistently been shown in emotion categorization tasks happy faces are categorized as happy faster than angry faces as angry. Furthermore, social category cues, such as facial sex and race, moderate the happy face advantage in evaluatively congruent ways with a larger happy face advantage for more positively evaluated faces. We investigated whether attractiveness, a facial attribute unrelated to more defined social categories, would moderate the happy face advantage consistent with the evaluative congruence account. A larger happy face advantage for the more positively evaluated attractive faces than for unattractive faces was predicted. Across 4 experiments participants categorized attractive and unattractive faces as happy or angry as quickly and accurately as possible. As predicted, when female faces were categorized separately, a happy face advantage emerged for the attractive females but not for the unattractive females. Corresponding results were only found in the error rates for male faces. This pattern was confirmed when female and male faces were categorized together, indicating that attractiveness may have a stronger influence on emotion perception for female faces. Attractiveness is shown to moderate emotion perception in line with the evaluative congruence account and is suggested to have a stronger influence on emotion perception than facial sex cues in contexts where attractiveness is a salient evaluative dimension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Extinction during reconsolidation eliminates recovery of fear conditioned to fear-irrelevant and fear-relevant stimuli
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2017.01.017
Abstract: Extant literature suggests that extinction training delivered during the memory reconsolidation period is superior to traditional extinction training in the reduction of fear recovery, as it targets the original fear memory trace. At present it is debated whether different types of fear memories are differentially sensitive to behavioral manipulations of reconsolidation. Here, we examined post-reconsolidation recovery of fear as a function of conditioned stimulus (CS) fear-relevance, using the unconditioned stimulus (US) to reactivate and destabilize conditioned fear memories. Participants (N = 56 25 male M = 24.39 years, SD = 7.71) in the US-reactivation and control group underwent differential fear conditioning to fear-relevant (spiders/snakes) and fear-irrelevant (geometric shapes) CSs on Day 1. On Day 2, participants received either reminded (US-reactivation) or non-reminded extinction training. Tests of fear recovery, conducted 24 h later, revealed recovery of differential electrodermal responding to both classes of CSs in the control group, but not in the US-reactivation group. These findings indicate that the US reactivation-extinction procedure eliminated recovery of extinguished responding not only to fear-irrelevant, but also to fear-relevant CSs. Contrasting previous reports, our findings show that post-reconsolidation recovery of conditioned responding is not a function of CS fear-relevance and that persistent reduction of fear, conditioned to fear-relevant CSs, can be achieved through behavioral manipulations of reconsolidation.
Conceptual generalisation in fear conditioning using single and multiple category exemplars as conditional stimuli – electrodermal responses and valence evaluations generalise to the broader category
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-05-2022
DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2022.2047897
Abstract: Conceptual generalisation occurs when conditional responses generalise to novel stimuli from the same category. Past research demonstrates that physiological fear responses generalise across categories, however, conceptual generalisation of stimulus valence evaluations during fear conditioning has not been examined. We investigated whether conceptual generalisation, as indexed by electrodermal responses and stimulus evaluations, would occur, and differ after training with single or multiple conditional stimuli (CSs). Stimuli from two of four categories (vegetables, farm animals, clothing, and office supplies) were used as the CS+ (followed by an electric stimulus) or CS- (presented alone). Generalisation was assessed by presenting novel stimuli from the CS categories after acquisition, extinction, and reinstatement. One category exemplar was used as the CS+ and CS- in the single group, whereas three exemplars were used as the CS+ and CS- in the multiple group. Electrodermal responses generalised in acquisition and extinction but did not differ between groups. In the multiple group, CS evaluations generalised in acquisition and extinction, whereas generalisation was not evident in the single group. Training with multiple CSs also resulted in the extinction of stimulus valence. The current findings have implications for future research examining the generalisation of valence and for exposure-based treatments of anxiety.
Mortality salience reduces attentional bias for fear-relevant animals
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-08-2008
The influence of contingency reversal instructions on electrodermal responding and conditional stimulus valence evaluations during differential fear conditioning
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 05-2016
Enhancing extinction learning: Occasional presentations of the unconditioned stimulus during extinction eliminate spontaneous recovery, but not necessarily reacquisition of fear
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.BRAT.2018.07.001
Abstract: Fears underlying anxiety disorders are commonly treated with exposure-based therapies, which are based on the principles of extinction learning. While these treatments are efficacious, fears may return after successful treatment. Past research suggested that post-extinction recovery of fear could be reduced through extinction training that involves occasional presentations of the aversive unconditioned stimulus (US), paired with the conditioned stimulus (CS). Here, we examined whether extinction training with occasionally paired or unpaired US presentations is superior in the reduction of fear recovery to non-reinforced extinction. Following differential fear conditioning to neutral cues, participants (N = 72 M age = 21.61 years, SD = 3.95) underwent either non-reinforced, partially reinforced, or unpaired extinction training. Extinction involving paired or unpaired US presentations, but not non-reinforced extinction, eliminated spontaneous recovery of differential skin conductance responses (SCRs). Results further suggested that unpaired, but not paired, US presentations may guard against rapid reacquisition of differential SCRs. No benefits of US presentations during extinction were found on the reinstatement of SCRs or recovery of differential negative CS+ valence. Presenting USs during extinction training was more effective than non-reinforced extinction in the reduction of fear recovery, as indexed by SCRs, with unpaired extinction being more effective than partially reinforced extinction.
Pupil dilation during encoding, but not type of auditory stimulation, predicts recognition success in face memory
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2023
Where should the balance be between “scientist” and “practitioner” in Australian undergraduate psychology?
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-11-2010
Are snakes and spiders special? Acquisition of negative valence and modified attentional processing by non-fear-relevant animal stimuli
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-2009
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Start Date: 2008
End Date: 2010
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStimulus Fear-relevance: Exploring The Boundaries Of Preferential Attentional Processing
Start Date: 2005
End Date: 2007
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityBiased Information Processing In Anxiety: Low Anxiety Scores, But Still At Risk
Start Date: 2002
End Date: 2005
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityBRAINnet: Brain Research And Integrative Neuroscience Network
Start Date: 2003
End Date: 2003
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityRace And Gender Stereotypes On The Brain: The Case Of Emotion Expression
Start Date: 2009
End Date: 2009
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityThe Creation Of An Eye Movement Recording Facility In Queensland
Start Date: 2002
End Date: 2002
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityEvaluative Learning: Do All Roads Lead To Rome?
Start Date: 2018
End Date: 2020
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityHuman Learning Of Likes And Dislikes: A Test Of The Dual Process Account And An Investigation Of Its Neural Substrates
Start Date: 2004
End Date: 2006
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDie Bedeutung Des Ekels Und Der Ekelsensitivität Für Zwangsstörungen Und Phobien Vom Blut-Spritzen-Verletzungs-Typus
Start Date: 1999
End Date: 2005
Funder: German Research Foundation
View Funded ActivityA 3.0 Tesla MRI System For Human Cognitive Neuroscience Research
Start Date: 2008
End Date: 2008
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityAustralian Research Council Special Research Initiative – Science Of Learning Research Centre
Start Date: 2013
End Date: 2016
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityLinkage - International - Grant ID: LX0990031
Start Date: 2009
End Date: 05-2010
Amount: $56,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP0450465
Start Date: 2004
End Date: 12-2007
Amount: $176,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP220100878
Start Date: 01-2023
End Date: 01-2026
Amount: $404,680.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityLinkage - International - Grant ID: LX0346872
Start Date: 09-2002
End Date: 12-2004
Amount: $25,570.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityLinkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE0210995
Start Date: 2001
End Date: 12-2002
Amount: $100,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP0770844
Start Date: 2007
End Date: 12-2011
Amount: $692,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP0559868
Start Date: 2005
End Date: 12-2008
Amount: $210,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivitySpecial Research Initiatives - Grant ID: SR0354494
Start Date: 2004
End Date: 02-2004
Amount: $10,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityLinkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE0882345
Start Date: 2008
End Date: 02-2009
Amount: $650,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP180100869
Start Date: 01-2018
End Date: 05-2022
Amount: $405,151.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP120100750
Start Date: 06-2012
End Date: 05-2016
Amount: $210,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP110100460
Start Date: 2011
End Date: 12-2014
Amount: $171,722.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivitySpecial Research Initiatives - Grant ID: SR120300015
Start Date: 11-2013
End Date: 06-2020
Amount: $16,000,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP180100394
Start Date: 01-2018
End Date: 12-2023
Amount: $339,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP0878140
Start Date: 2008
End Date: 12-2011
Amount: $181,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP150101540
Start Date: 2015
End Date: 12-2017
Amount: $443,900.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity