Preschoolers' understanding of the link between thinking and feeling: cognitive cuing and emotional change

In 3 studies we investigated 3- through 6-year-olds' knowledge of thinking and feeling by examining their understanding of how emotions can change when memories of past sad events are cued by objects in the current environment. In Study 1, 48 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds were presented with 4 illustrated stories in which focal characters experience minor sad events. Later, each story character encounters a visual cue that is related to one of his or her previous sad experiences. Children were told that the character felt sad, and they were asked to explain why. Study 1 suggested considerable competence as well as substantial development in the years between 4 and 6 in the understanding of the influence of mental activity on emotions. Studies 2 and 3 more systematically explored preschoolers' understanding of cognitive cuing and emotional change with different types of situations and cues. Across these 2 studies, 108 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds listened to illustrated stories that featured story characters who each experienced a sad event and who were later exposed to a related cue. Children were not only asked to explain why the characters suddenly felt sad, but in some stories, they were also asked to predict and explain how another character, who was never at the past sad event, would feel. Results of Studies 2 and 3 showed an initial understanding of cognitive cuing and emotion in some children as young as 3, replicated and extended the evidence for significant developmental changes in that understanding during the preschool years, and revealed that the strength and consistency of preschoolers' knowledge of cognitive cuing and emotion was affected by whether cues were the same, or only similar to, parts of the earlier events.     

Attentional bias to threat: A perceptual accuracy approach.

To investigate attentional bias to threatening information, the authors propose a new version of the spatial cueing paradigm in which the focus is on perceptual accuracy instead of response speed. In two experiments, healthy volunteers made unspeeded discriminations between three visual targets presented left or right. Each target was preceded by a visual cue (colored rectangle) at either the same (valid) or opposite (invalid) location. By means of differential classical conditioning with aversive white noise, a threat cue and a control cue were created. Analyses of error rates showed that cueing effects (lower proportion of errors in valid trials relative to invalid trials) were more pronounced in threat trials than in neutral trials. This threat-related bias was particularly because of threat cues reducing accuracy in invalid trials, indicating difficulty disengaging attention from threatening information. Engagement of attention was not affected by threat, as threat cues did not facilitate the processing of targets in valid trials. The findings are discussed in light of the strengths and limitations of spatial cueing tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment and representations of peer relationships.

Three studies explored the connection between attachment and peer-related representations. Children heard stories in which a peer with ambiguous intent caused a negative event. Study 1 examined three aspects of peer-related representations in 3.5-yr-olds: representations of (1) peer intent, (2) behavioral responses to the event, and (3) peer feelings. Children's representations of the mother's response to the event were also examined. Study 2 examined the connection between attachment and the same aspects of peer-related representations in kindergarten and 1st-grade children. The proposition implicit in attachment theory that it is children's representations of peer relationships that in part account for the connection between child–parent attachment and relations with peers was also tested. Study 3 focused on representations of peer intent in connection with self-reported maternal and paternal rejection in 5th graders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sponsorship, ambushing, and counter-strategy: Effects upon memory for sponsor and event.

Corporate sponsorship of sports, causes, and the arts has become a mainstream communications tool worldwide. The unique marketing opportunities associated with major events also attract nonsponsoring companies seeking to form associations with the event (ambushing). There are strategies available to brands and events which have been ambushed; however, there is only limited information about the effects of those strategies on attainment of sponsorship objectives. In Experiment 1, university staff and students participated by studying paragraphs linking a sponsor to a novel event. Relative to each sponsor-event pair, they then studied one of three different messages about a competitor. Results find a message which linked the competitor and the event increased competitor recall given the event as a cue and event recall given the competitor as a cue. These effects were moderated if there was information about the competitor not being the sponsor. In Experiment 2 ambushing and counter-ambushing information was presented over 2 days. Both types of messages increased competitor recall given the event as a cue and event recall given the competitor as a cue. In addition, “not sponsor” information was not always used even when it should have been recallable. The results can be explained if participants are using three cues: a specific cue such as a brand name, a contextual cue, and a category cue, such as the concept of an event. Findings suggest to sponsoring firms and event properties that counter-ambushing communications may have the unintended effect of strengthening an ambusher-event relationship in memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety-related attentional biases and their regulation by attentional control.

This study examined the role of self-reported attentional control in regulating attentional biases related to trait anxiety. Simple detection targets were preceded by cues labeling potential target locations as threatening (likely to result in negative feedback) or safe (likely to result in positive feedback). Trait anxious participants showed an early attentional bias favoring the threatening location 250 ms after the cue and a late bias favoring the safe location 500 ms after the cue. The anxiety-related threat bias was moderated by attentional control at the 500-ms delay: Anxious participants with poor attentional control still showed the threat bias, whereas those with good control were better able to shift from the threatening location. Thus, skilled control of voluntary attention may allow anxious persons to limit the impact of threatening information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unpacking unpacking: Greater detail can reduce perceived likelihood.

Past research suggests that a categorical event is perceived to be more likely if its subcases are explicitly delineated or “unpacked.” In 6 studies, we find that unpacking can often make an event seem less likely, especially when the details being unpacked are already highly accessible. Process evidence shows that the provision of greater detail accompanying unpacking reduces the simplicity of an event and that this dysfluency is used as a negative cue for likelihood. This work establishes processing fluency as a mechanism that opposes the other effects of unpacking, such as enhanced accessibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differences in P3 amplitudes between schizophrenics and healthy controls vary between the different events presented in a guessing task

P3 amplitudes were often found to be reduced in schizophrenics, but in varying degree. We studied in a guessing task whether variations of group differences could even be obtained within the same task, by measuring P3 in the potentials evoked by the three qualitatively different events that occurred in each trial. We hypothesized that such variations were due to variations of subjective task relevance associated with each event. In each trial, a light or a sound was presented. Subjects had to confirm this 'primary event' by a delayed response, and then the current amount of money earned by correct responses was displayed. In the certain condition, the primary event was preceded by the appropriate cue on the screen ('light' or 'sound') whereas in the uncertain condition, the word 'guess' appeared. The task-relevance hypothesis predicted that schizophrenics would have smaller P3s than the control group with the primary event in the uncertain condition, but that the groups would not differ for the P3s evoked by the other events (certain primary event, cue and earnings display in uncertain and certain conditions). Essentially, this predicted pattern of results was obtained, but additional assumptions are needed for the task-relevance hypothesis to account for the precise pattern of results. Analysis of subjects' guessing behavior showed that control subjects' guesses were affected by the outcome of their preceding guesses while schizophrenics' guesses were not. This result provides some additional support for the hypothesis that the guessing task is less relevant to schizophrenics than to control subjects.     

The Thematic Apperception Test and attitudes toward achievement in women: A new look at the motive to avoid success and a new method of measurement.

Asked 163 male and 165 female students to write stories to 1 of 3 versions of M. S. Horner's Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) verbal cue used to measure women's "motive to avoid success": a successful medical student who was a single female, a single male, or a married female. Ss then answered an objective questionnaire about the cue figure. Story protocols, classified as positive, mixed, or negative on the basis of success-related content, were significantly (p     

Integration of topic and subordinate information during reading.

Four experiments examined how readers integrate subordinate information with relevant context as they read. Ss read texts a sentence at a time with occasional interruptions lasting 30 sec. Following a distractor task, they resumed reading after being reminded of the topic sentence of the last paragraph they read (topic cue condition), being reminded of the last sentence they had read (local cue condition), or receiving no reminder of what they had been reading (no cue condition). Reading times on the 1st sentence following interruption were faster in the topic and local cue conditions than in the no cue condition (1) when the topic and local cues supplied missing referents for the target sentences, (2) when the target sentences were written to be understood as independent statements, and (3) whether the target sentences were embedded in short or long texts. Results are interpreted as demonstrating that readers integrate subordinate information with relevant topics, as well as with the immediate local context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Galvanic skin response as a measure of patient's reaction to therapist's permissiveness.

"Frequency of a patient's galvanic skin response is shown to be inversely related to the judged permissiveness of the therapist during a series of 42 hours of psychotherapy. The GSR is interpreted as a measure of the anxiety of the patient, or his 'mobilization' against any cue threatening punishment by the therapist, such as any cue which the patient has learned to perceive as evidence of low esteem. This anxiety presumably motivates varying subtle forms of resistance and defense against the feared punishment. Several alternative interpretations of the relation between permissiveness and GSR are rejected by various findings." GSR is related to the emotional significance of the patient's speech, as well as to the permissiveness of the therapist. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive resources, valence, and memory retrieval of emotional events in older adults.

In 2 studies with older adults, the authors investigated the effect of executive attention resources on the retrieval of emotional public events. Participants completed a battery of working memory tasks, as a measure of executive attention, and a battery of tasks assessing memory, as well as subjective experiences associated with the retrieval of remote public events. Participants also rated the valence of each public event story. The group-rated valence of the public event stories predicted retrieval and the quality of experiences associated with them, such that emotionally arousing events elicited the highest memory rates and the richest experiences. Furthermore, positive public events elicited the highest memory rates. Executive attention moderated only the relationship between event valence and how participants' associated memories are experienced at retrieval, such that superior executive attention resources predicted richer experiences associated with positive relative to neutral and negative stories. The current results extend previous findings on the effects of aging on emotion regulation, suggesting that cognitive control resources modulate subjective experiences associated with retrieved memories for remote real life events, but not memory retrieval itself. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cue discovery in probabilistic environments: Uncertainty and experimentation.

It is argued that cue discovery is an important part of the task of learning from experience in probabilistic environments. Cue discovery involves the identification of new valid predictive cues, and their incorporation into the learner's mental model. In contrast, previous work in "multiple-cue probability learning" has focused principally on learning the quantitative characteristics of given cue–criterion relations. In two studies presented here, 36 college students learned to predict the behavior of a computer-controlled graphic display. The criterion behavior was a function of four to six cues, including several not explicitly identified. Analyses of test results, verbal reports, and behavior during learning indicate that subjects used outcome feedback to accomplish cue discovery. This process was accomplished more effectively when subjects were permitted to experiment by designing their own learning experiences. A distinction is drawn between a system whose behavior is unpredictable because of the presence of unknown controlling variables, and one that contains "random" error. Cue discovery may be more difficult in the latter case, but is accomplished nonetheless. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eating behavior in response to food-cue exposure: Examining the cue-reactivity and counteractive-control models.

Many studies have demonstrated that those high in weight-related concerns eat more after food-cue exposure, which is consistent with predictions of the cue-reactivity model. However, the counteractive-control model predicts that exposure to fattening foods activates dieting-related goals and behavior in weight-concerned individuals. Although these models seem incongruous, the authors hypothesized that the salience of the cue could represent a critical factor in determining which model is activated. The authors predicted that attending to salient food cues would result in increased intake (cue reactivity) in individuals with high weight-related concerns, whereas incidental food-cue exposure would result in decreased intake (counteractive control), relative to control exposure. The authors employed a 3 (attended vs. incidental vs. control cue) × 2 (low vs. high weight-related concerns) design. As expected, participants with high weight-related concerns who attended to a food cue ate more than did both those with high weight-related concerns in the control condition and those with low weight-related concerns in the attended-cue condition; however, intake of individuals with high weight-related concerns who were exposed to the incidental cue did not differ from that of those in the control condition. The manner of food-cue presentation may be a critical factor in determining eating behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Event-Based Prospective Memory Following Severe Closed-Head Injury.

Twenty-four severe closed-head injury (CHI) participants and 24 controls completed event-based prospective memory tasks concurrently with an ongoing working memory task. The event cue was either integrated with the ongoing working memory task (focal cue) or peripheral to it. Prospective remembering was poorer for the CHI group in both the focal- and peripheral-cue conditions. The groups did not differ on the ongoing task. The peripheral cue and the integrated focal cue also did not differ in ability to trigger prospective remembering. The results suggest that, even with highly salient event cues, severe CHI participants (> 1 year postinjury) are more likely than controls to exhibit prospective memory failures. The data revealed a link between CHI participants' prospective memory failures and momentary lapses of intention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of surface and structural feature matches on the access of story analogs.

Competing theories of analogical reasoning have disagreed on the relative contributions of surface and structural features to the access of previously read base stories when one is reading a current cue story. A key limitation of the prior work was that surface and structural feature overlap between bases and cues was not manipulated precisely. The present study systematically manipulated the number of surface and structural matches to determine their relative effect on access. Results involving reminding and reading time measures suggest that surface and lower-order structural features affected access about equally, at least when a higher-order relation (HOR) was shared between a base and cue story. When a HOR was not shared, surface feature overlap continued to affect access while lower-order structural features had a less reliable effect. Models of access might need to be adjusted to account for these phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perspective-Taking Judgments Among Young Adults, Middle-Aged, and Elderly People.

Perspective-taking judgments among young adults, middle-aged, and elderly people were examined. In 1 condition, participants were instructed to judge the likelihood of acceptance of a painkiller as a function of 3 cues: severity of the condition, potential side effects, and level of trust in the health care provider. In the other condition, participants were instructed to judge the likelihood of purchasing pieces of clothing. Judgments were given from 2 viewpoints: the viewpoint of another person known to place no importance on one of the 3 cues, and the viewpoint of another person known to place very great importance on this cue. The hypotheses were that elderly people would not, to the same extent as young adults, be likely to discount the impact of the "no-importance" cue, and to magnify the impact of the "very important" cue. In both judgment situations, the results support these hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context and cue cards in young children's testimony: A comparison of brief narrative elaboration and context reinstatement.

In a comparison of interview procedures that aimed to assist retrieval strategies in children's event recall, 72 children aged 4-6 years were questioned about a witnessed event. Context reinstatement and brief narrative elaboration (an abbreviated version of K. J. Saywitz and L. Snyder's [1996] procedure) produced similar levels of correct recall, and both elicited more correct recall than did a control condition, with no increase in errors. Combining these procedures did not further improve performance. The superiority of narrative elaboration over the control group was evident in free recall and did not depend on explicit prompting with cue cards. These findings suggest that incorporating brief narrative elaboration training in investigative interviews with children may, like context reinstatement, be a valuable mnemonic aid. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Life's little (and big) lessons: Identity statuses and meaning-making in the turning point narratives of emerging adults.

A longitudinal study examined relations between 2 approaches to identity development: the identity status model and the narrative life story model. Turning point narratives were collected from emerging adults at age 23 years. Identity statuses were collected at several points across adolescence and emerging adulthood, as were measures of generativity and optimism. Narratives were coded for the sophistication of meaning-making reported, the event type in the narrative, and the emotional tone of the narrative. Meaning-making was defined as connecting the turning point to some aspect of or understanding of oneself. Results showed that less sophisticated meaning was associated particularly with the less advanced diffusion and foreclosure statuses, and that more sophisticated meaning was associated with an overall identity maturity index. Meaning was also positively associated with generativity and optimism at age 23, with stories focused on mortality experiences, and with a redemptive story sequence. Meaning was negatively associated with achievement stories. Results are discussed in terms of the similarities and differences in the 2 approaches to identity development and the elaboration of meaning-making as an important component of narrative identity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's recall 1 or 2 years after an event.

In Study 1, children were reinterviewed about an event they had taken part in 2 years earlier when they were 6 years old (M.-E. Pipe & J. C. Wilson, 1994). In Study 2, children were reinterviewed about an event in which they had participated 1 year earlier when they were 6 or 9 years of age (S. Gee & M.-E. Pipe, 1995). Interviews were conducted with or without cue items and distractors, as in the original studies. The amount of information reported in free recall decreased over the 1 - or 2-year delays, and for 6-year-olds, there was also a small decrease in accuracy of free recall. Reinstating specific cue items in Study 2 maintained recall when attention was drawn to them, but prompting children led to a decrease in accuracy. Whereas information repeated across interviews was highly accurate, information reported for the first time at the long delays was not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)