The automaticity of emotion recognition.

Evolutionary accounts of emotion typically assume that humans evolved to quickly and efficiently recognize emotion expressions because these expressions convey fitness-enhancing messages. The present research tested this assumption in 2 studies. Specifically, the authors examined (a) how quickly perceivers could recognize expressions of anger, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, fear, happiness, pride, sadness, shame, and surprise; (b) whether accuracy is improved when perceivers deliberate about each expression's meaning (vs. respond as quickly as possible); and (c) whether accurate recognition can occur under cognitive load. Across both studies, perceivers quickly and efficiently (i.e., under cognitive load) recognized most emotion expressions, including the self-conscious emotions of pride, embarrassment, and shame. Deliberation improved accuracy in some cases, but these improvements were relatively small. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for the cognitive processes underlying emotion recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Restructuring versus automaticity: Alternative accounts of skill acquisition.

Disagrees with the view of W. Schneider and R. M. Shiffrin (see PA, Vol 58:305; see also Shiffrin and Schneider, PA, Vol 57:4785) that improvement in performance is due to the development of automatic (capacity-free) processes. The present author notes that Schneider and Shiffrin's evidence was confounded by a category difference between memory-ensemble and distractor-set characters and argues that attempts by Shiffrin and Schneider to resolve the confounding failed. An alternative explanation of their results is presented in terms of the restructuring of task components. Other evidence regarding capacity-free processing is reviewed, and the implications of the critique for limited-capacity models of attention are discussed. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual automaticity in recognition memory: Levels-of-processing effects on familiarity.

Examined the effect of level of processing (LP) on recognition memory using 2 response-signal delays (RSD; 500 and 1500 msec). In Exp 1, LP (semantic or nonsemantic) and RSD were manipulated between 24 college students. In Exp 2, orienting task (pleasantness rating or letter judgment) and RSD were manipulated among 32 Ss. In Exp 3, study orientation and test instructions (inclusion or exclusion) were within-S factors, and RSD was a between-S factor. 32 Ss were included in Exp 3. In Exp 1, a modality effect was found for fast responses. The LP was reliable at both points in time. In Exp 2, fast responses were associated with significantly more "false-alarms" to words encoded semantically than those encoded nonsemantically. In Exp 3, both recollection and familiarity estimates were elevated by prior conceptual processing. Estimates of recollection were affected by RSD. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reassessing the automaticity–control distinction: Item recognition as a paradigm case.

Reviews the automaticity–control distinction as formalized by W. Schneider and R. M. Shiffrin (see record 1977-20305-001) and Shiffrin and Schneider (see record 1977-24785-001) in the development of what they saw to be a new and independent theory of human information processing. It is argued that virtually every defining attribute of the 2 operations, as specified, is violated by extant item-recognition data. As defined, the terms of their "theory" turn out trivially to redescribe the well-established fact that human performance is load-dependent in some cases and relatively load-independent in others. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The unbearable automaticity of being.

What was noted by E. J. Langer (1978) remains true today: that much of contemporary psychological research is based on the assumption that people are consciously and systematically processing incoming information in order to construe and interpret their world and to plan and engage in courses of action. As did Langer, the authors question this assumption. First, they review evidence that the ability to exercise such conscious, intentional control is actually quite limited, so that most of moment-to-moment psychological life must occur through nonconscious means if it is to occur at all. The authors then describe the different possible mechanisms that produce automatic, environmental control over these various phenomena and review evidence establishing both the existence of these mechanisms as well as their consequences for judgments, emotions, and behavior. Three major forms of automatic self-regulation are identified: an automatic effect of perception on action, automatic goal pursuit, and a continual automatic evaluation of one's experience. From the accumulating evidence, the authors conclude that these various nonconscious mental systems perform the lion's share of the self-regulatory burden, beneficently keeping the individual grounded in his or her current environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spontaneous and directed visual imagery: Image failure and image substitution.

40 17–29 yr old Ss were asked to visualize the scenes of 3 stimulus narratives (2 aggressive and 1 affectively neutral but implausible) and to signal successful visualization or type of disparity. Results show that both types of image disparity varied directly with blatancy of scenes depicting anger and aggression. Image failure was more closely associated with implausibility, but image substitution was more closely associated with anger-aggression. The former appeared to index interpersonal variables while the latter was consistent with repression and derivative formation. Almost all Ss signaled image disparity, and many of the image substitutes could be classified into 5 of Freud's mechanisms of defense. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition without central attention: Evidence for greater automaticity with advancing age.

The present experiments examined the automaticity of word recognition. The authors examined whether people can recognize words while central attention is devoted to another task and how this ability changes across the life span. In Experiment 1, a lexical decision Task 2 was combined with either an auditory or a visual Task 1. Regardless of the Task 1 modality, Task 2 word recognition proceeded in parallel with Task 1 central operations for older adults but not for younger adults. This is a rare example of improved cognitive processing with advancing age. When Task 2 was nonlexical (Experiment 2), however, there was no evidence for greater parallel processing for older adults. Thus, the processing advantage appears to be restricted to lexical processes. The authors conclude that greater cumulative experience with lexical processing leads to greater automaticity, allowing older adults to more efficiently perform this stage in parallel with another task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modularity in musical processing: The automaticity of harmonic priming.

Three experiments investigated the modularity of harmonic expectations that are based on cultural schemata despite the availability of more predictive veridical information. Participants were presented with prime–target chord pairs and made an intonation judgment about each target. Schematic expectation was manipulated by the combination of prime and target, with some transitions being schematically more probable than others. Veridical information in the form of prime–target previews, local transition probabilities, or valid versus invalid previews was also provided. Processing was facilitated when a schematically probable target chord followed the prime. Furthermore, this effect was independent of all manipulations of veridical expectation. A solution to L. B. Meyer's (1967b) query "On Rehearing Music" is suggested, in which schematic knowledge contributes to harmonic expectation in a modular manner regardless of whether any veridical knowledge exists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The automaticity of interpreting Automaticity.

Comments on J. A. Bargh and T. L. Chartrand's (see record 1999-05760-002) treatise on the pervasiveness of automaticity and its relation to self-regulation. While agreeing with Bargh and Chartrand that people do seem to evidence an automaticity of sorts in many behaviors, the present authors disagree with Bargh and Chartrand's interpretation of that automaticity as an empiricist "mechanism." Bargh and Chartrand failed to note that other interpretations are possible for automaticity. Other interpretations of automaticity, founded on philosophical traditions other than empiricism, do exist, and they lead to radically different conclusions. The present authors look at several of the competing interpretations of automaticity, including rationalist and ontological hermeneutics. The conclusions that scientists reach about data are driven as much by the philosophies they implicitly affirm as the data themselves. Before a particular interpretation of automaticity is adopted, psychologists ought to be aware of the different theoretical possibilities that exist and inform such a concept, as well as the conclusions and implications they suggest. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relativity rumba: Response to Held.

Comments on the article by Barbara Held (see record 2007-10276-001). The general line of Held's comments is not at all what I expected. I had anticipated that someone would accuse me of simply elevating projection (or maybe transference/countertransference) to the level of a virtue or an ability. "Sure, and why not?" I respond, only half joking. There are more earnest ways to respond, but they may not be germane at the moment. In response, I would on one hand agree that there may be an inherently conservative function in anything that urges attention to the ways we are all alike, and in fact to anything (such as most therapy) that may help us be more happy in the world as it now is. The other hand of a response to this criticism would be, in effect, a roundabout approach to a response called out much more directly by Held's comments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The kinetics of sigma subunit directed promoter recognition by E. coli RNA polymerase

Time-resolved laser UV irradiation and controlled proteolysis have been used to study the sequential recognition of the lac UV5 promoter by Escherichia coli RNA polymerase. Local rearrangements in the DNA, the appearance of intimate protein-DNA contacts, and structural changes within the sigma subunit together provide specific signatures that define major species populated during this process. At 22 degreesC, a first closed complex is characterised by a transient conformational change in the sigma subunit and by a distortion in the -35 region. Subsequently, direct contacts at -34 and at positions -8, -5 and -3 on the non-template strand appear prior to DNA strand separation. The contact in the -35 consensus region involves only the sigma subunit. This intermediate possesses different structural parameters from that formed by quenching open complexes from 37 degreesC to 14 degreesC. Sigma thus appears as the principal partner acting during promoter recognition, a strongly coupled process involving two major intermediates only.     

False recognition of pictures versus words in Alzheimer's disease: The distinctiveness heuristic.

False recognition of semantic associates can be reduced when older adults also study pictures representing each associate. D. L. Schacter, L. Israel, and C. Racine (1999) attributed this reduction to the operation of a distinctiveness heuristic: a response mode in which participants demand access to detailed recollections to support a positive recognition decision. The authors examined patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) and older adults with this paradigm. Half of the participants studied pictures and auditory words; the other half studied visual and auditory words. Older adults who studied pictures were able to reduce their false alarms compared with those who studied words only. AD patients who studied pictures were unable to reduce their false alarms compared with those who studied words only and, in fact, exhibited trends toward greater false recognition. Implications for understanding semantic memory in AD patients are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic assumptions of automaticity.

Comments on J. A. Bargh and T. L. Chartrand's (see record 1999-05760-002) treatise on the pervasiveness of automaticity and its relation to self-regulation. Although Bargh and Chartrand pointed to the philosophy underlying current psychological theories about human activity, according to the present author they confused many important philosophical issues in presenting their argument. A specific point of contention is Bargh and Chartrand's misinterpretation of humanistic psychology as proposing a "causal self" as a mediator between the environment and one's responses to it. Such stimulus–organism–response formulations propose that aspects of the organism such as intention or will are shaped by and caused from without or from within by environmental or biological determinants. Thus, humanists cannot be endorsing a mediational model of activity. This misunderstanding by Bargh and Chartrand is important because such a misunderstanding of the debate between humanists and behaviorists allowed Bargh and Chartrand to erroneously subsume the humanists under the conceptual umbrella of mediational behaviorism. According to the present author, Bargh and Chartrand offered a narrow, and in some cases inaccurate, picture of the theoretical underpinnings of automaticity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Inevitability and automaticity: A response to Fisk.

Responds to the comments of A. D. Fisk (see record 1986-16289-001) on the present authors' (see record 1985-27168-001) work on automatic processing of fundamental information. The present authors use the term automaticity as a process by which some attributes of an attended to stimulus are encoded into memory. It is suggested that Fisk's view of automaticity is derived from the study of automatic search mechanisms, particularly as they slowly develop in multiple frame visual search tasks; therefore, several methodological problems that Fisk addresses do not fit the concerns of the present authors or are irrelevant to them. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The automatic component of habit in health behavior: Habit as cue-contingent automaticity.

Objective: Habit might be usefully characterized as a form of automaticity that involves the association of a cue and a response. Three studies examined habitual automaticity in regard to different aspects of the cue-response relationship characteristic of unhealthy and healthy habits. Design, Main Outcome Measures, and Results: In each study, habitual automaticity was assessed by the Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI). In Study 1 SRHI scores correlated with attentional bias to smoking cues in a Stroop task. Study 2 examined the ability of a habit cue to elicit an unwanted habit response. In a prospective field study, habitual automaticity in relation to smoking when drinking alcohol in a licensed public house (pub) predicted the likelihood of cigarette-related action slips 2 months later after smoking in pubs had become illegal. In Study 3 experimental group participants formed an implementation intention to floss in response to a specified situational cue. Habitual automaticity of dental flossing was rapidly enhanced compared to controls. Conclusion: The studies provided three different demonstrations of the importance of cues in the automatic operation of habits. Habitual automaticity assessed by the SRHI captured aspects of a habit that go beyond mere frequency or consistency of the behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repetition versus luminance as a determinant of recognition.

Studied the effect of repeated brief exposures of single-letter stimuli on 4 normal hearing adults to determine whether the number of repetitions of a stimulus may be varied inversely with its luminance to produce a constant level of recognition performance. This postulated reciprocity relationship was refuted: performance always declined when the luminance was reduced (even though the number of repetitions increased). However, the deviation from reciprocity was small for stimuli at or above threshold luminance, and the facilitatory effect of repetition upon recognition was clearly shown for all luminance levels employed. Implications of the findings for models of visual information processing are discussed. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategies and automaticity: II. Dynamic aspects of strategy adjustment.

Examined the temporal dynamics of strategic adjustment of response criteria by comparing performance in blocked conditions, in which all stimulus-response mappings were either consistent (CM) or varied (VM), to performance in mixed conditions, in which CM and VM items were presented in the same block of trials. The degree of flexibility that Ss exhibit in deploying differential response strategies was examined. Surprisingly, Ss were unable to use a variety of informative pre-cues to rapidly shift between response strategies associated with automatic (CM) and nonautomatic (VM) processing. However, an analysis of sequential dependencies indicated that repetition of stimuli from the same class (CM vs VM) gradually led to shifts in response strategies. These results are interpreted within the framework of an extension of M. Treisman and T. C. Williams's (see record 1984-08523-001) 2-stage criteria adjustment model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The instance theory of automaticity: Why the Weibull?

It is shown that in order to derive the Weibull shape for the response time distribution in the instance theory of automaticity (G. D. Logan, 1988) by an asymptotic argument from the theory of extreme value statistics, it is necessary to determine the domain of attraction of the underlying parent distribution. An alternative, nonasymptotic characterization property equivalent to the power law of practice is presented here that gives a more feasible justification for the choice of the Weibull. This result leads to a different emphasis on the empirical conditions testing the theory. Some problems arising from the use of the asymptotic theory of extreme value statistics for the stochastic modeling of behavioral data are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Investigating linguistic relativity through bilingualism: The case of grammatical gender.

The authors investigated linguistic relativity effects by examining the semantic effects of grammatical gender (present in Italian but absent in English) in fluent bilingual speakers as compared with monolingual speakers. In an error-induction experiment, they used responses by monolingual speakers to establish a baseline for bilingual speakers and show that gender affects the semantic substitution errors made by monolingual Italian speakers compared with monolingual English speakers. They then showed that Italian-English bilingual speakers behave like monolingual English speakers when the task is in English and like monolingual Italian speakers when the task is in Italian, hence exhibiting appropriate semantic representations for each language. These results show that for bilingual speakers there is intraspeaker relativity in semantic representations and, therefore, that gender does not have a conceptual, nonlinguistic effect. The results also have implications for models of bilingual semantic memory and processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

New limits to automaticity: Context modulates semantic priming.

It is widely assumed that semantic priming in visual word recognition is automatic when the task requires word-level analysis. The present experiments show that this conclusion is too strong. Whether brief-duration primes facilitated the processing of related targets in lexical decision depended on the context in which the primes were seen. Semantic priming occurred if Ss saw only brief primes (blocked condition) but was minimal if longer primes were presented as well (mixed condition). Converging operations indicate that this modulation of semantic priming reflects operations beyond the lexical level rather than early encoding deficits. Rather than being automatic, semantic priming depends on the context in which a word is read. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)