Self-consciousness and the processing of self-relevant information.

Three experiments were conducted to examine cognitive processes involved in self-conscious behavior. According to Hull and Levy (1979), self-consciousness is associated with processes involved in self-referent encoding. The present studies advance the more specific hypothesis that self-consciousness is involved with the aspect of self-reference associated with the activation of knowledge about the self. Experiment 1 used a self-reference paradigm and found that self-consciousness increased the extent to which a manipulation of accessible self-knowledge influenced self-referent encoding. Experiment 2 used a self-perception paradigm and found that self-consciousness increased the extent to which a manipulation of accessible self-knowledge affected subsequent self-perception. Experiment 3 used a correlational design to demonstrate how cognitive processes associated with self-reference may mediate self-conscious behavior. Individual differences in self-referent encoding were associated with individual differences in self-consciousness; both variables were associated with increased affective reactions to self-relevant feedback; and partialing out individual differences in self-referent encoding eliminated the effects of self-consciousness. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for reconciling various theories of self-consciousness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention, automaticity, and levels of representation in number processing.

Participants performed same–different judgments for pairs of numerals in 2 conditions: numerical matching (responding "same" to pairs such as 2–TWO), or physical matching (responding "different" to pairs such as 2–TWO). In most cases, a distance effect was obtained, with the different responses being slower when the 2 numbers were numerically close together (e.g., 1–2) than when they were further apart (e.g., 1–8). This indicates that numbers were automatically converted mentally into quantities, even when the participants had been told to attend exclusively to their physical characteristics. As postulated by several models of number processing, (e.g., Dehaene, see PA, Vol 80:4300; McCloskey, see PA, Vol 80:6390) Arabic and verbal numerals thus appear to converge toward a common semantic representation of quantities. However, the present results suggest that an asemantic transcoding route might allow for a direct mapping of Arabic and verbal numbers, perhaps by means of a common phonological representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention in the acquisition and expression of automaticity.

The instance theory of automaticity claims that people learn what they attend to and express what they learned in transfer if they attend to the same things in the same was. These hypotheses were tested in 8 category search experiments in which target position was cued by color (red or green). The main question was whether target color would be encoded in training and retrieved in transfer. After training, recognition memory for target color was above chance, which suggests that color was encoded. However, category search performance was not affected by changing target color unless color was reported explicitly during training and transfer, which suggests that color was not always retrieved. The results are consistent with the instance theory. The distinction between encoding and retrieval is important in understanding the acquisition and expression of automaticity. Automatic performance emphasized speed and so may not be sensitive to things that are retrieved slowly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol and depression: Effects on mood and biased processing of self-relevant information.

Alcohol's effects on mood and processing of self-relevant information were studied in a sample of 57 college students (39 men and 18 women). Participants were blocked on level of depression and were randomly assigned to alcohol or placebo conditions. After beverage consumption, participants processed trait adjectives under self-relevant and semantic-processing instructions. Results showed that biased processing of depressed content adjectives by depressed participants under placebo conditions was reversed after consuming alcohol. Further, reduced recall of depressed-content, self-relevant information after alcohol consumption was significantly related to alcohol-enhanced mood in depressed participants. Results are discussed in relation to mechanisms of reinforcement that may link the coexistence of alcohol abuse and affective disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention moderates the processing of inhibitory information in primary psychopathy.

Primary psychopathic individuals are less apt to reevaluate or change their behavior in response to stimuli outside of their current focus of attention. According to the response modulation hypothesis, this tendency reflects a lack of responsivity to important peripheral information and undermines adaptive self-regulation. To evaluate this hypothesis, the authors administered a response competition (flanker-type) task and manipulated focus of visual attention. They predicted that psychopathic individuals would display significantly less interference to response incongruent information than nonpsychopathic participants when attention was cued to the target location but display normal interference when there was no prepotent focus of attention. The results confirmed this hypothesis and are consistent with the contention that attention moderates psychopathic individuals’ responsivity to inhibitory cues. Implications of this attentional anomaly for psychopathic traits and behavior are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention, automaticity, and developmental dyscalculia.

People suffering from developmental dyscalculia (DD) show an abnormal pattern of the size congruity effect. They do not display a facilitation component in a numerical Stroop task. In this task, participants are presented with 2 digits that differ both in physical size and numerical value, and they have to compare the digits while ignoring one of the dimensions. The present study examined performance of those with DD and control participants in the numerical Stroop task under cognitive load. The no-load condition replicated previous findings (i.e., lack of facilitation in the physical task for the DD group). Load had opposite effects on interference and facilitation. Load eliminated facilitation and increased interference in the control group. Load increased interference only in the physical task in the DD group. The opposite effect of load on facilitation and interference suggests that these components are related to different cognitive mechanisms. The fact that load produced a DD-like pattern in the control group could suggest that individuals with DD suffer from difficulty in recruiting attention in addition to the deficits in numerical processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Count me in! On the automaticity of numerosity processing.

Extraction of numerosity (i.e., enumeration) is an essential component of mathematical abilities. The current study asked how automatic is the processing of numerosity and whether automatic activation is task dependent. Participants were presented with displays containing a variable number of digits and were asked to pay attention to the number of digits or to their numerical value, in separate blocks. Effects of task were tested with a comparative judgment task and a parity judgment task. In the comparative judgment task, participants had to indicate whether the numerosity or the numerical value of the digits was smaller or larger than 5. In the parity judgment task, participants had to indicate whether this value was odd or even. Irrelevant numerical values modulated performance regardless of task. In contrast, irrelevant numerosities modulated performance only in the comparative judgment task. These results suggest that numerical value is activated automatically, whereas activation of numerosity is modulated by task. We suggest that the differences observed are related to different cognitive and neural mechanisms recruited by these tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social anxiety, anxious self-preoccupation, and recall of self-relevant information.

Theoretical and empirical efforts concerning cognitive processes associated with anxiety have typically emphasized either cognitive deficits (i.e., reduced learning, memory, and task performance) or cognitive excesses (i.e., increased self-focused, ruminative thought). Evidence of these 2 types of cognitive processes has primarily been based on different types of sources (performance measures and self-reports), which precludes direct comparisons of the extent to which cognitive deficits and/or excesses characterize anxiety states. The present study attempted to directly compare the cognitive excesses and deficits associated with social anxiety by operationalizing both types of cognitive phenomena with similar performance measures. 97 undergraduates, selected on the basis of high or low scores on the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale, performed a modified self-referent depth-of-processing paradigm under stress or no-stress conditions. Socially anxious Ss in a socially evaluative situation evidenced a specific type of cognitive excess (i.e., concern over evaluations by others) but not cognitive deficits. Results are discussed in terms of person-by-situation models of anxiety and the nature and treatment of social anxiety. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparative judgment of numerosity and numerical magnitude: Attention preempts automaticity.

It is commonly believed that humans are unable to ignore the meanings of numerical symbols, even when these meanings are irrelevant to the task at hand. In 5 experiments, the authors tested the notion of automatic activation of numerical magnitude by asking participants to compare, while timed, pairs of numerical arrays on either numerosity or numerical value. Garner and Stroop effects were used to gauge the degree of interactive processing. The results showed that both effects were sensitive to the discriminability of values along the constituent dimensions, to the number of stimulus values used, and to practice and motivation. Notably, Stroop and Garner effects were eliminated under several conditions. These findings are incompatible with claims of obligatory activation of meaning in numerical processing, and they cast doubt on theories positing automatic processing of semantic information for alphanumerical symbols. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinguishing between automaticity and attention in the processing of emotionally significant stimuli.

There is contradicting evidence as to whether irrelevant but significant emotional stimuli can be processed outside the focus of attention. In the current study, participants were asked to ignore emotional and neutral pictures while performing a competing task. In Experiment 1, orienting of attention to distracting pictures was manipulated via a peripheral cue. In Experiment 2, attentional load was varied, either leaving spare attention to process the distracting pictures or, alternatively, depleting attentional resources. Although all pictures were task irrelevant, negative pictures were found to interfere more with performance in comparison to neutral pictures. This finding suggests that processing of negative stimuli is automatic in the sense that it does not require execution of conscious monitoring. However, interference occurred only when sufficient attention was available for picture processing. Hence, processing of negative pictures was dependent on sufficient attentional resources. This suggests that processing of emotionally significant stimuli is automatic yet requires attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A dual-task investigation of automaticity in visual word processing.

An analysis of activation models of visual word processing suggests that frequency-sensitive forms of lexical processing should proceed normally while unattended. This hypothesis was tested by having participants perform a speeded pitch discrimination task followed by lexical decisions or word naming. As the stimulus onset asynchrony between the tasks was reduced, lexical-decision and naming latencies increased dramatically. Word-frequency effects were additive with the increase, indicating that frequency-sensitive processing was subject to postponement while attention was devoted to the other task. Either (a) the same neural hardware shares responsibility for lexical processing and central stages of choice reaction time (RT) task processing and cannot perform both computations simultaneously, or (b) lexical processing is blocked in order to optimize performance on the pitch discrimination task. Either way, word processing is not as automatic as activation models suggest. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory-based processing as a mechanism of automaticity in text comprehension.

A widespread theoretical assumption is that many processes involved in text comprehension are automatic, with automaticity typically defined in terms of properties (e.g., speed, effort). In contrast, the authors advocate for conceptualization of automaticity in terms of underlying cognitive mechanisms and evaluate one prominent account, the memory-based processing account, which states that one mechanism underlying automatization involves a shift from algorithm-based interpretation of stimuli to retrieval of prior interpretations of those stimuli. During practice, participants repeatedly read short stories containing novel conceptual combinations that were disambiguated with either their dominant or subordinate meaning. During transfer, the combinations were embedded in new sentences that either preserved or changed the disambiguated meaning. The primary dependent variable was reading time in the disambiguating region of target sentences. Supporting the memory-based processing account, speed-ups with practice were larger for repeated versus unrepeated items of the same type, reading times for subordinate versus dominant meanings of the combinations converged on later trials, and practiced meanings were retrieved when items appeared in a transfer context. (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)     

Hypnotic susceptibility and verbal automaticity: Automatic and strategic processing differences in the Stroop color-naming task.

The original hypothesis of M. Dixon et al (1990) that highly hypnotizable (HH) Ss process words more automatically than do low hypnotizable (LH) Ss was retested in a paradigm that separated strategic from automatic processes in the Stroop color-naming task. The words red and blue preceded a color patch that was red or blue. Ss were told that the word predicted the opposite color 75% of the time. Automatic and strategic processes were assessed by varying interstimulus interval (ISI) between the word and the color patch. Both HH and LH Ss showed significant strategic effects (faster incongruent-trial, color-naming reaction times [RTs] than congruent-trial RTs at ISIs over 400 msec), but only HH Ss showed significant automaticity (significantly faster congruent-trial RTs than incongruent-trial RTs at 16.7 msec, the lowest ISI). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hypnotizability and automaticity: Toward a parallel distributed processing model of hypnotic responding.

Tested a hypothesis from parallel distributed processing theory that highly hypnotizable Ss have greater connection strengths along verbal pathways and would show greater Stroop effects than low hypnotizable Ss. Using the paradigm from J. Cheesman and P. M. Merikle (see record 1989-03722-001) which varied cue visibility and probability, automatic and strategic effects on Stroop performance were assessed. Compared with 9 low and 9 moderately hypnotizable Ss, 9 highly hypnotizable ones showed significantly greater Stroop effects for both visible- and degraded-word trials. No strategic differences emerged for the 3 hypnotizability groups. These findings support the contention that highly hypnotizable persons have stronger verbal connection strengths than their moderately and low susceptible counterparts, and they may account for highly hypnotizable persons' propensity to disregard personal attributions and label their responses in hypnosis as being involuntary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention effects of moving and stationary single-element and multiple-element precues: limits of automaticity

A multiple-element precue (MEP), in which one unique element defines the actual precue, results in efficient precuing for identification of a target. The time course for identification in this case is similar to that for a central precue, even though it is presented peripherally (Chastain, 1996; Chastain & Cheal, in press). Five experiments were conducted to gain further information on the function of MEPs and to question what advantage prior knowledge of the precue may give. In Experiments 1 and 2, it was shown that for "pop-out" features, accuracy of identification of a target was higher if the precue type was known in advance. In contrast, as shown in Experiments 3, 4, and 5, when the precue was defined by apparent motion, there was no difference in accuracy due to advanced knowledge of the precue. Further, accuracy was considerably better for motion precues than for stationary precues.     

The stimulus in information processing.

Argues that the nature of the stimulus is an important variable determining how information is processed. 2 major stimulus concepts are discussed: dimensional integrality vs. separability, and state vs. process limited stimuli. These concepts relate to the effects of stimulus redundancy on discrimination. There will be a gain with redundancy: (a) if the need for redundancy is due to a process limitation and the redundant dimensions are integral, or (b) if the need for redundancy is due to state limitation and the redundant dimensions are separable. Redundancy can also lead to improvement in discrimination if the stimulus elements can be integrated into a gestalt whole. (28 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-schema and social information processing.

Tested the hypothesis that desirability of self-rating on a trait is predictive of the way information related to that trait is processed during the perception of others. In Exps I and II, 122 undergraduates' self-ratings on 15 traits and yes-no response latencies in person perception were collected. Desirability of self-rating on a trait was related to the perceived general desirability of the trait. This relation was hypothesized to reflect an influence of the self on person perception processes. Consistent with research by the present author (see record 1984-06453-001) on self-image bias, 2 alternative models of this influence were proposed: defensive and cognitive. In Exp III, 72 undergraduates' self-perceptions were manipulated by either positive or negative feedback. Results support the defensive model and indicate that even small situational changes in self-perceptions are capable of producing specific changes in the way an individual processes information about others. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)