On the orienting value of attitudes: Attitude accessibility as a determinant of an object's attraction of visual attention.

Tested the hypothesis that objects toward which individuals hold attitudes that are highly accessible from memory (i.e., attitude-evoking objects) are more likely to attract attention when presented in a visual display than objects involving less accessible attitudes. In Exps 1 and 2, Ss were more likely to notice and report such attitude-evoking objects. Exp 3 yielded evidence of incidental attention; Ss noticed attitude-evoking objects even when the task made it beneficial to ignore the objects. Exp 4 demonstrated that inclusion of attitude-evoking objects as distractor items interfered with Ss' performance of a visual search task. Apparently, attitude-evoking stimuli attract attention automatically. Thus, accessible attitudes provide the functional benefit of orienting an individual's visual attention toward objects with potential hedonic consequences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Effectiveness of Brand Placements in the Movies: Levels of Placements, Explicit and Implicit Memory, and Brand-Choice Behavior

Product placements within a movie are often treated as a binary variable: either they are present or absent. However, placements can occur at many different levels ranging from a simple background prop to the product being an instrumental part of the story. The influence of 3 different levels of brand placements on explicit and implicit memory for the brand, implicit choice behavior, and attitudes toward the brand were examined. The results confirmed that levels of brand placements influence recognition of the target brand and attitudes toward the brand. On the other hand, simple placement of the brand within the movie influenced implicit memory and the implicit choice task. The implications of the current study's findings were discussed.     

How self-affirmation reduces defensive processing of threatening health information: Evidence at the implicit level.

Objective: Self-affirmation reduces defensive responses to threatening health information, but little is known about the cognitive processes instigated by self-affirmation. This study tested whether self-affirmation increases responsiveness to threatening health information at the implicit level. Design: In an experimental study (N = 84), the authors presented high- (coffee drinkers) and low-relevance (noncoffee drinkers) participants with threatening health information linking caffeine consumption to health problems. Prior to reading this information, the authors manipulated self-affirmation. Main Outcome Measures: Participants completed an unobtrusive lexical decision task to measure the accessibility of threat-related cognitions and reported their perceptions of message quality and intentions to take precautions. Results: Among high-relevance participants, self-affirmation increased the accessibility of threat-related cognitions, increased perceptions of message quality, and promoted adaptive behavioral intentions. Conclusion: The findings suggest that self-affirmation can increase implicit responsiveness to threatening health information among a target audience, that is, people for whom the health information is highly relevant. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensory-perceptual qualities of images.

Four experiments demonstrated that such sensory-perceptual features of objects as weight, color, and numerosity affect imaginal performance involving images of those objects. For example, imaginary transport times of objects increased with both the hypothetical weight of the imagined object and the distance traversed. The transport functions were steeper when a map of the terrain was imagined than when it was perceived, suggesting that imaginal performance of heft did not parallel more perceptually guided performance. Corresponding to the view that images activate noncanonical information from long-term memory, mental transport times were longer for maps of familiar terrains than for those of presumably unelaborated unfamiliar terrains. Further, the effects of imaginary color discriminations depended on the familiarity of the object being imagined. Images of customarily colored familiar objects were generated faster when projected onto a surface of the same color than when projected onto a surface of another color, whereas images constructed from unfamiliar targets were recognized more accurately when the target's color differed substantially from that of the ground than when it differed by a smaller amount. The results were predicted by a model that assumed that images may incorporate ancillary characteristics in addition to canonical information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental representations of large and small spatial layouts are orientation dependent.

Previous research on spatial memory indicated that memories of small layouts were orientation dependent (orientation specific) but that memories of large layouts were orientation independent (orientation free). Two experiments investigated the relation between layout size and orientation dependency. Participants learned a small or a large 4-point path (Experiment 1) or a large display of objects (Experiment 2) and then made judgments of relative direction from imagined headings that were either the same as or different from the single studied orientation. Judgments were faster and more accurate when the imagined heading was the same as the studied orientation (i.e., aligned) than when the imagined heading differed from the studied orientation (i.e., misaligned). This alignment effect was present for both small and large layouts. These results indicate that location is encoded in an orientation-dependent manner regardless of layout size. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)