Spontaneous recognition: Investigating the role of working memory.

In almost every aspect of life, focusing on a target and ignoring distractors effectively is very important. Alternative to the common view, distraction may aid recognition via triggering automatic responses. Spontaneous recognition (SR) can be defined as the unintentional recognition of target stimuli and is measured by the effect of familiarity to distractors on a recognition task. Research has indicated that previously seen or not seen (old/new) distractors affect the recognition of targets. This research aimed to investigate the influence of working memory load on SR. A dual-task was designed to ensure engagement in two tasks-namely, the memory Stroop task (recognition task) and the n-back task (working memory task) at the same time. This design enabled an investigation of the influence of working memory load and allowed for further exploration of the influence of episodic memory load and the characteristics of n-back task. The results are in line with previous research; participants were more accurate when target and distractor were congruent versus when they were incongruent, but only when WM load was high. This interaction was modulated by episodic memory load and n-back task trials (match/mismatch). It was concluded that many factors may contribute to the SR effect. This research demonstrated that the SR effect is determined by WM availability and recognition processes engaged in another task.

Attentional control and estimation of the probability of positive and negative events.

People high in negative affect tend to think negative events are more likely than positive events ("probability bias"). Studies have found that weak attentional control exaggerates another negative affect-related cognitive bias - attentional bias - but it is not clear why this might be. We therefore wanted to know whether weak attentional control would be related to probability bias too. Four studies, with predominantly female student samples (N = 857), revealed correlations of around -.38 between attentional control and probability bias. This remained significant when trait anxiety and depression were controlled; there were no interactions between attentional control and negative affect. Studies 3 and 4 found that attentional control's relationship with probability bias was partly mediated by emotion regulation ability. These results suggest attentional control is important for regulating affect-related cognitive biases, and for emotion regulation in general. Furthermore, because cognitive biases are thought to be important for maintaining emotional disorders, these results are also consistent with weak attentional control being a risk factor for these disorders.

Unintentional and Intentional Recognition Rely on Dissociable Neurocognitive Mechanisms.

Distractibility can lead to accidents and academic failures as well as memory problems. Recent evidence suggests that intentional recognition memory can be biased by unintentional recognition of distracting stimuli in the same environment. It is unknown whether unintentional and intentional recognition depend on the same underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. We assessed whether human participants' recognition of previously seen (old) or not seen (new) target stimuli was affected by whether a to-be-ignored distractor was old or new. ERPs were recorded to investigate the neural correlates of this bias. The results showed that the old/new status of salient distractors had a biasing effect on target recognition accuracy. Both intentional and unintentional recognition elicited early ERP effects that are thought to reflect relatively automatic memory processes. However, only intentional recognition elicited the later ERP marker of conscious recollection, consistent with previous suggestions that recollection is under voluntary control. In contrast, unintentional recognition was associated with an enhanced late posterior negativity, which may reflect monitoring or evaluation of memory signals. The findings suggest that unintentional and intentional recognition involve dissociable memory processes.

Emotional correlates of unirhinal odour identification.

It seems self-evident that smell profoundly shapes emotion, but less clear is the nature of this interaction. Here, we sought to determine whether the ability to identify odours co-varies with self-reported feelings of empathy and emotional expression recognition, as predicted if the two capacities draw on common resource. Thirty-six neurotypical volunteers were administered the Alberta Smell Test, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and an emotional expression recognition task. Statistical analyses indicated that feelings of emotional empathy positively correlated with odour discrimination in right nostril, while the recognition of happy and fearful facial expressions positively correlated with odour discrimination in left nostril. These results uncover new links between olfactory discrimination and emotion which, given the ipsilateral configuration of the olfactory projections, point towards intra- rather than inter-hemispheric interaction. The results also provide novel support for the proposed lateralization of emotional empathy and the recognition of facial expression, and give reason to further explore the diagnostic sensitivity of smell tests because reduced sensitivity to others' emotions can mark the onset of certain neurological diseases.

The effect of mindfulness meditation on time perception.

Research has increasingly focussed on the benefits of meditation in everyday life and performance. Mindfulness in particular improves attention, working memory capacity, and reading comprehension. Given its emphasis on moment-to-moment awareness, we hypothesised that mindfulness meditation would alter time perception. Using a within-subjects design, participants carried out a temporal bisection task, where several probe durations are compared to "short" and "long" standards. Following this, participants either listened to an audiobook or a meditation that focussed on the movement of breath in the body. Finally, participants completed the temporal bisection task for a second time. The control group showed no change after the listening task. However, meditation led to a relative overestimation of durations. Within an internal clock framework, a change in attentional resources can produce longer perceived durations. This meditative effect has wider implications for the use of mindfulness as an everyday practice and a basis for clinical treatment.

Restrained eaters preserve top-down attentional control in the presence of food.

This study investigated the attentional control of restrained eaters when exposed to food. Restrained (N=55) and unrestrained eaters (N=56) completed a color word Stroop task. Top-down attentional control was assessed by adaptation effects (the Stroop effect is smaller when the previous trial is an incongruent color word than a congruent color word). Adaptation effects differed between restrained and unrestrained eaters according to the type of background image presented (high-fat food vs. non-food). Specifically, in restrained eaters adaptation effects did not differ as a function of image. In contrast, adaptation effects in unrestrained eaters were not observed with high-fat food. Motivation to either approach or avoid food may explain these differences.

Development of a repeated measures affective change blindness task.

Flicker-induced change blindness paradigms have been used to explore attentional biases for a range of concern-related cues. However, previous studies have had limitations related to concerns about carryover effects in repeated measures designs, as well as problems with response modalities. The present article develops a repeated measures paradigm utilising nonverbal responses and explores the implications of these design modifications for the reliability and validity of the paradigm. Affective stimuli were presented to participants, and the results suggest that the modified paradigm is a useful tool for assessing attentional bias. A number of recommendations for the future use of this methodology are made.

Ink colours as task-irrelevant information decrease memory accuracy with the Associative Memory Stroop Task.

Previous research by Hazan-Liran & Miller (2017) developed a new Stroop-like task to examine how ink colours as task-irrelevant information affects paired-associate learning (see also Miller, Hazan-Liran, & Cohen, 2018). The task was to learn word-number pairs (e.g. blue-5) whilst only numbers were coloured in either congruent ink colours (e.g. number 5 printed in blue ink), incongruent ink colours (e.g. 5 printed in brown ink) or neutral ink colours (e.g. 5 printed in black ink). The present paper refers to this task as the Associative Memory Stroop Task (AMST). Hazan-Liran & Miller (2017) found that incongruent ink colours interfere and congruent ink colour facilitate the speed of learning word-number pairs. The present experiments employed the AMST to examine the effects of irrelevant ink colours (with colour names) on memory accuracy in cued recall and associative recognition. Memory impairment was found with incongruent ink colours on both memory tests whilst improved memory accuracy with congruent ink colours was not reliable. We discuss possible explanations for these findings.

Biased probability estimates in trait anxiety and trait depression are unrelated to biased availability.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: People high in trait anxiety or depression overestimate the probability of negative events, and underestimate the probability of positive events, relative to people low in trait anxiety and depression. Although this probability bias may be fundamental to some emotional disorders, its causes are not well understood. The dominant explanations are based on the availability heuristic: people relatively high in anxiety or depression find it relatively easy to imagine reasons why bad things might happen to them, and this affects their probability estimates. We tested, for the first time, whether individual differences in the availability of such reasons mediate the relationships between trait anxiety or depression and probability bias, in a nonclinical sample. METHODS: Two hundred and seventy-eight undergraduates generated reasons why a set of positive and negative events might vs. might not happen to them, before rating those events' probability and potential impact on their lives. RESULTS: Individual differences in the availability of reasons why good and bad events might vs. might not happen did not mediate the sizeable relationships between trait anxiety and probability bias, and between trait depression and probability bias; these relationships remained significant when availability was controlled. Results for the impact of events ('cost bias') were less clear. LIMITATIONS: Replication with patient groups would be invaluable; different operationalisations of availability may change the results. CONCLUSIONS: Availability can influence probability estimates, but it does not explain why we see probability bias in people with high trait anxiety or depression.

Mindfulness Meditation Improves Visual Short-Term Memory.

Research into the effects of mindfulness meditation on behavioral outcomes has received much interest in recent years, with benefits for both short-term memory and working memory identified. However, little research has considered the potential effects of brief mindfulness meditation interventions or the nature of any benefits for visual short-term memory. Here, we investigate the effect of a single, 8-minute mindfulness meditation intervention, presented via audio recording, on a short-term memory task for faces. In comparison with two control groups (listening to an audiobook or simply passing the time however they wished), our mindfulness meditation participants showed greater increases in visual short-term memory capacity from pre- to post-intervention. In addition, only mindfulness meditation resulted in significant increases in performance. In conclusion, a single, brief mindfulness meditation intervention led to improvements in visual short-term memory capacity for faces, with important implications regarding the minimum intervention necessary to produce measurable changes in short-term memory tasks.

Distraction by unintentional recognition: Neurocognitive mechanisms and effects of aging.

Sometimes, we intentionally evaluate stimuli to assess whether we recognize them, whereas, at other times, stimuli automatically elicit recognition despite our efforts to ignore them. If multiple stimuli are encountered in the same environment, intentional recognition judgments can be biased by unintentional recognition of to-be-ignored stimuli. Aging is associated with increased distractibility and impaired intentional retrieval processes, which can make older adults more susceptible to distraction-induced recognition biases. We measured recognition memory performance, event-related potentials (ERPs), and electroencephalography oscillations in old (age range = 60-74) and young (age range = 18-24) adults to investigate how aging affects unintentional and intentional memory processes, and how these processes interact over time to produce distraction-induced recognition biases. Older participants had poorer intentional recognition memory, but the biasing effect of unintentional distractor recognition was similar across age groups. ERP effects related to intentional and unintentional recognition that were strongly expressed in the younger group were reduced or absent in the older group. Furthermore, the older group showed qualitatively different ERP activity during intentional recognition compared with the younger group. However, similar patterns of theta and alpha oscillations were found in both age groups, who showed theta power increases for both intentional and unintentional recognition, whereas alpha power was enhanced for intentional recognition but reduced for unintentional recognition. Overall, the findings show that unintentional and intentional recognition involve multiple dissociable memory processes that have different time-courses and functional characteristics and are differentially affected by aging. Whereas aging has strong effects on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying intentional recognition memory, unintentional recognition mechanisms are less affected. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Priming Emotional Salience Reveals the Role of Episodic Memory and Task Conflict in the Non-color Word Stroop Task.

Previous research attempted to account for the emotional Stroop effect based on connectionist models of the Stroop task that implicate conflict in the output layer as the underlying mechanism (e.g., Williams et al., 1996). Based on Kalanthroff et al.'s (2015) proactive-control/task-conflict (PC-TC) model, our study argues that the interference from non-color words (neutral and negative words) is due to task conflict. Using a study-test procedure 120 participants (59 high and 61 low trait anxiety) studied negative and neutral control words prior to being tested on a color responding task that included studied and unstudied words. The results for the low anxiety group show no emotional Stroop effect, but do demonstrate the slowdown in response latencies to a block of studied and unstudied words compared to a block of unstudied words. In contrast, the high anxiety group shows (a) an emotional Stroop effect but only for studied negative words and (b) a reversed sequential modulation in which studied negative words slowed down the color-responding of studied negative words on the next trial. We consider how these findings can be incorporated into the PC-TC model and suggest the interacting role of trait anxiety, episodic memory, and emotional salience driving attention that is based on task conflict.

Response Modality and the Stroop Task.

A long-standing debate in the Stroop literature concerns whether the way we respond to the color dimension determines how we process the irrelevant dimension, or whether word processing is purely stimulus driven. Models and findings in the Stroop literature differ in their predictions about how response modes (e.g., responding manually vs. vocally) affect how the irrelevant word is processed (i.e., phonologically, semantically) and the interference and facilitation that results, with some predicting qualitatively different Stroop effects. Here, we investigated whether response mode modifies phonological facilitation produced by the irrelevant word. In a fully within-subject design, we sought evidence for the use of a serial print-to-speech prelexical phonological processing route when using manual and vocal responses by testing for facilitating effects of phonological overlap between the irrelevant word and the color name at the initial and final phoneme positions. The results showed phoneme overlap leads to facilitation with both response modes, a result that is inconsistent with qualitative differences between the two response modes.

A relationship between weak attentional control and cognitive distortions, explained by negative affect.

People high in negative affect (anxiety or depression) show cognitive distortions, specific thinking errors which contribute to the maintenance of their condition. It is thought that weak attentional control is a risk factor for negative affect and emotional disorders, because weak attentional control exaggerates the expression of attentional bias, another cognitive feature of emotional disorders. We wondered whether weak attentional control might similarly exaggerate the expression of cognitive distortions. In two samples of students from Turkey and the UK, we found that weak attentional control was indeed related to cognitive distortions, but this relationship was explained by both variables' relationships with negative affect. This suggests that weak attentional control, while related to negative affect, does not necessarily exaggerate all of its cognitive features. There seems to be a limit on the affective consequences of poor attentional control, which may limit its clinical usefulness as a risk factor for emotional disorders.

Neural correlates of intrusion of emotion words in a modified Stroop task.

Behavioural studies have demonstrated that the emotional Stroop task is a valuable tool for investigating emotion-attention interactions in a variety of healthy and clinical populations, showing that participants are typically more distracted by negative stimuli as compared to neutral or positive stimuli. The main aim of this study was to find and examine the neural correlates of this greater intrusion from negative emotional stimuli. Reliable reaction time (RT) and event-related potential (ERP) data were collected from 23 participants who performed a manual emotional Stroop task with short (40 ms) and long (500 ms) inter-trial intervals. In the short interval condition, participants were found to produce longer RTs for negative than neutral words, suggesting that these stimuli were more difficult to ignore. This RT effect disappeared in the long interval condition, although larger P1 amplitudes were found for the negative words. This suggests that differences in early attention allocation may be unrelated to the degree of intrusion at the behavioural level. In addition, a larger negative slow wave around 300-700 ms post-stimulus was observed in the long interval condition, but only for those negative words that produced prolonged RTs as compared to their matched controls. This late and broadly distributed effect is believed to reflect suppression of meaning representations.

Priming can affect naming colours using the study-test procedure. Revealing the role of task conflict.

The Stroop paradigm has been widely used to study attention whilst its use to explore implicit memory have been mixed. Using the non-colour word Stroop task we tested contrasting predictions from the proactive-control/task-conflict model (Kalanthroff, Avnit, Henik, Davelaar & Usher, 2015) that implicate response conflict and task conflict for the priming effects. Using the study-test procedure 60 native English speakers were tested to determine whether priming effects from words that had previously been studied would cause interference when presented in a colour naming task. The results replicate a finding by MacLeod (1996) who showed no differences between the response latencies to studied and unstudied words. However, this pattern was predominately in the first half of the study where it was also found that both studied and unstudied words in a mixed block were slower to respond to than a block of pure unstudied words. The second half of the study showed stronger priming interference effects as well as a sequential modulation effect in which studied words slowed down the responses of studied words on the next trial. We discuss the role of proactive and reactive control processes and conclude that task conflict best explains the pattern of priming effects reported.

Effect of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in Increasing Pain Tolerance and Improving the Mental Health of Injured Athletes.

Literature indicates that injured athletes face both physical and psychological distress after they have been injured. In this study, a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was utilised as an intervention for use during the period of recovery with injured athletes and, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study using MBSR as an intervention for this purpose. Objective: The aim of this research was to investigate the role of MBSR practise in reducing the perception of pain and decreasing anxiety/stress, as well as increasing pain tolerance and mindfulness. An additional aim was to increase positive mood and decrease negative mood in injured athletes. Methods: The participants comprised of twenty athletes (male = 14; female = 6; age range = 21-36 years) who had severe injuries, preventing their participation in sport for more than 3 months. Prior to their injury, the participants had trained regularly with their University teams and participated in official university championships. Both groups followed their normal physiotherapy treatment, but in addition, the intervention group practised mindfulness meditation for 8 weeks (one 90-min session/week). A Cold Pressor Test (CPT) was used to assess pain tolerance. In contrast, the perception of pain was measured using a Visual Analogue Scale. Other measurements used were the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS), and Profile of Mood States (POMS). Results: Our results demonstrated an increase in pain tolerance for the intervention group and an increase in mindful awareness for injured athletes. Moreover, our findings observed a promising change in positive mood for both groups. Regarding the Stress/Anxiety scores, our findings showed a notable decrease across sessions; however, no significant changes were observed in other main and interaction effects in both groups. Conclusion: Injured athletes can benefit from using mindfulness as part of the sport rehabilitation process to increase their pain tolerance and awareness. Further research is required to assess whether increasing pain tolerance could help in the therapeutic process.

Setting the alarm: Word emotional attributes require consolidation to be operational.

Demonstrations of emotional Stroop in conditioned made-up words are flawed because of the lack of task ensuring similar word encoding across conditions. Here, participants were trained on associations between made-up words (e.g., 'drott') and pictures with an alarming or neutral content (e.g., 'a dead sheep' vs. 'a munching cow') in a situation that required attention to both ends of each association. To test whether word emotional attributes need to consolidate before they can hijack attention, one set of associations was learned seven days before the test, whereas the other set was learned either six hrs or immediately before the test. The novel words' ability to evoke their emotional attributes was assessed by using both Stroop and an auditory analogue called pause detection. Matching words and pictures was harder for alarming associations. However, similar learning rate and forgetting at seven days were observed for both types of associations. Pause detection revealed no emotion effect for same-day (i.e., unconsolidated) associations, but robust interference for seven-day-old (i.e., consolidated) alarming associations. Attention capture was found in the emotional Stroop as well, though only when trial n-1 referred to a same-day association. This task also showed stronger response repetition priming (independently of emotion) when trials n and n-1 both tapped into seven-day-old associations. Word emotional attributes hence take between six hrs and seven days to be operational. Moreover, age interactions between consecutive trials can be used to gauge implicitly the indirect (relational) episodic associations that develop in the meantime between the memories of individual items. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

An optimal viewing position effect in the Stroop task when only one letter is the color carrier.

Coloring only a single letter in the Stroop task can result in a reduction or elimination of Stroop interference. The present experiments were designed to test whether this modulation of Stroop interference occurs at all letter positions. Specifically, we investigated whether Stroop interference was reduced when the colored letter occupied the optimal viewing position (OVP). The experiments show that Stroop interference is not reduced at the OVP (Experiment 1) and that Stroop interference at the OVP is significantly greater than at other letter positions (Experiments 1 and 2). This finding has important theoretical and methodological consequences for studies of automatic processing in visual word recognition.

Working memory regulates trait anxiety-related threat processing biases.

High trait anxious individuals tend to show biased processing of threat. Correlational evidence suggests that executive control could be used to regulate such threat-processing. On this basis, we hypothesized that trait anxiety-related cognitive biases regarding threat should be exaggerated when executive control is experimentally impaired by loading working memory. In Study 1, 68 undergraduates read ambiguous vignettes under high and low working memory load; later, their interpretations of these vignettes were assessed via a recognition test. Trait anxiety predicted biased interpretation of social threat vignettes under high working memory load, but not under low working memory load. In Study 2, 53 undergraduates completed a dot probe task with fear-conditioned Japanese characters serving as threat stimuli. Trait anxiety predicted attentional bias to the threat stimuli but, again, this only occurred under high working memory load. Interestingly however, actual eye movements toward the threat stimuli were only associated with state anxiety, and this was not moderated by working memory load, suggesting that executive control regulates biased threat-processing downstream of initial input processes such as orienting. These results suggest that cognitive loads can exacerbate trait anxiety-related cognitive biases, and therefore represent a useful tool for assessing cognitive biases in future research. More importantly, since biased threat-processing has been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety, poor executive control may be a risk factor for anxiety disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record