A conditional judgment procedure for probing evaluative conditioning effects in the absence of feelings of remembering.

Attitude research has capitalized on evaluative conditioning procedures to gain insight into how evaluations are formed and may be changed. In evaluative conditioning, a conditioned stimulus (CS; e.g., an unfamiliar soda brand) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) of affective value (e.g., a pleasant picture). Following this pairing, a change in CS liking may be observed (e.g., the soda brand is liked better). A question with far-reaching theoretical and practical implications is whether the change in CS liking is found when participants feel they do not remember the CS-US pairings at the time an evaluation is produced about the CS. Here, we introduce a new conditional judgment procedure-the two-button-sets (TBS) task-for probing evaluative conditioning effects without feelings of remembering about the valence of the US paired with the CS. In three experiments, the TBS is (1) is successfully validated; it is also used to (2) provide preliminary information on the feeling of remembering question, and (3) to examine an affect-consistent bias in memory judgments for CS-US pairings. Results do not support evaluative effects in the absence of feelings of remembering, and they oppose the view that affect-consistent bias is limited to memory uncertainty. We discuss these findings in light of previous evidence and of dual-learning models of attitudes. We also discuss limitations and research avenues related to the new procedure.

LIFANA - toward developing a meal recommender system as a dietary support app for the elderly.

Background: Though a variety of eHealth/mHealth dietary solutions exist, many are ill-adapted to the target population and local eating habits. A specific need exists for the elderly, a growing vulnerable population with limited digital literacy. The LIFANA project aimed at developing a mobile nutrition solution, i.e. a dietary meal-recommender app for personalized meal planning useful for the elderly. Methods: In addition to considering age, gender, and physical activity, the app assured sufficient intake of calories and proteins. The solution was optimized to consider local eating culture in Portugal (PT)/The Netherlands (NL) where it was tested. Recipes (>300) were included and aligned with national food composition dietary databases (FCDBs) to analyse their nutritional values for meal planning. Individual dietary preferences, food restrictions (i.e., allergies), and budget considerations were included in the user profile. The development process involved user integration, including focus groups and usability evaluations, followed by longer field trials in Portugal (n=53 participants, age 60-81 y, 14 months) and the Netherlands (n=107, age 52-86 y, 3 months). Endpoints regarding acceptance/usage frequency, anthropometric measures and (in PT) blood pressure and body fat were collected. Results: 23/34 elderly finalized the trials in PT/NL. No significant changes in anthropometry or other assessed markers, including blood pressure, were observed. 9% (NL) and 47% (PT) of users reported that they would consider using the solution if it were on the market. Conclusions: Via an iterative adaptive process, a dietary app was developed and improved that demonstrated acceptance/user-friendliness comparable to other tools available on the market and allowed - despite the COVID crisis - for stable anthropometric markers and blood pressure. However, it was also observed that additional features, such as a link to an online shopping app, and closer personal follow-up was associated with increased usability and acceptance of the solution and thus further personalization and nudges are warranted to increase employment of such dietary apps.

Incidental Attitude Formation via the Surveillance Task: A Preregistered Replication of the Olson and Fazio (2001) Study.

Evaluative conditioning is one of the most widely studied procedures for establishing and changing attitudes. The surveillance task is a highly cited evaluative-conditioning paradigm and one that is claimed to generate attitudes without awareness. The potential for evaluative-conditioning effects to occur without awareness continues to fuel conceptual, theoretical, and applied developments. Yet few published studies have used this task, and most are characterized by small samples and small effect sizes. We conducted a high-powered (N = 1,478 adult participants), preregistered close replication of the original surveillance-task study (Olson & Fazio, 2001). We obtained evidence for a small evaluative-conditioning effect when "aware" participants were excluded using the original criterion-therefore replicating the original effect. However, no such effect emerged when three other awareness criteria were used. We suggest that there is a need for caution when using evidence from the surveillance-task effect to make theoretical and practical claims about "unaware" evaluative-conditioning effects.

No evaluative conditioning effects with briefly presented stimuli.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) changes the preference towards a formerly neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus; CS), by pairing it with a valent stimulus (unconditioned stimulus; US), in the direction of the valence of the US. When the CS is presented suboptimally (i.e., too briefly to be consciously perceived), contingency awareness between CS and US can be ruled out. Hence, EC effects with suboptimally presented CSs would support theories claiming that contingency awareness is not necessary for EC effects to occur. Recent studies reported the absence of EC with briefly presented CSs when both CS and US were presented in the visual modality, even though the CSs were identified at above-chance levels. Challenging this finding, Heycke et al. (R Soc Open Sci 4(9):160935, 2017) found some evidence for an EC effect with briefly presented visual stimuli in a cross-modal paradigm with auditory USs, but that study did not assess CS visibility. The present study realized a close replication of this study, while deviated from it using different stimuli, introducing a brief practice phase, and adding a CS visibility check. Overall EC for briefly presented stimuli was absent, and results from the visibility check show that an EC effect with briefly presented CSs was only found, when the CSs were identified at above-chance levels.

The enhancing effect of 200†mg caffeine on mnemonic discrimination is at best small.

Mnemonic discrimination is the ability to discriminate among similar memories, which requires separable representations of similar information. The neurocomputational process that assumedly decorrelates representations during encoding and consolidation is referred to as pattern separation. Deficits in pattern separation contribute to age-related declines in mnemonic functioning, which has motivated the development of targeted interventions. We followed-up a recent report that one 200 mg-dose of caffeine administered post-study enhances mnemonic discrimination [Borota, D., Murray, E., Keceli, G., Chang, A., Watabe, J. M., Ly, M., Toscano, J. P., & Yassa, M. A. (2014). Post-study caffeine administration enhances memory consolidation in humans. Nature Neuroscience, 17(2), 201-203. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3623]. To test whether the reported enhancements are an artifact of performance-impairing withdrawal symptoms in the control group, we did not restrict preexperimental caffeine intake and statistically adjusted treatment effects for habitual caffeine consumption. We detected no effects of caffeine and nonsuperiority testing ruled out medium and large enhancements in both average (1200 mg per week) and low-consumers (50 mg per week). Our results raise doubts about a caffeine-mediated enhancement of mnemonic discrimination on two counts: If the effect exists, it (1) is substantially smaller than originally reported and (2) may reflect an offset of performance-impairing withdrawal symptoms rather than genuinely enhanced consolidation. We recommend that future studies employ an alternating exposure-abstinence protocol, use an active control group, and verify posttreatment caffeine abstinence via saliva or blood samples.

Similarity-based and rule-based generalisation in the acquisition of attitudes via evaluative conditioning.

Generalisation in learning means that learning with one particular stimulus influences responding to other novel stimuli. Such generalisation effects have largely been overlooked within research on attitude acquisition via Evaluative Conditioning (i.e. EC effects). In five experiments, we investigated whether and when generalisation of EC effects is based on similarity or on abstract rules. Experiments 1, 2a, 2b and 3 showed that participants who abstracted a rule during the learning phase used that rule for category judgments of novel stimuli. However, evaluative ratings of the same stimuli were unaffected by the learned rule but followed the similarity to learned stimuli. Experiment 4 showed that this similarity-based pattern of generalisation is not specific to evaluative ratings. Rather, resemblance between judgment task and learning task seems to determine whether acquired rules are taken into account. We discuss how dual-process and single-process models of EC may account for the obtained generalisation results.

Why a standard IAT effect cannot provide evidence for association formation: the role of similarity construction.

Moran and Bar-Anan (Moran, T., & Bar-Anan, Y. (2013). The effect of object-valence relations on automatic evaluation. Cognition and Emotion, 27(4), 743-752) demonstrated that evaluations on a direct measure reflected information on both US valence and CS-US relations, whereas evaluations on an indirect measure (IAT) reflected only information on US valence. This dissociation between measures supposedly tapping into propositional and associative processes apparently supports dual process models of EC. In the present study, we present an alternative explanation of this pattern, based on an interpretation of IAT effects in terms of flexible similarity construction processes. According to this account, processing draws on those features that discriminate between target categories, and help to align targets with attributes in the compatible block. Across two experiments, we consistently found that IAT effects did not reflect rigid associations, but instead depended on whichever information could be used for similarity constructions between targets and attributes in different variants of the IAT. The findings are discussed with regard to theoretical models of EC as well as in reference to prominent accounts of IAT performance.

Associative Attitude Learning: A Closer Look at Evidence and How It Relates to Attitude Models.

Associative attitude learning is typically viewed as a low-level process that automatically registers mere co-occurrences between stimuli, independent of their validity and relational meaning. This view invites to critically examine how attitude formation conforms to four operating conditions (i.e., unawareness, efficiency, goal independence, and uncontrollability) and two operating principles (i.e., unqualified registration of mere co-occurrences between stimuli and formation of direct stimulus-response links), which is the main purpose of the present contribution. The general discussion examines how contemporary attitude models endorse these conditions and principles. Overall, this contribution calls for (a) a nuanced understanding of the nature and scope of associative attitude learning, (b) a fine-grained understanding of how contemporary attitude models endorse conditions and principles reviewed here and find them relevant to their theorization of attitude formation, (c) a clarification of how direct and indirect evaluative measures relate to these conditions and principles, and (d) enhanced efforts in specifying contemporary attitude formation models.

Does attitude acquisition in evaluative conditioning without explicit CS-US memory reflect implicit misattribution of affect?

Research that dissociates different types of processes within a given task using a processing tree approach suggests that attitudes may be acquired through evaluative conditioning in the absence of explicit encoding of CS-US pairings in memory. This research distinguishes explicit memory for the CS-US pairings from CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory. It has been suggested that the latter effect may be due to an implicit misattribution process that is assumed to operate when US evocativeness is low. In the present research, the latter assumption was supported neither by two high-powered experiments nor by complementary meta-analytic evidence, whereas evocativeness exerted an influence on explicit memory. This pattern of findings is inconsistent with the view that CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory reflects an implicit misattribution process at learning. Hence, the underlying learning process is awaiting further empirical scrutiny.

Of two minds or one? A registered replication of Rydell et al. (2006).

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is proposed as a mechanism of automatic preference acquisition in dual-process theories of attitudes (Gawronski, B., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin, 132(5), 692-731. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.5.692 ). Evidence for the automaticity of EC comes from studies claiming EC effects for subliminally presented stimuli. An impression-formation study showed a selective influence of briefly presented primes on implicitly measured attitudes, whereas supraliminally presented behavioural information about the target person was reflected in explicit ratings (Rydell, R. J., McConnell, A. R., Mackie, D. M., & Strain, L. M. (2006). Of two minds forming and changing valence-inconsistent implicit and explicit attitudes. Psychological Science, 17(11), 954-958. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01811.x) This finding is considered one of the strongest pieces of evidence for dual process theories (Sweldens, S., Corneille, O., & Yzerbyt, V. (2014). The role of awareness in attitude formation through evaluative conditioning. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(2), 187-209. doi: 10.1177/1088868314527832 ), and it is therefore crucial to assess its reliability and robustness. The present study presents two registered replications of the Rydell et al. (2006) study. In contrast to the original findings, the implicit measures did not reflect the valence of the subliminal primes in both studies.

Distorted estimates of implicit and explicit learning in applications of the process-dissociation procedure to the SRT task.

We investigated potential biases affecting the validity of the process-dissociation (PD) procedure when applied to sequence learning. Participants were or were not exposed to a serial reaction time task (SRTT) with two types of pseudo-random materials. Afterwards, participants worked on a free or cued generation task under inclusion and exclusion instructions. Results showed that pre-experimental response tendencies, non-associative learning of location frequencies, and the usage of cue locations introduced bias to PD estimates. These biases may lead to erroneous conclusions regarding the presence of implicit and explicit knowledge. Potential remedies for these problems are discussed.

Analyzing distributional properties of interference effects across modalities: chances and challenges.

In research investigating Stroop or Simon effects, data are typically analyzed at the level of mean response time (RT), with results showing faster responses for compatible than for incompatible trials. However, this analysis provides only limited information as it glosses over the shape of the RT distributions and how they may differ across tasks and experimental conditions. These limitations have encouraged the analysis of RT distributions using delta plots. In the present review, we aim to bring together research on distributional properties of auditory and visual interference effects. Extending previous reviews on distributional properties of the Simon effect, we additionally review studies reporting distributional analyses of Stroop effects. We show that distributional analyses of sequential effects (i.e., taking into account congruency of the previous trial) capture important similarities and differences of interference effects across tasks (Simon, Stroop) as well as across sensory modalities, despite some challenges associated to this approach.

'Let me recommend ': use of digital nudges or recommender systems for overweight and obesity prevention-a scoping review protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Recommender systems, digital tools providing recommendations, and digital nudges increasingly affect our lives. The combination of digital nudges and recommender systems is very attractive for its application in preventing overweight and obesity. However, linking recommender systems with personalised digital nudges has a potential yet to be fully exploited. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a scoping review to identify which digital nudges or recommender systems or their combinations have been used in obesity prevention and to map these systems according to the target population, health behaviour, system classification (eg, mechanisms for developing recommendations, delivery channels, personalisation, interconnection, used combination), and system implementation. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews guideline was used to inform protocol development. The eligibility criteria are based on the PCC framework (Population: any human; Concept: recommender systems or digital nudges; Context: obesity prevention). MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, CINHAL, Scopus, ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore were searched until September 2023. Primary studies with any design published in peer-reviewed academic journals and peer-reviewed conference papers will be included. Data will be extracted into a pre-developed extraction sheet. Results will be synthesised descriptively and narratively. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: No ethical approval is required for the scoping review, as data will be obtained from publicly available sources. The results of this scoping review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal, presented at conferences and used to inform the co-creation process and intervention adaptation in the context of a HealthyW8 project (www.healthyw8.eu).

Evaluating the robustness of parameter estimates in cognitive models: A meta-analytic review of multinomial processing tree models across the multiverse of estimation methods.

Researchers have become increasingly aware that data-analysis decisions affect results. Here, we examine this issue systematically for multinomial processing tree (MPT) models, a popular class of cognitive models for categorical data. Specifically, we examine the robustness of MPT model parameter estimates that arise from two important decisions: the level of data aggregation (complete-pooling, no-pooling, or partial-pooling) and the statistical framework (frequentist or Bayesian). These decisions span a multiverse of estimation methods. We synthesized the data from 13,956 participants (164 published data sets) with a meta-analytic strategy and analyzed the magnitude of divergence between estimation methods for the parameters of nine popular MPT models in psychology (e.g., process-dissociation, source monitoring). We further examined moderators as potential sources of divergence. We found that the absolute divergence between estimation methods was small on average (<.04; with MPT parameters ranging between 0 and 1); in some cases, however, divergence amounted to nearly the maximum possible range (.97). Divergence was partly explained by few moderators (e.g., the specific MPT model parameter, uncertainty in parameter estimation), but not by other plausible candidate moderators (e.g., parameter trade-offs, parameter correlations) or their interactions. Partial-pooling methods showed the smallest divergence within and across levels of pooling and thus seem to be an appropriate default method. Using MPT models as an example, we show how transparency and robustness can be increased in the field of cognitive modeling. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Parallel Acquisition of Uncorrelated Sequences does Not Provide Firm Evidence for a Modular Sequence-Learning System.

Dual-systems theories of sequence learning assume that sequence learning may proceed within a unidimensional learning system that is immune to cross-dimensional interference because information is processed and represented in dimension-specific, encapsulated modules. Important evidence for such modularity comes from studies investigating the absence or presence of interference between multiple uncorrelated sequences (e.g., a sequence of color stimuli and a sequence of motor keypresses). Here we question the premise that the parallel acquisition of uncorrelated sequences provides convincing evidence for a modularized learning system. In contrast, we demonstrate that parallel acquisition of multiple uncorrelated sequences is well predicted by a computational model that assumes a single learning system with joint representations of stimulus and response features.

Dissociable stages of problem solving (I): temporal characteristics revealed by eye-movement analyses.

Understanding the functional neuroanatomy of planning and problem solving may substantially benefit from better insight into the chronology of the cognitive processes involved. Based on the assumption that regularities in cognitive processing are reflected in overtly observable eye-movement patterns, here we recorded eye movements while participants worked on Tower of London (TOL) problems that comprised an experimental manipulation of different task demands. Single-trial saccade-locked analyses revealed that higher demands on forming an internal problem representation were associated with an increased number of gaze alternations between start state and goal state, but did not show any effect on the durations of these inspections of the states. In contrast, higher demands on actual planning in terms of mental manipulations of working memory contents coincided with a prolonged duration of the very last inspection of the start state (i.e., immediately preceding movement execution) but did not show any effect on the number of gaze alterations. Differential task demands on internalization and planning processes during problem solving hence selectively affect different eye-movement parameters. Moreover, these findings complement previous neuroimaging data on dissociable contributions of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in problem solving with novel evidence for a corresponding dissociation in the eye-movement patterns reflecting the associated cognitive processes.

Fluency and positivity as possible causes of the truth effect.

Statements' rated truth increases when people encounter them repeatedly. Processing fluency is a central variable to explain this truth effect. However, people experience processing fluency positively, and these positive experiences might cause the truth effect. Three studies investigated positivity and fluency influences on the truth effect. Study 1 found correlations between elicited positive feelings and rated truth. Study 2 replicated the repetition-based truth effect, but positivity did not influence the effect. Study 3 conveyed positive and negative correlations between positivity and truth in a learning phase. We again replicated the truth effect, but positivity only influenced judgments for easy statements in the learning phase. Thus, across three studies, we found positivity effects on rated truth, but not on the repetition-based truth effect: We conclude that positivity does not explain the standard truth effect, but the role of positive experiences for truth judgments deserves further investigation.

The truth about the truth: a meta-analytic review of the truth effect.

Repetition has been shown to increase subjective truth ratings of trivia statements. This truth effect can be measured in two ways: (a) as the increase in subjective truth from the first to the second encounter (within-items criterion) and (b) as the difference in truth ratings between repeated and other new statements (between-items criterion). Qualitative differences are assumed between the processes underlying both criteria. A meta-analysis of the truth effect was conducted that compared the two criteria. In all, 51 studies of the repetition-induced truth effect were included in the analysis. Results indicate that the between-items effect is larger than the within-items effect. Moderator analyses reveal that several moderators affect both effects differentially. This lends support to the notion that different psychological comparison processes may underlie the two effects. The results are discussed within the processing fluency account of the truth effect.

Impulsivity in borderline personality disorder: impairment in self-report measures, but not behavioral inhibition.

BACKGROUND: Impulsivity is a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, previous clinical and experimental studies investigating impulsivity in BPD rendered mixed results. In this study, impulsivity was assessed by self-report scales and behavioral inhibition tasks to compare different data levels. SAMPLING AND METHODS: Fifteen women with BPD and 15 matched healthy control subjects (HC) completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, Eysenck's Impulsivity Questionnaire and the UPPS (Urgency, Lack of Perseverance, Lack of Premeditation and Sensation Seeking) scale, and participated in a Stroop task, an antisaccade task and a stop signal task. RESULTS: Patients with BPD scored significantly higher on self-report measures as compared to HC, but not in behavioral tests. In BPD patients, but not in HC, behavioral inhibition errors were correlated with more intense emotional state. CONCLUSION: We found a discrepancy between self-report and behavioral data. Further studies need to assess additional possible mechanisms underlying increased impulsivity, their relation to emotional instability, and their neurobiological underpinnings.

Evaluative conditioning of pattern-masked nonwords requires perceptual awareness.

The evaluative conditioning (EC) phenomenon is central to the study of preference acquisition and attitude formation. Early studies have reported EC in the absence of awareness, but more recent work has questioned this conclusion. In previous work, using briefly presented and pattern-masked conditioned stimuli (CSs), we found that above-chance forced-choice identification of CSs is necessary for EC. Here we extend this work by addressing more directly the inherently subjective issue of consciousness. In 2 studies, we assessed whether above-threshold perceptual awareness of CSs is necessary for EC. Contrasting unconscious learning claims, EC was absent under low and intermediate levels of perceptual awareness. Additional findings suggest that the perceptual awareness task does not interfere with EC, and that it is more sensitive than memory-based awareness proxies. We also found that a confounded variant of the forced-choice identification task can artifactually induce EC; and that an unconfounded version of the task does not induce nor interfere with EC. We discuss limitations of the present studies as well as their relevance for the debate about the automaticity of evaluative learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).