2,025 research outputs found
Contingency awareness and evaluative conditioning: when will it be enough?
No full textThe role of contingency awareness in evaluative conditioning has been a contentious
issue for quite some time now. Several papers provide a review of the relevant
evidence (De Houwer, Baeyens, & Hendrickx, 1997a; De Houwer, Thomas, & Baeyens,
in press; Field, 2000; Lovibond & Shanks, in press; Shanks & St. John, 1994),
but the conclusions that are reached differ markedly. For instance, whereas De
Houwer et al. (in press) concluded that evaluative conditioning is largely independent
of contingency awareness, Field (2000, p. 32) argued that there is little unequivocal
evidence that evaluative conditioning without contingency awareness is a robust
finding.
The results of Fulcher and Hammerl provide another interesting contribution to
the debate. The aim of this commentary is to illustrate how even a single series of
studies such as those of Fulcher and Hammerl can be interpreted in different ways
depending on one’s perspective. I will first adopt a sceptical point of view and will
try to argue that the evidence presented by Fulcher and Hammerl does not provide
conclusive evidence for unconscious evaluative conditioning. Afterward, I will look
at the same studies from a more open, broader point of view and argue that the
reported results are important and that they are in line with the results of many previous
results which also support the hypothesis that, in comparison to other forms of
Pavlovian conditioning, evaluative conditioning is largely independent of contingency
awarenes
Attention to primes modulates affective priming of pronunciation responses
No full textIn studies on affective priming of pronunciation responses, two words are presented on each trial and participants are asked to read the second word out loud. Whereas some studies revealed shorter reaction times when the two words had the same valence than when they had a different valence, other studies either found no effect of affective congruence or revealed a reversed effect. In the present experiments, a significant effect of affective congruence only emerged when filler trials were presented in which the prime and target were identical and participants were instructed to attend to the primes (Experiment 2). No effects were found when participants were merely instructed to attend to or ignore the primes (Experiment 1), or when affectively incongruent filler trials were presented and participants were instructed to ignore the primes (Experiment 2)
Second-order backward blocking and unovershadowing in human causal learning.
No full textDe Houwer and Beckers (in press, Experiment 1) recently demonstrated that ratings about the relation between a target cue T2 and an outcome are higher when training involves CT1+ and T1T2+ followed by C+ trials than when training involves CT1+ and T1T2+ followed by C- trials. We replicated this study but now explicitly asked participants to rate the causal status of the cues both before and after the C+ or C- trials. Results showed that causal ratings for T2 were significantly higher after C+ trials than before C+ trials and that T2 received significantly lower ratings after C- trials than before C- trials. The results thus provide the first evidence for higher-order unovershadowing and higher-order backward blocking. In addition, the ratings for T1 revealed that first-order backward blocking (i.e., decrease in ratings for T1 as the result of C+ trials) was stronger than first-order unovershadowing (i.e., increase in ratings for T1 as the result of C- trials)
The Implicit Association Test as a tool for studying dysfunctional associations in psychopathology: strengths and limitations
No full textDysfunctional beliefs and associations are assumed to play a crucial role in various forms of psychopathology. Recently, it has been suggested that the Implicit Association Test (IAT) provides a better way to assess those associations than traditional self-report measures. During the IAT, participants classify items as belonging to one of four concepts. Results show that performance is superior when associated concepts are assigned to the same response than when associated concepts are assigned to different responses. I present an overview of the available literature on the IAT and evaluate the usefulness of this task as a tool for clinically oriented research
Don't make a habit out of it: Impaired learning conditions can make goal-directed behavior seem habitual
No full textsponsorship: Preparation of this article was supported by Research Program G073317N of the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) to Agnes Moors, Jan De Houwer, and Marcel Brass, and Grant C14/17/047 of the Research Fund of KU Leuven to Agnes Moors and Yannick Boddez. Yannick Boddez and Jan De Houwer are supported by Ghent University grant BOF16/MET_V/002 to Jan De Houwer. (Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO)|G073317N, Research Fund of KU Leuven|C14/17/047, Ghent University|BOF16/MET_V/002)status: Publishe
Automatic appraisal of motivational valence: motivational affective priming and Simon effects
No full textWe investigated whether motivationally determined stimulus valence can
processed in an automatic way, as is assumed in many appraisal theories (e.g., Frijda,
1986, 1993; Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 1993a). Whereas appraisal theorists typically
use conscious self-report methods to investigate their assumptions, our experiments
used indirect experimental methods that leave less room for deliberate, conscious
reflections of the participants. Using variants of the affective priming and Simon
paradigms, we demonstrated that intrinsically neutral, but wanted stimuli facilitated
responses with a positive valence, whereas intrinsically neutral, but unwanted
stimuli facilitated negative responses. In addition, the second experiment proved
be supportive of another assumption made by appraisal theorists according to which
a relation exits between different (automatic) outcomes of motivational appraisal
(positive-negative) and different action tendencies (approach-withdrawal)
A structural and process analysis of the Implicit Association Test
No full textThe Implicit Association Test (IAT) is based on the observation that participants find it easier to respond in the same way to exemplars of two concepts when these concepts are similar (e.g., “positive” and “flower”) compared to when the concepts are dissimilar (e.g., “positive” and “insect”). In the first part of this article, I argue that the IAT is structurally similar to stimulus–response compatibility tasks. On the basis of this analogy, I then present two response conflict accounts of IAT effects. The data of an experiment that was designed to test these accounts showed that IAT effects reflect attitudes toward the target concepts rather than attitudes toward the individual exemplars of those concepts. The results shed light on the processes that underlie IAT effects, suggest that automatic attitude activation may depend on the construal of the object that is fostered by the context, and clarify the relation between different indirect measures of attitudes
On the generality of the affective Simon effect
No full textIn affective Simon studies, participants are to select between a positive and negative response on the basis of a nonaffective stimulus feature (i.e., relevant stimulus feature) while ignoring the valence of the presented stimuli (i.e., irrelevant stimulus feature). De Houwer and Eelen (1998) showed that the time to select the correct response is influenced by the match between the valence of the response and the (irrelevant) valence of the stimulus. In the affective Simon studies that have been reported until now, only words were used as stimuli and the relevant stimulus feature was always the grammatical category of the words. We report four experiments in which we examined the generality of the affective Simon effect. Significant affective Simon effects were found when the semantic category, grammatical category, and letter-case of words was relevant, when the semantic category of photographed objects was relevant, and when participants were asked to give nonverbal approach or avoidance responses on the basis of the grammatical category of words. Results also showed that the magnitude of the affective Simon effect depended on the nature of the relevant feature
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