Automatic Associations Research Articles

Motivated, Fit, and Strong-Using Counter-Stereotypical Images to Reduce Weight Stigma Internalisation in Women with Obesity.

This study aimed to use implicit retraining to change automatic associations between body size and physical activity (PA) in women with obesity to reduce weight bias internalisation (WBI). A Solomon-square experimental design was used to determine the effect of a four-week online implicit retraining intervention on WBI (primary measure) and PA attitudes, self-efficacy, and self-reported behaviour (secondary measures). The intervention was a visual probe task pairing counter-stereotypical images of active individuals with obesity with positive PA-related words. In qualitative telephone interviews, a sub-sample of participants provided feedback and recommendations for using counter-stereotypical images in PA promotion. Women completed the intervention (n=48) or a control task (n=55). Results of a RM-ANOVA showed no interaction or main effect of group on WBI. A main effect of time demonstrated that both groups had reduced WBI between pre-test and post-test, through to one-week follow-up. There were no differences between groups or over time for PA attitudes, self-efficacy, or behaviour. Women who completed interviews (n=16) discussed several benefits and drawbacks of using counter-stereotypical images. Implicit retraining did not reduce WBI but qualitative findings support the use of counter-stereotypical PA images.

Sexual Attraction to Both Genders in Ambiphilic Men: Evidence from Implicit Cognitions

Ambiphilic (or bisexual) men describe feelings of sexual attraction to both men and women. However, physiological measures of arousal have failed to show a consistent pattern of arousal to both genders. We measured men’s automatic associations between the concept of sex (represented by words) and the concepts of men versus women (represented by images) via the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a priming task. On the IAT, gynephilic men (N = 32) were faster for women-sex pairings, androphilic men (N = 18) were faster for men-sex pairings, while ambiphilic men (N = 20) showed no bias toward either gender. We then isolated the concepts of “men” and “women” by comparing them separately against neutral images. In contrast to both the gynephilic or androphilic men, ambiphilic men showed sexual associations to both men and women. On the priming task, ambiphilic men showed faster responses to sex words, but slower responses to not-sex words, when primed with pictures of either men or women compared to when primed by neutral images. The results from all the experimental tasks suggest that ambiphilic men have a pattern of sexual association that is different from both gynephilic and androphilic men and represents a sexual attraction to both men and women.

Heart disease and physical activity messages targeted at women: Attentional bias and automatic associations

IntroductionLittle is known regarding automatic processing of heart disease information yet automatic responses may influence message effectiveness. ObjectiveTo examine automatic and reasoned perceptions of heart disease and physical activity information in women with (n=29) and without (n=37) diagnosed heart disease. MethodParticipants read heart disease information followed by measures of attentional bias and automatic associations, a brief interview and a questionnaire measuring message involvement, believability, and attention, and attitudes and intention. ResultsWomen with heart disease had greater attentional bias for heart disease-related words than women without heart disease, although the effect was weak. Fruit and vegetables were more strongly associated with prevention than physical activity, again with a small effect. The only significant predictor of intentions was self-reported previous leisure-time physical activity. ConclusionThere was a small attentional bias for heart disease-related words in women with heart disease, but this was not related to other constructs including automatic associations, attitudes or intentions. Women in the current study reported ‘nothing new’ in the information, with may indicate they did not have positive affective responses to it and it may not have automatically attracted attention nor have activated associations with physical activity. Health promoters should consider what might make messages about physical activity and heart disease more salient for women.

The power of nonverbal behavior: Penalty-takers’ body language influences impression formation and anticipation performance in goalkeepers in a simulated soccer penalty task

Previous research showed that penalty-takers’ body language affects the impressions goalkeepers form about them. Furthermore, it is often assumed that body language influences goalkeepers’ performance. However, as yet, there is no empirical evidence that indicates whether this latter effect exists. The present research was aimed at (1) replicating and offering more insight in the initial impression formation effects (Experiment 1-3) and (2) providing evidence that signals of dominance and submissiveness affect participants’ anticipation performance within a simulated soccer penalty task (Experiment 3). We report three experiments demonstrating that participants form more positive impressions and have less confidence in saving penalty kicks from dominant penalty-takers (or scoring against dominant goalkeepers, Experiment 1) than submissive penalty-takers (goalkeepers). However, we did not find evidence that participants’ automatic associations with dominant and submissive players underlie these findings (Experiment 2). Finally, we demonstrate that anticipation of kick direction is influenced by penalty-takers’ body language (Experiment 3). Participants performed worse in the simulated soccer penalty task against dominant than submissive penalty-takers. No mediation of impression formation was found.

Spatio-temporal associations with memory cues are linked to analogue traumatic intrusions

Trauma survivors with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently experience intrusive trauma memories associated with a feeling of “nowness”. Information-processing models of PTSD ascribe these symptoms to an insufficient integration of memories with their spatio-temporal context in the past, turning them into powerful stressors. Here, we tested the idea that automatic associations of trauma reminders with the present or the past predict intrusive memories. We instructed 96 healthy participants to view two different traumatic films. Participants then underwent a computerized training that established implicit contingencies between film reminder pictures with the verbal responses “now” or “past” to increase and reduce intrusions, respectively. The training successfully altered implicit spatio-temporal associations for film reminder stimuli on a subsequent Implicit Association Test (IAT). There were no additional transfer effects for tense usage during a free recall task after one week and for the development of intrusion symptoms (one-week diary, retrospective questionnaire). However, participants who associated one film more strongly with the present and the other with the past consistently reported relatively more intrusive memories related to the former film. Thus, our results lend support to information processing models of PTSD and warrant further investigation of the causal role of implicit associations with spatio-temporal information.

Critical Review of Measurement Practices in the Study of Automatic Associations of Sedentary Behavior, Physical Activity, and Exercise.

Studies of automatic associations of sedentary behavior, physical activity, and exercise are proliferating, but the lack of information on the psychometric properties of relevant measures is a potential impediment to progress. The purpose of this review was to critically summarize measurement practices in studies examining automatic associations related to sedentary behavior, physical activity, and exercise. Of 37 studies, 27 (73%) did not include a justification for the measure chosen to assess automatic associations. Additional problems have been noted, including the nonreporting of psychometric information (validity, internal consistency, test-retest reliability) and the lack of standardization of procedures (e.g.,number, type of stimuli). The authors emphasize the need to select measures based on conceptual arguments and psychometric evidence and to standardize measurement procedures. To facilitate progress, the review concludes with a proposal for conceptually appropriate validation criteria to be used in future studies.

A Hierarchical Approach for Associating Body-Worn Sensors to Video Regions in Crowded Mingling Scenarios

We address the complex problem of associating several wearable devices with the spatio-temporal region of their wearers in video during crowded mingling events using only acceleration and proximity. This is a particularly important first step for multisensor behavior analysis using video and wearable technologies, where the privacy of the participants must be maintained. Most state-of-the-art works using these two modalities perform their association manually, which becomes practically unfeasible as the number of people in the scene increases. We proposed an automatic association method based on a hierarchical linear assignment optimization, which exploits the spatial context of the scene. Moreover, we present extensive experiments on matching from 2 to more than 69 acceleration and video streams, showing significant improvements over a random baseline in a real-world crowded mingling scenario. We also show the effectiveness of our method for incomplete or missing streams (up to a certain limit) and analyze the tradeoff between length of the streams and number of participants. Finally, we provide an analysis of failure cases, showing that deep understanding of the social actions within the context of the event is necessary to further improve performance on this intriguing task.

A Longitudinal Study of Early Reading Development: Letter-Sound Knowledge, Phoneme Awareness and RAN, but Not Letter-Sound Integration, Predict Variations in Reading Development

ABSTRACTIt is now widely accepted that phonological language skills are a critical foundation for learning to read (decode). This longitudinal study investigated the predictive relationship between a range of key phonological language skills and early reading development in a sample of 191 children in their first year at school. The study also explored the theory that a failure to establish automatic associations between letters and speech sounds is a proximal causal risk factor for difficulties in learning to read. Our findings show that automatic letter-sound associations are established early, but do not predict variations in reading development. In contrast, phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge and alphanumeric RAN were all strong independent predictors of reading development. In addition, both phoneme awareness and RAN displayed a reciprocal relationship with reading, such that the growth of reading predicted improvements in these skills.

Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation Affects Implicit Spiritual Self-Representations

Recently, the empirical interest in religiousness and spirituality has grown, showing the association between the activity of a complex network of subcortical and fronto-parietal areas and explicit and implicit religious/spiritual representations. Importantly, while the causal link between parietal stimulation and implicit religiousness/spirituality has been demonstrated, the role of subcortical and medial cortical areas has not been directly investigated. Here, we assessed how implicit and explicit religious or spiritual representations are modulated by transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation (tVNS), a novel non-invasive method to stimulate subcortical and medial cortical structures. Implicit and explicit representations were tested with Religious, Spiritual and Self-esteem (as control) Implicit Association Tests and questionnaires. Active-tVNS, compared to sham-tVNS, affected implicit spiritual, but not religious or control self-representations, reducing the strength of the automatic association between the self and the spiritual dimension. Explicit self-representations were left unchanged. Findings shed new light on the neurobiological mechanisms of implicit spirituality.

A data science approach to movies and film director analysis

The creation of movies involves a careful process of planning, recording, and editing of the visual content. Here we propose a quantitative computer-based analysis of movies to identify similarities that can indicate on influential links between films, genres, or film directors. The method works by first extracting a comprehensive set of numerical image content descriptors from a large number of frames from each movie. Then, the most informative descriptors are selected, and the values of the frames are compared to each other to create a similarity matrix between the movies. The similarity matrix is visualized using a phylogeny to show a network of similarities between movies. Experimental results with a dataset of 104 movies show that the method is able to predict the movie based on a single frame with accuracy of ∼74 percent, and the similarity analysis tends to cluster movies of the same directors or of the same movie series. These results show that computer analysis is able to analyze similarities between movies, providing a quantitative approach to film studies. The automatic association of the movies by directors shows that the film director has stronger influence on the visual outcome than cinematographers or actors.

Measuring wanting without asking: The Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer paradigm under test

In consumer science, measuring liking is posited to be the best method to understand preferences and food choice behaviour. Consumer research shows that highly rewarding products are more often bought than slightly rewarding products. However, detecting clear differences in preferences for similarly rewarding products, which have just launched on the market, is not always easy to investigate with liking measures. Consequently, finding other methods measuring preferences for similarly rewarding products is necessary. A well-established theoretical framework used to study reward processing, the incentive salience theory, argues that the pursuit of a positive outcome depends on three distinct components: the motivation to obtain it (wanting), the pleasure felt during its consumption (liking), as well as its automatic associations and cognitive representations (learning). The Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) paradigm is a promising method used to investigate wanting in animals and humans. The human PIT task has been used in the chemosensory field in the presence of a single odour. In the present methodological studies, we further investigated the sensitivity of the PIT task to measure cue-triggered wanting by comparing two olfactory rewards. The first study used two olfactory stimuli with very different liking levels, whereas the second used two olfactory stimuli with similar liking levels. The results suggested that the PIT task was sensitive enough to detect the effort participants mobilized (wanting) to obtain two olfactory stimuli with very different liking levels, which was not the case for olfactory stimuli with similar liking levels. Implications of the PIT task for consumer research were discussed.

Theatricality, Michael Fried and Nineteenth-Century Art and Theatre

This provocation uses a case study of the French history painter Paul Delaroche to examine the way in which theatricality is invoked as a critical term. Michael Fried considers Delaroche’s work to exemplify theatricality, a designation that, for him, connotes qualities of exaggeration and inauthenticity, but I argue that this is not how Delaroche was viewed in his own time. This leads to a wider consideration of the assumptions that underpin thinking about theatricality. In particular, I question the idea that theatricality, as Fried understands it, is a quality of popular, as opposed to avant-garde, art. Finally, I want to challenge the automatic association between theatre and artifice that is threaded through discussions of theatricality.

"My friend, the pain": does altered body awareness affect the valence of pain descriptors?

Background: Pain is a marker of bodily status, that despite being aversive under most conditions, may also be perceived as a positive experience. However, how bodily states represent, define, and interpret pain signals, and how these processes might be reflected in common language, remains unclear.Methods: Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to explore the relationship between bodily awareness, pain reactions, and descriptions. A list of pain-related terms was generated from open-ended interviews with persons with spinal cord injury (SCI), and 138 participants (persons with SCI, health professionals, and a healthy control group) rated each descriptor as representative of pain on a gradated scale. A lexical decision task was used to test the strength of the automatic association of the word “pain” with positive and negative concepts. The behavioral results were related to body awareness, experience of pain, and exposure to pain, by comparing the three groups.Results: Higher positive and lower negative pain descriptors, as well as slower response times when categorizing pain as an unpleasant experience were found in the SCI group. The effect was not modulated by either the time since the injury or the present pain intensity, but it was linked to the level of subjective bodily awareness. Compared with the SCI group, health experts and non-experts both associated more quickly the word “pain” and unpleasant in the lexical decision task. However, while health professionals attributed positive linguistic qualities to pain, pain was exclusively associated with negative descriptors in healthy controls group.Conclusions: These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and clinical implications. An awareness of bodily signals prominently affects both the sensory and linguistic responses in persons with SCI. Pain should be evaluated more broadly to understand and, by extension, to manage, experiences beyond its adverse side.

Measuring automatic associations between relaxing/energizing feelings and odors

The extent to which automatic associations exist between relaxing and energizing feelings and odors is unclear. To investigate this question, we used a modified version of the Implicit Association Test. In this task, participants had to make speeded discrimination responses between stimuli and words related to energizing vs. relaxing feelings. These stimuli were either visual stimuli (i.e., vanilla vs. mint labels in Experiment 1) or olfactory (vanillin vs. menthol in Experiment 2, and two fine fragrances in Experiment 3). In compatible blocks, purportedly related items (e.g., vanillin and a label related to relaxing feelings) shared the same response key, while in incompatible blocks they did not (e.g., vanillin and a word related to energizing feelings). In the three experiments, the participants responded significantly faster in the compatible blocks than in the incompatible ones. The stronger the association between purportedly related items, the faster the participant responds in compatible blocks and the slower in incompatible blocks. Consequently, this differential speed of response supports the existence of associations between the stimuli that were considered to be compatible. This argues for the existence of automatic associations between relaxing/energizing feelings and odors, associations that can influence behavior.

Automatic Association of Scents Based on Visual Content

Although olfaction can enhance the user’s experience in virtual environments, the approach is not widely utilized by virtual contents. This is because the olfaction displays are either not aware of the content in the virtual world or they are application specific. Enabling wide context awareness is possible through the use of image recognition via machine learning. Screenshots from the virtual worlds can be analyzed for the presence of virtual scent emitters, allowing the olfactory display to respond by generating the corresponding smells. The Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), using Inception Model for image recognition was used for training the system. To evaluate the performance of the accuracy of the model, we trained it on a computer game called Minecraft. The results and performance of the model was 97% accurate, while in some cases the accuracy reached 99%.

Biased labels: An experimental study of language and stigma among individuals in recovery and health professionals

Background: Labels such as “addict” and “substance abuser” have been found to elicit implicit and explicit stigma among the general public previously. The difference in the levels of this bias among individuals in recovery and those employed in the health profession has not yet been identified, however. The current study seeks to answer this question using measures of implicit bias. Methods: A subset sample (n = 299) from a previously completed study (n = 1288) was selected for analysis. Mixed-model ANOVA tests were completed to identify variance between d-prime automatic association scores with the terms “addict” and “substance abuser” among individuals in recovery and those identified as working in the health professions. Results: Individuals in recovery did not have lower negative associations with either term, whereas individuals employed as health professionals had greater negative associations with the term “substance abuser” but did not have greater negative associations with the term “addict.” Conclusions: Results provide further evidence that previously identified stigmatizing labels have the potential to influence medical care and medical practitioner perceptions of individuals with substance use disorders and should be avoided. Further exploration into the role negative associations derived from commonly used labels have in the individual recovery process is needed to draw appropriate recommendations.

Individual Differences in Brain Structure and Resting Brain Function Underlie Representation-Connection in Scientific Problem Solving

Evidence from a range of fields shows that representation-connection (RC) is the key step towards the solution of a real-world insight problem. However, no study has focused on the inter-individual variability in RC, and little is known about whether structural and resting-state functional signals can account for inter-individual differences in RC. Combining structural (regional grey matter density, rGMD) and functional (fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) and resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC)) analysis approaches was used to examine the neural substrates of RC. The results showed that the RC score was positively correlated with rGMD and fALFF values in the bilateral lingual gyrus (LG), which might be related to relevant visual imagery during the correct matching of a specific prototype with an unsolved technical problem and the retrieval and application of key information from prototypes. In addition, the RC score was negatively correlated with the rGMD in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and functional connectivity analysis revealed that a higher RC score was inversely correlated with the strength of the RSFC between the right LG and the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), which indicated that RC might be supported by decreased response inhibition and the automatic association of semantics.

The role of implicit gender spatial stereotyping in mental rotation performance

Men outscore women in mental rotation. Among the possible explanations for this result are gender stereotypes. Research has shown that instructions confirming or disconfirming the gender stereotype that men are more talented than women may affect performance in some spatial tasks, such as mental rotation, but research so far has shown inconsistent or null results. However, no research to date has assessed whether participants' implicit associations linking men to spatial abilities may modulate these effects. Thus, the goal of this study was to assess the moderating role of the implicit gender spatial stereotyping, that is the automatic associations between men vs. women and space, in male and female participants receiving either stereotypical (stating that men outscore women) or stereotype-nullifying (stating that there is no gender difference) explicit instructions. Results confirmed that men performed better than women in mental rotation, but also showed that in the stereotype-nullifying condition, the higher the automatic associations between space and men the lower men's performance. The discussion focuses on the importance of considering implicit gender spatial stereotyping as a factor that can modulate mental rotation performance.

Intuitive physics of gravitational motion as shown by perceptual judgment and prediction-motion tasks

In Experiment 1, we explored participants' perceptual knowledge of vertical fall by presenting them with virtually simulated polystyrene or wooden spheres falling to the ground from about two meters high. Participants rated the perceived naturalness of the motion. Besides the implied mass of the sphere, we manipulated the motion pattern (i.e., uniform acceleration vs. uniform velocity), and the magnitude of acceleration or velocity. Results show that relatively low values of acceleration or velocity were judged as natural for the polystyrene sphere, whereas relatively high values of acceleration or velocity were judged as natural for the wooden sphere. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli of Experiment 1 were used, but the sphere disappeared behind an invisible occluder at some point of its trajectory. Participants were asked to predict the time-to-contact (TTC) of the sphere with the ground by pressing a key at the exact time of impact of the lower edge of the sphere with the floor of the room. Results show that the estimated TTC for the simulated wooden sphere was slightly but consistently smaller than the estimated TTC for the simulated polystyrene sphere. The influence of the implied mass on participants' responses might be the manifestation of two processes, namely an explicit ‘heavy-fast, light-slow’ heuristic, and/or an implicit, automatic association between mass and falling speed.

Automatic Associations and Conscious Attitudes Predict Different Aspects of Men’s Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Harassment Proclivities

Intimate partner violence against women (IPV) and sexual harassment are both widespread. Research on their causes and attitudinal correlates has rarely examined implicit, automatic cognitive associations related to the partner (in IPV aggressors) or to women (in sexual harassment offenders). The aim of the present research was to study these implicit associations in 129 male German students. Participants completed scales of hostile sexism (HS), masculine gender role stress (MGRS), short-term (STMO) and long-term mating orientation (LTMO), and proclivity to both IPV and sexual harassment. Next they performed a primed lexical decision task that measured whether concepts of violence, power, hostility, and sexuality were differentially associated with representations of women, men, and the participant’s own intimate partner. Results showed that implicit associations of own partner with violence as well as hostility were generally high but did not correlate strongly with the proclivity measures. Furthermore, the proclivity measures were positively predicted by HS, MGRS, and STMO, whereas LTMO negatively predicted IPV proclivity. Practice implications point to the need to address early socialization processes that may shape men’s negative associations with female partners. Some strategies to prevent and reduce these types of implicit associations are discussed.