Cognitive Processes In Response Research Articles

Cognitive Processes in Response to Goal Failure: A Study of Ruminative Thought and its Affective Consequences

Failure to make progress toward personal goals can lead to negative affective states, such as depression and anxiety. Past research suggests that rumination in response to goal failure may prolong and intensify those acute emotional responses, but that process remains unclear. We examined ruminative thought processes following experimentally manipulated exposure to past failures to attain advancement (promotion) goals and safety (prevention) goals. We predicted that priming of past promotion and prevention goal failures would lead individuals to think repetitively about these failures and that negative affect would be evoked by their recognition of their failures. Further, we predicted that when people experience a sufficient magnitude of negative affect, ruminative thought would intensify and prolong the negative affect associated with that type of goal failure. Results yielded strong support for our predictions regarding promotion goal failure and modest support for those regarding prevention goal failure.

Human Preferences and Risky Choices

EDITORIAL article Front. Psychol., 15 November 2011Sec. Cognition volume 2 - 2011 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00333

Multisensory Interactions Elicited by Audiovisual Stimuli Presented Peripherally in a Visual Attention Task: A Behavioral and Event-Related Potential Study in Humans

We applied behavioral and event-related potential measurements to study human multisensory interactions induced by audiovisual (AV) stimuli presented peripherally in a visual attention task in which an irrelevant auditory stimulus occasionally accompanied the visual stimulus. A stream of visual, auditory, and AV stimuli was randomly presented to the left or right side of the subjects; subjects covertly attended to the visual stimuli on either the left or right side and promptly responded to visual targets on that side. Behavioral results showed that responses to AV stimuli were faster and more accurate than those to visual stimuli only. Three event-related potential components related to AV interactions were identified: (1) over the right temporal area, approximately 200 to 220 milliseconds; (2) over the centromedial area, approximately 290 to 310 milliseconds; and (3) over the left and right ventral temporal area, approximately 290 to 310 milliseconds. We found that these interaction effects occurred slightly later than those reported in previously published AV interaction studies in which AV stimuli were presented centrally. Our results suggest that the retinotopic location of stimuli affects AV interactions occurring at later stages of cognitive processing in response to a visual attention task.

Blocks and bodies: Sex differences in a novel version of the Mental Rotations Test

A novel version of the Mental Rotations Test (MRT) that alternated the standard block figures with three-dimensional human figures was administered to 99 men and 129 women. Women and men differed predictably in their retrospective reports of childhood play and digit ratios, a putative measure of prenatal androgen action. Compared to the block figure items, human figure items on the modified MRT were associated with an improvement in performance in both sexes. However, consistent with the study hypothesis, the enhancing effect of the human figure condition on performance as measured by conventional scores was smaller in men compared to women and not at all evident in men when performance was measured by ratio scores. A closer inspection of the human figures effects on test scores showed performance in women improved for both male and female figure items. In contrast, relative to scores on block figure items, performance in men improved when stimuli were male figures but did not improve when stimuli were female figures. These results add to the evidence that the magnitude of sex differences in scores on the MRT may vary according to the test content and item properties. The findings suggest that online measures of cognitive processing in response to different classes of test stimuli (e.g., animate vs. inanimate objects, self-relevant vs. neutral stimuli) may prove useful in research aimed at understanding the hormonal and social factors contributing to the sex difference in performance on the MRT.

Characteristics of processing for trait adjectives in depressive persons: an event-related potential study.

Event-related potentials (ERP) following emotive words were investigated in 22 healthy subjects with high (HD) or low (LD) depressive scores. The ERP was recorded following a visual presentation of emotive adjectives. The adjectives presented included words that subjects felt to be fit or unfit to their own character or traits, and that they perceived as positive or negative. The latency of P300 (P1) for negative words was significantly longer than that for positive words at Pz in HD subjects. The N400 (N1) in HD subjects showed a longer latency than that in LD subjects (p<0.01) at Cz and Pz. However, there was no difference in amplitude between the fit and unfit category, nor in the positive or negative category of words between the LD and HD groups. The present study suggests that an excessive level of cognitive processing in response to passive stimulation by non-specific emotive words occurs in normal subjects with a depressive condition.

Aggressive and Nonaggressive Boys' Physiological and Cognitive Processes in Response to Peer Provocations

This study examined physiological and social-cognitive correlates of aggression in an in vivo laboratory provocation situation. Fifty-one male participants (ages 9 to 13) were selected based on teacher aggression screenings, ranging from normative to high levels. A provocation was induced by the experimenter communicating a threat from an unseen "peer" in the laboratory. Bivariate linear regression analyses showed that aggression significantly predicted heart rate at both pre- and postinduction, and aggression significantly predicted attributions of intent following the provocation. Results indicated that aggression was a significant predictor of changes in hostile attribution and heart rate following the threat induction. A positive correlation also was found between heart rate change and attribution change. The findings suggest that both physiological and social-cognitive processes should be addressed in clinical interventions with aggressive children.

When norms are violated: imagined interactions as processing and coping mechanisms

Relying on the fundamental assumption of violation theories that norm violations stimulate receiver thought processes, we explored receivers' symbolic cognitive processes in response to particular types of norm violations. Specifically, we reasoned that imagined interactions serve as a processing mechanism whereby individuals review the behavior of another, identify the type of norm violation, and make decisions about how to respond-all within their efforts to cope with deviations from norms. Utilizing the classroom context, we examined how teacher norm violations, operationalized as teacher misbehaviors, provoke students' imagined interaction activity. Results revealed that imagined interactions were used in respect to all three types of violations profiled and that participants were significantly more likely to engage in imagined interactions than to interact with or confront norm violators. The results are discussed in terms of implications for extending violation theories to include context-based goal attainment and power differentials between interactants.