Experimental Manipulation of Model Ecosystems

2000 ◽  
pp. 325-337
Author(s):  
Robert G. Wetzel ◽  
Gene E. Likens
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Model Ecosystems

Experimental Manipulation of Model Ecosystems

1991 ◽  
pp. 301-313
Author(s):  
Robert G. Wetzel ◽  
Gene E. Likens
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Model Ecosystems

Parasympathetic Concomitants of Habitual, Spontaneous, and Instructed Emotional Suppression

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asmir Gračanin ◽  
Igor Kardum ◽  
Jasna Hudek-Knežević
Keyword(s):  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Integration Model ◽  
Sinus Arrhythmia ◽  
Emotional Suppression ◽  
Emotion Experience ◽  
Similar Relation

Abstract. The neurovisceral integration model proposes that different forms of self-regulation, including the emotional suppression, are characterized by the activation of neural network whose workings are also reflected in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). However, most of the previous studies failed to observe theoretically expected increases in RSA during emotional suppression. Even when such effects were observed, it was not clear whether they resulted from specific task demands, a decrease in muscle activity, or they were the consequence of more specific self-control processes. We investigated the relation between habitual or trait-like suppression, spontaneous, and instructed suppression with changes in RSA during negative emotion experience. A modest positive correlation between spontaneous situational and habitual suppression was observed across two experimental tasks. Furthermore, the results showed greater RSA increase among participants who experienced higher negative affect (NA) increase and reported higher spontaneous suppression than among those with higher NA increase and lower spontaneous suppression. Importantly, this effect was independent from the habitual suppression and observable facial expressions. The results of the additional task based on experimental manipulation, rather than spontaneous use of situational suppression, indicated a similar relation between suppression and RSA. Our results consistently demonstrate that emotional suppression, especially its self-regulation component, is followed by the increase in parasympathetic activity.

Confound It!

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 855-867 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Kulas ◽  
Rachael Klahr ◽  
Lindsey Knights
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Response Pattern ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Scoring Method ◽  
Method Effect ◽  
Coding Method ◽  
The Social ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Method Factors ◽  
Psychological Inventory

Abstract. Many investigators have noted “reverse-coding” method factors when exploring response pattern structure with psychological inventory data. The current article probes for the existence of a confound in these investigations, whereby an item’s level of saturation with socially desirable content tends to covary with the item’s substantive scale keying. We first investigate its existence, demonstrating that 15 of 16 measures that have been previously implicated as exhibiting a reverse-scoring method effect can also be reasonably characterized as exhibiting a scoring key/social desirability confound. A second set of analyses targets the extent to which the confounding variable may confuse interpretation of factor analytic results and documents strong social desirability associations. The results suggest that assessment developers perhaps consider the social desirability scale value of indicators when constructing scale aggregates (and possibly scales when investigating inter-construct associations). Future investigations would ideally disentangle the confound via experimental manipulation.

Validating Four Standard Scales in Spiritually Practicing and Nonpracticing Samples Using Propensity Score Matching

2008 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 165-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niko Kohls ◽  
Harald Walach
Keyword(s):  
Propensity Score ◽  
Propensity Score Matching ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Propensity Scores ◽  
Total Sample ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Brief Symptom Inventory ◽  
Time Interaction ◽  
Social Support Scale ◽  
Lower Test

Validation studies of standard scales in the particular sample that one is studying are essential for accurate conclusions. We investigated the differences in answering patterns of the Brief-Symptom-Inventory (BSI), Transpersonal Trust Scale (TPV), Sense of Coherence Questionnaire (SOC), and a Social Support Scale (F-SoZu) for a matched sample of spiritually practicing (SP) and nonpracticing (NSP) individuals at two measurement points (t1, t2). Applying a sample matching procedure based on propensity scores, we selected two sociodemographically balanced subsamples of N = 120 out of a total sample of N = 431. Employing repeated measures ANOVAs, we found an intersample difference in means only for TPV and an intrasample difference for F-SoZu. Additionally, a group × time interaction effect was found for TPV. While Cronbach’s α was acceptable and comparable for both samples, a significantly lower test-rest-reliability for the BSI was found in the SP sample (rSP = .62; rNSP = .78). Thus, when researching the effects of spiritual practice, one should not only look at differences in means but also consider time stability. We recommend propensity score matching as an alternative for randomization in variables that defy experimental manipulation such as spirituality.

Personality Genetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Derringer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Behavior Genetics ◽  
Genetic Research ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Sequence Information ◽  
Natural Experiments ◽  
Genetic Sequence ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Causal Pathway

Although correlations between personality and health are consistently observed, often the causal pathway, or even the direction of effect, is unknown. Genes provide an additional node of information which may be included to help clarify the relationship between personality and health. Genetically informative studies, whether focused on family-identified relationships or specific genotypes, provide clear benefits to disentangling causal processes. Genetic measures approach near universal reliability and validity: processes of inheritance are consistent across cultures, geography, and time, such that similar models and instruments may be applied to incredibly diverse populations. Although frequency and intercorrelations differ by ancestry background (Novembre et al., 2008) and cultural context (Tucker-Drob & Bates, 2016) may exert powerful moderating effects, fundamental form and function is consistent across all members of our species, and even many other species. Genetic sequence information is also of course highly temporally stable, and possesses temporal precedence. That is, the literal genetic sequence is lifetime-stable and comes before all other experiences. Human behavior genetic research, like most personality research, faces limitations in terms of causal inferences that may be made in the absence of experimental manipulation. But behavior genetics takes advantage of natural experiments: populations that differ in terms of genetic similarity (either inferred – such as twins – or measured – such as genotyping methods) to begin to unravel the complex influences on individual differences in personality and health outcomes.

The face value of feedback: Facial behavior is shaped by goals and punishments during interaction with dynamic faces

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Yi ◽  
Philip Pärnamets ◽  
Andreas Olsson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Facial Expression ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Mechanistic Explanation ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Corrugator Supercilii ◽  
Dynamic Faces ◽  
Facial Behavior ◽  
Reinforcement Learning Models

Responding appropriately to others’ facial expressions is key to successful social functioning. Despite the large body of work on face perception and spontaneous responses to static faces, little is known about responses to faces in dynamic, naturalistic situations, and no study has investigated how goal directed responses to faces are influenced by learning during dyadic interactions. To experimentally model such situations, we developed a novel method based on online integration of electromyography (EMG) signals from the participants’ face (corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major) during facial expression exchange with dynamic faces displaying happy and angry facial expressions. Fifty-eight participants learned by trial-and-error to avoid receiving aversive stimulation by either reciprocate (congruently) or respond opposite (incongruently) to the expression of the target face. Our results validated our method, showing that participants learned to optimize their facial behavior, and replicated earlier findings of faster and more accurate responses in congruent vs. incongruent conditions. Moreover, participants performed better on trials when confronted with smiling, as compared to frowning, faces, suggesting it might be easier to adapt facial responses to positively associated expressions. Finally, we applied drift diffusion and reinforcement learning models to provide a mechanistic explanation for our findings which helped clarifying the underlying decision-making processes of our experimental manipulation. Our results introduce a new method to study learning and decision-making in facial expression exchange, in which there is a need to gradually adapt facial expression selection to both social and non-social reinforcements.

TESTING GOAL-DRIVEN CAPTURE BY THREAT

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Robert Harrison Brown
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Attentional Capture ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Experimental Manipulation ◽  
Contingent Capture ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Affective Stimuli ◽  
Clinical Disorders ◽  
Positive Stimuli

Attention has long been characterised within prominent models as reflecting a competition between goal-driven and stimulus-driven processes. It remains unclear, however, how involuntary attentional capture by affective stimuli, such as threat-laden content, fits into such models. While such effects were traditionally held to reflect stimulus-driven processes, recent research has increasingly implicated a critical role of goal-driven processes. Here we test an alternative goal-driven account of involuntary attentional capture by threat, using an experimental manipulation of goal-driven attention. To this end we combined the classic ‘contingent capture’ and ‘emotion-induced blink’ (EIB) paradigms in an RSVP task with both positive or threatening target search goals. Across six experiments, positive and threat distractors were presented in peripheral, parafoveal, and central locations. Across all distractor locations, we found that involuntary attentional capture by irrelevant threatening distractors could be induced via the adoption of a search goal for a threatening category; adopting a goal for a positive category conversely led to capture only by positive stimuli. Our findings provide direct experimental evidence for a causal role of voluntary goals in involuntary capture by irrelevant threat stimuli, and hence demonstrate the plausibility of a top-down account of this phenomenon. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to current cognitive models of attention and clinical disorders.

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