Distributional Analyses of Priming and Frequency in Lexical Decision: The Role of Individual Differences

Crying is a powerful solicitation of caregiving, yet little is known about the cognitive processes underpinning caring responses to crying others. This study examined (1) whether crying (compared to sad and happy) faces differentially elicited semantic activation of caregiving, and (2) whether individual differences in cognitive and emotional empathy moderated this activation. Ninety participants completed a lexical decision task in which caregiving, neutral, and nonwords were presented after subliminal exposure (24 ms) to crying, sad, and happy faces. Individuals low in cognitive empathy had slower reaction times to caregiving (vs. neutral) words after exposure to crying faces, but not after sad or happy faces. Results are discussed with respect to the role of empathy in response to crying others.

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The Role of Phonology in Iconicity Effects: Evidence from Individual Differences

10.31234/osf.io/cp8ys ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Kelsey Cnudde ◽

David Sidhu ◽

Penny M. Pexman

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Lexical Decision ◽

Lexical Decision Task ◽

Phonological Processing ◽

Decision Task ◽

Iconic Language

Growing evidence suggests that, along with arbitrariness, non-arbitrariness exists in language. An example of this is iconicity, in which a word’s form resembles its meaning. We investigated whether phonological processing plays a key role in the facilitated processing of iconic language (i.e., in some studies the meanings of iconic words are retrieved more quickly and more accurately). First, we reanalyzed the phonological lexical decision task (PLDT) data from Experiment 2 in Sidhu, Vigliocco, and Pexman (2020), and used accuracy on pseudohomophone trials to gauge extent of phonological processing. Participants with greater pseudohomophone accuracy were found to show larger iconic facilitation. We further tested this relationship with a new PLDT experiment, and collected imitativeness ratings for 522 words in order to manipulate the imitativeness of the iconic stimuli used. We found again that individual differences in phonological processing interacted with iconic facilitation. Further, these effects were found only for imitative iconic words (i.e., onomatopoeia and ideophones), suggesting that direct imitativeness is important to iconic facilitation. These findings suggest phonology plays a key role in iconic facilitation, and that the extent to which an individual engages in phonological processing may affect the strength of observed iconicity effects.

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Elaborating the role of reflection and individual differences in the study of folk-economic beliefs

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x18000274 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

Author(s):

Kevin Arceneaux

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Evolutionary History ◽

Behavioral Responses ◽

History Of ◽

Economic Beliefs

AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.

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Two Short Tests Fail to Detect Vigilance Decrements

European Journal of Psychological Assessment ◽

10.1027//1015-5759.17.1.48 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 48-55 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Juan Botella ◽

María José Contreras ◽

Pei-Chun Shih ◽

Víctor Rubio

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

High Performance ◽

Selection Process ◽

Vigilance Task ◽

Air Traffic Controllers ◽

Job Selection ◽

Performance Deterioration ◽

Short Test ◽

Psychological Dimensions

Summary: Deterioration in performance associated with decreased ability to sustain attention may be found in long and tedious task sessions. The necessity for assessing a number of psychological dimensions in a single session often demands “short” tests capable of assessing individual differences in abilities such as vigilance and maintenance of high performance levels. In the present paper two tasks were selected as candidates for playing this role, the Abbreviated Vigilance Task (AVT) by Temple, Warm, Dember, LaGrange and Matthews (1996) and the Continuous Attention Test (CAT) by Tiplady (1992) . However, when applied to a sample of 829 candidates in a job-selection process for air-traffic controllers, neither of them showed discriminative capacity. In a second study, an extended version of the CAT was applied to a similar sample of 667 subjects, but also proved incapable of properly detecting individual differences. In short, at least in a selection context such as that studied here, neither of the tasks appeared appropriate for playing the role of a “short” test for discriminating individual differences in performance deterioration in sustained attention.

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Individual Differences in the Name Similarity Effect

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000133 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 35 (2) ◽

pp. 111-118

Author(s):

Daniel J. Howard ◽

Roger A. Kerin

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Impression Management ◽

Interactive Effect ◽

Purchase Intentions ◽

Brand Attitude ◽

Self Monitoring ◽

Similarity Effect ◽

And Behavior ◽

Usage Context

The name similarity effect is the tendency to like people, places, and things with names similar to our own. Although many researchers have examined name similarity effects on preferences and behavior, no research to date has examined whether individual differences exist in susceptibility to those effects. This research reports the results of two experiments that examine the role of self-monitoring in moderating name similarity effects. In the first experiment, name similarity effects on brand attitude and purchase intentions were found to be stronger for respondents high, rather than low, in self-monitoring. In the second experiment, the interactive effect observed in the first study was found to be especially true in a public (vs. private) usage context. These findings are consistent with theoretical expectations of name similarity effects as an expression of egotism manifested in the image and impression management concerns of high self-monitors.

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The Role of Distress Disclosure Tendencies in the Experience and Expression of Laboratory-Induced Sadness

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000222 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 38 (1) ◽

pp. 55-62 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jeffrey H. Kahn ◽

Daniel W. Cox ◽

A. Myfanwy Bakker ◽

Julia I. O’Loughlin ◽

Agnieszka M. Kotlarczyk

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Emotional Reactivity ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Negative Emotion ◽

Theoretical Models ◽

Laboratory Research ◽

Emotion Words ◽

Distress Disclosure ◽

Computerized Text Analysis

Abstract. The benefits of talking with others about unpleasant emotions have been thoroughly investigated, but individual differences in distress disclosure tendencies have not been adequately integrated within theoretical models of emotion. The purpose of this laboratory research was to determine whether distress disclosure tendencies stem from differences in emotional reactivity or differences in emotion regulation. After completing measures of distress disclosure tendencies, social desirability, and positive and negative affect, 84 participants (74% women) were video recorded while viewing a sadness-inducing film clip. Participants completed post-film measures of affect and were then interviewed about their reactions to the film; these interviews were audio recorded for later coding and computerized text analysis. Distress disclosure tendencies were not predictive of the subjective experience of emotion, but they were positively related to facial expressions of sadness and happiness. Distress disclosure tendencies also predicted judges’ ratings of the verbal disclosure of emotion during the interview, but self-reported disclosure and use of positive and negative emotion words were not associated with distress disclosure tendencies. The authors present implications of this research for integrating individual differences in distress disclosure with models of emotion.

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