Figure-ground asymmetries in the Implicit Association Test (IAT).

Based on the assumption that binary classification tasks are often processed asymmetrically (figure-ground asymmetries), two experiments showed that association alone cannot account for effects observed in the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Experiment 1 (N = 16) replicated a standard version of the IAT effect using old vs. young names as target categories and good and bad words as attribute categories. However, reliable compatibility effects were also found for a modified version of the task in which neutral words vs. nonwords instead of good vs. bad words were used as attribute categories. In Experiment 2 (N = 8), a reversed IAT effect was observed after the figure-ground asymmetry in the target dimension had been inverted by a previous go/nogo detection task in which participants searched for exemplars of the category "young." The experiments support the hypothesis that figure-ground asymmetries produce compatibility effects in the IAT and suggest that IAT effects do not rely exclusively on evaluative associations between the target and attribute categories.

"What else could he have done?" Creating false answers in child witnesses by inviting speculation.

In 2 experiments (N = 111 children), a suggestive technique for interviewing child witnesses called "inviting speculation" was examined. Children were presented with atypical actions for common objects in a clown show. One week later, the children were asked to speculate (e.g., "What else could he have done with the knife?") in a between-subjects design on all or none of the items (Experiment 1) and in a within-subjects design on part of the items (Experiment 2), thereby getting highly probable speculations (e.g., "to cut"). After a 3-week delay, the experimenters found more highly probable but not more other false answers for the experimental items (Experiment 2). After a 5-6-month delay, the rate of (unspecified) false answers increased compared with the baseline (Experiments 1 and 2). The short-term effect is explained by a speculation-as-misinformation assumption, whereas the long-term effect is explained by the use of a metastrategy.

Stimulus-feature specific negative priming.

We report the results of two experiments that showed that the time needed to respond to a feature of a stimulus increases when that particular feature of that particular stimulus previously had to be ignored. The data of Experiment 2 argue against the hypothesis that the observed stimulus-feature specific negative priming was due to a response conflict instigated by automatic episodic retrieval of prime responses. Experiment 2 also showed that the effects were not caused by difficulties in switching between prime and probe tasks and provided additional evidence for the fact that priming effects were stimulus-feature specific. The present results suggest that the selective inhibition or episodic encoding mechanisms that are assumed to underlie negative priming can operate in a more specific and powerful manner than has been previously assumed.

Automatic vigilance: the attention-grabbing power of approach- and avoidance-related social information.

The automatic processing of information was investigated, varying valence (positive vs. negative) and relevance (other-relevant traits [ORT] vs. possessor-relevant traits [PRT]; G. Peeters, 1983) of stimuli. ORTs denote unconditionally positive or negative consequences for persons in the social environment of the holder of the trait (e.g., honest, brutal) whereas PRTs denote unconditionally positive or negative consequences for the trait holder (e.g., happy, depressive). In 2 experiments using the Stroop paradigm, larger interference effects were found for ORTs than PRTs. This is due to the behavior-relatedness of ORTs. In a go/no-go lexical decision task (Experiment 3), participants either had to withdraw their finger from a pressed key (i.e., "avoid") or had to press a key (i.e., "approach") if a word was presented. Responses to negative ORTs were relatively faster in the withdraw condition, whereas positive ORTs were relatively faster in the press condition.

Dissociative affective and associative priming effects in the lexical decision task: yes versus no responses to word targets reveal evaluative judgment tendencies.

The affective priming effect (AP; i.e., shorter evaluative or lexical decision latencies for affectively congruent prime-target pairs) has often been interpreted as evidence for spreading activation from the prime to affectively congruent targets. The present study emphasizes the view that in the lexical decision task, the prime-target configuration is implicitly evaluated as a question of the form "Is (prime) (target)?" (e.g., "Is death wise?") so that there is a tendency to affirm in cases of congruency and to negate in cases of incongruency. Therefore, after establishing the AP with the lexical decision task in Experiment 1, in Experiment 2 the assignment of yes responses to words and nonwords was varied. For the word = yes condition, the AP emerged, whereas the data pattern was reversed for the word = no condition. In Experiment 3, a comparable pattern of results was not found for symmetrical or backward associatively related prime-target pairs.

[Situation models in text comprehension: will emotionally relieving information be automatically activated?]. / Situationsmodelle in der Textverarbeitung: Werden emotional entlastende Informationen automatisch aktiviert?

It was tested whether the "situation model" framework can be applied to research on coping processes. Therefore, subjects (N = 80) were presented with short episodes (formulated in a self-referent manner) about everyday situations which potentially ended in a negative way (e.g., failures in achievement situations; losses etc.). The first half of each episode contained a critical sentence with emotionally relieving information. Given a negative ending, this information should be automatically activated due to its relieving effect. A two-factorial design was used. First, a phrase from the critical sentence was presented for recognition either after a negative ending, a positive ending, or before the ending. Second, with minor changes a control sentence (with an additionally distressing character) was constructed for each potentially relieving sentence. As hypothesized, an interaction emerged: Given a negative ending, the error rate was significantly lower for relieving information than for the control version, whereas there was no difference if the test phrase was presented before the end or after a positive end.

[A fair test of the spreading activation hypothesis: a study of affective congruency effects in the Stroop test]. / Ein fairer Test für die Aktivationsausbreitungshypothese: Untersuchung affektiver Kongruenzeffekte in der Stroop-Aufgabe.

It is argued that the Stroop color-naming task is especially suited to investigate affective priming effects in the sense of an automatic spreading of activation to other concepts of the same valence, because (a) the Stroop task is not prone to an explanation of affective congruency effects on the basis of reaction priming or reaction interference, and (b) it is possible to detect specific (fast and efficient stimulus processing due to heightened accessibility) as well as nonspecific (cognitive interference, triggering of global action tendencies) effects of an activation of valenced concepts in the Stroop task. Two experiments were conducted to investigate associative and affective priming effects with the Stroop task. In a first experiment (N = 36, SOA = 300 ms) a standard priming procedure was chosen; the primes were presented without any processing instructions. In a second experiment (N = 48, SOA = 500ms) the primes had to be reproduced after naming the color of the target. In both experiments significant association effects were found for the associative material. For the valenced material no affective congruency effects were found in either experiment. The present results are not compatible with the hypothesis of an automatic affective spreading of activation that was given as an explanation of affective congruency effects in previous studies using different tasks.

[Experimental analysis of processing stressful information: differential and age-related psychological aspects]. / Experimentelle Analysen zur Verarbeitung belastender Informationen: differential- und alternspsychologische Aspekte.

In two experimental studies with older subjects, the differential accessibility of palliative interpretations of negative situations was investigated using a scenario paradigm. Short episodes (formulated in a self-referent manner) were presented on a CRT-screen. Each story contained a palliative and distressing interpretation of a negative life situation. In a recognition test, the reaction time and the error variable were used as an index of accessibility of those aspects. In a pilot study (N = 62; age of subjects 49-79 years), it was found that the dispositional tendency to reinterpret negative life situations flexibly correlates positively with the accessibility of palliative information. Using a priming approach in the main study, it was shown that this result is based on a differential moderated association of the negative life-event and the type of information (i.e., palliative or distressing) (N = 120; age of subjects: 56-80 years). Especially with respect to scenarios which are centered on age-related declines, results were more pronounced with increasing age. The results are discussed in terms of a theory which contrasts active-instrumental efforts of coping with accommodative mechanisms of adjustment and reinterpretation.