Dirk Hermans

Autobiographical Memory Specificity and Emotional Disorder

The authors review research showing that when recalling autobiographical events, many emotionally disturbed patients summarize categories of events rather than retrieving a single episode. The mechanisms underlying such overgeneral memory are examined, with a focus on M. A. Conway and C. W. Pleydell-Pearces (2000) hierarchical search model of personal event retrieval. An elaboration of this model is proposed to account for overgeneral memory, focusing on how memory search can be affected by (a) capture and rumination processes, when mnemonic information used in retrieval activates ruminative thinking; (b) functional avoidance, when episodic material threatens to cause affective disturbance; and (c) impairment in executive capacity and control that limits an individuals ability to remain focused on retrieval in the face of distraction.

The affective priming effect: Automatic activation of evaluative information in memory

Abstract Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, and Kardes (1986) argued that affect may be activated automatically from memory on the mere observation of an affect-loaded stimulus. Using a variant of the standard sequential priming paradigm, it was demonstrated that the time needed to evaluate target words as positive or negative decreased if they were preceded by a similarly valenced prime word, but increased when preceded by a prime of opposite valence. Several aspects of their procedure, however, do not warrant their conclusion concerning the unconditionality of the effect. The present research investigated the generality of this affective priming effect. In Experiment 1, it was tested whether the effect can be generalised to more complex visual material. Stimulus pairs consisted of colour slides. Subjects had to evaluate the targets as quickly as possible. In Experiment 2, the standard word-word procedure was used, but target words had to be pronounced. In both experiments, significant affective priming effects...

A time course analysis of the affective priming effect.

The argument that automatic processes are responsible for affective/evaluative priming effects has been primarily based on studies that have manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; i.e., the interval between the onset of the prime and the onset of the target). Moreover, these SOA studies provide an insight in the time course of the activation processes underlying automatic affect/attitude activation. Based on a fine-grained manipulation of the SOA employing either the evaluative decision task (Experiment 1) and the pronunciation task (Experiment 2) we concluded that affective priming, and hence automatic affect activation, is based on fast-acting automatic processes. The results of Experiment 3 provide a valid explanation for an apparent discrepancy between the results of Experiments 1 and 2 and previous findings. Finally, the results of Experiment 3 support the prediction of Jarvis and Petty (1996) that affective priming effects should be stronger for participants who are more chronically engaged in conscious evaluations.

On the generality of the affective Simon effect

In affective Simon studies, participants are to select between a positive and negative response on the basis of a nonaffective stimulus feature (i.e., relevant stimulus feature) while ignoring the valence of the presented stimuli (i.e., irrelevant stimulus feature). De Houwer and Eelen (1998) showed that the time to select the correct response is influenced by the match between the valence of the response and the (irrelevant) valence of the stimulus. In the affective Simon studies that have been reported until now, only words were used as stimuli and the relevant stimulus feature was always the grammatical category of the words. We report four experiments in which we examined the generality of the affective Simon effect. Significant affective Simon effects were found when the semantic category, grammatical category, and letter-case of words was relevant, when the semantic category of photographed objects was relevant, and when participants were asked to give nonverbal approach or avoidance responses on the basis of the grammatical category of words. Results also showed that the magnitude of the affective Simon effect depended on the nature of the relevant feature.

Extinction in Human Fear Conditioning

Although most extinction research is conducted in animal laboratories, the study of extinction learning in human fear conditioning has gained increasing attention over the last decade. The most important findings from human fear extinction are reviewed in this article. Specifically, we review experimental investigations of the impact of conditioned inhibitors, conditioned exciters, context renewal, and reinstatement on fear extinction in human samples. We discuss data from laboratory studies of the extinction of aversively conditioned stimuli, as well as results from experimental clinical work with fearful or anxious individuals. We present directions for future research, in particular the need for further investigation of differences between animal and human conditioning outcomes, and research examining the role of both automatic and higher-order cognitive processes in human conditioning and extinction.

Differences in the affective processing of words and pictures

Abstract It is often assumed that affective information is represented within a semantic network. This hypothesis is more closely examined here, using a picture-word variant of the Stroop task. The studies are inspired by a recent theory of W.R. Glaser and M.O. Glaser (1989), who proposed a distinction between a semantic system, to which pictures have privileged access, and a lexical system with privileged access for words. If affective information is stored in the semantic system, differences in the affective processing of words and pictures can be expected. In Experiment 1, subjects had to name the affective value of the picture (or the word) of a picture-word stimulus. It was found that affect-incongruent distractors influenced the affective categorisation of words, but not of pictures. Also, the evaluation of pictures was much faster than the evaluation of words. Finally, the results showed that negative targets were categorised more quickly than positive ones, regardless of the type of target. In Exp...

Affect 4.0: A free software package for implementing psychological and psychophysiological experiments

We describe Affect 4.0, a user-friendly software package for implementing psychological and psychophysiological experiments. Affect 4.0 can be used to present visual, acoustic, and/or tactile stimuli in highly complex (i.e., semirandomized and response-contingent) sequences. Affect 4.0 is capable of registering response latencies and analog behavioral input with millisecond accuracy. Affect 4.0 is available free of charge.

Fear and Learning: From Basic Processes to Clinical Implications

This book brings together the most recent empirical developments in learning theory for understanding the etiology and treatment of fears and phobias. The editors have assembled contributions from leading scientists whose work represents the cutting edge in such areas as measurement methodology, neurobiology, cognitive processing, behavioral models, emotion regulation, and pharmacological and other clinical treatments. After a review of the history of fear learning and basic concepts and methods in fear measurement, subsequent chapters elucidate processes of acquisition and maintenance of fear, finally moving to the extinction, renewal, and reinstatement of fear. The research synthesized in this book has applicability to the entire spectrum of anxiety disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder, and specific phobias.

Affective priming of semantic categorisation responses

Fazio, Sanbonmatsu Powell, & Kardes, (1986) demonstrated that less time is needed to affectively categorise a target as positive or negative when it is preceded by a prime with the same valence (e.g., summer-honest) compared to when the target is preceded by a prime with a different valence (e.g., cancer-honest). Such effects could be due to spreading of activation within a semantic network and/or to Stroop-like response conflicts. If a spreading of activation mechanism operates in priming tasks, primes should also facilitate nonaffective semantic processing of affectively congruent targets. In Experiment 1, we failed to observe affective priming when participants responded on the basis of whether the target referred to a person or animal. Experiment 2 revealed significant affective priming when participants responded on the basis of the valence of the targets but not when the semantic category of the targets (person or object) was relevant, despite the fact that apart from the task, both conditions were identical. The present results suggest that affective priming in the affective categorisation task is primarily due to the operation of a Stroop-like response conflict mechanism.

Reality monitoring and metacognitive beliefs related to cognitive confidence in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The present study investigated general reality monitoring ability, and selective reality monitoring ability for anxiety relevant actions in a group of individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and a group of non-anxious controls. In addition, reality monitoring confidence was assessed, as well as specific meta-cognitive beliefs related to cognitive confidence (by means of the Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire (MCQ)). No differences were found between both groups in actual reality monitoring ability. Unlike previous studies, the reality monitoring task included actions that were related to the individual concerns of the OCD patients and were ideographically selected. Nevertheless, no differential reality monitoring effect was observed for the anxiety relevant stimuli. Data from the MCQ, however, revealed that OCD patients had less overall confidence in their memory for actions and their reality monitoring ability. Analysis of the confidence ratings of the reality monitoring task showed that this reduced confidence was restricted to the neutral actions. No differences were observed for patients that reported low or high frequencies of checking behaviour. The whole of these data do not support memory deficit models of OCD, but are in line with recent emphasis on the importance of memory confidence and other meta-cognitive beliefs in OCD.