Jaime Redondo

The Spanish adaptation of ANEW (affective norms for English words).

This article presents the Spanish adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999). The norms are based on 720 participants’ assessments of the translation into Spanish of the 1,034 words included in the ANEW. The evaluations were done in the dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). Apart from these dimensions, five objective (number of letters, number of syllables, grammatical class, frequency and number of orthographic neighbors) and three subjective (familiarity, concreteness and imageability) psycholinguistic indexes are included. The Spanish adaptation of ANEW can be downloaded at www.psychonomic.org.

Affective ratings of sound stimuli

This article present the Spanish assessments of the 111 sounds included in the International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS; Bradley & Lang, 1999b). The sounds were evaluated by 159 participants in the dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance, using a computer version of the Self-Assessment Manikin (Bradley & Lang, 1994). Results are compared with those obtained in the American version of the IADS, as well as in the Spanish adaptations of the International Affective Picture System (P. J. Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999; Moltó et al., 1999) and the Affective Norms for English Words (Bradley & Lang, 1999a; Redondo, Fraga, Padrón, & Comesaña, 2007).

Effects of conditioned stimulus presentation on diminution of the unconditioned response in aversive classical conditioning

The purpose of this experiment was to study whether conditioned diminution of the unconditioned response (UR) is a phenomenon with an associative basis. Discriminative electrodermal conditioning was used with an interval between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US; aversive white-noise) of 8 s. Fifty-nine volunteer subjects received discrimination training in which one CS was reinforced (CS+ /US) and a second CS was non-reinforced (CS-). After this discriminative training phase, participants were tested using intermixed trials in which a US was preceded by either a CS+, a CS-, or a neutral stimulus (NS). The results indicated that the skin conductance response amplitude of the UR was lower when the US was preceded by the CS+ than when the US was preceded by the CS- or the NS. However, NS/US presentations elicited URs of greater amplitude than those of the CS- /US presentations. The results can be explained in terms of orienting reflex reinstatement. In addition, it is argued that conditioned diminution has an associative basis.

Emotional nouns affect attachment decisions in sentence completion tasks.

We report three sentence completion experiments in which we manipulate the emotional dimension of the nouns in a complex noun phrase (NP) that precedes a relative clause (RC), as in the classic ambiguity in Someone shot the servant of the actress who was on the balcony. The aim was to see whether nouns such as orgy or genocide affect the well-established preference of Spanish to adjoin the relative clause high in the tree (to servant instead of actress in the example above). We manipulated the valence and arousal of the lexical entities residing in the NP. Our results indicate that (a) the inclusion of either pleasant or unpleasant words induces changes in the usual NP1 preference found in Spanish; (b) the effects of high-arousal words are especially clear, in that they pull RC adjunction towards the NP where they are located, be it the NP1 or the NP2; and (c) in the context of sentence production, these kinds of words seem intense enough to promote changes in (and even reverse) a solid syntactic bias. We discuss these findings in the light of existing theories of syntactic ambiguity resolution.

Effects of CS-US Interval on Unconditioned Response Diminution in Human Heart Rate Classical Conditioning

Abstract This experiment studies the role of the conditioned response (CR) in explaining the unconditioned response (UR) diminution phenomenon in heart rate (HR) classical conditioning. In order to analyze the implication of the different CR components on UR diminution, the interstimulus interval (ISI) was varied. Sixty volunteer subjects received discrimination training with an interval between conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US; aversive white noise) of 8 s. After the discrimination training phase, subjects were randomized into three different groups according to an ISI of 1, 5, or 8 s. The subjects of each group were then tested with five presentations of CS+/US. The results showed that UR amplitude as well as the deceleration immediately before this response (pre-UR deceleration) were significantly lower in the 5 s and 8 s ISI groups than in the 1 s ISI group. In addition, UR amplitude and pre-UR deceleration were statistically the same in the 5 s and 8 s ISI groups. These findin...

Effects of CS-US interval modification on diminution of the unconditioned response in electrodermal classical conditioning.

The purpose of this experiment was to study whether interstimulus interval (ISI) modification differentially affects the amplitude of the unconditioned response (UR amp.). Seventy-five volunteer subjects received discrimination training with an interval between conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US; aversive white noise) of 8 s. After the discrimination training phase, subjects exhibiting discriminative control were randomized into three groups that differed according to the ISI, of 1, 5 or 8 s. The subjects of each group were then tested with five presentations of CS + /US. The results demonstrate that the UR showed a greater amplitude when an ISI of 8 s was used than with ISIs of 1 or 5 s. No significant differences were found between the UR amp. of the 1- and 5-s ISI groups. These findings are discussed as a result of a hypothetical experimentally induced blend of the anticipatory CRs with the UR.

Is it possible to modify fear memories in humans with extinction training within a single day

Extinction procedures have been used widely in the study of fear memories, and different positions have been adopted regarding the efficacy of such procedures and the mechanisms involved. It has been argued that extinction may interfere with the consolidation of the fear memory if the procedure is applied with the appropriate timing after acquisition. However, the opposite position is also held, that is, that the extinction does not achieve an elimination of the fear response. The aim of the present study is to test the short-term effects of immediate extinction in fear reduction when this extinction is preceded by a retrieval trial. For this, a procedure similar to that employed by Schiller et al. (Nature 463(7277): 49–53, 2010) was used, but in a single day and with white noise as an aversive unconditioned stimulus. The results indicate that a CS+ single retrieval trial before the extinction procedure after acquisition was more effective in fear reduction than standard immediate extinction.

Preventing the return of fear memories with postretrieval extinction: A human study using a burst of white noise as an aversive stimulus.

Standard extinction procedures seem to imply an inhibition of the fear response, but not a modification of the original fear-memory trace, which remains intact (Bouton, 2002, 2004). Typically, the behavioral procedure used to modify this trace is the so-called postretrieval extinction, consisting of fear-memory reactivation followed by extinction applied within the reconsolidation window. However, the application of this technique yields mixed results, probably due to a series of boundary conditions that limit the effectiveness of postretrieval-extinction effects. In this study a number of potential, and hitherto unexplored, moderators of such effects are considered. Using an interval of 48 hr between extinction and re-extinction, the findings show a spontaneous recovery similar to that found in studies that use a 24-hr interval. Also, the use of intervals of 10 and 20 min between reactivation and extinction led to a similar fear return. Finally, the burst of white noise used as an unconditioned stimulus (US) here was shown to be as effective as the electric shock normally used in the study of fear-memory reconsolidation. These findings suggest that postretrieval extinction is an effective behavioral technique for modifying the original fear memory and for the elimination of the fear return.