Paul Eelen

When somatic information threatens, catastrophic thinking enhances attentional interference

&NA; Styles of catastrophic thinking about pain have been related to an inability to divert attention away from pain. We investigated whether pain catastrophizers displayed high attentional interference during a threatening low‐intensity electrocutaneous stimulus (ES). In Experiment 1, 44 undergraduates performed a tone discrimination task whilst experiencing several times an ES on the left or right arms. Tones were also presented 250 ms and 750 ms after ES onset. Participants were threatened that a high‐intensity painful stimulus would occur at one site. As predicted, pain catastrophizers displayed pronounced task interference immediately after threat stimulus onset. In Experiment 2, threat was induced in 36 undergraduates by informing them that an ES excites pain fibres. Again, catastrophizers had marked interference immediately after onset. The results are discussed in terms of how catastrophizing amplifies somatosensory information and primes fear mechanisms.

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.

Contingency awareness in evaluative conditioning: A case for unaware affective-evaluative learning

Abstract According to Martin and Levey (1987) evaluative conditioning is different from signal learning, i.e. the acquisition of knowledge about predictive relations between environmental events. The hypothesis was tested that evaluative conditioning, unlike signal learning, does not require awareness of the CS-US contingency. In three pilot experiments it was demonstrated that pairing neutral stimuli with either liked or disliked stimuli is sufficient to change neutral stimuli into a positive or negative direction. As indicated by postconditioning recognition questionnaires, this evaluative shift did not require and was not even influenced by contingency awareness. These findings were replicated and corroborated in an experiment, using a concurrent awareness assessment procedure and more fine-grained evaluative response measurements. The relevance of this conditioning without contingency awareness is discussed in the context of recent information processing models of Pavlovian conditioning.

Once in contact always in contact: Evaluative conditioning is resistant to extinction

Abstract The present study aimed at obtaining some further support for the hypothesis of a distinction between two basically different kinds of learning in a Pavlovian conditioning preparation: signal-learning and affective-evaluative learning ( Baeyens et al. , 1988a,b ; Levey and Martin, 1987 ). In this respect, we conducted an experiment to verify the Levey and Martin (1983, 1987) hypothesis that, unlike signal-learning, evaluative conditioning should be resistant to extinction. Mere contingent presentation of neutral with (dis)liked stimuli was sufficient to change the affective—evaluative tone of the originally neutral stimuli in a (negative) positive direction ( p not have any influence on the acquired evaluative value of the originally neutral stimuli ( p p et al. , 1986).

Human evaluative conditioning: Acquisition trials, presentation schedule, evaluative style and contingency awareness

Two different processes may be operative in human Pavlovian conditioning: signal learning and evaluative learning. Whereas most studies on evaluative conditioning focused on a mere demonstration of the phenomenon or on a theoretical analysis of the underlying processes, some basic parameters of evaluative learning are still unexplored. Hence, using the standard neutral picture--(dis)liked picture pairing paradigm (Baeyens, Eelen & Van den Bergh, 1990), in this study the effect of two parameters of evaluative conditioning was assessed on a between-subjects base, namely the Number of Acquisition Trials (2/5/10/20) and the Presentation Schedule of the stimulus pairs (blockwise or random). Additionally, the study included an exploratory analysis of the potential effects of the Evaluative Style of subjects (Feelers vs Thinkers, operationalized in terms of speed of emitting evaluations). Finally, the relationship between contingency awareness and evaluative learning was reassessed. Neutral-liked conditioning was found to be quadratically related to the number of acquisition trials (increase in effect up to 10 trials, decrease from 10 to 20 trials), whereas neutral-disliked conditioning linearly increased with increasing numbers of trials. Randomized vs blockwise presentation schedules of the stimulus pairs did differentially affect the overall pattern of conditioning, but in a way which was both unexpected and difficult to account for theoretically. Both the Evaluative Style of subjects and contingency awareness were demonstrated to be generally orthogonal to conditioned shifts in CS valence. Based on these findings, some practical suggestions are provided for the application of evaluating conditioning based therapeutical interventions to affective-behavioral disorders which are centred around inappropriate (dis)likes.

An Affective Variant of the Simon Paradigm

In this paper, we introduce anaffective variant of the Simon paradigm. Three experiments are reported in which nouns and adjectives with a positive, negative, or neutral affective meaning were used as stimuli. Depending on the grammatical category of the presented word (i.e. noun or adjective), participants had to respond as fast as possible by saying a predetermined positive or negative word. In Experiments 1 and 2, the words POSITIVE and NEGATIVE were required as responses, in Experiment 3, FLOWER and CANCER were used as response words. Despite the fact that participants were explicitly instructed to ignore the affective meaning of the presented words, reaction times were faster when the affective connotation of the presented word and the correct response was the same than when it differed. The results lendfurther support tothe hypothesis that stimulus valence can be processed automatically. We also argue that the affective Simon paradigm can be used as a flexible tool for the study of affective-process...

Avoidance and Confrontation of Painful, Back-Straining Movements in Chronic Back Pain Patients

Avoidance of painful activities has been proposed to be an important nsk factor for the initiation and maintenance of chronic low back suffering, whereas exposure to these activities has been suggested to be beneficial for recovery. In a cross-sectional study, the differences between chronic patients with avoidant and confrontational styles were investigated using self-report measures and a behavioral test. Participants were first classified as avoiders or confronters. In comparison with confronters, avoiders reported greater frequency and duration of pain, higher fear of pain and injury, more disability in daily living, and more attentiorr to back sensations. Finally, avoiders reported more fear of (re)injury during the behavioral test and had a worse performance than confronters. The results suggest a close link between the fear of pain/(re)injury on one hand and avoidance behavior and physical deconditioning on the oither hand.

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.

Autobiographical memory specificity and affect regulation: an experimental approach.

This study investigated J. M. G. Williamss (1996) affect-regulation hypothesis that level of specificity of autobiographical memory (AM) is used to minimize negative affect. It was found that a negative event leads to more reports of subjective stress in high- as compared with low-specific participants. Also, afterward, high-specific participants rated their unprompted memories for the event as more unpleasant. The results indicate that, relative to high specificity, being less specific in the retrieval of AMs is associated with less affective impact of a negative event. Results are discussed within the affect-regulation model. It is suggested that future research take a more functional perspective on AM specificity.