The timeline of threat processing in repressors: more evidence for early vigilance and late avoidance

Preference for ugly faces? -A cognitive study of attentional and memorial biases toward facial information among young females with facial dissatisfaction

Dissatisfaction with facial appearance is one of the strongest contributors to body image disturbance among young Chinese females and leads to a series of psychological and behavioral disorders. By conducting behavioral and ERP experiments, this study illustrates how young females in China with facial dissatisfaction process different levels of facial attractiveness. Experiments 1 and 2 are behavioral experiments in which the dot-probe paradigm was used to explore the participant's attentional bias to facial attractiveness. The results showed that regardless of whether the face image was presented above or below the threshold, young females with facial dissatisfaction exhibited attentional orientation toward lowly attractive faces and attentional avoidance to both lowly and highly attractive faces, while the control group showed difficulty in attentional disengagement from highly attractive faces. In experiment 3, the learning-recognition task was used to examine mnemonic bias toward facial attractiveness among females with facial dissatisfaction, and EEG data were also recorded during the encoding and retrieval phases. The study found that young females with facial dissatisfaction exhibited a mnemonic preference for lowly attractive images at both the encoding and retrieving stages, with higher P1, N170, P2, and N300 induced by lowly attractive faces, while the control group preferred highly attractive faces. In conclusion, young females with facial dissatisfaction tend to exhibit attentional orientation and mnemonic bias toward lowly attractive faces.

Memory for pictures of sexual assault: Sensitive maintenance of ambiguous stimuli

Individual differences in dispositional coping might influence how ambiguous situations involving interactions of men and women are interpreted and remembered. Specifically, we hypothesized that women with a sensitive coping style actively maintain ambiguously threatening stimuli in their memory, showing so-called sensitive maintenance. As a prerequisite to investigate this hypothesis, two surveys (Studies 1 and 2; N = 151 and N = 252) were conducted to answer the questions whether fear of sexual assault is of relevance for young women in Germany and whether ambiguous (rather than only unambiguously threatening) situations are experienced to a significant extent. After confirming this for our target population, our main hypothesis was tested in Study 3 (N = 192) by combining tasks assessing the appraisal and the forgetting of nonthreatening, threatening, and ambiguous pictures showing interactions of men and women, and by varying the cognitive load during the retention interval. Whereas fear of rape predicted the appraisal of pictures, coping dispositions predicted forgetting of ambiguously and unambiguously threatening pictures in the hypothesized way. Results are discussed from the perspective of adaptivity and functionality of memory.

Continuity and discontinuity in memory for threat

Using a paradigm that allows a quasi-continuous tracking of memory performance over time, two experiments were designed to test the hypotheses that (a) persons with a cognitively avoidant style of coping with threat manifest a dissociation between (intact) short-term and (reduced) long-term retrieval of aversive information and (b) persons with a vigilant coping style recall aversive information particularly well after long retention intervals, provided they are free to think about aversive events. Study 1 (N = 75) showed that avoiders manifest a poor memory for aversive pictures after long retention intervals only. Study 2 (N = 95) replicated this finding. In addition, manipulation of the cognitive load during the retention interval influenced vigilants' recall of aversive information in the predicted way. Results indicate that processes occurring during the retention interval are essential for individual difference in memory for aversive information and require similar attention as encoding, appraisal, and retrieval processes.

Fact or artefact: an item response theory analysis of median split based repressor classification

OBJECTIVE

Many studies have investigated the phenomenon of repression. Repressors are defined as individuals who deny or avoid the experience of negative affect. A common method for the identification of repressors is a median split approach using questionnaires that measure anxiety and social desirability. The present study aimed to evaluate this most frequently used procedure using a psychometric model.

DESIGN

We applied item response theory using model assumptions comparable with those of the median split approach to detect repressors and examine the appropriateness of the median split procedure.

METHODS

A mixed sample of 655 students and members of the general public completed the two scales usually used to identify repressors, namely the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale.

RESULTS

Employing item response theory mixture-model analyses, we were unable to replicate the median split solution on a latent level.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results did not support the identification of repressors via dichotomization of the two scales. The median split approach does not appear to detect repressors satisfactorily. The implications of the results for the conceptualization and assessment of repressors are discussed.

Could repressive coping be a mediating factor in the symptom profile of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia?

Despite a relatively high prevalence, and the enduring patronage of the disorder by psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry, innovative conceptualization of schizophrenia in a client-empowering and quality of life-enhancing way appears to represent a vacuum within the clinical agenda, certainly taking second place to 'patient management'. However, against this bland background of medicalization of what is clearly a poorly understood and complex multifactorial syndrome, innovative treatment approaches aimed at symptom control, in particular, the stress vulnerability model (SVM), have been developed. However, the SVM is an incomplete model of patient experience and says little of aetiological note. One area of psychological function that may give further insight into the symptom experience associated with schizophrenia within the context of stress vulnerability concerns the mechanisms of repression. Ironically, the notion of repression will for many represent the epitome of nonevidence-based psychiatric theory and related psychodynamic therapy practice. However, more contemporary work within the psychological literature has aimed to make the concept both measurable and observable. No longer occluded by the context of psychoanalysis, cognitive science accounts of repression may be of value in facilitating understanding of the variability and predictability of symptoms of schizophrenia and may provide a dimension of therapeutic engagement allied to the SVM.

Spontaneous Inferences, Implicit Impressions, and Implicit Theories

People make social inferences without intentions, awareness, or effort, i.e., spontaneously. We review recent findings on spontaneous social inferences (especially traits, goals, and causes) and closely related phenomena. We then describe current thinking on some of the most relevant processes, implicit knowledge, and theories. These include automatic and controlled processes and their interplay; embodied cognition, including mimicry; and associative versus rule-based processes. Implicit knowledge includes adult folk theories, conditions of personhood, self-knowledge to simulate others, and cultural and social class differences. Implicit theories concern Bayesian networks, recent attribution research, and questions about the utility of the disposition-situation dichotomy. Developmental research provides new insights. Spontaneous social inferences include a growing array of phenomena, but they have been insufficiently linked to other phenomena and theories. We hope the links suggested in this review begin to remedy this.