Walter Perrig
Mood effects in explicit memory and in unconscious priming
Authors
Walter Perrig (University of Berne)
Mood-congruency effects in explicit memory are well documented in the literature. The nature of these effects is far less clear. On one side there is the possibility that emotions guide attention and mood-congruent selective processes in an automatic and unconscious way. This “emotion hypothesis” competes with the “knowledge hypothesis” which assumes that activated schematic knowledge about mood states, about their causal factors and consequences controls selective mechanisms in a conscious and intentional way of learning and retrieval. In this contribution two experiments are presented in which mood induction is compared with mood simulation in an intentional learning condition, an incidental learning condition and in an unconscious priming condition. In the explicit memory experiment mood-congruency effects are shown after mood induction but not mood simulation. Moreover, mood-congruency effects are restricted to happy mood and are more pronounced in intentional learning than in incidental learning. In the unconscious priming experiment mood induction as well as mood simulation had mood-congruent effects on priming in the condition of positive mood but not in the condition of negative mood. This asymmetry in explicit memory as well as in unconscious priming is discussed in terms of mood dependent processing mode.
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Ulf-Dietrich Reips
Inattentional Blindness and Reactance in Product Placements
Authors
Ulf-Dietrich Reips (University of Zurich)
Roman Schaub (University of Zurich)
Philipp Hürlimann (University of Zurich)
An inattentional blindness (IB) paradigm („Gorilla in our midst“, Simons & Chabris, 1999) was used in three Web experiments to test the influence of product placements on implicit (choice of the product) and explicit measures (attitude towards the product). It was hypothesized that participants would show more positive reactions towards the product in IB conditions, and show reactance whenever they became aware of the placements.
Participants watched a short movie. A distraction task was applied, so a number of participants did not report having seen the product placement. During the first experiment the product was a logo, in experiments 2 and 3 a can of an energy drink. All products were designed for the purpose of the experiments only, and do not exist in the market.
Strength of IB was manipulated by task difficulty and salience (experiment 1), frequency of product placement (experiments 2 and 3), and announcement of placement (experiment 3). In experiment 1 (196 participants) both implicit and explicit measures showed a more favorable tendency towards the product during IB. In experiments 2 (126 participants) and 3 (172 participants) there was a positive effect of low presentation frequency on attitude towards the product that diminished with increasing frequency, independent of IB. In some (not all) conditions they also more often chose the product. Experiments 2 and 3 are available at http://psych-wextor.unizh.ch:8080/phu/1/ and http://psych-wextor.unizh.ch:8080/phu/2/
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Vinzenz Morger
Isn’t it Odd? List Context Effects in Parity Judgments – Comparing Data from Laboratory- and Web-based Experiments
Authors
Vinzenz Morger (University of Education Thurgau)
Ulf Reips (University of Zurich)
Beat Meier (University of Berne)
A parity judgment is a categorization task with well-defined concepts: “even” or “odd”. Therefore, one would assume parity judgments to be based on analytic processing, driven by a clear decision criterion and it should not be affected by implicit cognitions from recent context information. However, in laboratory studies it was demonstrated, that such decisions are sensitive to different lists of previously processed instances. Response latencies for categorizing 85 as an “odd number” were substantially slower when presented after a list of dissimilar odd numbers (e.g. 31, 53, 77) as compared to a list of similar odd numbers (83, 65, 25). Moreover, almost one third of the participants rejected 85 as an “odd number” when it followed the list of dissimilar numbers, whereas error rates were negligible in the context of the list with similar odd numbers. We present further evidence of this list context effect from a study that was conducted under controlled laboratory conditions and as an open WEB-experiment using JavaScript for the collection of responses. In both conditions, the latency effect was replicated and comparable to the data of the original experiment. The error effect was replicated as well, however, it was less pronounced than in the original laboratory studies. These data underscore the utility of WEB-experimenting in order to extend the general validity of laboratory findings to less controlled situations.
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Beat Meier
Correlated streams of information are necessary but not sufficient for incidental sequence learning: Evidence from task sequence learning.
Authors
Beat Meier (University of Berne)
Josephine Cock (University of Berne)
With the standard sequence learning paradigm, the serial reaction time task, correlation of the stimulus and the response sequence is an intrinsic part of the design. Therefore, the existence of correlated streams of information may be a necessary pre-condition for the occurrence of incidental learning. To test this hypothesis we used a task sequence learning paradigm during which three simple decision tasks (case, colour, and shape decisions) were presented in a repeated 6-element cycle or in a random order. In addition in Experiment 1, the sequence of required left- or right hand responses as well as the position of the stimulus on the screen also followed a repeated 6-element cycle or a random order. We predicted that only conditions containing correlated sequences would produce learning effects. The results were consistent with this expectation. In Experiment 2, we used univalent stimulus-category to response mappings, thereby creating the opportunity for a correlation between finger-type (index, middle, ring fingers) and task ordering (i.e., index fingers - case decision, middle fingers - colour decision, ring-fingers - shape decision) when the latter were presented in a repeated sequence. Under this condition no sequence learning occurred. The results implicate that the presence of a correlated sequence is necessary but not sufficient for incidental learning. Active processing of two correlated streams of information as part of the task requirements is mandatory.
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Isabelle Cherney
The Development of Sex Differences in Incidental Memory
Authors
Isabelle Cherney (University of Creighton (USA))
The hunter-gatherer theory predicts that females should have better incidental memory for objects and locations than males. Cherney and Ryalls (1999) tested this prediction with young children and adults showing that both females and males remembered more objects congruent with their own sex, but that there was no overall advantage for females. There was no location memory advantage either when controlling for the gender of the objects. Their results were more congruent with gender schematic processing than the hunter-gatherer theory. In a subsequent study, 160 children’s and adults’ incidental and intentional recall of static and dynamic pictures showed that gender-schematic processing was only evident in the incidental memory condition. Gender schematic processing was similar across the age groups. Another study showed that incidental memory tasks are suitable to identify the accuracy between mental terms and memory behavior in very young children. In several subsequent studies, a total of 206 adult participants were exposed for a brief or extended period to 30 gender-stereotyped objects while playing a computer game under stress or no stress conditions. The findings showed that low distractibility and higher trait anxiety facilitated recall but that these findings were moderated by stress. Gender schematic recall was also manifest among this sample. The talk will address what these and other studies can tell us about the development of sex differences in incidental memory.
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