Biomedical subjects

Mark Rotteveel

Publications and source records attributed to Mark Rotteveel.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

The effects of stress-induced cortisol responses on approach-avoidance behavior.

High glucocorticoid stress-responses are associated with prolonged freezing reactions and decreased active approach and avoidance behavior in animals. The present study was designed to investigate the effects of cortisol responses and trait avoidance on approach-avoidance behavior in humans. Twenty individuals were administered a computerized approach-avoidance (AA)-task before and after stress-induction (Trier Social Stress Test). The AA-task involved a reaction time (RT) task, in which participants made affect congruent and affect incongruent arm movements towards positive and threatening social stimuli. Affect congruent responses involved arm extension (avoidance) in response to angry faces and arm flexion (approach) in response to happy faces. Reversed responses were made in affect incongruent instruction conditions. As expected, participants with high cortisol responses showed significantly decreased RT congruency-effects in a context of social stress. Low trait avoidance was also associated with diminished congruency-effects during stress. However, the latter effect disappeared after controlling for the effects of cortisol. In sum, in agreement with animal research, these data suggest that high cortisol responses are associated with a decrease in active approach-avoidance behavior during stress. These findings may have important implications for the study of freezing and avoidance reactions in patients with anxiety disorders, such as social phobia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Automatic affective evaluation does not automatically predispose for arm flexion and extension.

Affect may have the function of preparing organisms for action, enabling approach and avoidance behavior. M. Chen and J. A. Bargh (1999) suggested that affective processing automatically resulted in action tendencies for arm flexion and extension. The crucial question is, however, whether automaticity of evaluation was actually achieved or whether their results were due to nonautomatic, conscious processing. When faces with emotional expressions were evaluated consciously, similar effects were obtained as in the M. Chen and J. A. Bargh study. When conscious evaluation was reduced, however, no action tendencies were observed, whereas affective processing of the faces was still evident from affective priming effects. The results suggest that tendencies for arm flexion and extension are not automatic consequences of automatic affective information processing.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Loading working memory enhances affective priming.

Stronger affective priming (Murphy & Zajonc, 1993) with suboptimal (i.e., reduced consciousness) than with optimal (i.e., full consciousness) prime presentation suggests that nonconscious processes form an important part of emotions. Merikle and Joordens (1997) have argued that both impoverished presentation and divided attention can produce suboptimal conditions and result in parallel effects. We manipulated attention by means of a concurrent working memory load while keeping presentation duration constant, as participants evaluated Japanese ideographs that were preceded by happy, neutral, or angry faces (affective priming) and male or female faces (nonaffective priming). In contrast to nonaffective priming, affective priming was larger with divided attention than with focused attention. It is concluded that manipulations of stimulus quality and of attention can both be used to probe the distinction between conscious and nonconscious processes and that the highest chances of obtaining the pattern of stronger priming with suboptimal presentation than with optimal presentation occur in the affective domain.

Affect↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Visual performance of adults with prelingual auditory impairment.

Reaction times and picture evaluations by 18 adults with hearing loss were compared with those of 18 matched controls during two visual priming tasks. In Task 1, participants reacted to sexual and plant target pictures (while influenced by similar preceding pictures) by pressing "sex" or "plant" buttons. In Task 2, they evaluated target Japanese ideographs (while influenced by preceding positive or negative facial expressions as prime pictures) by pressing "positive" or "negative" buttons. In Task 1, the controls had the faster responses. In Task 2, they showed the usual congruent priming effect during very short prime presentations. Participants with hearing loss showed this effect only during short and long prime presentation times; thus, they were not superior to the controls in picture recognition, instead showing (a) impaired processing of visual information or (b) impaired perceptual-motor skills regarding quick responses to visual information (or both).

Adult↗