Biomedical subjects

Mark Spiering

Publications and source records attributed to Mark Spiering.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Preliminary evidence for an automatic link between sex and power among men who molest children.

Understanding critical motivational processes of sexual offenders may ultimately provide important clues to more effective treatments. Implicit, automatic cognitive processes have received minimal attention; however, a lexical decision experiment revealed automatic links between the concepts of power and sex among participants who self-reported attraction to sexual aggression. The current study replicates this experiment with a group of male child molesters and forensic and analogue controls. Subliminally presented sex words elicited a facilitation effect for power words among child molesters only; that is, sex to power associations were evident, as well as a trend for the reverse. These results provide preliminary evidence for an automatic sex-power association in child molesters and may point to a crucial pathological link in the cognitive schemata of sex offenders. As well, the current study suggests that paradigms from cognitive psychology may contribute to multimodal (risk) assessment of sexual offenders.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Conscious processing of sexual information: mechanisms of appraisal.

To elucidate some of the activational mechanisms of sexual response, this study investigated the effects of conscious appraisal of sexual and neutral stimuli on a categorization task and on ratings of sexual arousal. Conscious appraisal is dependent on memory, regulatory, and attentional processes, interacting with one another. It is proposed that regulation is activated by attention, furnished by representations from implicit and explicit memory. Participants (26 men and 25 women) were asked to respond to "target" stimuli that were preceded by supraliminal "prime" stimuli. Primes and targets were operationalized by slides with sexual (i.e., romantic vs. explicit) and neutral content. In a cognitive task, participants had to group randomly presented targets as quickly as possible into sexual and nonsexual categories. Categorization of sexual targets was delayed when they were preceded by sexual primes compared to neutral primes. This was interpreted as an inhibitory process and compared with the Sexual Content-Induced Delay phenomenon (J. H. Geer & H. S. Bellard, 1996; J. H. Geer & J. S. Melton, 1997). No gender difference was found. In a subsequent affective task, participants provided an assessment of sexual arousal, followed by an evaluation of the target. This task was hypothesized to result in differential access to memory, where assessments of sexual arousal are influenced mainly by implicit memory, and where evaluations are influenced mainly by explicit memory. Gender differences were most prominent in the evaluation aspect of this task. It was concluded that cognitive processing of sexual information is similar for both genders, but that gender differences are present in affective processing of sexual information.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Sexual behavior and responsiveness to sexual stimuli following laboratory-induced sexual arousal.

Sexual excitement can be seen as an action disposition. In this study sexual arousal was expected to generate sexual action and to increase interest and responsiveness to sexual stimuli. In two experiments, male and female participants were exposed to a neutral or a sexual film. We measured genital and subjective responses to the film, and sexual behavior following the laboratory visit. In Experiment 2, film exposure was followed by a task in which participants rated the sexual arousability of neutral and sexual pictures. Rating time of the sexual pictures served as an index for sexual interest. Responsiveness to the sexual pictures was measured by modulation of spinal tendinous (T) reflexes. Sexual activity, but not sexual desire, was higher for participants in the sexual film condition than for participants in the neutral condition. Sexual interest and responsiveness to still pictures were not higher for participants in the sexual film condition than for those in the neutral film condition. In addition, men who saw the neutral film showed a greater responsiveness to still pictures than men who saw the sexual film. The results support the view of sexual arousal as an emotional state generating action tendencies and actual sexual behavior.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Priming the sexual system: implicit versus explicit activation.

We investigated implicit versus explicit activation of the sexual system using a priming paradigm in which sexual slides were preceded by either sexual or neutral primes. In the first experiment, primes were made inaccessible to conscious cognitive elaboration. Identification of sexual targets was facilitated by sexual primes, indicating that sexual representations in memory can be activated automatically. In the second experiment, in which primes were presented at a conscious level, identification of sexual targets was decelerated by sexual primes. Primes elicited subjective sexual arousal in Experiment 2 only, demonstrating that the activation of subjective experience requires conscious cognitive elaboration. With the addition of a sexually specific physiological measure, to be constructed to measure initial genital responses, this paradigm may help elucidate activational mechanisms of sexual response.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Conscious processing of sexual information: interference caused by sexual primes.

The concept Sexual Content-Induced Delay (SCID) refers to a hesitancy in decision making related to erotic material (Geer & Bellard, 1996; Geer & Melton, 1997). Empirical evidence about SCID stems from lexical decision tasks. Our previous studies also showed SCID effects in sex versus neutral categorization tasks in which pictures were used. In these tasks, recognition of sexual pictures is delayed when preceded by consciously presented sexual primes. In the current study, 2 manipulations were added to the categorization task to investigate underlying information processing mechanisms of SCID. Firstly, the appraisal process was influenced by varying the instructions. Secondly, primes with nonsexual emotional content were added to test the specificity of the SCID effect. Thirty-seven undergraduates were asked to categorize sexual and neutral pictures that were primed by sexual, threatening, and neutral primes. Participants ignored or focussed prime content dependent on 2 different instructions. Results showed that the SCID effect only emerged when sexual primes were ignored; however, threatening primes also decelerated recognition of sexual pictures after the ignore instruction. Results of the focus instruction were qualitatively different, that is, participants recognized sexual pictures faster when primed sexually. It was suggested that SCID can be interpreted as the activation of regulatory modules by emotional stimuli in the stage of elicitation of emotional response. In contrast, when the sexual system is already activated, it appears that decisions regarding sexual information are facilitated.

Adult↗

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↗