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PubMed1998

Awareness of remembering achieved through automatic and conscious processes in multiple sclerosis.

Fifty multiple sclerosis (MS) and forty-one matched control subjects were administered a word stem completion task and the California Verbal Learning. Test (CVLT). As predicted, priming in a conventional "implicit" task did not differ for MS and control groups, and under "explicit" instructions verbal list recall was significantly lower in the MS group with recognition intact. Application of the process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, Toth, & Yonelinas, 1993) to the word stem task demonstrated that conscious and unconscious processes both contribute to remembering in MS. Exploratory analyses found no group differences in words remembered under inclusion nor exclusion conditions, though preliminary estimates for MS automatic processing exceeded those for controls. As predicted, prospective metamemory judgments reflected subsequent performance for both groups in the inclusion but not the exclusion condition. By contrast, retrospective monitoring for both groups reflected memory performance in both conditions. However post hoc analyses demonstrated that those MS subjects who employed more automatic processing were less aware retrospectively of their successful remembering under exclusion than MS subjects who used less automatic processing.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

How does practice reduce dual-task interference: integration, automatization, or just stage-shortening?

The present study assessed three hypotheses of how practice reduces dual-task interference: Practice teaches participants to efficiently integrate performance of a task pair; practice promotes automatization of individual tasks, allowing the central bottleneck to be bypassed; practice leaves the bottleneck intact but shorter in duration. These hypotheses were tested in two transfer-of-training experiments. Participants received one of three training types (Task 1 only, or Task 2 only, or dual-task), followed by dual-task test sessions. Practice effects in Experiment 1 (Task 1: auditory-vocal; Task 2: visual-manual) were fully explained by the intact bottleneck hypothesis, without task integration or automatization. This hypothesis also accounted well for the majority of participants when the task order was reversed (Experiment 2). In this case, however, there were multiple indicators that several participants had succeeded in eliminating the bottleneck by automatizing one or both tasks. Neither experiment provided any evidence that practice promotes efficient task integration.

Automatism↗

PubMed2004

Simple arithmetic processing: the question of automaticity.

In adult simple arithmetic performance, it is commonly held that retrieval of solutions occurs automatically from a network of stored facts in memory. However, such an account of performance necessarily predicts a uniform reaction time for solution retrieval and is therefore not consistent with the robust finding that reaction time increases with problem size and difficulty. Additionally, past research into arithmetic performance has relied on tasks that may have actually induced and measured attentional processing, thereby possibly confounding previous results and conclusions pertaining to automaticity. The present study therefore, attempted to more reliably assess the influence of automatic processing in arithmetic performance by utilizing a variant of the well-established semantic word-priming procedure with a target-naming task. The overall results revealed significant facilitation in naming times at SOAs of 240 and 1000 ms for congruent targets i.e., targets that represented the correct solutions to problems presented as primes (e.g., 6+8 and 14). Significant inhibition in comparison to a neutral condition (0+0 and 17) was also observed at 120 and 240 ms SOAs in naming incongruent targets (e.g., 6+8 and 17). Furthermore, response times were found to vary as a function of both arithmetic fluency and problem size. Differences in performance to addition and multiplication operations and implications for cognitive research and education are considered.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

The Children's Automatic Thoughts Scale in a clinical sample: psychometric properties and clinical utility.

The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties and clinical utility of the Children's Automatic Thoughts Scale (CATS; Schniering, C. A., & Rapee, R. M. (2002). Development and validation of a measure of children's automatic thoughts: The Children's Automatic Thoughts Scale. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 40, 1091-1109) in a large sample of anxious youth. The participants were 891 referred children and adolescents. Participants completed the CATS and a wide range of symptom measures, and were assessed via a structured diagnostic interview. Previous community-based psychometric properties were confirmed. The scale was highly sensitive to treatment change, and showed evidence of cognitive specificity with reductions in threat and failure beliefs, but not in hostility beliefs following treatment. The CATS demonstrated good convergent validity with related anxiety and depression scales, and moderate discriminant validity was found across anxious, anxious-depressed and anxious-oppositional groups. Implications for the assessment of child anxiety, and difficulties around children "faking good" on anxiety measures are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Automatic and controlled semantic processing: a masked prime-task effect.

A classical definition of automaticity establishes that automatic processing occurs without attention or consciousness, and cannot be controlled. Previous studies have demonstrated that semantic priming can be reduced if attention is directed to a low-level of analysis. This finding suggests that semantic processing is not automatic since it can be controlled. In this paper, we present two experiments that demonstrate that semantic processing may occur in the absence of attention and consciousness. A negative semantic priming effect was found when a low-level prime-task was required and when a masked lexical decision prime-task was performed (Experiment 1). This paper also discusses the limitations of the inhibitory mechanism involved in negative semantic priming effect.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Genital automatisms in childhood partial seizures.

PURPOSE: To describe frequency and electroclinical characteristics as well as localizing and lateralizing value of childhood periictal genital automatisms (GAs). METHODS: Five-hundred-forty-one videotaped seizures of 109 consecutive patients <12 years with refractory partial epilepsy and postoperatively seizure-free outcome were analyzed. Genital automatisms (scratching, fondling or grabbing of the genitals) were monitored by two independent investigators. RESULTS: Eight (four temporal, four extratemporal) patients (7%) showed GA at least once during 20 (3.7%) seizures. Age of patients with GA was between 4.5 and 11.9 (mean 9.5+/-2.4) years and was significantly higher than the age of children without GA (p=0.006). Boys showed GAs more frequently than girls (p=0.026). Genital automatisms appeared both ictally and postictally with a mean duration of 51s. They were unilateral (completed by one hand) in 18/20 seizures and were done by the hand ipsilateral to the seizure onset zone in 16/18 cases (p=0.001). Although consciousness was preserved during GA in 3/8 patients, neither periictal urinary urge nor penile erection was associated with it. CONCLUSIONS: Periictal GAs appear in school-age patients with a similar frequency to that in adults but almost lack in preschool children. Although the presence of childhood GA has neither localizing nor lateralizing value per se, the hand used for GA is more frequently ipsilateral to the seizure onset zone. The mechanisms for childhood GAs are not clear but probably different from those of adults.

Automatism↗

PubMed2006

Automatic perception and synaesthesia: evidence from colour and photism naming in a stroop-negative priming task.

It is widely assumed that synaesthetic perception is highly automatic, as shown by Stroop test. Furthermore, it has been shown that, although automatic, it can be suppressed leading to Negative Priming (NP). However, these assumptions have not been consistently investigated, as not many papers have measured Stroop in synaesthesia, and only one used a NP procedure. Two experiments were carried out in a female synaesthete (MA), and 13 control participants, in which numbers and letters were displayed in colours either congruent or incongruent with MA's photisms. In contrast to control participants, MA showed significant Stroop effect both when naming the colours and when naming the photisms (slower RT when naming a colour or photism that was incongruently coloured versus congruently coloured). For comparison, we also report a control experiment in which the first letters of colour names were displayed in either congruent (e.g., B in blue) or incongruent (e.g., B in red) colours. Significant Stroop and NP effects were found when a control group named the displayed colour of these letters. The synaesthesic Stroop effect shown by MA was greater than that observed in the Control Experiment when MA was to name the displayed colour, but smaller when she was to name the photism of the stimuli. Regarding NP, MA showed an effect similar to that observed in the Control Experiment, but only when she was to name the photisms of the stimuli. Altogether, these results show that synaesthetic perception is highly automatic and difficult to inhibit.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2001

Brain activation during automatic and controlled processing of semantic relations: a priming experiment using lexical-decision.

Semantic relations may be studied using the experimental technique known as semantic priming, in which a word 'primes' the processing of a related target (e.g. lion-tiger), following a short delay. Priming may be automatic or, with longer delays, under more controlled processing. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the cerebral activation during two lexical-decision semantic priming experiments, with a short and long delay, representing automatic and controlled processing, respectively. A further two un-primed lexical-decision tasks were performed to distinguish cerebral activation specific to semantic priming itself from those utilised during lexical-decision processes. Distinct regions of anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were critical to automatic and controlled semantic priming, whilst the putamen and hippocampal complex responded differently to unrelated and semantically related prime-target pairs. Lexical-decision alone revealed activation in posterior temporal cortex especially on the left, in agreement with previous neuroimaging studies. The results provide a plausible neural substrate for common semantic relations independent of task demands and further emphasise the regional functional specialisation of the ACC.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Automatic processing of verbal emotion stimuli in schizophrenia.

In the present study, automatic processing of verbal emotion stimuli was investigated as a function of affective symptoms, emotional state and trait characteristics of chronic schizophrenia patients. A sequential pronunciation priming task was administered to 30 schizophrenia patients with a flat affect expression, 30 schizophrenia patients suffering from anhedonia, 28 schizophrenia patients not suffering from anhedonia or flat affect, and 30 healthy subjects to assess affective and semantic priming effects. The Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (Andreasen, British Journal of Psychiatry, 1989, 155, 53-58) was applied to evaluate the flat affect and anhedonia, and to categorize patients into groups. Schizophrenia patients did not differ from healthy subjects in affective and semantic priming scores. However, affective priming based on positive primes was inversely correlated with negative state and trait affectivity, and positively correlated with trait joy in the patient sample. These results support the view that a decrement in automatic processing facilitation of positive valence might play a role in the development of negative emotions. The symptoms of flat affect and anhedonia do not appear to be associated with impairments in the automatic processing of verbal emotional material in schizophrenia.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Automatisms with preserved responsiveness and ictal aphasia: contradictory lateralising signs during a dominant temporal lobe seizure.

The 25-year-old right-handed woman suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) was referred to our centre for presurgical evaluation. MRI showed a right-sided hippocampal sclerosis. During video-EEG-recorded seizures, abdominal aura was followed by oral automatisms, during which she was completely reactive to external stimuli, although she was unable to speak. Ictal EEG showed right temporal seizure pattern, without contralateral propagation. She had abnormal speech postictally. Speech-activated functional transcranial Doppler sonography revealed right-sided speech dominance. She has become seizure free after a right-sided amygdalo-hippocampectomy. In our patient, contradictory clinical ictal lateralising signs (automatisms with preserved responsiveness vs. ictal and postictal dysphasia) occurred during right-, speech-dominant-sided seizures. This is the first report when automatisms with preserved consciousness occurred during a seizure originating and involving the speech-dominant hemisphere.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

When fair is foul and foul is fair: reverse priming in automatic evaluation.

Responses to information were facilitated by the rapid prior presentation of evaluatively congruent material. This fundamental discovery (R. H. Fazio, D. M. Sanbonmatsu, M. C. Powell, & F. R. Kardes, 1986) marked a breakthrough in research on automatic information processing by demonstrating that evaluative meaning is grasped without conscious control. Experiments employing a word naming task provided stringent tests of the automaticity of evaluation and found support for it. More strikingly, a previously unobserved reversal of these effects (i.e., slower responses to evaluatively matched rather than mismatched items) was found when primes were evaluatively extreme. Procedural variances across 6 experiments revealed that the reverse priming effect was highly robust. This discovery is analogous to demonstrations of contrast effects in controlled judgments. It is theorized that the reverse priming effect reflects an automatic correction for the biasing influence of the prime.

Automatism↗

PubMed1998

What is learned during automatization? II. Obligatory encoding of spatial location.

Six experiments addressed the encoding of location information during automatization, to test a critical prediction of the instance theory of automaticity (G. D. Logan, 1988). Subjects searched 1- or 2-word displays for members of a target category. Specific targets appeared in the same locations consistently throughout training, and then location changed at transfer. Sensitivity to changes in location were assessed with implicit and explicit memory tests. In both tests, sensitivity depended on the number of locations the words could occupy (2 vs. 16). Sensitivity varied with the number of words presented (1 vs. 2) in the implicit test, but not in the explicit test. The results suggest that subjects encoded the locations of the words during automatization, which confirms the predictions of the instance theory.

Automatism↗

PubMed1997

Using numerosity judgments to determine what is learned during automatization.

An important question in learning is the nature of the information required to support skilled, or automatic, performance. In 2 experiments, participants counted patterns of 8-10 objects displayed on a computer screen for 4 sessions of 240 trials each before being transferred to a different set of patterns for a final session of 240 trials. The patterns in the final session differed from those seen in the 4 training sessions in either overall configuration (Experiment 1) or identity of constituents (Experiment 2). Results indicated that both types of information are important in learning and automatization of a counting task and support the idea that what is attended to during training will be necessary to support subsequent automatic performance.

Automatism↗

PubMed2000

Asking questions can change choice behavior: does it do so automatically or effortfully?

The present research uses a technique that permits unique estimation of both automatic and effortful processes in the question-behavior link. Results show that individuals asked to report behavioral intent (vs. those not asked) are more likely to choose options that are highly accessible and positively valenced, regardless of cognitive resources available at the time of processing. This suggests that the effect of intent questions on subsequent behavior is primarily the result of automatic, as opposed to effortful, processing. Practically, this suggests that efforts to debias this robust effect need to affect nonconscious processes and adjust for the automatic impact of being asked an intention question on respondents' behavior.

Automatism↗

PubMed2004

Contextual moderation of racial bias: the impact of social roles on controlled and automatically activated attitudes.

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the social roles implied by specific contexts can attenuate or reverse the typical pattern of racial bias obtained on both controlled and automatic evaluation measures. Study 1 assessed evaluations of Black and Asian faces in contexts related to athlete or student roles. Study 2 compared evaluations of Black and White faces in 3 role-related contexts (prisoner, churchgoer, and factory worker). Study 3 manipulated role cues (lawyer or prisoner) within the same prison context. All 3 studies produced significant reversals of racial bias as a function of implied role on measures of both controlled and automatic evaluation. These results support the interpretation that differential evaluations based on Race x Role interactions provide one way that context can moderate both controlled and automatic racial bias.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Liking is for doing: the effects of goal pursuit on automatic evaluation.

Findings from 3 experiments suggest that participants who were actively engaged in goal pursuit, compared with those who were not pursuing the goal, automatically evaluated goal-relevant objects as relatively more positive than goal-irrelevant objects. In Experiment 3, participants' automatic evaluations also predicted their behavioral intentions toward goal-relevant objects. These results suggest the functional nature of automatic evaluation and are in harmony with the classic conceptualization of thinking and feeling as being in the service of "doing" (e.g., S. T. Fiske, 1992; W. James, 1890; K. Lewin, 1926) as well as with more recent work on the cognitive mechanics of goal pursuit (e.g., G. B. Moskowitz, 2002; J. Y. Shah & A.W. Kruglanski, 2002).

Achievement↗

PubMed2005

Social tuning of automatic racial attitudes: the role of affiliative motivation.

Consistent with the affiliative social tuning hypothesis, this study showed that the desire to get along with another person shifted participants' automatic attitudes toward the ostensible attitudes of that person. In Experiment 1, the automatic racial attitudes of women but not men emulated those of an experimenter displaying race-egalitarian attitudes or attitudes neutral with respect to race. Mediational analysis revealed that the gender difference in social tuning was mediated by liking for the experimenter. In Experiment 2, the likability of the experimenter was manipulated. Individuals who interacted with a likable experimenter exhibited social tuning more so than did those who interacted with a rude experimenter. These findings suggest that affiliative motives may elicit malleability of automatic attitudes independent of manipulations of social group exemplars.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

At the boundaries of automaticity: negation as reflective operation.

The present research investigated whether automatic social-cognitive skills are based on the same representations and processes as their controlled counterparts. Using the cognitive task of negating valence, the authors demonstrate that enhanced practice in negating the valence of a stimulus can lead to changes in the underlying associative representation. However, procedural, rule-based components of negations were generally unaffected by practice (Experiments 1-3). Moreover, negations of evaluative stimuli did not influence automatic evaluative responses to these stimuli, unless the negation was included in the associative representation of a stimulus (Experiments 4-6). These results suggest that some practice-related skill improvements are limited to conditions in which a general procedure can be substituted by the retrieval of results of previous applications from associative memory. Implications for research on automaticity and social cognition are discussed.

Automatism↗