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Stimulus Material (stimulus + material)
Selected AbstractsUnreliability of the dot probe taskEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 7 2005Stefan C. Schmukle Abstract The dot probe task is a widely used measure of attention allocation to threatening stimuli. The present two studies examine the reliability of different versions of this task using words as well as pictures as stimulus material. Estimates of both internal consistency and retest reliability over one week lead to the conclusion that the dot probe task is a completely unreliable measure of attentional allocation in non-clinical samples. This unreliability may explain the inconsistent findings for the dot probe task as reported in the literature. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Neural correlates of exemplar novelty processing under different spatial attention conditionsHUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 11 2009Christian Michael Stoppel Abstract The detection of novel events and their identification is a basic prerequisite in a rapidly changing environment. Recently, the processing of novelty has been shown to rely on the hippocampus and to be associated with activity in reward-related areas. The present study investigated the influence of spatial attention on neural processing of novel relative to frequently presented standard and target stimuli. Never-before-seen Mandelbrot-fractals absent of semantic content were employed as stimulus material. Consistent with current theories, novelty activated a widespread network of brain areas including the hippocampus. No activity, however, could be observed in reward-related areas with the novel stimuli absent of a semantic meaning employed here. In the perceptual part of the novelty-processing network a region in the lingual gyrus was found to specifically process novel events when they occurred outside the focus of spatial attention. These findings indicate that the initial detection of unexpected novel events generally occurs in specialized perceptual areas within the ventral visual stream, whereas activation of reward-related areas appears to be restricted to events that do possess a semantic content indicative of the biological relevance of the stimulus. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Social representations of organ donors and non-donorsJOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2005Mary Anne Lauri Abstract This paper illustrates the empirical investigation of social representations by means of photographs as stimulus material and the technique of correspondence analysis to study the resulting data. The research was part of a campaign carried out to promote organ donation in Malta. The study tries to find out whether a public communication campaign could change perceptions. Five focus groups were held before the campaign and another five, two months after the campaign. Part of the data collected through these focus groups was analysed using correspondence analysis. The results showed that before the campaign, donors were generally perceived to be either young or important people or public personalities. After the campaign, donors were perceived more to be ordinary family people, educated, generous and religious. On the other hand, before the campaign, non-donors were seen as conservative, uncouth and uncaring, whereas after the campaign non-donors were generally perceived to be older, uninformed and uneducated people. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] NGRI Revisited: Venirepersons' Attitudes Toward the Insanity Defense,JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 8 2006Brooke Butler Three hundred venirepersons from the 12th Judicial Circuit in Sarasota, Florida completed the following booklet of stimulus materials: one question measuring participants' level of support for insanity defense; a 16-item measure assessing participants' attitudes toward the myths associated with the insanity defense, the legal definitions of insanity, and mental illness; a case scenario; verdict preference; and standard demographic questions. Level of support for the insanity defense was significantly related to participants' attitudes toward legal standards of insanity, mental illness, and the myths associated with the insanity defense. In addition, results indicated that level of support for the insanity defense, age, educational level, occupation, type of prior jury service, and political views were significantly related to verdict preference. Notably, three factors that have been found to impact verdict preference in previous research failed to do so in the current study: participants' experience with psychological disorders; participants' exposure to psychotropic medications; and participants' experience with psychologists or psychiatrists. The findings both replicate and extend earlier findings by suggesting that attitudes toward the insanity defense are more complex than previously imagined. [source] The effects of rational and experiential information processing of expert testimony in death penalty casesBEHAVIORAL SCIENCES & THE LAW, Issue 6 2004Daniel A. Krauss J.D., Ph.D. Past research examining the effects of actuarial and clinical expert testimony on defendants' dangerousness in Texas death penalty sentencing has found that jurors are more influenced by less scientific pure clinical expert testimony and less influenced by more scientific actuarial expert testimony (Krauss & Lee, 2003; Krauss & Sales, 2001). By applying cognitive,experiential self-theory (CEST) to juror decision-making, the present study was undertaken in an attempt to offer a theoretical rationale for these findings. Based on past CEST research, 163 mock jurors were either directed into a rational mode or experiential mode of processing. Consistent with CEST and inconsistent with previous research using the same stimulus materials, results demonstrate that jurors in a rational mode of processing more heavily weighted actuarial expert testimony in their dangerousness assessments, while those jurors in the experiential condition were more influenced by clinical expert testimony. The policy implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||