The relationship between differential stimulus relatedness and implicit measure effect sizes

Cummins, Jamie; Roche, Bryan; Tyndall, Ian; Cartwright, Aoife

doi:10.1002/jeab.437

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 40 publications

(54 reference statements)

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“…It is assumed that the faster the response, the stronger is the participant’s attitude toward the relation presented on the screen. As hypothesized for other implicit measures (Cummins et al, 2018), the IRAP allows researchers to determine the existence and strength of relations between stimuli.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional Faces in Symbolic Relations: A Happiness Superiority Effect Involving the Equivalence Paradigm

Bortoloti

Almeida

et al. 2019

Front. Psychol.

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The stimulus equivalence paradigm presented operational criteria to identify symbolic functions in observable behaviors. When humans match dissimilar stimuli (e.g., words to pictures), equivalence relations between those stimuli are likely to be demonstrated through behavioral tests derived from the logical properties of reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity. If these properties are confirmed, one can say that those stimuli are members of an equivalence class in which each member is substitutable for the others. A number of studies, which have established equivalence classes comprised of arbitrary stimuli and pictures of faces expressing emotions, have found that valences of the faces affect the relatedness of equivalent stimuli. Importantly, several studies reported stronger relational strength in equivalence classes containing happy faces than in equivalence classes containing angry faces. The processes that may account for this higher degree of relatability of happy faces are not yet known. The current study investigated the dynamics of the symbolic relational responding involving facial expressions of different emotions by means of the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). Participants were 186 undergraduate students who were taught to establish two equivalence classes, each comprising pictures of faces expressing either happiness (for one class) or a negative emotion (for another class), and meaningless words. The IRAP effect was taken as an index for the relational strength established between equivalent stimuli in the different equivalence classes. The dynamics of arbitrary relational responding in the course of the four IRAP trial types revealed that the participants exhibited a stronger IRAP effect in trials involving the happy faces and a weaker IRAP effect in trials involving the negative faces. These findings indicate that the happy faces had higher impact on the symbolic relational responding than the negative faces. The potential role played by the orienting function of happy vs. negative faces is discussed. By considering other studies that also reported a happiness superiority effect in other contexts, we present converging evidence for the prioritization of positive affect in emotional, categorical, and symbolic processing.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional Faces in Symbolic Relations: A Happiness Superiority Effect Involving the Equivalence Paradigm

Bortoloti

Almeida

et al. 2019

Front. Psychol.

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“…That these effects reflect learning is well-substantiated. Novel implicit evaluations can be established by learning interventions (Charlesworth et al, 2020;De Houwer et al, 1998), and these effects increase with more extensive learning (Cummins et al, 2018;Cummins & Roche, 2020). Effects can also be dramatically shifted for both experimental stimuli (Cone et al, 2017) and real-life stimuli with strong pre-existing implicit evaluations (Van Dessel et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implicit measures of beliefs

Cummins¹

2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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The assessment of the thoughts and evaluations of human beings is a central feature of modern psychological science. Further to this, many researchers are specifically interested in the automatic thoughts and evaluations of individuals. To assess automatic thoughts and evaluations, researchers typically use a range of measurement procedures whose outcomes are broadly referred to as implicit measures (De Houwer, 2006). Historically, researchers have believed that only associations between stimuli operate at the automatic level. As a consequence, the procedures of implicit measures have tended to measure only associations between stimuli (i.e., without specifying the relations between stimuli). However, growing evidence now suggests that beliefs about how stimuli are related (i.e., implicit beliefs) can also be measured at the automatic level (for a recent review, see De Houwer et al., 2020). This has led to an issue for the measurement of automatic thoughts and evaluations: since most procedures of implicit measures have been developed from an associative perspective, these procedures are unable to accommodate relational information into their stimuli. As a result of the limitations of implicit measures developed from an associative perspective, researchers have begun developing relational implicit measures (i.e., implicit measures of beliefs) which can accommodate relational information. To date, four relational implicit measures have been developed: the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP; Power et al., 2009), the Relational Responding Task (RRT; De Houwer et al., 2015), the Propositional Evaluation Paradigm (PEP; Müller & Rothermund, 2019), and the Autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT; Sartori et al., 2008). Although the above four measures represent initial progress towards developing valid relational implicit measures, there is much work yet to be done: both in terms of developing new relational implicit measures, and in terms of validating existing measures (relative to whether they are valid measures of their construct of interest, whether they capture relational information, and whether they reflect automatic responding). These were precisely the goals of the current project: to develop and validate new and existing relational implicit measures. Chapter 1 begins with a general introduction to the field of implicit measures, and the three ways in which researchers commonly define the “implicit” term. With the historical context of these varying definitions, the Chapter explores why the need for relational implicit measures has only recently emerged, and describes the relational implicit measures which have been developed to date. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 detail the development of three new relational implicit measures: the Truth Misattribution Procedure (TMP), the Propositional Concealed Information Test (pCIT), and the Mousetracking Propositional Evaluation Paradigm (MT-PEP), respectively. Chapters 5 and 6 consist of comparative investigations of multiple relational implicit measures. Specifically, Chapter 5 compares the RRT, aIAT, and pCIT (as well as the standard IAT) in the context of drinking self-identity and the prediction of problematic drinking outcomes, whereas Chapter 6 compares the RRT, aIAT, and MT-PEP (as well as the standard IAT) in the context of sensitivity to experimentally-manipulated relational information. Finally, Chapter 7 provides a summary and synthesis of the results of the empirical chapters. In addition, the Chapter offers reflections on the use of implicit measures more broadly, critiquing the ultimate goals of using such measures, as well as reflecting on why the behaviour of scientists in the field of implicit measures has tended to be relatively unreceptive to recommendations for improving the measures.

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“…In the current study, we aimed to evaluate and prototype a CCT based on an emerging behavior-analytic method known as the Function Acquisition Speed Test (FAST) (O'Reilly et al, 2013;Cartwright et al, 2017;Cummins et al, 2018). The FAST assesses the differential rate at which relations between classes of stimuli (words or images) are acquired in two differing training configurations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MINDflex Training for Cognitive Flexibility in Chronic Pain: A Randomized, Controlled Cross-Over Trial

et al. 2020

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Impairments in executive functioning are prevalent in chronic pain conditions, with cognitive inflexibility being the most frequently reported. The current randomized, cross-over trial, piloted a computerized cognitive training (CCT) program based on Relational Frame Theory, targeting improvement in cognitive flexibility. At baseline, 73 chronic pain patients completed testing on pre-selected outcomes of executive functioning, alongside IQ measures. When tested three times over the course of 5 months, there was a drop-out rate of 40% at the third time point, leaving 44 patients who had data at all time points. The results showed that there was a substantial learning effect from the MINDFLEX training and a substantial time-dependent improvement on the primary outcomes of increased flexibility, but that this could not be tied to active training. In conclusion, this small study indicated a learning effect as well as improvement on primary outcomes. Based on the current results, a larger trial with improved feasibility of training is warranted.

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The relationship between differential stimulus relatedness and implicit measure effect sizes

Cited by 17 publications

References 40 publications

Emotional Faces in Symbolic Relations: A Happiness Superiority Effect Involving the Equivalence Paradigm

Emotional Faces in Symbolic Relations: A Happiness Superiority Effect Involving the Equivalence Paradigm

Implicit measures of beliefs

MINDflex Training for Cognitive Flexibility in Chronic Pain: A Randomized, Controlled Cross-Over Trial

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