Frontiers in Psychology - August 2018

I believe I'm listed as covering Frontiers in Comparative Psych, but there were a couple of interest from "Cognition" and "Emotion Science" sections I thought I would throw in as well:

***Comparative:***

**Mizunami, M., Terao, K., & Alvarez, B. (2018). Application of a Prediction Error Theory to Pavlovian Conditioning in an Insect. *Frontiers in Psychology*, *9*, 1272.** https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01272

Here’s one that looks at associative learning in invertebrates (crickets). Starts off with a brief overview of prediction error theories for mammalian Pavlovian conditioning that account for blocking effects (stimulus X is paired with an unconditioned stimulus US, which blocks the association of novel stimulus Y
with US after a phase in which stim X and stim Y are presented together and reinforced
by US such that when stim Y is presented alone animals do not respond/have
failed to learn that association). Blocking effects were shown for an
experiment with crickets, and the results aligned most with the Rescorla-Wagner
model, which assumes that the amount of learning is determined by the
discrepancy between the strength of the actual US and total strengths of the
predicted US by all the CSs (if stim X fully predicts US, stim Y is blocked).

***Cognition:***

**Ortells, J. J., De Fockert, J. W., Romera, N., & Fernández, S. (2018). Expectancy-Based Strategic Processes Are Influenced by Spatial Working Memory Load and Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity. *Frontiers in Psychology*, *9*, 1239.** https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01239

The goal of the study was to see whether the effects on WM load on a Stroop
task are domain general or domain specific. They used a non-verbal WM task to
see whether it would affect a verbal Stroop task, and thus suggest that the
role of WM is domain-general. Participants’ individual working memory capacities
were assessed using a change detection task. Then, in two experiments, were
given two different non-verbal, spatial working memory tasks. For each task
there was a condition that required low WM load and one that required high WM
load. When participants were under high WM load, they showed a standard Stroop
effect (they were unable to ignore the incongruence of the prime). Under low WM
there was a reversed Stroop effect for individuals that had a higher working
memory capacity.

***Emotion Science:***

**Figueira, J. S. B., Pacheco, L. B., Lobo, I., Volchan, E., Pereira, M. G., de Oliveira, L., & David, I. A. (2018). “Keep That in Mind!” The Role of Positive Affect in Working Memory for Maintaining Goal-Relevant Information. *Frontiers in Psychology*, *9*, 1228**. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01228

Positive affect as a stable personality trait is positively correlated with
working memory capacity, even when neutral or unpleasant emotional states are
induced. Working memory was assessed using an event-related potential,
contralateral delay activity (CDA). Emotional states were induced by showing
participants either intact bodies (neutral) or mutilated bodies (unpleasant).
Affect was evaluated using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedules. Participants
were then run on a change detection task in which they either attended to an
array or two squares or four squares (with one square changing color in 50% of
the trials after a retention interval). CDA increased more for individuals with
higher trait positive affect when they switched from the two to four square
arrays (i.e. those with high trait positive affect had greater WM capacity).

**Berdica, E., Gerdes, A. B. M., Bublatzky, F., White, A. J., & Alpers, G. W. (2018). Threat vs. Threat: Attention to Fear-Related Animals and Threatening Faces. *Frontiers in* Psychology*,* 9*, 1154.*** *https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01154'*

Researchers showed
participants that were either afraid of spiders, socially anxious, or non-anxious
pairs of images from four categories: spiders, butterflies, angry faces, and
neutral faces. The goal here was to assess how different classes of threatening
stimuli compete for attention since these studies typically only look at one
kind of stimuli. In general, unpleasant photos (spiders and angry faces)
initially capture participants attention compared to neutral images
(butterflies and neutral faces). The more afraid of spiders one was, the
stronger the effect when looking at spiders. However, for socially anxious
participants there was no preference to look first at either spiders or angry
faces, but neutral faces were looked at more quickly than a nonsocial neutral
stimulus, butterflies.