Relief from incidental fear evokes exuberant risk taking.

Incidental emotions are defined as feelings that are unrelated to a decision task at hand and thereby not normatively relevant for making choices. The precise influence and formal theoretical implications of incidental emotions regarding financial risk taking are still largely unclear. An effect of incidental emotion on decision-making would challenge the main extant formal theoretical economic models because such models do not allow for an effect of incidental emotions.

The influence of acoustic startle probes on fear learning in humans.

Even though human fear-conditioning involves affective learning as well as expectancy learning, most studies assess only one of the two distinct processes. Commonly used read-outs of associative fear learning are the fear-potentiated startle reflex (FPS), pupil dilation and US-expectancy ratings. FPS is thought to reflect the affective aspect of fear learning, while pupil dilation reflects a general arousal response.

Neural substrates of individual differences in human fear learning: evidence from concurrent fMRI, fear-potentiated startle, and US-expectancy data.

To provide insight into individual differences in fear learning, we examined the emotional and cognitive expressions of discriminative fear conditioning in direct relation to its neural substrates. Contrary to previous behavioral-neural (fMRI) research on fear learning--in which the emotional expression of fear was generally indexed by skin conductance--we used fear-potentiated startle, a more reliable and specific index of fear. While we obtained concurrent fear-potentiated startle, neuroimaging (fMRI), and US-expectancy data, healthy participants underwent a fear-conditioning paradigm in which one of two conditioned stimuli (CS(+) but not CS(-)) was paired with a shock (unconditioned stimulus [US]).

Social support and cardiovascular responding to laboratory stress: moderating effects of gender role identification, sex, and type of support.

The objective of the present study was to examine moderating effects of gender role identification, sex, and type of support on the buffering role of social support on cardiovascular responses. We hypothesized that (a) gender role identification, more than sex, would moderate the effect of social support and (b) to obtain optimal attenuating effects of social support, type of support provided should match type of support preferred in terms of one's gender role identification. That is, feminine participants would benefit more from relatively direct support, whereas masculine participants would benefit more from indirect support.

Effects of sex, gender role identification, and gender relevance of two types of stressors on cardiovascular and subjective responses: sex and gender match and mismatch effects.

The authors tested the hypothesis that a match between the gender relevance of a stressor and one's sex or gender role identification would elicit higher cardiovascular responses. Healthy female and male undergraduates (n = 108) were exposed to two stressors: the Cold Pressor Test (CPT) and the n-back task. Stressor relevance was manipulated to be masculine or feminine relevant or gender neutral.

Cardiovascular responses across stressor phases: the match of gender and gender-role identification with the gender relevance of the stressor.

Objective: To test the hypothesis that cardiovascular responses across stressor phases (anticipation, stressor, recovery) are higher when gender or gender-role identification match with the gender relevance of the stressor than in case of a mismatch and gender irrelevance which are not supposed to differ.

Methods: In a double-blind design, 151 healthy women and men were assigned to the Cold Pressor Test with feminine, masculine, or gender-irrelevant introductions.

Results: The pattern of responding was vascular [high on systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and total peripheral resistance (TPR), and relatively low on heart rate, stroke volume, and cardiac output] across stressor phases.

Cross-cultural validity of the masculine and feminine gender role stress scales.

The objective was to examine the usefulness of Dutch versions of the Masculine Gender Role Stress (MGRS; Eisler & Skidmore, 1987) Scale and the Feminine Gender Role Stress (Gillespie & Eisler, 1992) Scale in The Netherlands. Undergraduate students (N = 2,239) completed both gender role stress scales. A subgroup (n = 508) also completed questionnaires about masculinity-femininity and daily hassles.

Age-of-acquisition effects in native speakers and second-language learners.

Two lexical decision experiments were conducted to study the locus of age-of-acquisition (AoA) effects in skilled readers with English or Dutch as their first language. AoA effects have generally been explained in terms of phonological processing. In Experiment 1, Dutch elementary school and secondary school students were presented with words factorially manipulated on surface frequency and AoA).

Contrasting effects of age of acquisition in lexical decision and letter detection.

Two experiments studied attention in beginning and skilled readers of Dutch to letter information in function words and content words. Early and late acquired nouns and function words were presented to third-grade students and skilled adolescent readers. Target words were presented in short story contexts, as in the study of Greenberg, Koriat, and Vellutino (1998).