Biomedical subjects

S L Crites

Publications and source records attributed to S L Crites.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Impact of nutrition knowledge on food evaluations.

OBJECTIVE: This study explored whether nutrition knowledge interacted with evaluations of a food's healthiness to influence food attitudes (ie, global evaluations). Since attitudes guide behavior, understanding factors that impact food attitudes is one way to understand food selection and why factors such as nutrition knowledge have only a modest impact on food selection. We hypothesized that the relation between health evaluations and food attitudes would be stronger for people high in nutrition knowledge. We also explored the macronutrient composition of foods, and how it related to attitudes and health evaluations. DESIGN: Survey employing multilevel analyses to examine within- and between-subject influences on food attitudes. SETTING: Student unions at two universities in the Southwestern US. SUBJECTS: A total of 138 participants (mean age=19.8; 69 males, 67 females, two unreported). INTERVENTIONS: Participants indicated their attitudes toward; experience with; and health, flavor, and affective evaluations of 24 foods before and after lunch and completed questionnaires assessing individual difference variables. RESULTS: Experience and evaluations of healthiness, flavor, positive affect, and negative affect all predicted food attitudes. Health evaluations were more strongly associated with attitudes for people high in nutrition knowledge. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest a mechanism through which individual differences impact food attitudes and thus likely influence food selection.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Immediate and delayed stimulus repetitions evoke different ERPs in a serial-probe recognition task.

In this study we examined whether event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with stimulus repetition and recognition in a serial-probe recognition task were comparable to ERPs in other tasks that are more typically used to investigate old/new ERP effects. The experiment consisted of 320 trials in which a recognition probe followed a four-item memory set; 160 trials consisted of images depicting common objects that were easy to label (EL task), and 160 trials consisted of images depicting abstract patterns that were difficult to label (DL task). Nineteen participants indicated whether a probe that followed each memory set was or was not presented in the memory set. Half of the probes matched, and half did not match, an item in the preceding memory set. ERPs appeared to reflect two processes--one that differentiated between recently presented stimuli and other stimuli and another that distinguished between repeated stimuli and new stimuli. ERPs to recent probes were more positive than ERPs to other probes in the EL and DL tasks. ERPs to match (old) probes were more positive than ERPs to nonmatch (new) probes only in the EL task.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Changes in food attitudes as a function of hunger.

This experiment investigated whether hunger selectively influences attitudes toward common food items. Participants completed a take-home questionnaire on which they rated their attitudes toward food and non-food items when they were either hungry (45 participants) or not hungry (45 participants); after returning the questionnaire, participants completed a second take-home questionnaire in the opposite hunger condition. Results of both between-subject and within-subject analyses revealed that participants rated foods more positively when hungry compared to not hungry and that there was no difference in the ratings of non-foods when hungry vs. not hungry. Moreover, attitudes toward high-fat foods changed more as a function of hunger than attitudes toward low-calorie foods. As attitudes are important for guiding behavior, these results suggest that food attitudes influence daily eating patterns and consumer decisions regarding food purchases. The findings may also have important health implications because hunger exerts a greater influence on attitudes toward high-fat foods.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Event-related potentials and serial position effects in a visual probe recognition task.

In two experiments, we explored the utility of using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) evoked during picture recognition to examine the cognitive and neural processes underlying primacy and recency effects. Each experiment consisted of 210 trials in which a recognition probe followed a 12-picture sequence (105 match and 105 nonmatch trials). The 105 match-probe trials consisted of 35 trials in which the probe matched a prime memory set item (Positions 1-3), 35 in which the probe matched a middle memory set item (Positions 6-8), and 35 in which the probe matched a recent memory set item (Positions 10-12). Behavioral results revealed recency but not primacy effects in both experiments. Recent probes, compared with prime and middle probes, evoked ERPs that were more positive from approximately 300 to 400 ms; this enhanced positivity occurred in a positive component peaking around 315 ms and a negative component peaking around 365 ms. These findings fit more closely with the notion of short-term memory as an activation of elements in long-term memory than as a distinct memory store (or stores) separate from long-term memory.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Bioelectrical echoes from evaluative categorization: II. A late positive brain potential that varies as a function of attitude registration rather than attitude report.

We report evidence of both correspondence and independence between participants' attitude report and a late positive potential (LPP) of the event-related potential. Attitude reports and LPPs to positive, neutral, and negative stimuli that were preceded by positive stimuli were recorded while participants either reported accurately their attitudes or misreported neutral or negative attitudes. Evaluatively inconsistent, in contrast to consistent, stimuli evoked a larger LPP regardless of whether participants reported accurately or misreported their attitudes. These results were replicated in a second study in which attitude reports and LPPs to negative, neutral, and positive stimuli that were preceded by negative stimuli were recorded. Findings suggest that the LPP evoked during evaluative judgments reflects attitude categorization rather than attitude report processes and can potentially assess attitudes that people are unwilling to report.

Adult↗

PubMed1994

Bioelectrical echoes from evaluative categorizations: I. A late positive brain potential that varies as a function of trait negativity and extremity.

Attitudes can be conceptualized in terms of the elementary operations of evaluative categorization and response selection-execution. This article describes a component of the event-related potential that is associated with the first of these operations. Ss were exposed to sequences of 6 traits and performed a dichotomous evaluative categorization task. Evaluative inconsistency was varied by embedding very positive, moderately positive, moderately negative, and very negative traits in sequences containing predominantly very positive traits. Highly and moderately evaluatively inconsistent traits, compared with mildly inconsistent or consistent traits, evoked a larger amplitude late positive potential (LPP) that was maximal over centroparietal regions. Furthermore, extremely evaluatively inconsistent traits evoked a larger amplitude LPP than moderately evaluatively inconsistent traits even though both sets of traits were judged to be negative.

Affect↗

PubMed1992

Relationship between facial expressiveness and sympathetic activation in emotion: a critical review, with emphasis on modeling underlying mechanisms and individual differences.

Two important questions bearing on personality processes and individual differences are how do facial expressiveness and sympathetic activation vary as a function of the intensity of an emotional stimulus, and what is the functional mechanism underlying facial expressiveness and sympathetic activation in emotion? A formulation is proposed that is based on 2 propositions: (a) All strong emotions result in some degree of activation of the organism (i.e., principle of stimulus dynamism) and (b) there are individual differences in the gain (amplification) operating on the facial expressive and sympathetic response channels (i.e., principle of individual response uniqueness). This formulation organizes much of the existing data on internalizers and externalizers and yields novel predictions regarding the subpopulation labeled as generalizers.

Arousal↗