Parental Evaluative History and Selective Recognition of Evaluative Words

Abstract

This investigation found support for the general hypothesis that prior social experience influences current perception of historically relevant cues. Male college Ss, matched for quality of prior maternal evaluation, were separated into those (N = 40) who rated their fathers positive in their evaluations of them (HN) and those (N = 38) who rated their fathers as more negative (LN). These groups did not differ in their perception of maternal evaluative cues when presented alone. When paternal evaluative cues were presented as distractors, selective attention to maternal cues was more disrupted for the LN group. Deployment of attention to task-irrelevant paternal cues, as inferred from intrusions, did not differ for the HN and the LN groups. However, the LN subjects did demonstrate a negative qualitative bias in those intrusion errors which came from the task-irrelevant paternal set, whereas HN subjects showed a positive qualitative bias. Both biases were in keeping with paternal evaluative histories. Greater disruption of LN task performance may have been the result of responses, such as anxiety, associated with their negative bias.