Attentional control theory is an approach to anxiety and cognition representing a major development of Eysenck and Calvo’s (1992) processing efficiency theory. It is assumed that anxiety impairs efficient functioning of the goal-directed attentional system and increases the extent to which processing is influenced by the stimulus-driven attentional system. In addition to decreasing attentional control, anxiety increases attention to threat-related stimuli. Adverse effects of anxiety on processing efficiency depend on two central executive functions involving attentional control: inhibition and shifting. How-ever, anxiety may not impair performance effectiveness (quality of performance) when it leads to the use of compensatory strategies (e.g., enhanced effort; increased use of processing resources). Directions for future research are discussed.

Studies examining individual differences in working memory capacity have suggested that individuals with low working memory capacities demonstrate impaired performance on a variety of attention and memory tasks compared with individuals with high working memory capacities. This working memory limitation can be conceived of as arising from 2 components: a dynamic attention component (primary memory) and a probabilistic cue-dependent search component (secondary memory). This framework is used to examine previous individual differences studies of working memory capacity, and new evidence is examined on the basis of predictions of the framework to performance on immediate free recall. It is suggested that individual differences in working memory capacity are partially due to the ability to maintain information accessible in primary memory and the ability to search for information from secondary memory.

Two studies investigated the role of executive control in moderating the relationship between automatic stereotype activation and behavioral responses. Race bias in weapon identification was used to measure stereotyping, and a process dissociation procedure was used to measure automatic and controlled components of performance. In Experiment 1, the controlled component was shown to correlate with general attention control and race-specific motivations to control prejudice. Across multiple measures, automatic race bias was more likely to be expressed as behavioral discrimination among individuals with poor executive control. Experiment 2 found the same relationship between automatic and controlled components of behavior when predicting impressions of a Black individual. Executive control is discussed in the context of other control strategies in influential dual-process models of stereotyping.

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), in which participants are randomly given either a good, such as a coffee mug, that they may later sell ("sellers") or a choice between the good and amounts of cash ("choosers"). Sellers typically demand at least twice as much as choosers, inconsistent with economic theory. This result is usually explained by an increased weighting of losses, or loss aversion. The authors provide a memory-based account of endowment, suggesting that people construct values by posing a series of queries whose order differs for sellers and choosers. Because of output interference, these queries retrieve different aspects of the object and the medium of exchange, producing different valuations. The authors show that the content and structure of the recalled aspects differ for selling and choosing and that these aspects predict valuations. Merely altering the order in which queries are posed can eliminate the endowment effect, and changing the order of queries can produce endowment-like effects without ownership. Keywords: decision making, preference construction, loss aversion, endowment effect The endowment effect The most common psychological characterization of the endowment effect is loss aversion, which describes and summarizes two phenomena: First, valuations depend on a reference point; second, decreases in the objective value of an attribute have more influence on valuation and choice than equivalent increases in objective value. In the endowment effect, the reference point is the current state of affairs, and the good represents either a gain or a loss. Loss aversion is a major premise of prospect theory and is used as a basis for explanations of many decision phenomena. These include why the framing of options influences choices The endowment effect illustrates how the strategies used in evaluating simple objects have significant economic consequences. For example, this result challenges the Coase theorem, an important assumption in the economic analysis of social welfare and political economy, which suggests that the value of an object is independent of initial ownership Two other candidate accounts, often suggested by skeptical economists, are strategic misrepresentation and wealth effects. The strategic misrepresentation account suggests that participants think they are making opening offers much like starting positions in a negotiation rather than stating their true valuation of the good. Memory, and Cognition 2007, Vol. 33, No. 3, 461-474 0278-7393/07/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0278-7393.33.3.461 461 schak, 1964, or "BDM"), which provides respondents with an incentive for truthful revelation of their value for a good. Participants must indicate, for each of a number of amounts of money (i.e., possible market prices), whether they would prefer the mug or the money. The experimenter then announces the market price, which was determined a priori, and completes transactions with participants according to what they stated to be their preference at that price. Reporting anything other than their true value costs participants money. To control for wealth effects, experimenters have contrasted two equivalent decisions with different frames: Selling prices (for those who are given a mug) and choices between money and the object (for those who are not). These controls have become standard in research on the endowment effect A more psychological class of explanations suggest that buying and selling shift the decision maker's focus of attention, consistent with the notion that most evaluations are sensitive to implicit goals However, these ideas may be only a start in understanding what underlies the endowment effect. In this article, we develop and test a process account of endowment effects that is based on the notion that valuations depend on memory retrieval processes. This approach has several advantages: First, it connects the valuation of simple objects with the literature on memory and leverages our understanding of retrieval. Second, it may help identify boundary conditions, delineating when endowment effects may and may not occur. Third, a process explanation may help identify whether loss aversion actually reflects experienced preferences or, instead, is an artifact that should be minimized in measuring values. Finally, a mechanism-based explanation might suggest interventions that would reduce or eliminate endowment effects. A Query Theory of the Endowment Effect Our starting point is that preferences, like all knowledge, are subject to the processes and dynamics associated with retrieval from memory, and that these principles can largely explain the endowment effect and other phenomena in evaluation (see . Indeed, if one takes the view that preferences are sometimes constructed, it seems highly plausible that memory in general, and in particular the retrieval of information about the objects in question, will play a central role. In this spirit, Kahneman and colleagues Premises of Query Theory Our explanation of the endowment effect is based on four premises. The first is that decision makers naturally decompose valuation questions such as "What should be my selling (or buying) price?" into a series of queries, such as "Why should I make the trade?" or "Why should I not make the trade?" The second premise is that these queries are executed serially, one after the other, and that query order differs across response modes. Note that this decomposition and execution may well be automatic, without the awareness of the decision maker. The third premise of our account is that because of output interference, query order matters: The first query results in a richer and more heavily weighted representation than the second. To produce differences in valuation, our fourth premise suggests, different response modes produce different query orders: Choosers tend to first consider why they might not enter into the transaction and then consider why they might enter into the transaction. Sellers, we argue, tend to execute the same two queries in the reverse order. The first premise, that valuation is based on a series of queries, suggests that people respond to a question like "How much would you pay for this mug?" by decomposing it into a series of standard queries Our second premise is based, in the decision literature, on the idea that different weights are revealed by different response modes and, consistent with Our third premise, that the results of queries depend on query order, is based on the idea of output interference in memory research, suggesting that directed recall of some members of a list can result in a decrease in memory for the unrecalled part of the list Our final premise, that the order of queries depends on the endowment state, will of course be subject to empirical verification, but it also reflects the intuition that people consider the advantages of the current state of affairs along with the disadvantages of an alternative reality before they think about the disadvantages of their current state and the advantages of an alternative reality. Put another way, decision makers tend to first assess the advantages of the status quo, then assess the advantages of the alternative state Aspect Listing To obtain some indication of the aspects considered during a pricing decision, we used a variant of a verbal report methodology called an aspect listing. We asked respondents to type into a computer interface the things they were considering as they made their pricing judgment, recording the content, order, and latency of these entries. Of course, this is only an approximate measure of the cognitions that occur as respondents make this judgment. Although the queries themselves may be automatic processes and thus difficult to observe, the aspect-listing method is designed to capture their effect by showing what is produced by the queries. Compared with more sophisticated measures, however, this approach has the advantage of being easily scalable to the kinds of large samples and market settings that are used to demonstrate the endowment effect. Predictions This perspective produces several clear predictions that we test in the course of this research, specifically, the following: 1. Listed aspects should differ, in content and number, depending on an individual's endowment state. 2. The sequence of aspects should correspond to our hypothesized order of queries, which depends on endowment state. Although we cannot observe the queries used per se, we should be able to see their effects in what is produced. Specifically, when participants are endowed with the good, value-increasing aspects should be more numerous and appear earlier in the aspect protocol, and the opposite should occur when participants are not endowed. 3. Aspect listings should predict prices. If the retrieval of aspects is used to determine value, then the quantity and valence of aspects should predict prices. This finding would demonstrate that these concurrent reports QUERY THEORY AND THE ENDOWMENT EFFECT 4. Changing the order of queries might eliminate the endowment effect. Because endowment changes query order, which in turn changes the kinds of aspects considered, we might, by manipulating the order of queries, change prices. By reversing the natural order of queries, we should be able to diminish or eliminate the endowment effect. 5. Finally, we should be able to produce changes in value without endowment. If the construction of value depends on query order, changing query order alone should change people's valuation of a good, even when ownership is held constant. General Method With the current work we sought to explain a phenomenon widely replicated using the methods of experimental economics with concepts from the study of memory. In our experiments, we attempted to meet the requirements of experimental economics Experiment 1: Does Endowment Change the Aspects Considered? This experiment was based on a standard endowment paradigm, with the exception that participants were also asked to list aspects of what they considered prior to indicating their valuations. 1 After setting their price and executing any ensuing market transactions, respondents saw these aspects again and indicated both the focus (thoughts about the object or the money) and the valence of each. If these aspect listings reflect the information retrieved from memory and used by respondents to determine their valuation, they should differ in content, number, and order for choosers and sellers. In addition, we expected these aspects to predict prices. Method Participants Eighty-seven participants were recruited on a university campus. They were each paid $5 for their participation and, depending on their choices, received either a mug or a cash amount determined by their choices and the incentive-compatible mechanism. Materials and Procedure Practice task. Prior to the main task, respondents completed a practice task during which they were required to use the computer interfaces for both aspect listing and pricing in a domain unrelated to that used in the main task. To practice the pricing task, participants had to indicate an experimenter-induced valuation of a good. They were allowed to proceed only if they entered this valuation correctly. Test of understanding. Some have argued that the endowment effect may involve respondents' misconceptions of task instructions Revelation of endowment state. Participants were given the opportunity to examine a mug placed in front of them, after which they proceeded to a computer screen that revealed their endowment state-they were randomly assigned to either a "selling" condition (i.e., endowed) or a "choosing" condition (i.e., not endowed). More specifically, respondents were informed either (a) that the mug was theirs to keep but that they would later have an opportunity to sell it to the experimenter for some amount of money (selling condition) or (b) that they would later be able to choose between receiving the mug and receiving some amount of money (choosing condition). Aspect listing. Before indicating their valuation of the mug, participants listed the aspects they were considering in making their decisions. Specifically, they were asked to type all reasons why they personally would want to either have the mug or have the money, one reason at a time (see Appendix A for details). Pricing. To eliminate the potential confound of wealth states with endowment, we contrasted selling prices to a choice condition, in which participants chose between receiving the mug and receiving various amounts of money. This contrast controls for the wealth position of those endowed and those not endowed, with the only difference between conditions being the description of the transaction (see Lerner, Small, & Loewenstein, 2004, p. 338, for further discussion of why choice is a superior control to selling). Participants revealed their valuation of the mug on a scale ranging from $.50 to $12, with increments of 50 cents. In the selling condition, participants were asked to indicate whether, at each of these 24 prices, they would prefer to sell the mug or not (see Appendix B for details). The corresponding question in the choos-1 The thought-listing procedure used here differs from other methods for assessing reasons, such as cognitive responses 464 JOHNSON, HÄ UBL, AND KEINAN ing condition was whether, for each of the amounts, participants would prefer to get the mug or the money. 2 Market transaction. Once participants had completed the pricing task, the experimenter announced the market price, which had been determined a priori. Transactions were then completed according to the preference that each participant had expressed in connection with that amount during the pricing task. That is, in the selling condition, participants either kept the mug or sold it to the experimenter for the market price (in cash), depending on their earlier response. In the choosing condition, participants either received a mug or the market price (in cash), according to their preference as revealed in the pricing task. Self-coding of aspects. Participants were presented with the aspects they had listed earlier, one at a time, and asked to indicate both the focus (whether the statement referred to the mug or the money) and the valence (positive or negative, in reference to the focus) of each aspect. Of note, in several other studies we have had aspects coded by naive raters, and these codings produce very similar results. Finally, participants responded to a series of general questions, including the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS; Results Prices As can be seen in the top line of Content of Aspects Participants generated different aspects depending on whether they were endowed, as shown in Order of Aspects The sequential nature of our query account predicts that the kind of aspects generated will change during the aspect listing. For participants endowed with a mug, we expected that aspect listings would initially consist of mostly value-increasing aspects and that value-decreasing aspects would be produced more frequently toward the end. We expected the reverse would be true for participants not endowed with a mug. Because participants listed different numbers of aspects, we tested this prediction by calculating, for each participant, a score that reflects his or her tendency to produce value-increasing aspects before value-decreasing ones. This score, the standardized median rank difference of aspect types (SMRD), is defined as 2(MR i Ϫ MR d )/n, where MR d ϭ median rank of value-decreasing aspects in a participant's sequence, MR i ϭ median rank of valueincreasing aspects in a participant's sequence, and n ϭ total number of aspects in a participant's sequence. 3 The SMRD score can take on values from 1 (all value-increasing aspects were listed before any value-decreasing aspects) to -1 (all value-decreasing aspects were listed before any value-increasing aspects). As predicted, the mean SMRD score was significantly higher for sellers (.62) than for choosers (.26), F(1, 79) ϭ 4.14, p Ͻ .05. This result provides support for our hypothesis that ownership of an object leads to a difference in queries, as reflected by differences in the order in which aspects are produced. Predicting Prices From Aspects The aspects generated by respondents are not epiphenomenal, or what economists term "cheap talk," because they help predict participants' valuations of the mug. Using price as a dependent variable and the number of value-increasing aspects and valuedecreasing aspects produced by each respondent as independent variables in a multiple regression reveals that this crude encoding of aspects explains 21% of the variance in valuations, F(4, 75) ϭ 4.81, p Ͻ .001. Both regression coefficients are in the expected direction-that is, the effects of the number of value-increasing and value-decreasing aspects on price are positive and negative, respectively. As a comparison, endowment state (i.e., whether a participant was a seller or a chooser) explains only 16% of the variance in valuations. Discussion Experiment 1 provides initial support for the first three of the five predictions of our query-based account of the endowment effect: First, respondents generate different kinds of aspects if they are setting selling prices than if they are choosing between the object and a set of cash amounts. This experiment also provides strong support for the hypothesized change in recall order: Consistent with our prediction that endowment state influences query order, value-increasing statements are generated earlier by sellers and value-decreasing statements are generated earlier by choosers. Finally, consistent with the third prediction of our theoretical account, the number and valence of these aspects predict valuations, and they do so at least as well as the endowment manipulation itself. 2 Exact instructions for the experiment are available from the authors upon request. 3 Note that for any sequence (of length s) in which only one of the two response categories of interest (i.e., value-increasing or value-decreasing aspects) appears, the median rank of the unobserved response category is set to s ϩ 1, which is a conservative way of representing the low level of accessibility of thoughts of that type. In addition, for the purpose of calculating the SMRD score, n ϭ s ϩ 1 for such single-category sequences. For sequences that include responses from both categories, n ϭ s. QUERY THEORY AND THE ENDOWMENT EFFECT Experiment 2: Eliminating Endowment Effects Although the results of Experiment 1 support our query theory account of the endowment effect, much of this evidence is correlational and could also be consistent with other accounts. Stronger evidence for our query-based explanation would be provided by a test of our fourth prediction, that by manipulating the order of queries, we might actually influence the aspects considered by respondents and the magnitude of the endowment effect. In Experiment 2, we did this by manipulating, for some participants, the order in which they generated value-increasing versus valuedecreasing aspects. In particular, we included a condition that reversed the natural order of queries to memory for a given endowment state suggested by our query theory and confirmed by Experiment 1. We expected that this reversal of the natural query order would result in a smaller endowment effect, as well as a difference in the nature of the aspects produced by participants. Method Participants Eighty-three participants were recruited on a university campus. They were paid $5 each for their participation and, depending on their choices during the experiment, also received either a mug or a cash amount, as determined by the incentive-compatible BDM mechanism. Materials and Procedure The procedure was similar to Experiment 1, starting with a practice task. Again, participants who did no better than chance in the practice task were eliminated (10 participants). In addition, 1 participant was eliminated for evidently having misunderstood the aspect-listing task. This left us with 72 usable participants. As in Experiment 1, participants were assigned to either a selling condition (i.e., endowed) or a choosing condition (i.e., not endowed). After learning their endowment state and before indicating their valuation of the mug, participants listed the aspects they were considering in making their decisions. We used two aspect-listing conditions. One was an unguided condition where, as in Experiment 1, participants simply listed all of the aspects they were considering without any externally imposed query order. In the other condition, the natural order of queries to memory for a given endowment state suggested by our theory was reversed, such that sellers (endowed) were asked to first produce valuedecreasing aspects and then produce value-increasing aspects, whereas choosers (not endowed) were asked to list valueincreasing before value-decreasing aspects. Thus, participants in Experiment 2 were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (endowment state: selling vs. choosing) ϫ 2 (order of aspect generation: unguided vs. reverse of natural order) betweensubjects design. Results Prices As can be seen from the line graph in 466 JOHNSON, HÄ UBL, AND KEINAN 68) ϭ 5.04, p Ͻ .05. This is best described by an analysis of simple effects within the two aspect-listing conditions, which revealed a large endowment effect for unguided aspect listing, F(1, 68) ϭ 7.55, p Ͻ .01, as shown on the left side of

Although frequently mentioned in contemporary neuropsychology, the term executive functioning has been a source of considerable confusion. One way in which the meaning of a variable can be investigated involves examining its pattern of relations with established cognitive abilities. This method was applied to a variety of variables hypothesized to assess executive functioning in 2 data sets, 1 consisting of 328 adults between 18 and 93 years of age and a 2nd composite data set based on nearly 7,000 healthy adults between 18 and 95 years of age. Most of the hypothesized executive functioning variables were strongly related to reasoning and perceptual speed abilities, and very few had any unique relations with age after taking into consideration the relations of age through the cognitive abilities. These results raise questions about the extent to which neuropsychological tests of executive functioning measure a distinct dimension of variation in normal adults.

A time-course analysis of visual attention focusing (attentional constraint) was conducted in groups of participants with high and low working memory spans, a dimension the authors have argued reflects the ability to control attention. In 4 experiments, participants performed the Eriksen flanker paradigm under increasing levels of speed stress. Conditional accuracy functions were derived to measure the time course of attentional constraint. The data showed that accuracy rates rose toward asymptote at different rates, with participants with high working memory spans reaching peak performance before participants with low working memory spans. The authors interpret these data in terms of a rate of attention constraint model.

This study investigated the possibility that lifelong bilingualism may lead to enhanced efficiency in the ability to shift between mental sets. We compared the performance of monolingual and fluent bilingual college students in a task-switching paradigm. Bilinguals incurred reduced switching costs in the task-switching paradigm when compared with monolinguals, suggesting that lifelong experience in switching between languages may contribute to increased efficiency in the ability to shift flexibly between mental sets. On the other hand, bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals in the differential cost of performing mixed-task as opposed to single-task blocks. Together, these results indicate that bilingual advantages in executive function most likely extend beyond inhibition of competing responses, and encompass flexible mental shifting as well. Most people in the world today use more than one language in the course of daily life, and the acquisition and dynamic interaction of multiple languages are being intensely studied within the domain of psycholinguistics (Kroll and De Groot, 2005). Alongside this work, there is growing interest in the possibility that bilingualism might exert its influence beyond the language system, and have implications for cognition more generally (for a recent

Abstract. There have been many attempts to account theoretically for the effects of anxiety on cognitive performance. This article focuses on two theories based on insights from cognitive psychology. The more recent is the attentional control theory (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007), which developed from the earlier processing efficiency theory (Eysenck & Calvo, 1992). Both theories assume there is a fundamental distinction between performance effectiveness (quality of performance) and processing efficiency (the relationship between performance effectiveness and use of processing resources), and that anxiety impairs processing efficiency more than perfor-mance effectiveness. Both theories also assume that anxiety impairs the efficiency of the central executive component of the working memory system. In addition, attentional control theory assumes that anxiety impairs the efficiency of two types of attentional control: (1) negative attentional control (involved in inhibiting attention to task-irrelevant stimuli); and (2) positive attentional control (involved in flexibly switching attention between and within tasks to maximize performance). Recent (including unpublished) research relevant to theoretical predictions from attentional control theory is discussed. In addition, future directions for theory and research in the area of anxiety and performance are presented.

Although many tasks have been developed recently to study executive control in the preschool years, the constructs that underlie performance on these tasks are poorly understood. In particular, it is unclear whether executive control is composed of multiple, separable cognitive abilities (e.g., inhibition and working memory) or whether it is unitary in nature. A sample of 243 normally developing children between 2.3 and 6 years of age completed a battery of age-appropriate executive control tasks. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to compare multiple models of executive control empirically. A single-factor, general model was sufficient to account for the data. Furthermore, the fit of the unitary model was invariant across subgroups of children divided by socioeconomic status or sex. Girls displayed a higher level of latent executive control than boys, and children of higher and lower socioeconomic status did not differ in level. In typically developing preschool children, tasks conceptualized as indexes of working memory and inhibitory control in fact measured a single cognitive ability, despite surface differences between task characteristics.