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Betty CHANG
PhD, researcher
Unit of Clinical Psychology: Emotion, Cognition, Health
| Address: |
Department of Psychology
Catholic University of Louvain
Place du Cardinal Mercier 10 (E240)
1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Belgium |
| Phone: |
+32 (0)10474638 |
| Fax.: |
+32 (0)10474834 |
| E-Mail: |
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Research domains |
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Representative publications |
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I recently finished my PhD in cognitive psychology at the University of New South Wales with Chris Mitchell. At Louvain University, I am working with Pierre Philippot and Olivier Corneille to examine how the level of specificity with which past and future events are construed influences our emotional and cognitive processing.
Research domains
1. Emotion and memory
Autobiographical memories consist of some information that is schematic (i.e. common to similar memories), and some information that is specific (i.e. unique to that particular memory). Pierre Philippot and colleagues have shown that retrieving the schematic details of emotional memories causes people to feel more emotion than retrieving the specific details of emotional memories. We are currently investigating several issues related to this effect.
The first issue is to clarify the nature of the difference in emotional consequences of schematic and specific retrieval. It may be that schematic retrieval increases emotional responding more than specific retrieval because the former mode of retrieval increases people’s emotional processing. Alternatively, it may be that specific retrieval decreases people’s emotional processing.
The second issue concerns the mechanism causing schematic vs. specific retrieval to produce different emotional responses. Philippot and colleagues propose that this effect occurs because retrieving specific information inhibits people’s emotional schemas, which reduces emotional responding. Alternatively, it may be that focusing on emotional schemas enhances emotional responding.
The third issue is whether schematic vs. specific retrieval leads to specific changes in cognitive and affective processing. For example, schematic vs. specific retrieval may influence how people remember related emotional memories. These two types of retrieval may also affect how people process subsequent emotional stimuli.
2. Salience asymmetries in the Implicit Association Test (IAT)
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most widely used indirect measure of attitudes in social psychology. It has been suggested that salience asymmetries are a cognitive contaminant of the IAT that threatens the accurate assessment of attitudes. Salience asymmetries in the IAT are claimed to correspond with visual search asymmetries, and differences in target familiarity (Rothermund & Wentura, 2001, 2004). In my PhD research, I proposed that processing fluency is the common mechanism underlying both visual search asymmetries and familiarity. In several experiments, I showed that differences in the fluency with which categories in the IAT were classified was a more reliable predictor of salience asymmetry effects in the IAT than either visual search asymmetries or familiarity. I also developed a modified version of the IAT that is able to discriminate between the effects of valence and salience in the IAT.
Representative publications
Articles:
Chang, B., Mitchell, C.J. (2009). Processing fluency as a source of salience asymmetries in the Implicit Association Test. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62 (10), 2030-2054. 
Theses:
Chang, B. (2008). Salience asymmetries in the Implicit Association Test. PhD Thesis, University of New South Wales, Australia.
Selected presentations:
Chang, B., & Mitchell, C.J. (2008, March). Non-associative contaminants of the Implicit Association Test. Paper presented at the 35th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, University of Western Australia, Fremantle, Australia.
Chang, B., & Mitchell, C.J. & Kinoshita, S. (2007, July). Target salience and attribute valence in the Implicit Association Test. Poster presented at the 4th International Conference On Memory, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Chang, B., & Mitchell, C.J. (2007, April). Familiarity effects in the Implicit Association Test. Paper presented at the 36th Society of Australasian Social Psychologists Conference, University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, and Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.
Chang, B., Mitchell, C.J., & Kinoshita, S. (2006, April). The relationship between target salience and attribute valence in the Implicit Association Test. Paper presented at the 33rd Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.
