Cognitive characteristics of the Type A coronary-prone behavior pattern

Reasoned that across a series of acquisition stimuli, Type A's, compared to Type B's, would be more responsive to the development of central tendencies in the frequency of appearance of the attributes that comprise the stimuli. This difference in attention should lead to a difference in encoding. On a subsequent recognition-memory task, then, Type A's should report with greater certainty than Type B's that they had seen stimuli composed of frequently observed attributes and should report with greater certainty that they had not seen stimuli composed of rarely observed attributes. In a test of this reasoning, 160 undergraduates classified as A's and B's by the Jenkins Activity Survey completed concept-formation and recognition-memory tasks under 1 of 4 levels of situational challenge. The predicted patterns occurred among Ss in whom moderate and high levels of challenge had been induced. Findings thus support the arguments that Type A's and B's process information differently and that this processing difference must be elicited by situational challenge. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).