If so, this may have important clinical implications, since information processing models share the assumption that automatic associations are less susceptible to change than deliberate associations (e.g., Strack & Deutch, 2004; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000).
Importantly in the context of our study, it is generally difficult to attribute activation patterns to either early processing stages that are central to the recognition of written words or later post-access processes, which might reflect deliberate associations or mental imagery elicited in response to written words.
The low correlations between the reaction time (i.e., AST) and self-report measures of sex-related affective associations correspond with the predictions based on information processing models that emphasize the discrepancy between deliberate affective associations and automatically activated affective associations (e.g., Fazio & Towles-Schwen, 1999; Strack & Deutch, 2004; Wilson et al., 2000).
According to the information-processing model of sexual arousal, automatically elicited associations are assumed to be related to genital responses (e.g., lubrication) whereas deliberate, controlled associations are linked to the experience of sexual excitement and further strategic/planned behavior.
Following this, reappraisal of deliberate affective associations with sexual stimuli seems the most appropriate focus of therapeutic interventions.
The finding that women with dyspareunia displayed positive automatic associations with sexual stimuli regardless of their persistent intrusive painful intercourse experiences may be explained by assuming that the deliberate negative associations with sex are acquired at a relatively late age.
That is, deliberate negative associations might develop during initial sexual experiences or at intercourse debut in women with lifelong dyspareunia and even later, after a period of pain-free intercourse, in women with acquired dyspareunia.
The information processing model of sexual arousal (Janssen et al., 2000; Laan & Janssen, 2007) may also account for the discrepancy between automatically activated and deliberate affective associations regarding sexual stimuli in the dyspareunia group as it proposes that different levels of cognitive processing differentially influence subjective and physiological sexual arousal responses.
Kurtz thinks the media tip-toed around the race elephant in the room, and I tend to agree — while everyone fretted that the use of the word "cocaine" was deliberate to invoke an association to associations with inner-city crack dens, no one actually examined whether it would, or why.
Like every other 19th-century tourist spot, from Atlantic City to Niagara Falls, Lake George is a human invention -- a deliberate construction of imagery and association that was born with the arrival of the first real American middle class in the early to mid-1800's.
