Thomas Pronk

University of Amsterdam | UVA · Department of Psychology

The two Bayesian adaptive psychometric methods named QUEST (Watson & Pelli, 1983) and QUEST+ (Watson, 2017) are widely used to estimate psychometric parameters, especially the threshold, in laboratory-based psychophysical experiments. Considering the increase of online psychophysical experiments in recent years, there is a growing need to have the...

Research deployed via the internet and administered via smartphones could have access to more diverse samples than lab-based research. Diverse samples could have relatively high variation in their traits and so yield relatively reliable measurements of individual differences in these traits. Several cognitive tasks that originated from the experime...

People’s news diets are shaped by a diverse set of selection biases that may be unconscious in nature. This study investigates whether providing individuals with information about such unconscious biases attenuates selective exposure. More specifically, in two selective-exposure experiments among Dutch ingroup members focusing on ethnic (N = 286) a...

Research deployed via the internet and administered via smartphones could have access to more diverse samples than lab-based research. Diverse samples could have relatively high variation in their traits and so yield relatively reliable measurements of individual differences in these traits. Cognitive tasks have been reported to yield relatively lo...

Introduction Emerging adulthood is a phase in life that is associated with an increased risk to develop a variety of mental health disorders including anxiety and depression. However, less than 25% of university students receive professional help for their mental health reports. Internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) may entail useful...

Introduction Web-based smoking interventions hold potential for smoking cessation; however, many of them report low intervention usage (i.e., high levels of non-usage attrition). One strategy to counter this issue is to tailor such interventions to user subtypes if these can be identified and related to non-usage attrition outcomes. The aim of this...

Estimating the reliability of cognitive task datasets is commonly done via split-half methods. We review four methods that differ in how the trials are split into parts: a first-second half split, an odd-even trial split, a permutated split, and a Monte Carlo-based split. Additionally, each splitting method could be combined with stratification by...

In dit onderzoek is de kwaliteit van de moeder-kindrelatie en het verband met psychopathologie na seksueel misbruik onderzocht. Participanten waren 27 kinderen die seksueel misbruik hadden meegemaakt en 58 niet-misbruikte kinderen (7–16 jaar) en hun moeders. Kinderen vulden een vragenlijst in en voerden een impliciete-associatietest uit om de kwali...

Estimating the reliability of cognitive task datasets is commonly done via split-half methods. We review five different splitting methods: first-second half, odd-even trials, stratified, permutated, and Monte Carlo. These methods are reviewed in terms of the degree to which they are confounded with four effects that may occur in cognitive tasks: ef...

Background: Automatically activated cognitive motivational processes such as the tendency to attend to or approach smoking-related stimuli (ie, attentional and approach bias) have been related to smoking behaviors. Therefore, these cognitive biases are thought to play a role in maintaining smoking behaviors. Cognitive biases can be modified with co...

Background: Automatically activated cognitive motivational processes such as the tendency to attend to or approach smoking-related stimuli (ie, attentional and approach bias) have been related to smoking behaviors. Therefore, these cognitive biases are thought to play a role in maintaining smoking behaviors. Cognitive biases can be modified with c...

Web applications can implement procedures for studying the speed of mental processes (mental chronometry) and can be administered via web browsers on most commodity desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. This approach to conducting mental chronometry offers various opportunities, such as increased scale, ease of data collection, and access to...

BACKGROUND Automatically activated cognitive motivational processes such as the tendency to attend to or approach smoking-related stimuli (i.e., attentional and approach bias) have been related to smoking behaviors. Therefore, these cognitive biases are thought to play a role in maintaining smoking behaviors. Cognitive biases can be modified with C...

Introduction: The reclassification of gambling disorder as an addictive disorder in the latest DSM-5 has yielded the question which innovations in addiction treatment can benefit the treatment of problem gambling (PG). One particular innovation that has shown promise in other addictive behaviors, is the use of cognitive bias modification (CBM) tech...

Web applications can implement procedures for studying the speed of mental processes (mental chronometry). As web applications, these procedures can be administered via web-browsers on most commodity desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. This approach to conducting mental chronometry offers various opportunities, such as increased scale, eas...

Background Disordered gamblers have phenotypical and pathological similarities to those with substance use disorders (SUD), including exaggerated automatic cognitive processing of motivationally salient gambling cues in the environment (i.e., attentional and approach bias). Cognitive bias modification (CBM) is a family of computerised interventions...

Objective: To assess the efficacy of a multiple-sessions Web-based Attentional Bias Modification (ABM) self-help intervention in 434 smokers who made a quit-attempt. Method: Respondents were randomized to receive 6 sessions of ABM- or placebo-training in a period of 2 weeks. Smoking-related cognitions (e.g., self-efficacy and intention to quit)...

Background Alcohol research may benefit from controlled and validated picture sets. We have constructed the Amsterdam Beverage Picture Set (ABPS), which was designed for alcohol research in general and cognitive bias measurement and modification in particular. Here, we first formulate a position on alcohol stimulus validity that prescribes that alc...

Addiction research has hypothesised that automatic and reflective cognitive processes play an important role in the onset and maintenance of alcohol (ab)use, wherein automatic reactions to drug-related cues steer the drug user towards consuming before reflective processes can get over and steer towards a different behavioural response. These automa...

Background: Alcohol research may benefit from controlled and validated picture sets. We have constructed the Amsterdam Beverage Picture Set (ABPS), which was designed for alcohol research in general and cognitive bias measurement and modification in particular. Here, we first formulate a position on alcohol stimulus validity that prescribes that a...

Dual process models posit that problem drinking is maintained by an imbalance between relatively strong automatic processes and weak controlled processes, a combination of executive functions and motivation. Few studies have examined how the interplay between automatic processes and executive functions is affected by motivation to change. This stud...

Recently, it has been suggested that impairments in executive functioning might be risk factors for the onset of alcohol use rather than a result of heavy alcohol use. In the present study, we examined whether two aspects of executive functioning, working memory and response inhibition, predicted the first alcoholic drink and first binge drinking e...

Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) has opened up new ways to treat addiction by retraining relatively automatic, maladaptive processes implied in the onset and maintenance of addiction disorders (Wiers et al., 2013). Many CBM interventions can, in principle, be administered online, thus showing potential of being a cheap addition to conventional tre...

The present study explores the applicability of the Many-Facet Rasch Measurement model to an Approach Avoidance Task assessing automatic approach tendencies toward alcohol. The MFRM was applied to 54 alcohol dependent outpatients who completed a combined Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) training, targeting alcohol approach and attentional bias. Ma...

Introduction: Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) has opened up new ways to treat addiction by retraining relatively automatic processes implied in the onset and maintenance of alcohol (mis)use (Stacy & Wiers, 2010). Many CBM interventions can, in principle, be administered online, thus showing potential of being a cheap addition to conventional trea...

Aims: To examine the impact of an important context variable (alcohol-specific parental rules) and an important person variable (risky personality traits) and their interaction on prospective adolescent drinking. Methods: Participants were 252 adolescents, 67.9% female, between 13 and 16 years old. Data were collected via online assessments during...

The hallmark of implicit learning is that complex knowledge can be acquired unconsciously. The second order conditionals (SOCs) of Reed and Johnson (1994) were developed to be complex, and they are popular materials for implicit learning research. Recently, it was demonstrated that in a sequence made noisy (by combining two SOCs), shared features o...