Page 175 - Emotions through the eyes of our closest living relatives- Exploring attentional and behavioral mechanisms

Validation of the Pictorial Implicit Association Test
language are that it is applicable to a wider variety of populations, and that the same test (i.e., without having to translate words) can be used even in populations that are very different (e.g., because of culture, language, cognitive ability), thus making direct comparisons possible. The stimuli we used for the (adult) PIAT were selected from the cross-culturally validated International Affective Picture System (Lang et al., 2007), and the IAPS is one example of what researchers can use to study e.g., cultural differences in implicit attitudes. At the same time, while the PIAT has not been validated for non- human animals, it could potentially be a useful tool to study implicit attitudes in for instance great apes, as they are highly capable of extracting emotionally relevant information from scenes and can be trained on the use of a touchscreen (Altschul et al., 2017; Kret et al., 2016; Perdue et al., 2012). For animals, more appropriate positive and negative images should then be selected (e.g., a favorite food item or an item that holds a negative association).
Conclusion
With the aim of validating a non-verbal PIAT, we found that it can be used to measure
implicit biases reliably, and similarly to a standard verbal IAT. As such, we believe
it can provide a practical way to study implicit associations in a wide variety of
individuals, and conceivably in non-verbal populations. Pictorial adaptations to the
IAT have the potential to answer important questions related to the ontogeny and
evolutionary development of implicit attitudes, and to directly compare different 7 groups of individuals on their implicit associations. Intergroup conflict in humans is
still ubiquitous, and the discussions about the foundations of implicit associations are still ongoing. We therefore deem it crucial to find novel ways to probe these implicit attitudes and make within- and between-species comparisons possible, which we think is the most important role that pictorial adaptations to the IAT can fulfill. By validating the PIAT as a tool, our study sets a first step into that direction, but future studies should look into optimization of the task by testing different kinds of attitudes and using multiple different category exemplars. Ultimately, we hope the PIAT can be added to the steadily growing list of cognitive tasks that can be used in comparative research.
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