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Experiment 2

Food information has a high reward value for human beings, and may be more so for those who are overweight or obese. Attention bias towards or away from food stimuli appears to be related to clinical symptoms in disordered eating and obesity. A popular task to assess attentional bias is the dot probe task. However, several studies have shown that the dot probe task has low reliability, making it a poor candidate to study individual differences or assess changes. A recent study (van Ens et al., 2019), however, seems to suggest that, by using a long stimulus presentation duration (3 seconds or longer), reaction time index may have acceptable internal and good test-retest reliability; in addition, although eye-tracking based first fixation measure had poor internal and test-retest reliability, the total dwell time measure had excellent internal and acceptable test-retest reliability. But several confounding factors and major limitations in this study may affect the validity and generalizability of the results: 1) it was mentioned that the color and complexity between food and nonfood stimuli were carefully matched, but it was not clear how; moreover, important physical properties such as luminance and contrast were not controlled for. Therefore, it was not clear whether any bias observed between food and nonfood images might be due to potential physical differences in luminance, contrast, etc. 2) Only 20 food stimuli (10 for high caloric density and 10 for low caloric density) were used, each presented for four times in the experiment. The limited number of images raises the question of generalizability across different food images; and repetitive presentations of images raises the possibility that any bias observed might not be due to attention per se but might relate to memory. 3) It was mentioned that appetizing stimuli were used to draw participants’ attention but it was not clear whether and how tastefulness was actually measured, which is important given individual differences in food preference. Moreover, caloric density was used, but it might not be a good index of healthfulness, since healthfulness, too, can be subjective. 4) reliability was measured only by Pearson’s correlation, which is a limited measure of reliability; for example, it does not take into account systematic differences between testing sessions. 5) the food and nonfood images were presented for 3 seconds, which is much longer than typically used in the dot probe task. It is then not clear how presentation duration might affect attentional bias and its reliability. Therefore, we plan to conduct a systematic investigation of the reliability of eye tracking based attention bias to food images in the dot-probe task using both reaction time and eye tracking measures. We plan to do so in two studies. In study 1, we resolve the confounds and limitations identified above with a few key innovations: 1) to control for differences in physical properties between food and nonfood stimuli, we use diffeomorphic transformed images based on the food images to serve as low-level control stimuli; 2) to improve generalizability and avoid the memory confound, we will increase the number of food images from 20 to 288, with each food image presented only once; 3) to control for individual differences in subjective perception, healthfulness and tastiness of the food items are rated by each participant individually, with the ratings then used to divide the food images into four groups (low healthfulness and low tastiness, low healthfulness and high tastiness, high healthfulness and low tastiness, and high healthfulness and high tastiness); 4) to provide a comprehensive evaluation, reliability is assessed by Pearson’s correlation coefficients/intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), standard errors of measurement, and Cronbach’s alpha. In study 2, we also systematically investigate the role of presentation duration and the role of image repetitions in attention bias, by manipulating stimulus duration (100 ms, 500 ms, 1000 ms, vs. 3000 ms) and repetitions (1 time vs. 4 times).

Food information has a high reward value for human beings, and may be more so for those who are overweight or obese. Stimuli with high reward value may be particularly conspicuous, demanding our attention even when we are attending to something else. Yet, the nature and neural signals of potential biased processing of food information remains unclear. Moreover, despite decades of research, a reliable measure of food information processing remains elusive, making it a methodological bottleneck in obesity and disordered eating research. To address the nature of biased attention processing, we ask 1) how attention is biased toward two cardinal properties of food information, namely, healthfulness and tastiness, even though the food information is irrelevant to the task at hand; and 2) whether and how such processing might be dependent on the demandingness of the central task (i.e., perceptual load). In our previous study which has been preregistered, we recruited 32 participants and measured their responses to infrequent visual food information embedded in streams of other visual objects in EEG, specifically, by using a variant of steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), oddball fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS). The infrequent food objects (i.e., oddballs) are one of four different combinations in different trials based on healthfulness and tastiness: 1) high healthfulness and high tastiness; 1) high healthfulness and low tastiness; 3) low healthfulness and high tastiness; and 4) low healthfulness and low tastiness. The perceptual load of the central task is either low (detection of a certain color of letters) or high (detection of certain combinations of color and identity of letters). In this study, the results demonstrated robust and reliable implicit categorization of food information at the individual level for all 32 participants, with the effect not modulated by perceptual load or tastiness (but might be by healthfulness). Since oddball FPVS is a novel paradigm applied to studying food information processing, it would be critical to replicate the findings in order to develop FPVS as a reliable measure of food information processing as well as apply this tool to obesity or other clinical sample with eating disorders. In particular, the modulating effect of healthfulness observed was not salient and requires further evidence. Furthermore, the lack of modulation by tastiness and perceptual load also warrants replication. Therefore, we plan to conduct a replication study with the same paradigm and sample size to validate our previous findings.

Perceptual decision making is an action to choose an option among a list of available choices, typically from two choices over a short time period (e.g. recognising if a traffic light is red or green during driving). Computational, neural, cognitive and behavioural theories have merged to describe that this dynamic behaviour of perceptual decision making is a consequence of competitions between accumulating sensory evidence of available stimuli (e.g. gradually recognising that a traffic light is red because perceptual information of red light reaches a decisional threshold earlier than that of green light) [for a review, see 1-4]. Similar processes have been described by those theories in a voluntary condition where one is given a full control to decide to choose one stimulus over a list of available options (or even given a choice to choose none), competing between accumulating voluntary decisions within one's mind, which is referred to as an intentional (and also referred to as a voluntary) decision making [e.g. 5-7]. In our first study, we used the perceptual decision making task of the Serial Reaction Time Task or SRTT with an involuntary (i.e. choosing a highlighted cue while avoiding three other unhighlighted cues) and a voluntary or freely-selectable (i.e. choosing one cue among all of four highlighted cues) conditions. This study demonstrated that the voluntary condition showed larger RT improvement on tapping a keyboard key spatially corresponding to a visual cue presented on a computer screen after a series of the tapping training than in the involuntary condition. This indicates that cognitive processes of choosing a choice through one’s mind alone leads to faster learning in such perceptual decision making task than inducing an action through perceiving a highlighted cue that guides which key to choose. Based on the initial finding, our second study reduced a number of free choices from fully selectable four options to two freely available and two inhibiting options in the voluntary condition. In this new study setting, participants’ reaction time became slower at the beginning of training, but the voluntary condition still showed larger RT improvement across repetitions of training than in the involuntary condition. In addition to that, we set one of the two freely selectable choices following a same sequential pattern as the fixed sequence pattern in the involuntary condition. This design increased a likelihood of choosing the free choice more frequently and speeded up participants’ reaction time faster than the other free choice. This suggests that trained or familiar sequential pattern leads to a preferred or biased choice within such intentional decision making task, and participants’ reaction speed might be boosted by skipping the additional decision making processes of inhibiting an action to certain choices and directly moving into the decision processes of choosing a choice underlying the trained sequential pattern in the involuntary condition. The finding in the second study raises a new question: how important are the trained sequential pattern (i.e. trained sequential pattern in the involuntary or fully fixed sequential condition) and participants’ intentional choices (i.e. choices among free choices in the voluntary condition) in this dynamic decision making task? Specifically, which factor produces a stronger effect on the dynamic decision making task? Do those effects interact each other (e.g. effects are additive or competitive)? Do those effects link to and predict subsequent decision making patterns? If so, which factor leads to a better link and prediction? Is the link/prediction better when combined, or separated? Here, our third study aims to examine these questions, by assigning the two free choice - two inhibiting choice setting to all trials. In this new study design, the fully fixed sequential condition (i.e. previously classified as an involuntary condition) follows a fixed sequential pattern with a pair of two freely selectable choices so that participants will learn a fixed sequential pattern of pairs, but they also need to make a further intentional decision between the two choices. We will test if the trained pattern of pairs of two free choices or participants’ intentional choices between the pair lead to a better performance (e.g. faster RTs or accuracy) individually or their effects are interactive. Also, we will examine if these effects link to and predict subsequent decision making patterns.

In-Vehicle technology, such as a smartphone, has been shown to distract people from driving. Following the paradigm of Sall et al. (2014), here we will investigate whether the LED flashes that occur near participants can capture their attention and interfere with the detection of changes in the road environment ahead.

Stage 1 IPA at PCI RR

Sex differences are commonly observed in behaviors that are closely linked to adaptive function, but sex differences can also be observed in behavioral "building blocks" such as locomotor activity and reward processing. Modern neuroscientific inquiry, in pursuit of generalizable principles of functioning across sexes, has often ignored these more subtle sex differences in behavioral building blocks that may result from differences in these behavioral building blocks. A frequent assumption is that there is a default (often male) way to perform a behavior. This approach misses fundamental drivers of individual variability within and between sexes. Incomplete behavioral descriptions of both sexes can lead to an overreliance on reduced "single-variable" readouts of complex behaviors, the design of which may be based on male-biased samples. Here, we advocate that the incorporation of new machine-learning tools for collecting and analyzing multimodal "big behavior" data allows for a more holistic and richer approach to the quantification of behavior in both sexes. These new tools make behavioral description more robust and replicable across laboratories and species, and may open up new lines of neuroscientific inquiry by facilitating the discovery of novel behavioral states. Having more accurate measures of behavioral diversity in males and females could serve as a hypothesis generator for where and when we should look in the brain for meaningful neural differences.

The current study follows-up on two preregistered experiments in which we investigated whether information in the focus of attention is protected from (Experiment 1: https://osf.io/8uvnb) or particularly vulnerable to (Experiment 2: https://osf.io/af8mj/) perceptual interference, compared to information outside the focus of attention. Contrary to what is typically observed, we did not find an interference effect in either of the experiments, neither for information in the focus of attention, nor for information outside the focus of attention. Therefore, in the current study, we will 1) investigate why we did not observe an interference effect in Experiment 1, while 2) still keeping our initial research question in mind (i.e., Is information in the focus of attention protected from or particularly vulnerable to perceptual interference, compared to information outside the focus of attention?). Related to the first point, we propose two hypotheses as to why we did not observe an interference effect in the aforementioned experiments. Firstly, the lack of an interference effect might be due to the specific, unfamiliar materials that were used (i.e., material hypothesis; non-verbalizable images from Endo et al., 2003). Secondly, the lack of an interference effect might be due to the long encoding times (i.e., encoding time hypothesis), resulting in particularly strong or robust memory representations. To investigate these two hypotheses, we will present participants with the paradigm as used in Experiment 1 (i.e., a 100% valid retro-cue paradigm), except for two critical changes; (1) we will use two types of materials (familiar vs. unfamiliar), and (2) we will decrease the encoding time from 2000 ms to 1000 ms. More specifically, we will present half of the participants with unfamiliar, not-verbalizable images as used in Experiment 1 (Endo et al., 2003) and the other half of the participants with a set of familiar, verbalizable images (Brady et al., 2008). For all participants in the current experiment, we decreased the encoding time, to enable us to compare the data of the participants of Experiment 1 (i.e., unfamiliar material – long encoding time) with the data of the participants who were presented with unfamiliar memory materials in the current study (i.e., unfamiliar material – short encoding time).

In this study, we will investigate whether the item in the focus of attention is more vulnerable to perceptual interference compared to other items, outside of the focus of attention in working memory, as previously has been found in different reward paradigms (e.g., Allen & Ueno, 2018; Hitch et al., 2018, 2020; Hu et al., 2014, 2016). To do so, we will use a ‘1114’ reward pattern as was typically used in the aforementioned studies. If the item in the focus of attention is more vulnerable to perceptual interference than items outside of the focus of attention in working memory, we should find a clear disruptive effect of perceptual interference for high reward items compared to low reward items (i.e., typically found in reward paradigms). Additionally, we will investigate whether the same pattern can be found for high reward items compared to no reward items (i.e., a comparison that is more similar to what is typically done in retro-cue paradigms).

Adult users of cochlear implants (CIs) must perceive, understand, and recall speech from a sharply degraded acoustic input. These real-world demands of speech processing in CI users can be contrasted with current clinical outcome studies that focus almost entirely on intelligibility of phonemes, words, and short sentences. This thesis consists of two experiments. Experiment 1 tested the recall of discourse passages presented to normal (acoustic) hearing young adults, with noise-band vocoding used to simulate the sound of speech via a CI. Effects on recall accuracy when participants could control the rate of speech by self-pacing the input and when passages had higher, inter-word (cloze) predictability were also tested. Patterns of individuals’ self-pacing and a qualitative analysis of participants’ recall in terms of the proportion of main-level propositions versus minor-level propositions recalled were examined. Additionally, the type of passage—whether it was narrative or expository—was a variable of interest. All of this was done to explore potential effects of speech clarity on processing strategies and how they might interact with passage difficulty. A continuous measure of task-related changes in pupil size were obtained as a measure of processing effort and engagement. Experiment 2 was conducted using the same materials and procedures as Experiment 1, but with actual adult CI users rather than the simulation study in Experiment 1. Results show that CI users’ recall was influenced by the same stimulus features but were less likely to show an advantage for the self-pacing conditions. Results are discussed in terms of effort versus task engagement.

This experiment is part of a study including four experiments (100%_retrocue, 3-1-1_reward, 33%_retrocue, and 100-1-1_reward) in which we want to investigate whether information in the focus of attention is protected from or particularly vulnerable to perceptual interference. One of the most prominent differences between studies finding a protective or vulnerable state is the fact that the studies finding a protective state typically used a retro-cue (e.g., van Moorselaar et al., 2015), whereas studies finding a particularly vulnerable state typically used a reward pattern to prioritize information in working memory (e.g., Allen & Ueno, 2018). In the current experiment (3-1-1_reward), we aim to reproduce the observed vulnerable state of an item in the focus of attention as found by Allen & Ueno (2018) by presenting the paradigm by van Moorselaar et al. (2015) but with a 3-1-1 reward pattern (i.e., all items have an equal chance of being tested but one receives a higher reward). Thus, in this experiment, the priority signal indicates which item will result in a higher reward when it is tested and responded to correctly at the end of the trial, but all items have an equal chance of being tested. There are three Priority states in this experiment: high priority, low priority, and equal priority. The data for both the high priority and the low priority condition come from trials with a priority signal. That is, data for the high-priority condition comes from trials in which the high-priority item was tested, whereas data for the low-priority condition comes from trials in which one of the low-priority items was tested. Data for the equal priority condition comes from trials without a priority signal.

Online study of mind wandering comparing younger vs. older adults and their reports of different emotionally charged mind wandering experiences.

This experiment is part of a study including four experiments (100%_retrocue, 3-1-1_reward, 33%_retrocue, and 100-1-1_reward) in which we want to investigate whether information in the focus of attention is protected from or vulnerable to perceptual interference. One of the most prominent differences between studies finding a protective or vulnerable state is the fact that the studies finding a protective state typically used a retro-cue (e.g., van Moorselaar et al., 2015), whereas studies finding a particularly vulnerable state typically used a reward pattern to prioritize information in working memory (e.g., Allen & Ueno, 2018). In this current experiment (100%_retrocue), we aim to replicate the observed protective state of an item in the focus of attention as found by van Moorselaar et al. (2015) by using the same paradigm as used by van Moorselaar et al. (2015), including a 100% valid retro-cue. Thus, in this experiment, the priority signal indicates which item will be tested at the end of the trial. There are two Priority states in this experiment: high priority and equal priority. The data for the high-priority condition comes from trials in which a priority signal was present, whereas the data for the equal-priority condition comes from trials without a priority signal.

This experiment follows up on a series of experiments (see preregistrations: https://osf.io/3vder, https://osf.io/2wgty, https://osf.io/3hfds, https://osf.io/kgqz3) in which we wanted to investigate whether information in the focus of attention is protected from or particularly vulnerable to perceptual interference. One of the most prominent differences between studies finding a protective or vulnerable state is the fact that the studies finding a protective state typically used a retro-cue (e.g., van Moorselaar et al., 2015), whereas studies finding a particularly vulnerable state typically used a reward pattern to prioritize information in working memory (e.g., Allen & Ueno, 2018). Importantly, while a retro-cue usually indicates the to-be-tested item, presenting a reward pattern does not give an indication of the to-be-tested item. Thus, in a retro-cue paradigm, there is only one item that can be tested, while in a reward pattern paradigm, all items can still be tested. On the one hand, the difference in a protective versus vulnerable state might arise from the difference in how information is brought into the focus of attention (Prioritization mode: cued vs. rewarded). On the other hand, the difference in a protective versus vulnerable state might come from a difference in task relevance (objective or subjective). This is what we aimed to test in our previous preregistered experiments (https://osf.io/3vder, https://osf.io/2wgty, https://osf.io/3hfds, https://osf.io/kgqz3). However, in our reward experiments, all items could be tested equally but one was more (subjectively) relevant than the others, while in our cue experiments, either only 1 item was relevant (100% valid cue experiment), or all items were equally relevant (33% valid cue experiment). Thus, to complete our series of studies, we aimed to create a cue experiment in which all items were relevant but one more so than the others (i.e., using a 66% valid retro-cue). There are three Priority states in this experiment: high priority, low priority, and equal priority. The data for both the high-priority and the low-priority condition come from trials with a priority signal. That is, data for the high-priority condition comes from trials in which the high-priority item was tested while data for the low-priority condition comes from trials in which one of the low-priority items was tested. Data for the equal-priority condition comes from trials without a priority signal.

This experiment is part of a study including four experiments (100%_retrocue, 3-1-1_reward, 33%_retrocue, and 100-1-1_reward) in which we want to investigate whether information in the focus of attention is protected from or vulnerable to perceptual interference. One of the most prominent differences between studies finding a protective or vulnerable state is the fact that the studies finding a protective state typically used a retro-cue (e.g., van Moorselaar et al., 2015), whereas studies finding a particularly vulnerable state typically used a reward pattern to prioritize information in working memory (e.g., Allen & Ueno, 2018). One possibility is that the difference in a protective versus vulnerable state arises from the difference in how information is brought into the focus of attention (Prioritization mode: cued vs. rewarded). Alternatively, the difference in a protective versus vulnerable state might arise from a difference in (objective or subjective) task relevance of the prioritized information across the conditions in question. In the current reward paradigm, we will increase the task relevance by increasing the high reward value from 3 to 100. If the susceptibility of an item in the focus of attention depends on the prioritization mode, then we expect to see a vulnerable state in the current experiment, even though the difference in task relevance between the high-priority item and the low-priority items was increased compared to the 3-1-1 reward pattern. If the susceptibility of an item in the focus of attention depends on the task relevance, then we expect to see a protective state in the current experiment, because the difference in task relevance between the high-priority item and low-priority items was increased compared to the 3-1-1 reward pattern. In this experiment, there are three Priority states: high priority, low priority, and equal priority. The data for both the high-priority and the low-priority condition come from trials with a priority signal. That is, data for the high-priority condition comes from trials in which the high-priority item was tested while data for the low-priority condition comes from trials in which one of the low-priority items was tested. Data for the equal-priority condition comes from trials without a priority signal.

The pronounced decline in episodic memory during healthy aging can be explained by decreasing abilities to build and remember associations (i.e., associative memory). Strategies as interactive imagery (i.e., creating a mental image of the two words in interaction) and creating relational sentences (i.e., sentences integrating the two words) enhance associative memory in older adults. However, older adults do not spontaneously and efficiently use these strategies. Recent research revealed that drawing is an efficient encoding tool to enhance memory performance for single items in younger and older adults. However, the impact of drawing on associative memory remains to be investigated. In the current project we aim to extend existing evidence to associative memory and thus investigate whether drawing as an encoding tool can reduce age-related deficits in associative memory. We assume that drawing enhances the effect of strategies involving imagery in older adults. In a first experiment (see preregistration 1), we tested the effect of drawing interactive images, compared to writing relational sentences on recognition memory performance for items and for associations of items in two age groups (younger vs. older). Ten older and eleven young participants were tested. In this first study, encoding time for writing and drawing was 25 s. Results showed dramatically impaired associative memory performance after drawing in the older group, when compared to writing. In contrast, item memory performance after writing in the older group resulted in good memory performance, comparable to memory performance of the younger group. The results coincided with the feedback from older participants, reporting that the encoding time was too short to draw interactive images. We think that these results (impaired associative memory performance in the older group after drawing interactive images) can be explained by the encoding time of that was too short for the old participants to successfully use drawing to create an interactive image. We decided to stop the study (preregistration 1) and to start the present study using the same paradigm, but with longer encoding time (45 s) for the older participants. Further, as writing interactive sentences seemed to be a successful encoding tool also for the older group, we use writing rote repetitions of the words as control condition of the present study. This control condition will not automatically lead to the creation of an interaction between the two words of a pair. We expect an overall positive effect of drawing on memory performance with the largest benefit for associative memory in older adults (reflected by the difference between drawing and control condition). This experiment will provide insight on the mechanistic underpinnings of methods to improve episodic memory in aging people.

Addendum to original pre-registration

In this study, we investigate how much it is worth for human agents to be in control over a specific action outcome.

An online study characterizing perceived hazardousness of natural videos (Road Hazard Stimuli)

Perceptual decision making is an action to choose an option among a list of available choices, typically from two choices over a short time period (e.g. recognising if a traffic light is red or green during driving). Computational, neural, cognitive and behavioral theories have merged to describe that this dynamic behavior of perceptual decision making is a consequence of competitions between accumulating sensory evidence of available stimuli (e.g. gradually recognising that a traffic light is red because perceptual information of red light reaches a decisional threshold earlier than that of green light) [for a review, see 1-4]. Similar processes have been described by those theories in a voluntary condition where one is given a full control to decide one stimulus over a list of available options (or even given a choice to choose none), competing between voluntary decisions within one's mind, which is referred to as an intentional (and also referred to as a voluntary) decision making [e.g. 5-7]. In this study, we plan to utilise a modified version of the Serial Reaction Time Task or SRTT, where an involuntary (i.e. choosing a highlighted cue) and a voluntary or freely-selectable (i.e. choosing a cue among highlighted cues) conditions exist in a perceptual decision making task of tapping keyboard keys spatially corresponding to visual cues presented on a computer screen. Here we aim to examine how the coexistence of the involuntary and the voluntary conditions interacts with performance of the perceptual decision making task. [See the "Other" section for references.]

In this study, we will investigate the protective state of the item in the focus of attention from perceptual interference as previously has been found in different retro-cue paradigms (e.g., Barth & Schneider, 2018; Hollingworth & Maxcey-Richard, 2013; Makovski, 2012; Makovski & Jiang, 2007; Makovski & Pertzov, 2015; Schneider et al., 2017; van Moorselaar et al., 2015). To do so, we will use a 100% valid retro-cue as was typically used in the studies finding this protective state for the item in the focus of attention. If the item in the focus of attention is indeed protected against perceptual interference, we expect to find that a disruptive effect of perceptual interference is small, or absent, for cued items while there is a clear disruptive effect of perceptual interference for uncued items.

In a series of prior experiments, we found that inter-individual variability in cued recall (CR) word memory performance was greater than inter-individual variability in free recall (FR) word memory performance (at least using English nouns and straightforward study-test designs). Specifically, across several experiments we observed a CR:FR variance ratio of ~1.2-1.3. However, in all those experiments, the CR task involved twice as many studied words (e.g., 15 CR pairs vs. 15 FR single-word targets). We considered the possibility that this imbalance may have contributed to the CR:FR variability effect described above. The following experiment was designed to test this possibility.

Study of how attorney closing argument guidance influences mock-juror decisions following in-person deliberations.

Reviewers pointed out that one salient possibility is that the CR:FR variance effect we observed was due to the fixed equal per-word/pair study time of 5s. For instance, it could be that 5s is sufficient to encode FR singletons regardless of strategy or reading speed, but not for CR. We observed some hints of bimodality in some of our CR data--it could be that the increased CR variability is due to grouping on some factor related to the 5s per-pair study time. The objective of this experiment was to investigate this possibility by making the study phases for CR and FR self-paced. That is, participants could study each word/pair for up to 30s, and proceed to the next word/pair whenever they thought they were ready. This design allowed us to combat the potential confound mentioned previously, and to explore effects of study time (e.g., do participants spend substantially longer on CR than FR study? Does longer study time (normalized within-participant) predict accuracy?). This experiment was essentially a replication of one of our earlier simple designs (Experiments 2A and 2B, see https://osf.io/yv3b7/) using a general nouns word list and one CR and one FR study list (15 words/pairs per list) per participant.

An experimental study investigating the effect of explainable AI advice on peoples’ decision-making in an HR-related task

This experiment is part of a study including four experiments (100%_retrocue, 3-1-1_reward, 33%_retrocue, and 100-1-1_reward) in which we want to investigate whether information in the focus of attention is protected from or particularly vulnerable to perceptual interference. One of the most prominent differences between studies finding a protective or vulnerable state is the fact that the studies finding a protective state typically used a retro-cue (e.g., van Moorselaar et al., 2015), whereas studies finding a particularly vulnerable state typically used a reward pattern to prioritize information in working memory (e.g., Allen & Ueno, 2018). One possibility is that the difference in a protective versus vulnerable state arises from the difference in how information is brought into the focus of attention (Prioritization mode: cued vs. rewarded). Alternatively, the difference in a protective versus vulnerable state might arise from a difference in (objective or subjective) task relevance of the prioritized information across the conditions in question. In the current retro-cue paradigm, we will lower the task relevance by reducing the cue validity from 100% to 33%. If the susceptibility of an item in the focus of attention depends on the prioritization mode, then we expect to see a protective state in the current experiment, even though the difference in task relevance between the high-priority item and equal-priority items was reduced compared to 100% validity. If the susceptibility of an item in the focus of attention depends on the task relevance, then we expect to see a vulnerable state in the current experiment, because the difference in task relevance between the high-priority item and equal-priority items was reduced compared to 100% validity. There are three Priority states in this experiment: high priority, low priority, and equal priority. The data for both the high-priority and the low-priority condition come from trials with a priority signal. That is, data for the high-priority condition comes from trials in which the high-priority item was tested while data for the low-priority condition comes from trials in which one of the low-priority items was tested. Data for the equal-priority condition comes from trials without a priority signal.

Novelty and impact are key characteristics of the scientific enterprise. Classic theories of scientific change distinguish among different types of novelty and emphasize how a new idea interacts with previous work and influences future flows of knowledge. However, even recently developed measures of novelty remain unidimensional, and continued reliance on citation counts captures only the amount, but not the nature, of scientific impact. To better align theoretical and empirical work, we attend to different types of novelty (new results, new theories, and new methods) and whether a scientific offering has a consolidating form of influence (bringing renewed attention to foundational ideas) or a disruptive one (prompting subsequent scholars to overlook them). By integrating data from the Web of Science (to measure the nature of influence) with essays written by authors of Citation Classics (to measure novelty type), and by joining computational text analysis with statistical analyses, we demonstrate clear and robust patterns between type of novelty and the nature of scientific influence. As expected, new methods tend to be more disruptive, whereas new theories tend to be less disruptive. Surprisingly, new results do not have a robust effect on the nature of scientific influence.

Emotional expressions form a key part of user behavior on today's digital platforms. While multimodal emotion recognition techniques are gaining research attention, there is a lack of deeper understanding on how visual and non-visual features can be used to better recognize emotions in certain contexts, but not others. This study analyzes the interplay between the effects of multimodal emotion features derived from facial expressions, tone and text in conjunction with two key contextual factors: i) gender of the speaker, and ii) duration of the emotional episode. Using a large public dataset of 2,176 manually annotated YouTube videos, we found that while multimodal features consistently outperformed bimodal and unimodal features, their performance varied significantly across different emotions, gender and duration contexts. Multimodal features performed particularly better for male speakers in recognizing most emotions. Furthermore, multimodal features performed particularly better for shorter than for longer videos in recognizing neutral and happiness, but not sadness and anger. These findings offer new insights towards the development of more context-aware emotion recognition and empathetic systems., Comment: Accepted version at IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing

Como respuesta al problema de la violencia física y sexual contra la infancia en Colombia, el Congreso de la República aprobó, en 2020, la instauración de la cadena perpetua para quienes cometieran este tipo de delitos, cuyas mayorías consideraron que era la solución correcta a este fenómeno social. Sin embargo, varios sectores han descreído de esta medida y la han tildado de populista e innecesaria. El propósito de este artículo es demostrar que, en este caso, se observó la primacía de la emoción —o intuición— y no de la razón. Para ello se analizan los argumentos presentados en los debates, a partir de teorías de la argumentación y de la psicología cognitiva, se describe el populismo punitivo y se concluye que los planteamientos basados en la intuición y en la emoción se impusieron más que la ciencia o la razón. Esto puede adecuarse a las categorías del populismo, que es posible combatirlo, sostengo, con una mirada distinta, que comprenda la cultura científica, el reconocimiento del otro y la educación emocional. In response to the problem of physical and sexual violence against children in Colombia, the Congress of the Republic approved in 2020 the life imprisonment for those who committed these types of crimes, as its majorities considered it to be the correct solution to this social phenomenon. However, several sectors have doubted this measure, calling it populist and unnecessary. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that in this case the primacy of emotion—or intuition—and not of reason was evidenced. To this end, an analysis of the arguments presented in the different debates is made, based on theories of argumentation and cognitive psychology, describing punitive populism. The conclusion is that arguments based on intuition and emotion prevailed over science or reason. This is compatible with populism, which can be combated, I argue, through a different perspective that includes scientific culture, recognition of the other, and emotional education.

Item does not contain fulltext There is a renewed interest for complex adaptive system approaches that can account for the inherently complex and dynamic nature of psychopathology. Yet a theory of psychopathology grounded in the principles of complex adaptive systems is lacking. Here, we present such a theory based on the notion of dynamic patterns: patterns that are formed over time. We propose that psychopathology can be understood as a dynamic pattern that emerges from self-organized interactions between interdependent biopsychosocial processes in a complex adaptive system comprising a person in their environment. Psychopathology is emergent in the sense that it refers to the person-environment system as a whole and cannot be reduced to specific system parts. Psychopathology as a dynamic pattern is also self-organized, meaning that it arises solely from the interdependencies in the system: the interactions between countless biopsychosocial variables. All possible manifestations of psychopathology will correspond to a wide variety of dynamic patterns. Yet we propose that the development of these patterns over time can be described by general principles of pattern formation in complex adaptive systems. A discussion of implications for classification, intervention, and public health concludes the article. 10 p.

Music is commonly regarded as one of the fine arts, but aesthetic responses to music are still poorly understood. The aim of this study was thus to shed light on the psychological process through ...

Pavlovian learning processes are central to the etiology and treatment of anxiety disorders. Anhedonia and related perturbations in reward processes have been implicated in Pavlovian learning. Associations between anhedonia symptoms and neural indices of Pavlovian learning can inform transdiagnostic associations among depressive and anxiety disorders.Participants ages 18 to 19 years (67% female) completed a fear extinction (n = 254) and recall (n = 249) paradigm during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Symptom dimensions of general distress (common to anxiety and depression), fears (more specific to anxiety), and anhedonia-apprehension (more specific to depression) were evaluated. We trained whole-brain multivoxel pattern decoders for anhedonia-apprehension during extinction and extinction recall and tested the decoders' ability to predict anhedonia-apprehension in an external validation sample. Specificity analyses examined effects covarying for general distress and fears. Decoding was repeated within canonical brain networks to highlight candidate neurocircuitry underlying whole-brain effects.Whole-brain decoder training succeeded during both tasks. Prediction of anhedonia-apprehension in the external validation sample was successful for extinction (RResults suggest that patterns of brain activity during extinction, particularly in the cognitive control, default mode, limbic, salience, and visual networks, can be predictive of anhedonia symptoms. Future research should examine associations between anhedonia and extinction, including studies of exposure therapy or positive affect treatments among anhedonic individuals.

The metacognitive sense of confidence can play a critical role in regulating decision making. In particular, a lack of confidence can justify the explicit, potentially costly, instrumental acquisition of extra information that might resolve uncertainty. Human confidence is highly complex, and recent computational work has suggested a statistically sophisticated tapestry behind the information that governs both the making and monitoring of choices. However, the consequences of the form of such confidence computations for search have yet to be understood. Here, we reveal extra richness in the use of confidence for information seeking by formulating joint models of action, confidence, and information search within a Bayesian and reinforcement learning framework. Through detailed theoretical analysis of these models, we show the intricate normative downstream consequences for search arising from more complex forms of metacognition. For example, our results highlight how the ability to monitor errors or general metacognitive sensitivity impact seeking decisions and can generate diverse relationships between action, confidence, and the optimal search for information. We also explore whether empirical search behavior enjoys any of the characteristics of normatively derived prescriptions. More broadly, our work demonstrates that it is crucial to treat metacognitive monitoring and control as closely linked processes.

The hippocampal formation (HF) facilitates the creation of declarative memories, with subfields providing unique contributions to the discriminability and generalizability of events. The HF itself and its connections with other structures exhibit a protracted development. Maturational differences across subfields facilitate a shift towards memory specificity, with peri-puberty sitting at the inflection point. Peri-puberty also happens to be a sensitive period in the development of anxiety disorders. Taken together, we believe HF development is critical to negative overgeneralization, a common feature of anxiety disorders. To investigate the role of the HF in behavioral discrimination and generalization we examined the relation between behavior and cross-sectional indices of HF maturity derived from subfield volume. Participants aged 9-14 years, recruited from clinical and community sources, performed a recognition task with emotionally valent (positive, negative) and neutral images. T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted structural scans were collected. Partial least squares correlations were used to derive a singular metric of maturity for both HF volume and structural connectivity. We found our volumetric HF maturity index was positively associated with discrimination for neutral images and generalization for negative images. Hippocampal-medial prefrontal cortex structural connectivity maturity metric evidenced a similar trend with behavior as the HF volumetric approach. These findings are important because they reflect a novel developmentally related balance between discrimination and generalization behavior supported by the hippocampus and its connections with other regions. Maturational shifts in this balance may contribute to negative overgeneralization, a common feature of anxiety disorders that escalates during the same developmental window.Significance StatementThe hippocampal formation (HF) facilitates declarative memory specificity and is composed of subfields whose development during adolescence overlaps with the onset of anxiety disorders. Aberrations in mechanisms governing memory specificity may contribute to negative overgeneralization in anxious youth. Participants completed an emotional memory discrimination task while in the scanner. Using a multivariate maturity metric based on subfield volume we found individuals with more “mature” HF were better at differentiating similar neutral images and more likely to generalize similar negative images. These findings are important because they capture a novel developmental mechanism related to the balance between discrimination and generalization. Shifts in this balance, may contribute to negative overgeneralization, a common feature of anxiety disorders.

The predicted utility of information stored in working memory (WM) is hypothesized to influence the strategic allocation of WM resources. Prior work has shown that when information is prioritized, it is remembered with greater precision relative to other remembered items. However, these paradigms often complicate interpretation of the effects of predicted utility on item fidelity due to a concurrent memory load. Likewise, no fMRI studies have examined whether the predicted utility of an item modulates fidelity in the neural representation of items during the memory delay without a concurrent load. In the current study, we used fMRI to investigate whether predicted utility influences fidelity of WM representations in the brain. Using a generative model multivoxel analysis approach to estimate the quality of remembered representations across predicted utility conditions, we observed that items with greater predicted utility are maintained in memory with greater fidelity, even when they are the only item being maintained. Further, we found that this pattern follows a parametric relationship where more predicted utility corresponded to greater fidelity. These precision differences could not be accounted for based on a redistribution of resources among already-remembered items. Rather, we interpret these results in terms of a gating mechanism that allows for pre-allocation of resources based on predicted value alone. This evidence supports a theoretical distinction between resource allocation that occurs as a result of load and resource pre-allocation that occurs as a result of predicted utility.

The original 90-item Creative Behavior Inventory (CBI) was a landmark self-report scale in creativity research, and the 28-item brief form developed nearly 20 years ago continues to be a popular measure of everyday creativity. Relatively little is known, however, about the psychometric properties of this widely used scale. In the current research, we conduct a detailed psychometric investigation into the 28-item CBI by applying methods from item response theory using a sample of 2,082 adults. Our investigation revealed several strengths of the current scale: excellent reliability, suitable dimensionality, appropriate item difficulty, and reasonably good item discrimination. Several areas for improvement were highlighted as well: (1) the four-point response scale should have fewer options; (2) a handful of items showed gender-based differential item functioning, indicating some gender bias; and (3) local dependence statistics revealed clusters of items that are redundant and could be trimmed. These analyses support the continued use of the CBI for assessing engagement in everyday creative behaviors but suggest that the CBI could benefit from thoughtful revision.

Recent theory conceptualizes emotion regulation as occurring across three stages: (a) identifying the need to regulate, (b) selecting a strategy, and (c) implementing that strategy to modify emotions. Yet, measurement of emotion regulation has not kept pace with these theoretical advances. In particular, widely used global self-report questionnaires are often assumed to index people's typical strategy selection tendencies. However, it is unclear how well global self-reports capture individual differences in strategy selection and/or whether they may also index other emotion regulation stages. To address this issue, we examined how global self-report measures correspond with the three stages of emotion regulation as modeled using daily life data. We analyzed data from nine daily diary and experience sampling studies (total N = 1,097), in which participants provided daily and global self-reports of cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and rumination. We found only weak-to-moderate correlations between global self-reports and average daily self-reports of each regulation strategy (indexing strategy selection). Global self-reports also correlated with individual differences in the degree to which (a) preceding affect experience predicted regulation strategies (representing the identification stage), and (b) regulation strategies predicted subsequent changes in affective experience (representing the implementation stage). Our findings suggest that global self-report measures of reappraisal, suppression, and rumination may not strongly and uniquely correlate with individual differences in daily selection of these strategies. Moreover, global self-report measures may also index individual differences in the perceived need to regulate, and the affective consequences of regulation in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved). ispartof: Emotion vol:23 issue:2 pages:357-374 ispartof: location:United States status: published

Disturbances in interpersonal functioning are prevalent in individuals with suicidality. Foundational for interpersonal functioning is theory of mind (ToM), a social-cognitive ability that allows individuals to understand the thoughts and feelings of others. Recent work has begun to investigate ToM performance in individuals with suicidality, though no review has quantitatively aggregated findings from these varied studies. The current study investigated the relations between ToM and suicidality with meta-analysis.We identified and meta-analyzed 15 studies that presented data for 2,895 participants (617 of whom had reported at least one suicide attempt).Results indicated a significant, negative relation between ToM and suicidality with a medium overall effect size (Deficits in ToM associated with suicidality hold promise for risk-identification, treatment, and prevention work.HighlightsTheory of mind (ToM) abilities are critical for effective interpersonal functioning.Meta-analytics results indicate that ToM deficits are associated with suicidality.Identifying such suicidality-related ToM deficits may inform risk-identification, treatment, and prevention work.

Neuropsychological tests have commonly been used to determine the organization of cognitive functions by identifying latent variables. In contrast, an approach which has seldom been employed is network analysis. We characterize the network structure of a set of representative neuropsychological test scores in cognitively healthy older adults and MCI and dementia patients using network analysis. We employed the neuropsychological battery from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center which included healthy controls (n = 7623), mild cognitive impairment patients (n = 5981) and dementia patients (n = 2040), defined according to the Clinical Dementia Rating. The results showed that, according to several network analysis measures, the most central cognitive function is executive function followed by attention, language, and memory. At the test level, the most central test was the Trail Making Test B, which measures cognitive flexibility. Importantly, these results and most other network measures, such as the community organization and graph representation, were similar across the three diagnostic groups. Therefore, network analysis can help to establish a ranking of cognitive functions and tests based on network centrality and suggests that this organization is preserved in dementia. Central nodes might be particularly relevant both from a theoretical and clinical point of view, as they are more associated with other nodes, and their disruption is likely to have a larger effect on the overall network than peripheral nodes. The present analysis may provide a proof of principle for the application of network analysis to cognitive data.

Narrative coherence serves as an index of the unity in an individual's sense of self-integrating their past self with their present self and allowing them to pursue meaningful goals for their future. It has been assessed using the Life Story Interview. Personality functioning is used to describe an individual's ability to develop stable and integrated representations of the self and others as well as their ability to develop and maintain stable, intimate, and affiliative relationships and meaningfully empathize with others. We studied the links between narrative coherence (based on Life Story Interviews) and personality functioning (as indexed by clinician ratings using the Levels of Personality Functioning Scale) in a psychiatric sample (N = 134) and more generally studied the nomological net surrounding narrative coherence. Contrary to predictions, results revealed that narrative coherence does not serve as a marker of personality functioning. However, we found evidence of an association between narrative coherence and measures of extraversion and psychosocial functioning. This study represents an important step in integrating narrative identity with empirically derived structural models of personality pathology and psychopathology. Implications for future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Most psycholinguistic models of reading aloud and of speech production do not include linguistic representations more fine-grained than the phoneme, despite the fact that the available empirical evidence suggests that feature-level representations are activated during reading aloud and speech production. In a series of masked-priming experiments that employed the reading aloud task, we investigated effects of phonological features, such as voicing, place of articulation, and constriction location, on response latencies in English and Russian. We propose a hypothesis that predicts greater likelihood of obtaining feature-priming effects when the onsets of the prime and the target share more feature values than when they share fewer. We found that prime-target pairs whose onsets differed only in voicing (e.g., /p/-/b/) primed each other consistently in Russian, as has already been found in English. Response latencies for prime-target pairs whose onsets differed in place of articulation (e.g., /b/-/d/) patterned differently in English and Russian. Prime-target pairs whose onsets differed in constriction location only (e.g., /s/ and /ʂ/) did not yield a priming effect in Russian. We conclude that feature-priming effects are modulated not only by the phonological similarity between the onsets of primes and targets but also by the dynamics of feature activation and by the language-specific relationship between orthography and phonology. Our findings suggest that feature-level representations need to be included in models of reading aloud and of speech production if we are to move forward with theorizing in these research domains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Facial width-to height ratio (fWHR), presumed to be shaped by testosterone during puberty, has been linked with aggressive, dominant, and power-seeking behavioral traits in adult males, although the causal mediation is still being disputed. To investigate the role of mere observer attribution bias in the association, we instructed participants to draw, feature-assemble, or photo-edit faces of fictitious males with aggressive-dominant character (compared with peaceloving-submissive), or powerful social status (compared with powerless). Across three studies involving 1,100 modeled faces in total, we observed little evidence for attribution bias with regards to facial width. Only in the photo-edited faces did character condition seem to affect fWHR; this difference, however, relied on displayed state emotions, not on static facial features. Anger, in particular, was expressed by lowered or V-shaped eyebrows, whereby facial height was reduced so that fWHR increased, relative to the comparison condition where the opposite happened. Using Bayesian analyses and equivalence testing, we confirmed that, in the absence of state emotionality, there was no effect of character condition on facial width. Our results add to a number of recent studies stressing the role of emotion overgeneralization in the association of fWHR with personality traits, an attributional bias that may give rise to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Methodologically, we infer that static images may be of limited use for investigations of fWHR because they cannot sufficiently differentiate between transient muscular activation and identity-related bone structures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Do we preferentially learn from outcomes that confirm our choices? This is one of the most basic, and yet consequence-bearing, questions concerning reinforcement learning. In recent years, we investigated this question in a series of studies implementing increasingly complex behavioral protocols. The learning rates fitted in experiments featuring partial or complete feedback, as well as free and forced choices, were systematically found to be consistent with a choice-confirmation bias. This result is robust across a broad range of outcome contingencies and response modalities. One of the prominent behavioral consequences of the confirmatory learning rate pattern is choice hysteresis: that is the tendency of repeating previous choices, despite contradictory evidence. As robust and replicable as they have proven to be, these findings were (legitimately) challenged by a couple of studies pointing out that a choice-confirmatory pattern of learning rates may spuriously arise from not taking into consideration an explicit choice autocorrelation term in the model. In the present study, we re-analyze data from four previously published papers (in total nine experiments; N=363), originally included in the studies demonstrating (or criticizing) the choice-confirmation bias in human participants. We fitted two models: one featured valence-specific updates (i.e., different learning rates for confirmatory and disconfirmatory outcomes) and one additionally including an explicit choice autocorrelation process (gradual perseveration). Our analysis confirms that the inclusion of the gradual perseveration process in the model significantly reduces the estimated choice-confirmation bias. However, in all considered experiments, the choice-confirmation bias remains present at the meta-analytical level, and significantly different from zero in most experiments. Our results demonstrate that the choice-confirmation bias resists the inclusion of an explicit choice autocorrelation term, thus proving to be a robust feature of human reinforcement learning. We conclude by discussing the psychological plausibility of the gradual perseveration process in the context of these behavioral paradigms and by pointing to additional computational processes that may play an important role in estimating and interpreting the computational biases under scrutiny.

While previous research has indicated that alcohol use is associated with difficulties in emotion processing and socioemotional functioning, less is known about the effects of cannabis on these functions. The purpose of this review article is to provide the current state of knowledge on the effects of cannabis on emotion processing with regard to behavioral, physiological, and neural responses. This narrative review synthesizes previous research investigating the effects of cannabis on emotion processing across studies that have utilized a number of experimental approaches to determine both the acute and chronic effects of cannabis on emotion processing. Limitations of current research and steps for future directions are discussed. Existing research has shown that cannabis use is associated with difficulties in emotion processing, such as impairments in correctly identifying emotions and problems with emotion differentiation. Electroencephalography (EEG) studies have produced mixed findings, but have considered a number of variables, such as participant sex, and comorbid depression. In addition, while there are mixed findings for the effects of cannabis on amygdalar brain activity across functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, several studies indicate that cannabis use is linked with decreased brain response in the frontal lobe while viewing emotional stimuli. To our knowledge, this is one of the first critical review articles focused on an emerging research area of cannabis and emotion processing. Synthesizing the existing findings in this developing research field is important for future prevention and intervention studies focused on promoting healthy socioemotional functioning in cannabis users. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).