Search

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has provided relevant evidence regarding the neural correlates of language. The aim of the present study is to summarize and assess previous findings regarding linguistic levels (i.e., semantic and morpho-syntactic) and brain structures utilized during verb and sentence processing. To do that, we systematically reviewed TMS research on verb and sentence processing in healthy speakers, and meta-analyzed TMS-induced effects according to the region of stimulation and experimental manipulation. Findings from 45 articles show that approximately half of the reviewed work focuses on the embodiment of action verbs. The majority of studies (60%) target only one cortical region in relation to a specific linguistic process. Frontal areas are most frequently stimulated in connection to morphosyntactic processes and action verb semantics, and temporoparietal regions in relation to integration of sentential meaning and thematic role assignment. A meta-analysis of 72 effect sizes of the reviewed papers indicates that TMS has a small overall effect size, but effect sizes for anterior compared to posterior regions do not differ for semantic or morphosyntactic contrasts. Our findings stress the need to increase the number of targeted areas, while using the same linguistic contrasts in order to disentangle the contributions of different cortical regions to distinct linguistic processes.

Genetic essentialism is a set of beliefs holding that certain categories have a heritable, intrinsic, and biological basis. The current studies explore people's genetic essentialist beliefs about criminality, how such essentialism relates to beliefs about appropriate punishment, and the kinds of judgments and motivations that underlie these associations. Study 1 validated a novel task, in which respondents estimated how possible it would be for a child to inherit criminal behavior from a sperm donor with whom they had no contact. Studies 2-4 used this task to address how genetic essentialist beliefs related to the harmfulness of a crime and the harshness of recommended punishment. Results indicated a tendency to essentialize both low- and high-harm crimes, though genetic essentialism was higher for more harmful crimes. Moreover, genetic essentialist beliefs predicted recommendations for harsher punishments, with retributive and protective motivations, as well as perceptions of recidivism risk, partially mediating this association. Further, Studies 3 and 4 found that genetic essentialism positively predicted support for harsh punishments such as the death penalty, as well as support for directing financial resources more toward law enforcement and less toward social support. Lay theories about criminality may have profound implications for decisions about appropriate punishment for wrongdoers, as well as broader policy decisions about crime, punishment, and resource allocation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Human beings regularly "mentally travel" to past and future times in memory and imagination. In theory, whether an event is remembered or imagined (its "mnemicity") underspecifies whether it is oriented toward the past or the future (its "temporality"). However, it remains unclear to what extent the temporal orientation of such episodic simulations is cognitively represented separately from their status as memory or imagination. To address this question, we investigated to what extent episodic simulations are distinguishable in recall by virtue of both temporal orientation and mnemicity. In three experiments (

A key goal for cognitive neuroscience is to understand the neurocognitive systems that support semantic memory. Recent multivariate analyses of neuroimaging data have contributed greatly to this effort, but the rapid development of these novel approaches has made it difficult to track the diversity of findings and to understand how and why they sometimes lead to contradictory conclusions. We address this challenge by reviewing cognitive theories of semantic representation and their neural instantiation. We then consider contemporary approaches to neural decoding and assess which types of representation each can possibly detect. The analysis suggests why the results are heterogeneous and identifies crucial links between cognitive theory, data collection, and analysis that can help to better connect neuroimaging to mechanistic theories of semantic cognition.

Learning to read impacts the way the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOT) reorganizes. The postulated underlying mechanism of neuronal recycling was recently revisited. Neuroimaging data showed that voxels weakly specialized for visual processing keep their initial category selectivity (i.e., object or face processing) while acquiring an additional and stronger responsivity to written words. Here, we examined a large and diverse group of six-year-olds prior to formal literacy training (N = 72) using various data analysis techniques (univariate, multivariate, rapid adaptation) and types of stimuli (print, false fonts, houses, faces) to further explore how VOT changes and adapts to the novel skill of reading. We found that among several visual stimuli categories only print activated a wide network of language related areas outside of the bilateral visual cortex, and the level of reading skill was related to the strength of this activation, showing the development of the reading circuit. Rapid adaptation was not directly related to the level of reading skill in the young children studied here, but it clearly revealed the emergence of the reading network in readers. Most importantly, we found that the reorganization of the VOT is not in fact an "invasion" by reading acquisition-voxels previously activated for faces started to respond more for print, while at the same time keeping their previous function. We can thus conclude that the revised hypothesis of neuronal recycling is supported by our data.

The presence of complementary information across multiple sensory or motor modalities during learning, referred to as multimodal enrichment, can markedly benefit learning outcomes. Why is this? Here, we integrate cognitive, neuroscientific, and computational approaches to understanding the effectiveness of enrichment and discuss recent neuroscience findings indicating that crossmodal responses in sensory and motor brain regions causally contribute to the behavioral benefits of enrichment. The findings provide novel evidence for multimodal theories of enriched learning, challenge assumptions of longstanding cognitive theories, and provide counterevidence to unimodal neurobiologically inspired theories. Enriched educational methods are likely effective not only because they may engage greater levels of attention or deeper levels of processing, but also because multimodal interactions in the brain can enhance learning and memory.

Forensic feature-comparison examiners compare-or "match"-evidence samples (e.g., fingerprints) to provide judgments about the source of the evidence. Research demonstrates that examiners in select disciplines possess expertise in this task by outperforming novices-yet the psychological mechanisms underpinning this expertise are unclear. This article investigates one implicated mechanism: statistical learning, the ability to learn how often things occur in the environment. This ability is likely important in forensic decision-making as samples sharing rarer statistical information are more likely to come from the same source than those sharing more common information. We investigated 46 fingerprint examiners' and 52 novices' statistical learning of fingerprint categories and application of this knowledge in a source-likelihood judgment task. Participants completed four measures of their statistical learning (frequency discrimination judgments, bounded and unbounded frequency estimates, and source-likelihood judgments) before and after familiarization to the "ground-truth" category frequencies. Compared to novices, fingerprint examiners had superior domain-specific statistical learning across all measures-both before and after familiarization. This suggests that fingerprint expertise facilitates domain-specific statistical learning-something that has important theoretical and applied implications for the development of training programs and statistical databases in forensic science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Language function may reorganize to overcome focal impairment; however, the relation between functional and structural changes in patients with brain tumors remains unclear. We investigated the cortical volume of atypical language dominant (AD) patients with left frontal-insular high-grade (HGG) and low-grade glioma (LGG). We hypothesized atypical language being associated with areas of increased cortical volume in the right hemisphere, including language areas homologues.Patient were recruited following the criteria: left frontal-insular glioma; functional MRI and 3DT1-weighted images; no artifacts. We calculated an hemispheric language laterality index (LI), defined as: AD if LI .2; left-dominant (LD) if LI ≥ .2. We measured cortical volume in three voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analyses: total AD vs. LD patients; AD vs. LD in HGG; AD vs. LD in LGG. We repeated the analysis in AD vs. LD healthy controls (HC). A minimum threshold of t 2 and corrected p .025 (Bonferroni) was employed.We recruited 119 patients (44LGG, 75HGG). Hemispheric LI demonstrated 64/119AD and 55/119LD patients. The first VBM analysis demonstrated significantly increased cortical volume in AD patients in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), right superior temporal gyrus (STG), right insula, right fusiform gyrus (FG), right precentral gyrus, right temporal-parietal junction, right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), right hippocampus, right- and left cerebellum. AD patients with HGG showed the same areas of significantly increased cortical volume. AD patients with LGG displayed significantly increased cortical volume in right IFG, right STG, right insula, right FG, right anterior cingulate cortex, right PCC, right dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex. HC showed no significant results.Right-sided (atypical) language activations in patients with left-hemispheric gliomas are associated with areas of increased cortical volume. Additionally, default mode network nodes showed greater cortical volume in AD patients regardless of the tumor grade, supporting the idea of these cortices participating in the development of language plasticity.

Here, we present a strong test of the hypothesis that sacrificial moral dilemmas are solved using the same value-based decision mechanism that operates on decisions concerning economic goods. To test this hypothesis, we developed Psychological Value Theory. Psychological Value Theory is an expansion and generalization of Cohen and Ahn's (2016) Theory of Subjective Utilitarianism. Psychological Value Theory defines a new theoretical construct termed Psychological Value, measures Psychological Value using a traditional psychophysics paradigm, and predicts preferential choice from those measurements using a value-based computational model. We evaluate the validity of Psychological Value Theory across six experiments. In Experiment 1, we use Psychological Value Theory to estimate the perceived Psychological Value of human lives and economic goods. The data reveal that perceived Psychological Value of lives is highly influenced by individual differences of people but minimally influenced by the number of people in a group. In Experiments 2-5, we demonstrate that when used as input in a value-based computational model, perceived Psychological Values of human lives accurately predict participants' RT and response choices to sacrificial moral dilemmas. In Experiment 6, we replicate these findings for decisions involving economic goods. We cross-validate our results with multiple data sets using multiple methods. We conclude that the same value-based processes underlying economic decisions also underlie choices involving human lives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

How do we remember our past experiences? This question remains stubbornly resistant to resolution. The next 25 years may see significant traction on this and other outstanding issues if memory researchers capitalise on exciting technological developments that allow embodied cognition to be studied in ways that closely approximate real life.

A key feature of human task learning is shared task representation: Simple, subordinate tasks can be learned and then shared by multiple complex superordinate tasks as building blocks to facilitate task learning. An important yet unanswered question is how superordinate tasks sharing the same subordinate task affects the learning and memory of each other. Leveraging theories of associative memory, we hypothesize that shared subordinate tasks can cause both interference and facilitation between superordinate tasks. These hypotheses are tested using a novel experimental task which trains participants to perform superordinate tasks consisting of shared, trained subordinate tasks. Across 3 experiments, we demonstrate that sharing a subordinate task can (a) impair the memory of previously learned superordinate tasks and (b) integrate learned superordinate tasks to facilitate new superordinate task learning without direct experience. These findings shed light on the organizational principles of task knowledge and their consequences on task learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Mind wandering is ubiquitous in everyday life and has a pervasive and profound impact on task-related performance. A range of psychological processes have been proposed to underlie these performance-related decrements, including failures of executive control, volatile information processing, and shortcomings in selective attention to critical task-relevant stimuli. Despite progress in the development of such theories, existing descriptive analyses have limited capacity to discriminate between the theories. We propose a cognitive-model based analysis that simultaneously explains self-reported mind wandering and task performance. We quantitatively compare six explanations of poor performance in the presence of mind wandering. The competing theories are distinguished by whether there is an impact on executive control and, if so, how executive control acts on information processing, and whether there is an impact on volatility of information processing. Across two experiments using the sustained attention to response task, we find quantitative evidence that mind wandering is associated with two latent factors. Our strongest conclusion is that executive control is impaired: increased mind wandering is associated with reduced ability to inhibit habitual response tendencies. Our nuanced conclusion is that executive control deficits manifest in reduced ability to selectively attend to the information value of rare but task-critical events.

Theories of cognitive fatigue disagree on whether performance decrement is caused by motivational or functional alterations. Here, drawing inspiration from the habituation and visual adaptation literature, we tested the assumption that keeping neural networks active for an extensive period of time entails consequences at the subjective and objective level-the defining characteristics of fatigue-when confounds such as motivation, boredom, and level of skill are controlled. In Experiment 1, we revealed that passive visual stimulation affected the performance of a subsequent task that was carried out in the same portion of visual space. While under conditions of low cognitive load and arousal, participants improved their performance in the stimulated quadrant; the reverse was observed under high arousal conditions. This latter performance decrement correlated also with the reported subjective level of fatigue and occurred while neural responses to the saturating stimulus remained constant, as assessed through steady-state EEG. In subsequent experiments, we replicated and further characterized this performance deterioration effect, revealing its specificity to the stimulated eye and stimulus orientation. Across the three experiments, the decrease in performance was correlated with pupil-linked arousal, suggesting its mediating effect in this phenomenon. In sum, we show that repeated stimulation of neural networks under high-arousal conditions leads to their altered functional performance, a mechanism which may play a role in the development of global cognitive fatigue. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

In four experiments, we investigated the impact of letter case (lower case vs. UPPER CASE) on the processing of sequences of written words. Experiment 1 used the rapid parallel visual presentation (RPVP) paradigm with postcued identification of one word in a five-word sequence. The sequence could be grammatically correct (e.g., "the boy likes his bike") or be an ungrammatical reordering of the same words (e.g., "his boy the bike likes the"). We replicated the standard sentence superiority effect (more accurate identification of target words when embedded in a grammatically correct sequence compared with ungrammatical sequences), and also found that lowercase presentation led to higher word identification accuracy, but equally so for the grammatical and ungrammatical sequences. This pattern suggests that the lowercase advantage was mostly operating at the level of individual word identification. The following three experiments used the grammatical decision task to provide an examination of letter case effects on more global sentence processing measures. All these experiments revealed a significant lowercase advantage in grammatical decisions, independently of the nature of the ungrammatical sequence (Experiments 2 and 3) and independently of whether or not the letter case manipulation was blocked (Experiment 4). The size of the effects observed in grammatical decisions again points to individual word identification as the primary locus of the lowercase advantage. We conclude that letter case mainly affects early visuo-orthographic processing and access to case-independent letter and word identities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

According to the semantic primacy hypothesis of emotion generation, stimuli must be semantically categorized to evoke emotions. This hypothesis was tested for the subjective component of emotions in four chronometric experiments in which the conscious recognition of emotion-eliciting objects and the onset of affect was timed using temporal order judgments (TOJs, Exp. 1a, 1b, and 3) and simultaneity judgments (SJs, Exp. 2). Participants viewed pictures that elicited pleasant or unpleasant feelings. At varying intervals before and after picture onset, a visual probe stimulus was presented. In separate blocks of trials, the participants judged when they recognized the object shown in the picture and noticed the feeling evoked by the picture: Before or after the probe (TOJs), or simultaneously/not simultaneously with the probe (SJs). Psychometric functions were fitted to the data of the individual participants to determine the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) of the target events and the probe. In both tasks, the mean PSS of affect occurred significantly later than the PSS of object recognition, with an average delay of about 120 ms. A positive lag between object recognition and affect was found for nearly all participants and pictures. In addition, the latencies of object recognition and affect were positively correlated. The found temporal order of object recognition and affect is consistent with the findings of previous studies using speeded reaction time tasks. Implications of the findings for the cognition-emotion debate and for bodily feedback theories of emotional experience are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Lateralized processing of orthographic information is a hallmark of proficient reading. However, how this finding obtained for fixed-gaze processing of orthographic stimuli translates to ecologically valid reading conditions remained to be clarified. To address this shortcoming, here we assessed the lateralization of early orthographic processing in fixed-gaze and natural reading conditions using concomitant eye-tracking and EEG data recorded from young adults without reading difficulties. Sensor-space analyses confirmed the well-known left-lateralized negative-going deflection of fixed-gaze EEG activity throughout the period of early orthographic processing. At the same time, fixation-related EEG activity exhibited left-lateralized followed by right-lateralized processing of text stimuli during natural reading. A strong positive relationship was found between the early leftward lateralization in fixed-gaze and natural reading conditions. Using source-space analyses, early left-lateralized brain activity was obtained in lateraloccipital and posterior ventral occipito-temporal cortices reflecting letter-level processing in both conditions. In addition, in the same time interval, left-lateralized source activity was found also in premotor and parietal brain regions during natural reading. While brain activity remained left-lateralized in later stages representing word-level processing in posterior and middle ventral temporal regions in the fixed-gaze condition, fixation-related source activity became stronger in the right hemisphere in medial and more anterior ventral temporal brain regions indicating higher-level processing of orthographic information. Although our results show a strong positive relationship between the lateralization of letter-level processing in the two conditions and suggest lateralized brain activity as a general marker for processing of orthographic information, they also clearly indicate the need for reading research in ecologically valid conditions to identify the neural basis of visuospatial attentional, oculomotor and higher-level processes specific for natural reading.

Many studies demonstrate that detecting statistical regularities in linguistic input plays a key role in language acquisition. Yet, it is unclear to what extent statistical learning is involved in more naturalistic settings, when young children have to acquire meaningful grammatical elements. In the present study, we address these points, by investigating whether statistical learning is involved in acquiring a morpho-syntactic structure from input that resembles natural languages more closely. We exposed 50 kindergarteners (M = 5 years, 5 months) to a miniature language in which they had to learn a grammatical marker that expressed number, and which could only be acquired on the basis of the distributional properties in the input. Half of the children performed an attention check during the experiment. Results show that young children are able to learn this meaning. We found no clear evidence that facilitating attention to the input increases learning performance.

New analyses of the data in this study (Salet et al., 2021, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01873-x) have led us to reinterpret our main finding. Previously, we had attributed better performance for targets appearing at regular intervals versus irregular intervals to “temporal statistical learning.” That is, we surmised that this benefit for the regular intervals arises because participants implicitly distilled the regular 3000 ms interval from the otherwise variable environment (i.e., irregular intervals) to predict future (regular) targets. The analyses presented in this Addendum, however, show that this benefit can be attributed to ongoing “temporal preparation” rather than temporal statistical learning.

Human language is unique among animal communication systems, in part because of its dual patterning in which meaningless phonological units combine to form meaningful words (phonological structure) and words combine to form sentences (lexicosyntactic structure). Although dual patterning is well recognized, its emergence in language development has been scarcely investigated. Chief among questions still unanswered is the extent to which development of these separate structures is independent or interdependent, and what supports acquisition of each level of structure. We explored these questions by examining growth of lexicosyntactic and phonological structure in children with normal hearing (

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have become powerful and increasingly ubiquitous tools to model human cognition, and often produce similar behaviors. For example, with their hierarchical, brain-inspired organization of computations, DNNs apparently categorize real-world images in the same way as humans do. Does this imply that their categorization algorithms are also similar? We have framed the question with three embedded degrees that progressively constrain algorithmic similarity evaluations: equivalence of (i) behavioral/brain responses, which is current practice, (ii) the stimulus features that are processed to produce these outcomes, which is more constraining, and (iii) the algorithms that process these shared features, the ultimate goal. To improve DNNs as models of cognition, we develop for each degree an increasingly constrained benchmark that specifies the epistemological conditions for the considered equivalence.

In recognition memory, anything that is objectively new is necessarily not-old, and anything that is objectively old is necessarily not-new. Therefore, judging whether a test item is new is logically equivalent to judging whether it is old, and conversely. Nevertheless, a series of 10 experiments showed that old? and new? judgments did not produce equivalent recognition accuracy. In Experiments 1-4, wherein subjects made old? or new? judgments about test items, new? judgments yielded more accurate performance for old items than old? judgments did, and old? judgments yielded more accurate performance for new items than new? judgments did. This same violation of logical equivalence was observed in Experiments 5-10, wherein subjects made similar? judgments as well as old? and new? ones. In short, old? and new? judgments displayed consistent Judgment × Item crossovers, rather than equivalence. Response latencies were used to test the hypothesis that Judgment × Item crossovers were due to certain judgment-item combinations provoking more deliberate, thorough retrieval than other combinations. There was no support for that hypothesis, but the data were consistent with an earlier theory, which posits that latency depends on the extent to which judgments or items slant retrieval toward accessing verbatim traces. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

How can artificial neural networks capture the advanced cognitive abilities of pioneering scientists? I suggest they must learn to exploit human-invented tools of thought and human-like ways of using them, and must engage in explicit goal-directed problem solving as exemplified in the activities of scientists and mathematicians and taught in advanced educational settings.

We used a longitudinal randomized control experiment to compare the effect of specific practice (training on one form of a task) and varied practice (training on various forms of a task) on perceptual learning and transfer. Participants practiced a visual search task for 10 hours over 2 to 4 weeks. The specific practice group searched for features only in fingerprints during each session, whereas the varied practice group searched for features in five different image categories. Both groups were tested on a series of tasks at four time points: before training, midway through training, immediately after training ended, and 6 to 8 weeks later. The specific group improved more during training and demonstrated greater pre-post performance gains than the varied group on a visual search task with untrained fingerprint images. Both groups improved equally on a visual search task with an untrained image category, but only the specific group's performance dropped significantly when tested several weeks later. Finally, both groups improved equally on a series of untrained fingerprint tasks. Practice with respect to a single category (versus many) instills better near transfer, but category-specific and category-general visual search training appear equally effective for developing task-general expertise. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

An analysis of the covariance and mean structure of signal detection measures for assessing recognition performance was conducted using data from ratings and repeated

A recent study by Siew and Vitevitch (2020a) investigated word form lexica and their growth in children acquiring English and Dutch as first languages from a network perspective. They identified a unique developmental trajectory in network growth, with high-density neighborhoods becoming enriched through growth at early acquisition stages (the "preferential attachment" mechanism) but low-density neighborhoods gaining new neighbors at advanced acquisition stages (termed "inverse preferential attachment"). Their findings were confirmed for various languages, they fit with assumptions of cognitive efficiency in lexical memory and retrieval and are intriguing for second language research as well. The present study was designed as a replication of Siew and Vitevitch (2020a) study "An investigation of network growth principles in the phonological language network" with data of English-as-a-second-language learners. Results mirror findings by Siew and Vitevitch and demonstrate that preferential attachment is the main network growth algorithm driving lexical learning at early second-language proficiency stages, while inverse preferential attachment prevails at more advanced proficiency stages. The similar growth dynamics observed in phonological networks of first and second language users may indicate a universal cognitive principle underlying word learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Human beings are cognitive misers. One facet of this effort avoidance is the reluctance to voluntarily switch tasks when repeating the same task is allowed. Yet participants voluntarily switch despite the resulting costs. This paradox might be resolved if the individual switching ability or sensitivity is considered. Here, we investigated whether the voluntary switch rate (VSR) is governed by the objective or the subjective (introspective) switch costs. Three experiments were conducted utilizing voluntary task switching with forced and free task choices intermixed. In Experiments 1 and 3, objective switch costs were measured on forced tasks, and subjective switch costs were calculated from (introspectively) estimated reaction times in a separate phase. In Experiment 2, objective and subjective costs were measured in the same phase. In Experiments 2 and 3, we additionally manipulated the forced switch rate. Results show that objective and subjective switch costs were lower in blocks with higher forced switch rates. The objective switch costs predicted VSR in Experiments 1 and (partially) 3. The subjective switch costs predicted the VSR only in Experiment 3 (the lower the costs, the higher the VSR). Hence, the present study offers first insight into under which circumstances introspection guides decision-making during voluntary task switching. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

When intercepting moving targets, people perform slightly better if they follow their natural tendency to pursue the target with their eyes. Is this because the velocity is judged more precisely when pursuing the target? To find out, we compared how well people could determine which of two sequentially presented moving bars was moving faster. There was always also a static bar on the screen. People judged the moving bar's velocity about 10% more precisely when pursuing it than when fixating the static bar.

Sensory adaptation is a feature-specific modulation of neural responses and is potentially fundamental to maximizing perceptual sensitivity. Despite its function being unclear, it has been hypothesized that sensory adaptation modifies the neurons' response codes, increasing the ability to process sensory signals on a larger scale. To better understand how such flexibility of our brain is possible, we investigated the effect of high- and low-frequency vibrotactile adaptation on perceived tactile temporal frequency during childhood, a time known for the brain to experience varying levels of plasticity. We tested tactile temporal frequency discrimination thresholds in both children and adults before and after tactile adaptation. Our results demonstrate that sensory adaptation does not consistently change perceived tactile temporal frequency in younger children as it does in adults, as adult-like trends begin to emerge at around 8 years of age but consolidate only in 10-year-old children. The absence of adaptation aftereffects suggests that, under certain conditions, sensory history does not affect perception in younger children in a similar way to adults. Surprisingly, younger children proved to be less flexible in modulating neural responses after prolonged exposure to an adapting stimulus, a tendency conflicting with the high plasticity levels the brain experiences during the early stages of life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotions are temporally dynamic, but the persistence of emotions outside of their appropriate temporal context is detrimental to health and well-being. Yet, precisely how temporal coding and emotional processing interact remains unclear. Recently unveiled temporal context representations in the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex (EC), and prefrontal cortex (PFC) support memory for what happened when. Here, we discuss how these neural temporal representations may interact with densely interconnected amygdala circuitry to shape emotional functioning. We propose a neuroanatomically informed framework suggesting that high-fidelity temporal representations linked to dynamic experiences promote emotion regulation and adaptive emotional memories. Then, we discuss how newly-identified synaptic and molecular features of amygdala-hippocampal projections suggest that intense, amygdala-dependent emotional responses may distort temporal-coding mechanisms. We conclude by identifying key avenues for future research.

Many bidialectal children grow up speaking a variety (e.g., a regional dialect) that differs from the variety in which they subsequently acquire literacy. Previous computational simulations and artificial literacy learning experiments with adults have demonstrated lower accuracy in reading contrastive words for which dialect variants exist compared with noncontrastive words without dialect variants. At the same time, exposure to multiple varieties did not affect learners' ability to phonologically decode untrained words; in fact, longer literacy training resulted in a benefit from dialect exposure as competing variants in the input may have increased reliance on grapheme-phoneme conversion. However, these previous experiments interleaved word learning and reading/spelling training, yet children typically acquire substantial oral language knowledge prior to literacy training. Here we used artificial literacy learning with adults to examine whether the previous findings replicate in an ecologically more valid procedure where word learning precedes literacy training. We also manipulated training conditions to explore interventions thought to be beneficial for literacy acquisition, such as providing explicit social cues for variety use and literacy training in both varieties. Our findings replicated the reduced accuracy for reading contrastive words in those learners who had successfully acquired the dialect variants prior to literacy training. This effect was exacerbated when literacy training also included dialect variation. Crucially, although no benefits from the interventions were found, dialect exposure did not affect reading and spelling of untrained words suggesting that phonological decoding skills can remain unaffected by the existence of multiple word form variants in a learner's lexicon.

Effects of animacy and agent prominence in linguistic and cognitive processing are well-established in the literature. However, it is less clear how strongly an agent argument will influence production and comprehension when a sentence also contains another prominent argument. We examine this question with Tagalog, a verb-initial language, which designates a syntactically prominent, subject-like element (the pivot) without demoting the grammatical status of the core agent. We implemented two experiments that investigated the influences of agent and pivot prominence on syntactic linear word order patterns in production and on anticipatory gaze patterns in comprehension. Tagalog's grammar allowed us to separate the influence of agentivity from animacy by manipulating the animacy of the pivot (animate pivots: agent and benefactive voices; inanimate pivots: patient and instrument voices). The production results contrasted with the comprehension results: agent and pivot prominence both emerged strongly in a fragment-completion production task, but animacy dominated anticipatory gaze patterns in a visual-world comprehension task. The results of these experiments demonstrate variability in production and comprehension outcomes as well as an apparent mismatch between the constraints that shape these two systems, which we attribute to contrasting goals in production versus comprehension and to the organization of information in verb-initial languages. The investigation highlights the value of research on languages with typologically understudied structural properties in revealing mechanisms of the production and comprehension systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Fingerprint comparisons are extended in time due to the fine details (minutiae) that necessitate multiple eye fixations throughout the comparison. How is evidence accumulated across these multiple regions? The present work measures decisions at multiple points during a comparison to address how feature diagnosticity and image clarity play a role in evidence accumulation. We find that evidence is accumulated at a constant rate over time, with evidence for identification and exclusion accumulated at similar rates. Manipulations of image diagnosticity and image clarity demonstrate two exceptions to this constant rate: Highly diagnostic evidence followed by weak evidence tends to lose the initial benefits of the strong start, and low image clarity at the start of the comparison can be overcome with high image clarity at the end of the comparison. The results suggest that examiners tend to treat each region fairly independently (as demonstrated by linear evidence accumulation), with only weak evidence for hysteresis effects that tend to fade as additional regions are presented. Data from transition probability matrices support an incremental evidence accumulation account, with very little evidence for rapid "aha" moments even for exclusion decisions. The results are consistent with a model in which each fixated region contributes an independent unit of evidence, and these accumulate to form an eventual decision. Fingerprint comparisons do not seem to depend on which regions are selected first, and thus examiners need not worry about finding the most diagnostic region first, but instead focus on conducting a complete analysis of the latent print.

Lung cancer in never-smokers represents a growing proportion of patients. The relationship between smoking status, symptom appraisal and help-seeking behaviour is complex. Little is known about cancer symptom-related health behaviours according to smoking status. The aim of the study was to explore lung cancer patients' experiences of a lung cancer diagnosis, identifying differences by smoking history.This was a qualitative study involving telephone interviews with 40 lung cancer patients (20 never smokers, 11 former smokers and 9 current smokers). We used framework analysis to analyse the data using the Common Sense Model of Illness Self-Regulation as a theoretical framework, developed after initial analysis.All patients were likely to delay seeking help for symptoms in primary care regardless of smoking history, but for different reasons. Smoking history was instrumental to how individuals perceived and responded to early symptoms of lung cancer. Differences in interpretation and coping responses to new symptoms seemed to be caused by the higher presence of comorbidities due to smoking, and perceptions of the current state of health. Individuals with a smoking history reported acting with urgency in seeking help and follow up, whereas patients who experienced low levels of concern were more easily reassured by clinicians, resulting in delays.Never and former smokers perceive, interpret, and respond to symptoms of lung cancer differently to smokers. However, few people attribute their lung symptoms to cancer initially, even with a smoking history. Interventions that drive increased urgency and vigilance in never smokers may be effective.

Social perceptions of speakers are influenced by their voice information, including vocal characteristics and semantic content. Our study investigated how individuals’ warmth- and competence-related perceptions of speakers were affected by vocal pitch levels (i.e., high/low) and three kinds of semantic cues (i.e., prosocial, antisocial, and neutral) simultaneously. We have three key findings. First, antisocial cues negatively affected social perceptions, regardless of speakers’ gender. However, prosocial cues did not have positive impacts on evaluations of speakers because ratings were similar between prosocial cues and neutral cues. Second, female vocal pitch mattered for warmth-related perceptions but not for competence-related perceptions. The role of semantic cues should be additionally considered when investigating the impact of male vocal pitch on these perceptions. For example, higher-pitched men in prosocial contexts were perceived as warmer, while low-pitched men in antisocial contexts were judged as more competent. Third, the connection between vocal pitch and two kinds of perceptions showed an opposite trend, in which high pitch was related to more warmth but less competence, while the low pitch was associated with less warmth but more competence. These findings extend the understanding of the role of vocal pitch in the formation of stereotypes of strangers in different semantic contexts.

Climate change and other challenges to the stability and functioning of natural and managed environmental systems are driven by increasing anthropogenic domination of the Earth. Models to forecast the trajectory of climate change and to identify pathways to sustainability require representation of human behaviour and its feedbacks with the climate system. Social climate models (SCMs) are an emerging class of models that embed human behaviour in climate models. We survey existing SCMs and make recommendations for how to integrate models of human behaviour and climate. We suggest a framework for representing human behaviour that consists of cognition, contagion and a behavioural response. Cognition represents the human processing of information around climate change; contagion represents the spread of information, beliefs and behaviour through social networks; and response is the resultant behaviour or action. This framework allows for biases, habituation and other cognitive processes that shape human perception of climate change as well as the influence of social norms, social learning and other social processes on the spread of information and factors that shape decision-making and behaviour. SCMs move beyond the inclusion of human activities in climate models to the representation of human behaviour that determines the magnitude, sign and character of these activities. The development of SCMs is a challenging but important next step in the evolution of Earth system models.

Many advanced cancer patients struggle with anxiety, depressive symptoms, and anger toward God and illness-related stressors. Patients may perceive their illness as an injustice (i.e., appraise their illness as unfair, severe, and irreparable or blame others for their illness), which may be a risk factor for poor psychological and spiritual outcomes. This study examined relations between cancer-related perceived injustice and psycho-spiritual outcomes as well as potential mediators of these relationships.Advanced lung (n = 102) and prostate (n = 99) cancer patients completed a one-time survey. Using path analyses, we examined a parallel mediation model including the direct effects of perceived injustice on psycho-spiritual outcomes (i.e., anxiety, depressive symptoms, anger about cancer, anger towards God) and the indirect effects of perceived injustice on psycho-spiritual outcomes through two parallel mediators: meaning making and acceptance of cancer. We then explored whether these relations differed by cancer type.Path analyses indicated that perceived injustice was directly and indirectly-through acceptance of cancer but not meaning making-associated with psycho-spiritual outcomes. Results did not differ between lung and prostate cancer patients.Advanced cancer patients with greater perceived injustice are at higher risk for poor psycho-spiritual outcomes. Acceptance of cancer, but not meaning making, explained relationships between cancer-related perceived injustice and psycho-spiritual outcomes. Findings support testing acceptance-based interventions to address perceived injustice in advanced cancer patients.

For centuries, anecdotal evidence such as the perfect pitch of the blind piano tuner or blind musician has supported the notion that individuals who have lost their sight early in life have superior hearing abilities compared with sighted people. Recently, auditory psychophysical and functional imaging studies have identified that specific auditory enhancements in the early blind can be linked to activation in extrastriate visual cortex, suggesting crossmodal plasticity. Furthermore, the nature of the sensory reorganization in occipital cortex supports the concept of a task-based functional cartography for the cerebral cortex rather than a sensory-based organization. In total, studies of early-blind individuals provide valuable insights into mechanisms of cortical plasticity and principles of cerebral organization.

Based on recent research, I propose that threat stemming from the environment, perceivers, and targets distorts the visual perception of racial minorities in ways that facilitate discrimination. This model synthesizes the growing motivated race perception literature, generates new hypotheses about threat-induced discrimination, and reveals barriers to discrimination intervention.

Subjective well-being is characterized by relatively frequent positive emotions, relatively infrequent negative emotions, and high life satisfaction. Although myriad research topics related to subjective well-being have been explored - from how it should be measured to how it affects physical health - a key finding is that social connections are crucial. Researchers are therefore increasingly exploring whether subjective well-being can be improved through interventions that encourage specific types of social behaviors, including prosociality, gratitude, extraversion, and brief social interactions. We review this recent work, highlighting potential behavioral and psychological mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of such interventions, along with their boundary conditions.

Compression, the ability to recode information in a denser format, is a core property of working memory (WM). Previous studies have shown that the ability to compress information largely benefits WM performance. Importantly, recent evidence also suggests compression as freeing up WM resources, thus enhancing recall performance for other, less compressible information. Contrary to the traditional view positing that between-item similarity decreases WM performance, this study shows that between-item similarity can be used to free up WM resources through compression. Across a series of four experiments, we show that between-item similarity not only enhances recall performance for similar items themselves, but also for other, less compressible items within the same list, and this in the semantic (Experiment 1), phonological (Experiment 2), visuospatial (Experiment 3), and visual (Experiment 4) domains. Across these different domains, a consistent pattern of results emerged: between-item similarity proactively-but not retroactively-enhanced WM performance for other items, and this as compared with a condition in which between-item similarity at the whole-list level was minimized. We propose that between-item similarity in any domain may impact WM using the same underlying machinery: via a compression mechanism, which allows an efficient reallocation of WM resources. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Semantic processing is a central component of language and cognition. The anterior temporal lobe is postulated to be a key hub for semantic processing, but the posterior temporoparietal cortex is also involved in thematic associations during language. It is possible that these regions act in concert and depend on an anteroposterior network linking the temporal pole with posterior structures to support thematic semantic processing during language production. We employed connectome-based lesion-symptom mapping to examine the causal relationship between lesioned white matter pathways and thematic processing language deficits among individuals with post-stroke aphasia. Seventy-nine adults with chronic aphasia completed the Philadelphia Naming Test, and semantic errors were coded as either thematic or taxonomic to control for taxonomic errors. Controlling for nonverbal conceptual-semantic knowledge as measured by the Pyramids and Palm Trees Test, lesion size, and the taxonomic error rate, thematic error rate was associated with loss of white matter connections from the temporal pole traversing in peri-Sylvian regions to the posterior cingulate and the insula. These findings support the existence of a distributed network underlying thematic relationship processing in language as opposed to discrete cortical areas.

Previous studies showed a bilingual advantage in metacognitive processing (tracking one's own cognitive performance) in linguistic tasks. However, bilinguals do not constitute a homogeneous population, and it was unclear which aspects of bilingualism affect metacognition. In this project, we tested the hypothesis that simultaneous acquisition and use of typologically different languages leads to development of diverse processing strategies and enhances metacognition. The hypothesis was tested in the visual and auditory modalities in language and nonlanguage domains, in an artificial language learning task. In the auditory modality, the hypothesis was confirmed for linguistic stimuli, with no between-domain transfer of metacognitive abilities was observed at the individual level. In the visual modality, no differences in metacognitive efficiency were observed. Moreover, we found that bilingualism per se and the use of typologically different languages modulated separate metacognitive processes engaged in monitoring cognitive performance in statistical learning task. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Memory consolidation is a continuous transformative process between encoding and retrieval of mental representations. Recent research has shown that neural activity immediately after encoding is particularly associated with later successful retrieval. It is currently unclear whether post-encoding neural activity makes a distinct and causal contribution to memory consolidation. Here, we investigated the role of the post-encoding period for consolidation of spatial memory in neurologically normal human subjects. We used the GABA

In the traditional conception of working memory for word lists, phonological codes are used primarily, and semantic codes are often discarded or ignored. Yet, other evidence indicates an important role for semantic codes. We carried out a preplanned set of four experiments to determine whether phonological and semantic codes are used similarly or differently. In each trial, random lists of one, two, three, four, six, or eight words were followed by a probe to be judged present in the list or absent from it. Sometimes, a probe was absent from the list but rhymed with a list item (in Experiments 1 and 2) or was a synonym of a list item (in Experiments 3 and 4). A probe that was similar to a list item was to be rejected just like other nontarget probes, a reject-similar use (in Experiments 1 and 3), or it was to be placed in the same category as list items, an accept-similar use (in Experiments 2 and 4). The results were comparable in the accept-similar use of both phonological and semantic codes. However, the reject-similar use was interestingly different. Rejecting rhyming items was more difficult than rejecting control words, as expected, whereas rejecting synonyms was easier than rejecting control words, presumably due to a recall-to-reject process. This effect increased with memory load. We discuss theoretically important differences between the use of phonology and semantics in working memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

We ask whether moral judgment in preschool children observes a "means principle." It is well established that young children consider both the consequences and the goals of actions when making moral judgments; much less studied is the question of whether the

Neuroscientists often describe neural activity as a representation of something, or claim to have found evidence for a neural representation, but there is considerable ambiguity about what such claims entail. Here we develop a thorough account of what 'representation' does and should do for neuroscientists in terms of three key aspects of representation. (i) Correlation: a neural representation correlates to its represented content; (ii) causal role: the representation has a characteristic effect on behavior; and (iii) teleology: a goal or purpose served by the behavior and thus the representation. We draw broadly on literature in both neuroscience and philosophy to show how these three aspects are rooted in common approaches to understanding the brain and mind. We first describe different contexts that 'representation' has been closely linked to in neuroscience, then discuss each of the three aspects in detail.

Much recent research and theorizing in the field of reasoning has been concerned with intuitive sensitivity to logical validity, such as the logic-brightness effect, in which logically valid arguments are judged to have a "brighter" typeface than invalid arguments. We propose and test a novel signal competition account of this phenomenon. Our account makes two assumptions: (a) as per the demands of the logic-brightness task, people attempt to find a perceptual signal to guide brightness judgments, but (b) when the perceptual signal is hard to discern, they instead attend to cues such as argument validity. Experiment 1 tested this account by manipulating the difficulty of the perceptual contrast. When contrast discrimination was relatively difficult, we replicated the logic-brightness effect. When the discrimination was easy, the effect was eliminated. Experiment 2 manipulated the ambiguity of the perceptual task, comparing discrimination performance when the perceptual contrast was labeled in terms of rating "brightness" or "darkness". When the less ambiguous darkness labeling was used, there was no evidence of a logic-brightness effect. In both experiments, individual sensitivity to the perceptual discrimination was negatively correlated with sensitivity to argument validity. Hierarchical latent mixture modeling revealed distinct individual strategies: responses based on perceptual cues, responses based on validity or guessing. Consistent with the signal competition account, the proportion of those responding to validity increased with perceptual discrimination difficulty or task ambiguity. The results challenge explanations of the logic-brightness effect based on parallel dual-process models of reasoning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Negotiations are critical to interpersonal interactions, yet little is known about how the conceptual skills that support successful negotiations develop in childhood and across societies. Here, we presented 384 3-10-year-old children in the United States and India with tasks that measured children's understanding that people can value the same resources differently (Experiments 1-4) and that underlying interests motivate people's stated positions (Experiment 5). In Experiments 1 and 2, children participated in a third-person resource distribution task. Children distributed resources (candies) to two targets who valued resources differently: absolute preferences (liking A but disliking B) or relative preferences (liking both but preferring A to B). By age 5, children differentiated relative from absolute preferences. Experiments 3 and 4 presented a first-person variant of the same task. In trials involving a conflict in which both the child and the target preferred the same resource, U.S. children prioritized their own preferences, whereas Indian children prioritized the targets' preferences. In Experiment 5, all participants from the previous studies participated in an additional task in which two people wanted a single resource, an orange, but their interests differed-one wanted the pulp to make juice and one wanted the peel to make cake. With age, children increasingly proposed the value-maximizing option of splitting the peel from the pulp, rather than halving the orange. Notably, even the youngest Indian children chose the value-maximizing option. Our findings outline the development of two antecedents to successful negotiations and highlight the disparate role of self-interest across cultural contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Many models of attention assume that categorization (the individuation of events based on the feature dimension relevant for response selection) occurs only after an object has been selected and encoded in working memory (WM). In contrast, we propose that the match between an item and the currently activated set of possible response features (categorization template) already modulates selective perceptual processing prior to WM encoding. To test this proposal, we measured electrophysiological markers of attentional engagement (N2pc components) and behavioral interference effects from posttarget distractors (PTDs) as a function of whether these distractors matched the categorization template. Participants were presented with rapid serial visual presentations (RSVPs) of digits and letters and had to identify a target indicated by a surrounding shape in these RSVP streams. Targets were drawn from a subset of items within an alphanumeric category. Accuracy was highest when the PTD belonged to the irrelevant alphanumeric category, lower when the PTD matched the target's alphanumeric category but not the categorization template, and lowest when the PTD matched the categorization template. On trials with template-matching PTDs, target-elicited N2pc components were temporally extended, indicative of additional attentional amplification triggered by these PTDs. We propose that this amplification produces increased competition between targets and PTDs, resulting in performance costs. These results provide new evidence for the continuous nature of evidence accumulation and attentional modulations during perceptual processing. They show that attentional selectivity is not exclusively mediated by search templates, but that categorization templates also play an important and often overlooked role. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).