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This project is the central platform for the Network of (German-speaking) Open Science Initiatives (Netzwerk der Open-Science-Initiativen, NOSI). We're providing protocols, links, and resources that might be of interest to others interested in Open Science.

The current study aims at disentangling shared and different aspects of psychological flexibility on a mechanistic level.

The current study aims at investigating three facets of psychological flexibility on a neuronal level.

The aim of the planned project is to increase the understanding how social aspects might be involved in food-restrictive behavior in anorexia nervosa (AN) – for more information see document “Theoretical_background”. To this end, a group of AN patients and healthy controls (HC) will perform two experimental paradigms during functional magnetic resonance imaging. This preregistration will focus on one of these paradigms, in which neural activations during the imagination of eating-related and -unrelated social situations will be investigated, and situations in which participants imagine to be the protagonist of the situation will be contrasted to situations in which they imagine being an observer of another person. We assume that AN patients perceive the imagination of eating in the presence of others as less pleasant than control subjects and feel more shame due to social comparison processes – because it reveals a lack of self-control and deviation from personal ideals. In contrast, when they imagine being in social situations where they only observe someone else eating, patients with AN might react with pleasure because of social comparison. To clarify that these effects are specific to situations related to eating and not due to the fact that AN patients generally find social situations less or more pleasant, we will contrast eating-related situations with other situations which are not related to eating.

The aim of the planned project is to increase the understanding how social aspects might be involved in food-restrictive behavior in anorexia nervosa (AN) – for more information see document “Theoretical_background”. To this end, a group of AN patients and healthy participants will perform two experimental paradigms during functional magnetic resonance imaging. This preregistration will focus on one of these paradigms, in which neural responses to anticipated food and non-food rewards will be examined and personal rewards will be contrasted to rewards for another person. We assume that subjective reward values mediate the neural responses to reward-related cues and that AN patients will feel less motivated to strive for food-related stimuli due to their negative appraisal which is based on reluctance to gain weight and goals like food avoidance and self-control (see theoretical background). In contrast, we assume that reward responses to stimuli signaling food rewards for another person will not altered in the same way since these are not associated with (personal) weight gain or in conflict with cognitive goals. Instead, reward responses might even be increased compared to healthy participants, indicating social comparison processes in AN and vicarious pleasure from others’ eating.

Cognitive flexibility – the ability to adjust one ́s behavior to changing environmental demands – is crucial for controlled behavior. However, the term ‘cognitive flexibility’ is used heterogeneously, and associations between cognitive flexibility and other facets of flexible behavior have only rarely been studied systematically. To resolve some of these conceptual uncertainties, we directly compared cognitive flexibility (cue-instructed switching between two affectively neutral tasks), affective flexibility (switching between a neutral and an affective task using emotional stimuli), and feedback-based flexibility (non-cued, feedback-dependent switching between two neutral tasks). Three experimental paradigms were established that share as many procedural features (in terms of stimuli and/or task rules) as possible and administered in a pre-registered study plan (N=100). Correlation analyses revealed significant associations between the efficiency of cognitive and affective task switching (response time switch costs). Feedback-based flexibility (measured as mean number of errors after rule reversals) did not correlate with task switching efficiency in the other paradigms, but selectively with the effectiveness of affective switching (error rate costs when switching from neutral to emotion task). While preregistered confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) provided no clear evidence for a shared factor underlying the efficiency of switching in all three domains of flexibility, an exploratory CFA suggested commonalities regarding switching effectiveness (accuracy-based switch costs). We propose shared mechanisms controlling the efficiency of cue-dependent task switching across domains, while the relationship to feedback-based flexibility may depend on mechanisms controlling switching effectiveness. Our results call for a more stringent conceptual differentiation between different variants of psychological flexibility.