Although much learning in real-life environments relies on highly selective feedback about outcomes, virtually all cognitive models of learning, judgment, and categorization assume complete and representative feedback. We investigated empirically the effect of selective feedback on decision making and how people code experience with selective feedback. The results showed that, in contrast to a commonly raised concern, performance was not impaired following learning with selective and biased feedback. Furthermore, even in a simple decision task, the experience that people acquired was not a mere recording of the observed outcomes, but rather a reconstruction from general task knowledge.
Pupillary contagionresponding to pupil size observed in other people with changes in one's own pupilhas been found in adults and suggests that arousal and other internal states could be transferred across individuals using a subtle physiological cue. Examining this phenomenon developmentally gives insight into its origins and underlying mechanisms, such as whether it is an automatic adaptation already present in infancy. In the current study, 6- and 9-month-olds viewed schematic depictions of eyes with smaller and larger pupilspairs of concentric circles with smaller and larger black centerswhile their own pupil sizes were recorded. Control stimuli were comparable squares. For both age groups, infants' pupil size was greater when they viewed large-center circles than when they viewed small-center circles, and no differences were found for large-center compared with small-center squares. The findings suggest that infants are sensitive and responsive to subtle cues to other people's internal states, a mechanism that would be beneficial for early social development.
The importance of executive functioning for later life outcomes, along with its potential to be positively affected by intervention programs, motivates the need to find early markers of executive functioning. In this study, 18-month-olds performed three executive-function tasksinvolving simple inhibition, working memory, and more complex inhibitionand a motion-capture task assessing prospective motor control during reaching. We demonstrated that prospective motor control, as measured by the peak velocity of the first movement unit, is related to infants' performance on simple-inhibition and working memory tasks. The current study provides evidence that motor control and executive functioning are intertwined early in life, which suggests an embodied perspective on executive-functioning development. We argue that executive functions and prospective motor control develop from a common source and a single motive: to control action. This is the first demonstration that low-level movement planning is related to higher-order executive control early in life.
Previous research has generated examples of how genetic and environmental factors can interact to create risk for psychopathology. Using a gene-by-environment (G x E) interaction design, we tested whether three polymorphisms in the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1, also referred to as SLC6A3, located at 5p15.33) interacted with maternal parenting style to predict first-onset episodes of depression. Participants were male adolescents (N= 176) recruited from a juvenile detention center in northern Russia. As hypothesized, one of the polymorphisms (rs40184) moderated the effect of perceived maternal rejection on the onset of major depressive disorder, as well as on suicidal ideation. Further, this G x E interaction was specific to depression; it did not predict clinically significant anxiety. These results highlight the need for further research investigating the moderating effects of dopaminergic genes on depression.
Memory of a traumatic event becomes consolidated within hours. Intrusive memories can then flash back repeatedly into the mind's eye and cause distress. We investigated whether reconsolidation-the process during which memories become malleable when recalled-can be blocked using a cognitive task and whether such an approach can reduce these unbidden intrusions. We predicted that reconsolidation of a reactivated visual memory of experimental trauma could be disrupted by engaging in a visuospatial task that would compete for visual working memory resources. We showed that intrusive memories were virtually abolished by playing the computer game Tetris following a memory-reactivation task 24 hr after initial exposure to experimental trauma. Furthermore, both memory reactivation and playing Tetris were required to reduce subsequent intrusions (Experiment 2), consistent with reconsolidation-update mechanisms. A simple, noninvasive cognitive-task procedure administered after emotional memory has already consolidated (i.e., > 24 hours after exposure to experimental trauma) may prevent the recurrence of intrusive memories of those emotional events.
Speech is usually assumed to start with a clearly defined preverbal message, which provides a benchmark for self-monitoring and a robust sense of agency for one's utterances. However, an alternative hypothesis states that speakers often have no detailed preview of what they are about to say, and that they instead use auditory feedback to infer the meaning of their words. In the experiment reported here, participants performed a Stroop color-naming task while we covertly manipulated their auditory feedback in real time so that they said one thing but heard themselves saying something else. Under ideal timing conditions, two thirds of these semantic exchanges went undetected by the participants, and in 85% of all nondetected exchanges, the inserted words were experienced as self-produced. These findings indicate that the sense of agency for speech has a strong inferential component, and that auditory feedback of one's own voice acts as a pathway for semantic monitoring, potentially overriding other feedback loops.
Although jihadist threats are regarded as foreign, most Islamist terror attacks in Europe and the United States have been orchestrated by Muslims born and raised in Western societies. In the present research, we explored a link between perceived deprivation of Western Muslims and endorsement of extremism. We suggest that Western-born Muslims are particularly vulnerable to the impact of perceived relative deprivation because comparisons with majority groups' peers are more salient for them than for individuals born elsewhere. Thus, we hypothesized that Western-born, compared with foreign-born, Muslims would score higher on four predictors of extremism (e.g., violent intentions), and group-based deprivation would explain these differences. Studies 1 to 6 (Ns = 59, 232, 259, 243, 104, and 366, respectively) confirmed that Western-born Muslims scored higher on all examined predictors of extremism. Mediation and meta-analysis showed that group-based relative deprivation accounted for these differences. Study 7 (N = 60) showed that these findings are not generalizable to non-Muslims.
A recent genome-wide-association study of educational attainment identified three single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) whose associations, despite their small effect sizes (each R-2 approximate to 0.02%), reached genome-wide significance (p < 5 x 10(-8)) in a large discovery sample and were replicated in an independent sample (p < .05). The study also reported associations between educational attainment and indices of SNPs called polygenic scores. In three studies, we evaluated the robustness of these findings. Study 1 showed that the associations with all three SNPs were replicated in another large (N = 34,428) independent sample. We also found that the scores remained predictive (R-2 approximate to 2%) in regressions with stringent controls for stratification (Study 2) and in new within-family analyses (Study 3). Our results show that large and therefore well-powered genome-wide-association studies can identify replicable genetic associations with behavioral traits. The small effect sizes of individual SNPs are likely to be a major contributing factor explaining the striking contrast between our results and the disappointing replication record of most candidate-gene studies.