P300 amplitude variations,prior probabilities,and likelihoods: A Bayesian ERP study

The capability of the human brain for Bayesian inference was assessed by manipulating probabilistic contingencies in an urn-ball task. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to stimuli that differed in their relative frequency of occurrence (.18 to .82). A veraged ERPs with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (relative frequency of occurrence > .5) were used for further analysis. Research hypotheses about relationships between probabilistic contingencies and ERP amplitude variations were formalized as (in-)equality constrained hypotheses. Conducting Bayesian model comparisons, we found that manipulations of prior probabilities and likelihoods were associated with separately modifiable and distinct ERP responses. P3a amplitudes were sensitive to the degree of prior certainty such that higher prior probabilities were related to larger frontally distributed P3a waves. P3b amplitudes were sensitive to the degree of likelihood certainty such that lower likelihoods were associated with larger parietally distributed P3b waves. These ERP data suggest that these antecedents of Bayesian inference (prior probabilities and likelihoods) are coded by the human brain.     

Given What I Know: Seeing the Past as a Portal to an Intentional Future

Dr. Terrence Roberts is our second guest for the Hearing Our Elders series. Dr. Roberts is one of the Little Rock Nine, the first group of African American students to attend Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Interview segments are woven into the article, providing a historical and political context from which to understand the current national climate with regard to social justice and multicultural responsiveness. Dr. Roberts's interview revealed 6 critical themes: resilience, understanding context in the face of the status quo, reimagining language, choice as key to good mental health, use of the self as an intervention tool, and the importance of being historical in one's thinking. Intentionality is identified as a metatheme that asks the question of where one falls on the status quo versus change agent continuum. Dr. Terrence Roberts es nuestro segundo invitado en la serie Escuchar a Nuestros Mayores. El Dr. Roberts es uno de los Little Rock Nine, el primer grupo de estudiantes afroamericanos que estudiaron en la escuela Little Rock Central High School en 1957. Se insertan fragmentos de la entrevista en el artículo, lo que proporciona un contexto histórico y político desde el que se puede comprender el clima nacional actual respecto a la justicia social y la sensibilidad multicultural. La entrevista con el Dr. Roberts reveló 6 temas críticos: la resiliencia, comprender el contexto frente al status quo, reimaginar el lenguaje, la capacidad de elección como clave para una buena salud mental, el uso del autoconcepto como herramienta de intervención y la importancia de ser histórico en el pensamiento personal. La intencionalidad se identifica como un metatema que formula la pregunta de dónde se sitúa uno mismo a lo largo del continuo entre status quo y agente de cambio.     

Can we link emotional eating with the emotion regulation skills of adolescents?

Objective: A recent cross-sectional study showed that maternal rejection is associated with emotional eating of obese youngsters seeking treatment, and that this relation is mediated by maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) of the youngsters. We wanted to build on this study and investigate the relation between parental rejection, maladaptive ER and emotional eating in a community sample using longitudinal data.

Design: Participants were 81 youngsters between the ages of 10 and 16 years. Participants completed questionnaires assessing maternal and paternal rejection, ER strategies and emotional eating, at two time moments (M = 71 days between time moments). Latent change models were used to estimate level and change of each variable.

Results: Results showed that the levels of maternal rejection, maladaptive ER and emotional eating were related. The indirect effect of the level of maternal rejection on the level of emotional eating through the level of maladaptive ER was marginally significant. On average, maternal rejection showed no change over time, whereas the other variables decreased. The changes in the variables were not related.

Conclusion: The findings highlight the importance of assessing the emotional bond between mother and youngster and the ER of youngsters with an emotional eating style.     

Time’s up! Involvement of metamemory knowledge,executive functions,and time monitoring in children’s prospective memory performance

This study examined time-based prospective memory (PM) in children and explored the possible involvement of metamemory knowledge and executive functions in the use of an appropriate time-monitoring strategy depending on the ongoing task’s difficulty. Specifically, a sample of 72 typically developing children aged 4, 6, and 9 years old were given an original PM paradigm composed of both an ongoing procedural activity and a PM task. Half of the participants (expert group) were trained in the ongoing activity before the prospective test. As expected, results show that time monitoring had a positive effect on children’s PM performance. Furthermore, mediation analyses reveal that strategic time monitoring was predicted by metamemory knowledge in the expert group but only by executive functions in the novice group. Overall, these findings provide interesting avenues to explain how metamemory knowledge, strategy use, and executive functions interact to improve PM performance during childhood.     

Building Buddhism in England: The Flourishing of a Minority Faith Heritage

From the earliest days of Buddhism in Britain, individuals and communities have sought out buildings to provide locations where they might practise and teach Buddhism. In this paper, we focus on this neglected area of the study of minority faith traditions in Britain. Our research, which was commissioned by Historic England, examines how Buddhist communities have used buildings and what this tells us about how a minority tradition is initially established and how it subsequently changes and develops. In this context, we suggest that buildings are more than bricks and mortar and provide a richly rewarding analytical lens to tell stories about migration, socio-economic status, religious diversity and integration and the complexity of processes around secularisation and religious change, as well shifting policy agendas in the UK that have begun to take faith seriously. This contributes to deepening the picture of the migration and adaptation of Buddhism and Buddhist practice across the globe.     

Serial reversal learning in bumblebees (Bombus impatiens)

Bumblebees are capable of rapidly learning discriminations, but flexibility in bumblebee learning is less well understood. We tested bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) on a serial reversal learning task. A serial reversal task requires learning of an initial discrimination between two differentially rewarded stimuli, followed by multiple reversals of the reward contingency between stimuli. A reduction in errors with repeated reversals in a serial reversal task is an indicator of behavioural flexibility. Bees were housed in a large indoor environment and tested during foraging flights. Testing free-flying bees allowed for large numbers of trials and reversals. All bees were trained to perform a simultaneous discrimination between two colours for a nectar reward, followed by nine reversals of this discrimination. Results showed that bumblebees reduced errors and improved their performance across successive reversals. A reduction in perseverative errors was the major cause of the improvement in performance. Bees showed a slight increase in error rate in their final trials, perhaps as a consequence of increasing proactive interference, but proactive interference may also have contributed to the overall improvement in performance across reversals. Bumblebees are thus capable of behavioural flexibility comparable to that of other animals and may use proactive interference as a mechanism of behavioural flexibility in varying environments.     

“It's Only Other People Who Make Me Feel Black”: Acculturation,Identity, and Agency in a Multicultural Community

This article explores identity work and acculturation work in the lives of British mixed‐heritage children and adults. Children, teenagers, and parents with mixed heritage participated in a community arts project that invited them to deliberate, construct, and reconstruct their cultural identities and cultural relations. We found that acculturation, cultural and raced identities, are constructed through a series of oppositional themes: cultural maintenance versus cultural contact; identity as inclusion versus identity as exclusion; institutionalized ideologies versus agency. The findings point towards an understanding of acculturation as a dynamic, situated, and multifaceted process: acculturation in movement. To investigate this, we argue that acculturation research needs to develop a more dynamic and situated approach to the study of identity, representation, and culture. The article concludes with a discussion on the need for political psychologists to develop methods attuned to the tensions and politics of acculturation that are capable of highlighting the possibilities for resistance and social change.     

Flow experience and team performance: The role of team goal commitment and information exchange

While a number of studies show that the flow experience is related to different outcomes at the individual level, the role of flow in work teams remains unclear. This study contributes to the advancement of knowledge on flow by testing the relationships between this psychological state, team goal commitment and team performance. Data were gathered from 85 teams comprised of graduate and undergraduate students who participated in a project management simulation. The results show that the flow experience is positively related to team performance. This relationship is mediated by team goal commitment and moderated by the level of information exchange between team members. In practical terms, the results of this study show that managers should implement interventions fostering the flow experience in their teams, while at the same time encouraging information exchange between members.