Reasoning by exclusion in the kea (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Nestor notabilis</Emphasis>)

Reasoning by exclusion, i.e. the ability to understand that if there are only two possibilities and if it is not A, it must be B, has been a topic of great interest in recent comparative cognition research. Many studies have investigated this ability, employing different methods, but rarely exploring concurrent decision processes underlying choice behaviour of non-human animals encountering inconsistent or incomplete information. Here, we employed a novel training and test method in order to perform an in-depth analysis of the underlying processes. Importantly, to discourage the explorative behaviour of the kea, a highly neophilic species, the training included a large amount of novel, unrewarded stimuli. The subsequent test consisted of 30 sessions with different sequences of four test trials. In these test trials, we confronted the kea with novel stimuli that were paired with either the rewarded or unrewarded training stimuli or with the novel stimuli of previous test trials. Once habituated to novelty, eight out of fourteen kea tested responded to novel stimuli by inferring their contingency via logical exclusion of the alternative. One individual inferred predominantly in this way, while other response strategies, such as one trial learning, stimulus preferences and avoiding the negative stimulus also guided the responses of the remaining individuals. Interestingly, the difficulty of the task had no influence on the test performance. We discuss the implications of these findings for the current hypotheses about the emergence of inferential reasoning in some avian species, considering causal links to brain size, feeding ecology and social complexity.     

Views on Quality of Life Differ Between Alcohol Related Brain Damaged Individuals and Their Healthcare Professionals

Measuring quality of life (QoL) in alcohol related brain damaged individuals (ARBDs) is challenging, mostly because patients are characterized by important cognitive impairments and are generally unaware of their defects. However, quality of life assessments are essential to help inform care and rehabilitative settings; thus introducing and including views from healthcare professionals on ARBDs’ quality of life is a reasonable approach. We examine QoL and the perception of cognitive defects among ARBDs and compare them to expert appraisals by acquainted healthcare professionals. We hypothesize that ARBDs self-assessments outscore QoL expert-ratings by professionals and demonstrate an unawareness of their cognitive deficits, with anosognosia being related to the QoL domains of interest. Six domains of QoL and the occurrence of cognitive problems in 14 detoxified alcoholics are investigated by means of self-ratings and expert-ratings from two acquainted healthcare professionals. Anosognosia is assessed by using difference scores between self- and expert-ratings on the manifestation of everyday executive dysfunctions. We find that ARBDs experience anosognosia (ps?<?.001) and outscore systematically expert-ratings on the investigated QoL domains (ps?<?.03). Complex patterns of relationships between self-/expert-rated QoL relate mostly negatively and moderately with anosognosia, confirming some of our assumptions and informing others. ARBDs are characterized by anosognosia and differ largely from expert’s views on patient QoL. Professionals relate compromised patient QoL to the inability of the patient to have insight of his/her dysfunctions; whereas among patients, QoL relates less strongly to anosognosia. Remaining doubts on the validity of QoL self-/expert-ratings in ARBDs are discussed.     

The costs and benefits of cross-task priming

Two lines of research on cross-task priming yield opposite results. Research on repetition priming observed positive priming, whereas research on the role of priming in task-switching observed negative effects. We combined the two types of design. In the transfer phase of our paradigm, subjects performed task B either as a pure block (BBB) or as a switch block (ABAB). We presented items which were either unprimed or primed by prior presentation during a preceding priming phase performed on task A. Amongst others, the priming effect is determined by two factors: First, the more operation time the system needs during the probe event, the higher the likelihood to obtain priming. Protracting operation time by reducing stimulus quality favors positive priming, whereas providing more operation time by making subjects switch between tasks favors negative priming. Second, the strength of the memory trace of the prime event determines whether that trace can possibly yield negative priming, in that only strong traces can be retrieved together with the associated task/response.     

Regret and Behavior: Comment on Zeelenberg and Pieters

Zeelenberg and Pieter's (2007) regret regulation theory 1.0 offers a synthesis that brings together concepts spanning numerous literatures. We have no substantive disagreement with their theory, but instead offer 3 observations to further aid regret researchers studying consumer decision making. First, the overall arch of any regret theory must be situated within an understanding of behavior regulation. Second, the distinction between regrets of action versus inaction is best understood in terms of motivational implications, particularly with regard to Higgin's (1998) distinction between promotion and prevention focus. Third, the opportunity principle offers a particularly clear means of summarizing the regulatory consequences of the regret experience. Regret is an emotion pivotal for decision making, and its cognitive underpinning has and continues to be elucidated in research focusing on counterfactual thinking.     

马普人类发展研究所毕生发展心理研究中心：研究主题和研究活动展示

Paul B. Baltes于1981年在马普人类发展研究所成立的毕生发展心理研究中心已经使毕生发展心理学成为了发展心理学中的一个重要的概念分支。2004年以来,中心已经将研究项目扩展到了发展行为神经科学。中心主要在三个主题上开展研究工作: (1) 研究作为成熟、学习和衰老的交互作用的结果, 毕生的不同发展阶段中人类行为变化的规律: (2) 发展能够整合来自于自身机能、时间序列、以及行为和神经层面分析等领域实证证据的理论和方法体系。(3) 通过探索不同年龄可塑性上的差异寻找发展的机制。中心继续重点关注成人晚期和老年期, 这为理论和实践上的创新提供了独特的机遇。同时, 中心加强了对包括婴儿期和儿童早期在内的个体发展早期阶段的研究。本文报告了来自四项从行为和神经层面分析感觉和认知发展的研究的最新发现。     

Dyadic judgments based on conflicting samples: The failure to ignore invalid input

The present research demonstrates a so far unrecognized impediment of group performance, metacognitive myopia (Fiedler, 2012). Judges and decision-makers follow the given samples of information uncritically and neglect the metacognitive assessment of the samples' validity. Applying this notion to dyadic judgments, we instructed dyads to jointly estimate conditional probabilities p (Win|A) and p (Win|B) of Lotteries A and B. One person per dyad experienced a valid sample (winning rates conditional on lotteries). The other person experienced an invalid, reverse sample (lotteries conditional on winning). Whereas valid samples provide unbiased estimates of lotteries' winning probabilities, invalid samples can greatly misrepresent the association of winning and lotteries (depending on lottery base rates). Across three experiments, metacognitive myopia—both at the individual and at the dyadic group level—prevented participants from discriminating valid and invalid samples. Group judgments were biased toward erroneous implications of invalid samples, reflecting an equality bias among unequal group members.     

Both trace and delay conditioning of evaluative responses depend on contingency awareness

Whereas previous evaluative conditioning (EC) studies produced inconsistent results concerning the role of contingency knowledge, there are classical eye-blink conditioning studies suggesting that declarative processes are involved in trace conditioning but not in delay conditioning. In two EC experiments pairing neutral sounds (conditioned stimuli; CSs) with affective pictures (unconditioned stimuli; USs), we tested whether the type of conditioning procedure affects the relationship between awareness and EC. Auditory CSs and visual USs were either overlapping and co-terminating (Delay Conditioning Group), or they were separated by a short temporal gap (Trace Conditioning Group). In both groups, contingency awareness was manipulated by varying the duration at which the US was presented during conditioning. Furthermore, in addition to a post-conditioning measure of awareness, US detectability was measured concurrently during the learning phase in Experiment 2. US exposure duration affected both measures of awareness. The data of both experiments demonstrate that EC does not occur if the USs are presented at very brief durations, but reliable EC effects can be observed at longer US exposure durations. As there were no differences between trace and delay conditioning, the data suggest that contingency awareness plays a crucial role in trace and in delay conditioning of evaluative responses. These results challenge automatic association-formation accounts of EC, but they are in line with ‘single-process’ accounts assuming EC to be dependent on conscious declarative knowledge about CS–US contingencies.