Asylum Seekers in Europe: Issues and Solutions

The recent exceptional migratory surge has put huge pressure on many countries of the developed world. The Member States of the European Union are still striving to find a sustainable solution to the ongoing massive asylum crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from wars, authoritarian regimes, and poverty in the Middle East and North Africa. Really, the recent asylum crisis is essentially a policy asylum crisis, which places under pressure a limited number of Member States. The research provides a diagnosis of what went wrong, by highlighting the weakness of mechanisms for implementing the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility. To overcome some drawbacks of the European asylum system, the research suggests a novel and constructive solution, which could promote common values and interests in a viable way. Due to its geographic location and expertise, Italy could play a central role in supporting the EU asylum system, by facilitating substantial cooperation and policy integration.     

Segmented Paths? Mexican Generational Differences in the Transition to First-Time Homeownership in the United States

Homeownership represents an important indicator of immigrant incorporation and assimilation. This study is a longitudinal analysis of the transition to first-time homeownership among a cohort of youths followed from 1979 to 2009 using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY, 1979). In particular, I examine Mexican generational group differences in the transition to first-time homeownership over an observation period that spans 30 years while evaluating theories of straight-line and segmented assimilation. I find that Mexican homeownership rates do not increase in a linear fashion across generations, relative to native, non-Hispanic whites, even after controlling for various social, demographic, and economic characteristics. Furthermore, analyses limited to Mexicans reveal that first- and second-generation respondents exhibit more success in the transition to first-time homeownership than their third-generation counterparts. Contrary to observing linear gains in homeownership across generations, I find that Mexicans are experiencing segmented paths towards homeownership and achieving upward mobility across generations.     

The Good Immigrant Worker: 2013 US Senate Bill 744, Color-Blind Nativism and the Struggle for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

We explore immigration politics in the contemporary USA through analysis of the political framing of 2013 US Senate Bill 744, especially among its supporters. SB 744 is a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform proposal that called for the largest overhaul of the immigration system in more than 25 years; it was passed in June 2013 by the US Senate but blocked in the House. Through analysis of the 2012–2013 textual content of the official websites and blogs of six US immigration lobby organizations from across the political spectrum, we offer a typology of political framings of comprehensive immigration reform. Drawing on popular anti-immigrant rhetoric, organizations with an agenda of immigration restriction and deterrence battled against the bill. On the other side, supporters of the bill ranged from business coalitions to immigrant rights groups, an assortment of interests that was reflected in the variety of arguments advanced in favor of the bill. Despite the far more fragmented character of pro-SB 744 discourse in comparison to that advanced by the opposition, our investigation suggests the ongoing and contested formation of a strategic pro-SB 744 framing that centered on the “good immigrant worker,” a “race-blind” trope that melds US nationalist narratives of immigration with an ethos of neoliberalism that upholds individual merit and market value to create a notion of “deservingness” that affirms the worth of immigrants as diligent workers.     

Attentional responses on an auditory oddball predict false memory susceptibility

Attention and memory are highly integrated processes. Building on prior behavioral investigations, this study assesses the link between individual differences in low-level neural attentional responding and false memory susceptibility on the misinformation effect, a paradigm in which false event memories are induced via misleading post-event information. Twenty-four subjects completed the misinformation effect paradigm after which high-density (256-channel) EEG data was collected as they engaged in an auditory oddball task. Temporal-spatial decomposition was used to extract two attention-related components from the oddball data, the P3b and Classic Slow Wave. The P3b was utilized as an index of individual differences in salient target attentional responding while the slow wave was adopted as an index of variability in task-level sustained attention. Analyses of these components show a significant negative relationship between slow-wave responses to oddball non-targets and perceptual false memory endorsements, suggestive of a link between individual differences in levels of sustained attention and false memory susceptibility. These findings provide the first demonstrated link between individual differences in basic attentional responses and false memory. These results support prior behavioral work linking attention and false memory and highlight the integration between attentional processes and real-world episodic memory.     

Reduction of implicit cognitive bias with cathodal tDCS to the left prefrontal cortex

Implicit associations can interfere with cognitive operations and behavioral decisions without direct intention. Enhancement of neural activity with anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was proposed to reduce implicit associations by means of improved cognitive control. However, a targeted reduction of distractive implicit associations by inhibitory cathodal tDCS, recently shown in spatial–numerical associations, provides an interesting alternative approach to support goal-directed behavior with transcranial brain stimulation. To test this rationale with a sham-controlled cross-over design, a standardized Implicit Association Test (IAT) was performed by 24 healthy participants parallel to 1 mA cathodal or sham tDCS to the left prefrontal cortex. In this double-classification task, insect versus flower pictures and negative versus positive words are mapped together onto two shared response keys with crossed response assignments in separate blocks. Responses were faster when insect + negative and flower + positive stimuli required the same answer (IAT effect). Most critically, the IAT effect was reduced during cathodal tDCS as compared to sham stimulation. Thus, results are consistent with the proposed stimulation rationale, with previous observations, and complementary to previous studies using different tDCS configurations.     

Ocular signatures of proactive versus reactive cognitive control in young adults

During the execution of a cognitive task, the brain maintains contextual information to guide behavior and achieve desired goals. The AX-Continuous Performance Task is used to study proactive versus reactive cognitive control. Young adults tend to behave proactively in standard testing conditions. However, it remains unclear how interindividual variability (e.g., in cognitive and motivational factors) may drive people into more reactive or proactive control under the same task demands. We investigated the use of control strategies in a large population of healthy young adults. We computed the proactive behavioral index and consequently divided participants into proactive, reactive, and intermediate groups. We found that reactive participants were generally slower, presented lower context sensitivity, and larger response variability. Pupillary changes and blink rate index cognitive effort allocation. We measured, concomitantly to the task, the pupil size and frequency of blinks associated with the cue maintenance and response intervals. During the cue period, nonfrequent, nontarget cues led to increased pupil dilation and number of blinks in all participants. During the response interval, we found more errors and increased pupil dilation to the probe when all participants had to overcome a response bias generated by the frequent cue. Only reactive participants showed larger response-related pupil when they had to overcome a response bias related to the frequent probe. Contrary to expectations, groups did not differ in ocular measures in the cue period. In conclusion, interindividual differences in cognitive control between healthy adults can be mapped onto different patterns of effort allocation indexed by the pupil.     

Enhancing theory of mind in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia with transcranial direct current stimulation

Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a form of frontotemporal degeneration characterized by early changes in personality, emotional blunting, and/or loss of empathy. Recent research has highlighted that these features may be at least partially explained by impairments in the theory of mind (ToM; i.e., the ability to understand and predict other people’s behaviour by attributing independent mental states to them). The aim of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was to test the hypothesis that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the medial frontal cortex (MFC) selectively enhances communicative intention processing, a specific ToM ability. Using a single-session online design, we administered a ToM task that measures the ability to represent other people’s private and communicative intentions during active or sham tDCS to 16 bvFTD patients. To assess the impact of dementia on performance on the ToM task, we included 16 age-matched healthy volunteers who were asked to perform the entire experimental ToM task. BvFTD is characterized by an impairment in the comprehension of both communicative and private intentions relative to a healthy control group and by a disproportional impairment in communicative intention compared with private intention processing. Significant and selective accuracy improvement in the comprehension of communicative intentions after active stimulation was observed in patients with bvFTD. This is the first study that analyses ToM ability in patients with bvFTD using tDCS stimulation. Our findings could potentially contribute to the development of an effective, noninvasive brain stimulation treatment of ToM impairments in patients with bvFTD.     

Attention and anticipation in response to varying levels of uncertain threat: An ERP study

Individual differences in responding to uncertainty have been proposed as a key mechanism of how anxiety disorders develop and are maintained. However, most empirical work has compared responding to uncertain versus certain threat dichotomously. This is a significant limitation because uncertainty in daily life occurs along a continuum of probability, ranging from very low to high chances of negative outcomes. The current study investigated (1) how varying levels of uncertainty impact attention and anticipatory emotion, and (2) how these effects are moderated by individual differences in risk factors for anxiety disorders, particularly intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and worry. Participants (n = 65) completed a card task in which the probability of shock varied across trials. Two event-related potential components were examined: the P2, an index of attention, and the stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN), an index of anticipation. The P2 tracked the level of uncertainty and was smaller for more uncertain outcomes. Participants higher in IU exhibited greater differences in the P2 across levels of uncertainty. The SPN did not track specific levels of uncertainty but was largest for uncertain threat compared with certain threat and safety. Greater worry was associated with blunting of the SPN in anticipation of all outcomes. Thus, attention appears to be sensitive to variations in uncertainty, whereas anticipation seems sensitive to uncertainty globally. The two processes appear to be distinctly related to anxiety risk factors. These results highlight the value of examining multiple aspects of anticipatory responding to varying levels of uncertainty for understanding risk for anxiety disorders.     

Neural and behavioral effects of regulating emotional responses to errors during an implicit racial bias task

Affect regulation plays a key role in several theories of racial bias reduction. Here, we tested whether engaging in emotion regulation strategies while performing an implicit racial bias task (Weapons Identification Task; WIT) would alter neural and behavioral manifestations of bias. Participants either suppressed or reappraised in a positive light the distress associated with making errors during the WIT, while an electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. We hypothesized that engaging in emotion regulation strategies would reduce the distress associated with making errors indicative of bias, resulting in smaller error-related negativity (ERN) amplitude during errors and increased expression of racial bias. Results of within-subjects comparisons (Experiment 1) generally supported these predictions. However, when emotion regulation strategies were manipulated between subjects (Experiment 2) there was no effect of suppression or reappraisal on bias expression. Across both experiments, engaging in emotion regulation led to larger ERNs for errors occurring on Black- relative to White-primed trials. In addition, a number of significant order effects were observed, indicating important differences in the effects of engaging in emotion regulation strategies when those strategies are attempted in participants’ first versus second block of trials. No such order effects were evident when a second trial block was completed with no emotion regulation instructions. Findings are discussed in terms of the need for greater specificity in experimental tests of emotion regulation on error processing and cognitive performance.     

Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence

Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults’ visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person’s perspective. Participants completed the avatar visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective (Experiments 1 and 2) or only from their own perspective (Experiment 3), where the two perspectives could be consistent or in conflict. Age of avatar was manipulated between (Experiment 1) or within (Experiments 2 and 3) participants, and interference was assessed using behavioral (Experiments 1–3) and ERP (Experiment 1) measures. Results revealed that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when a child avatar was present, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective. We attribute this pattern to either enhanced visual processing for own-age others or an inference on reduced mental awareness in younger children. The findings argue against a purely attentional basis for the altercentric effect, and instead support an account where both mentalising and directional processes modulate automatic visual perspective-taking, and perspective-taking effects are strongly influenced by experimental context.