Vicarious learning and the development of fears in childhood

Vicarious learning has long been assumed to be an indirect pathway to fear; however, there is only retrospective evidence that children acquire fears in this way. In two experiments, children (aged 7-9 years) were exposed to pictures of novel animals paired with pictures of either scared, happy or no facial expressions to see the impact on their fear cognitions and avoidance behavior about the animals. In Experiment 1, directly (self-report) and indirectly measured (affective priming) fear attitudes towards the animals changed congruent with the facial expressions with which these were paired. The indirectly measured fear beliefs persisted up to 3 months. Experiment 2 showed that children took significantly longer to approach a box they believed to contain an animal they had previously seen paired with scared faces. These results support theories of fear acquisition that suppose that vicarious learning affects cognitive and behavioral fear emotion, and suggest possibilities for interventions to weaken fear acquired in this way.     

Memory for emotionally neutral information in posttraumatic stress disorder: A meta-analytic investigation

Studies have come to conflicting conclusions about whether posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with poorer memory for emotionally neutral information. The authors report a meta-analysis of 27 studies that investigated verbal and/or visual memory in samples with PTSD and healthy controls. The results indicated that the association between PTSD and memory impairment appears to be robust, small to moderate in size, and stronger for verbal than for visual memory. Effect sizes did not vary according to whether recall was immediate or delayed. The association is found in both civilian and military samples and cannot be readily explained as being due to the use of nontraumatized healthy control groups or concurrent head injury. The findings are placed in the context of recent neurobiological and experimental cognitive research.     

Brain Recording,Mind-Reading,and Neurotechnology: Ethical Issues from Consumer Devices to Brain-Based Speech Decoding

Science and Engineering Ethics - Brain reading technologies are rapidly being developed in a number of neuroscience fields. These technologies can record, process, and decode neural signals. This...