Reducing the dauer larva: molecular models of biological phenomena in Caenorhabditis elegans research

One important aspect of biological explanation is detailed causal modeling of particular phenomena in limited experimental background conditions. Recognising this allows one to appreciate that a sufficient condition for a reduction in biology is a molecular model of (1) only the demonstrated causal parameters of a biological model and (2) only within a replicable experimental background. These identities—which are ubiquitous in biology and form the basis of ruthless reductions (Bickle, Philosophy and neuroscience: a ruthlessly reductive account, 2003)—are criticised as merely “local” (Sullivan, Synthese 167:511–539, 2009) or “fragmentary” (Schaffner, Synthese, 151(3):377–402, 2006). However, in an instructive case, a biological model is preserved in molecular terms, demonstrating a complex phenomenon that has been successfully reduced.     

Is the emotional Stroop task a special case of mood induction? Evidence from sustained effects of attention under emotion

Sustained effects of emotion are well known in everyday experience. Surprisingly, such effects are seldom recorded in laboratory studies of the emotional Stroop task, in which participants name the color of emotion and neutral words. Color performance is more sluggish with emotion words than with neutral words, the emotional Stroop effect (ESE). The ESE is not sensitive to the order in which the two groups of words are presented, so the effect of exposure to emotion words does not extend to disrupting performance in a subsequent block with neutral words. We attribute this absence of a sustained effect to habituation engendered by excessive repetition of the experimental stimuli. In a series of four experiments, we showed that sustained effects do occur when habituation is removed, and we also showed that the massive exposure to negative stimuli within the ESE paradigm induces a commensurately negative mood. A novel perspective is offered, in which the ESE is considered a special case of mood induction.     

Beyond words: evidence for automatic language–gesture integration of symbolic gestures but not dynamic landscapes

Understanding actions based on either language or action observation is presumed to involve the motor system, reflecting the engagement of an embodied conceptual network. We examined how linguistic and gestural information were integrated in a series of cross-domain priming studies. We varied the task demands across three experiments in which symbolic gestures served as primes for verbal targets. Primes were clips of symbolic gestures taken from a rich set of emblems. Participants responded by making a lexical decision to the target (Experiment 1), naming the target (Experiment 2), or performing a semantic relatedness judgment (Experiment 3). The magnitude of semantic priming was larger in the relatedness judgment and lexical decision tasks compared to the naming task. Priming was also observed in a control task in which the primes were pictures of landscapes with conceptually related verbal targets. However, for these stimuli, the amount of priming was similar across the three tasks. We propose that action observation triggers an automatic, pre-lexical spread of activation, consistent with the idea that language–gesture integration occurs in an obligatory and automatic fashion.     

Heuristics and biases in mental arithmetic: revisiting and reversing operational momentum

ABSTRACT

Mental arithmetic is characterised by a tendency to overestimate addition and to underestimate subtraction results: the operational momentum (OM) effect. Here, motivated by contentious explanations of this effect, we developed and tested an arithmetic heuristics and biases model that predicts reverse OM due to cognitive anchoring effects. Participants produced bi-directional lines with lengths corresponding to the results of arithmetic problems. In two experiments, we found regular OM with zero problems (e.g., 3+0, 3?0) but reverse OM with non-zero problems (e.g., 2+1, 4?1). In a third experiment, we tested the prediction of our model. Our results suggest the presence of at least three competing biases in mental arithmetic: a more-or-less heuristic, a sign-space association and an anchoring bias. We conclude that mental arithmetic exhibits shortcuts for decision-making similar to traditional domains of reasoning and problem-solving.     

Non-cognitive antecedents of pay and pay expectations: gender-based differences in a masculine work setting

Research on gender differences in the effects of non-cognitive traits and behaviours on pay is rather scant and focuses largely on the big five personality traits. To address this gap, we consider the equivocal findings regarding the direct associations of intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, and networking with pay, arguing for gender differences in the degree to which actual pay and pay expectations are influenced by these non-cognitive factors. Hypotheses are tested using a sample of 250 individuals working in traditionally masculine jobs at a single high-technology firm. Participants completed two surveys, and income data were retrieved from the firm’s archives. Intrinsic motivation was positively related to actual pay and pay expectations among men and was negatively related to both pay measures among women. Self-efficacy was positively related to actual pay among women and was unrelated to actual pay among men. Networking was positively related to actual pay among men and was negatively related to actual pay among women. Finally, self-efficacy and networking were unrelated to pay expectations among both men and women. We draw from notions of gender stereotypes, backlash, and tokenism to discuss gender-based differences in how organizations appraise and reward non-cognitive traits and behaviours.     

Prosaccade and Antisaccade Paradigms in Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease: A Meta-Analytic Review

Persons with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) are at high Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) risk but the development of sensitive measures to assess subtle cognitive decline in this population poses a major challenge for clinicians and researchers. Eye movement monitoring is a non-invasive, sensitive way to assess subtle cognitive processes in clinical populations. We conducted a critical review and a meta-analysis of the literature on pro and antisaccade paradigm in AD/MCI. The meta-analysis included 20 studies, all of which used the prosaccade paradigm and 13 of which studied the antisaccade paradigm as well. Our meta-analysis showed that AD but not MCI patients showed longer prosaccade latencies when compared to controls. While antisaccade latencies did not differentiate between patients from controls, antisaccade error rate were significantly increased among patients in comparison to controls in over 87% of the studies. These findings highlight antisaccade error rate as a reliable tool to distinguish inhibition abilities between AD/MCI and healthy older persons.     

The cognitive reflection test is robust to multiple exposures

The cognitive reflection test (CRT) is a widely used measure of the propensity to engage in analytic or deliberative reasoning in lieu of gut feelings or intuitions. CRT problems are unique because they reliably cue intuitive but incorrect responses and, therefore, appear simple among those who do poorly. By virtue of being composed of so-called “trick problems” that, in theory, could be discovered as such, it is commonly held that the predictive validity of the CRT is undermined by prior experience with the task. Indeed, recent studies have shown that people who have had previous experience with the CRT score higher on the test. Naturally, however, it is not obvious that this actually undermines the predictive validity of the test. Across six studies with ~ 2,500 participants and 17 variables of interest (e.g., religious belief, bullshit receptivity, smartphone usage, susceptibility to heuristics and biases, and numeracy), we did not find a single case in which the predictive power of the CRT was significantly undermined by repeated exposure. This occurred despite the fact that we replicated the previously reported increase in accuracy among individuals who reported previous experience with the CRT. We speculate that the CRT remains robust after multiple exposures because less reflective (more intuitive) individuals fail to realize that being presented with apparently easy problems more than once confers information about the task’s actual difficulty.     

Mixed matters: fluency impacts trust ratings when faces range on valence but not on motivational implications

Facial features that resemble emotional expressions influence key social evaluations, including trust. Here, we present four experiments testing how the impact of such expressive features is qualified by their processing difficulty. We show that faces with mixed expressive features are relatively devalued, and faces with pure expressive features are relatively valued. This is especially true when participants first engage in a categorisation task that makes processing of mixed expressions difficult and pure expressions easy. Critically, we also demonstrate that the impact of categorisation fluency depends on the specific nature of the expressive features. When faces vary on valence (i.e. sad to happy), trust judgments increase with their positivity, but also depend on fluency. When faces vary on social motivation (i.e. angry to sad), trust judgments increase with their approachability, but remain impervious to disfluency. This suggests that people intelligently use fluency to make judgments on valence-relevant judgment dimensions – but not when faces can be judged using other relevant criteria, such as motivation. Overall, the findings highlight that key social impressions (like trust) are flexibly constructed from inputs related to stimulus features and processing experience.     

The positive effect of negative emotions in protracted conflict: The case of anger

Extant research has demonstrated the destructive role that anger plays in the context of intergroup conflict. Among other findings, it has been established that anger elevates public support for aggressive and violent actions towards the outgroup. This finding has been explained by the unique cognitive appraisals, emotional goal, and response tendencies associated with anger, typified by appraised relative strength and high control, motivation to correct perceived wrongdoings, and willingness to engage in risky behavior. In the current work we examine an innovative assumption, according to which the apparent destructive implications of anger are a result of situational range restriction—namely, that anger as a group emotion has been examined almost solely at the escalation stage of conflict. Instead, we propose that the same unique characteristics of anger can bring about constructive political attitudes and support for non-violent policies in the context of systematic efforts to de-escalate a protracted conflict.To test this hypothesis we conducted two studies in which we examined the relationship between anger and the willingness to engage in positive risk-taking and support non-violent policies in the context of political negotiations between adversaries. Results indicate a significant positive relationship, supporting the hypothesis that anger is not an exclusively militant emotion, and its effects are situationally dependent.