Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and Stroop performance: Tackling the lateralization

Neuroscience research has identified the involvement of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in cognitive control. Questions remain, however, about its lateralization correlates during Stroop task performance, an experimental cornerstone on which a large amount of cognitive control research is based. After reviewing the literature, we find that three Stroop variants have been used in an attempt to uncover different aspects of cognitive control related to DLPFC involvement. In sum, rapid and sequential up-regulation of the attentional set seems to be related to the left DLPFC. These attentional adjustments are based on participants’ expectancies regarding the conflicting nature of the upcoming trial, and not on the conflict itself. In contrast, the right DLPFC is associated with an overall up-regulation of the attentional set when attentional conflict is experienced.     

Responsibility and the Brain Sciences

Some theorists think that the more we get to know about the neural underpinnings of our behaviors, the less likely we will be to hold people responsible for their actions. This intuition has driven some to suspect that as neuroscience gains insight into the neurological causes of our actions, people will cease to view others as morally responsible for their actions, thus creating a troubling quandary for our legal system. This paper provides empirical evidence against such intuitions. Particularly, our studies of folk intuitions suggest that (1) when the causes of an action are described in neurological terms, they are not found to be any more exculpatory than when described in psychological terms, and (2) agents are not held fully responsible even for actions that are fully neurologically caused.     

Psychosocial mediators of a lifestyle physical activity intervention in women

ObjectivesA lifestyle physical activity intervention in women based on the transtheoretical model and social–cognitive theory effectively increased physical activity. The aim of the present study was to examine possible mediators (perceived benefits and barriers of physical activity, self-efficacy, processes of change, and social support) of these physical activity changes.MethodsMembers of four units of a women's organization followed a six-month minimal-contact physical activity program. The intervention program included one group meeting, a self-help booklet and five monthly reminder letters. Members of two other units served as control group. Physical activity (accelerometer counts), and psychosocial constructs (self-report questionnaires) were assessed at baseline (pretest) and directly after the intervention (posttest). Women who completed all measurements (n = 101) were included in the mediation analyses.ResultsParticipants in the intervention group reported significantly greater increases in the use of behavioral processes from pretest to posttest than participants in the control group. None of the proposed psychosocial constructs showed a mediating effect on changes in physical activity.ConclusionsThe mechanisms proposed by the transtheoretical model and social–cognitive theory could not explain the positive effect of the intervention on physical activity. Identifying the working components of an intervention remains a challenging and necessary step in the development of effective low-cost and high-reach physical activity interventions.     

Further examination of the convergent and discriminant validity of the student–teacher relationship scale

Two studies extended psychometric research on the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS) with kindergarten and preschool children (N₁ = 60–71; N₂ = 35) and their teachers. These studies used a multi‐method approach to replicate and extend previous findings concerning the convergent validity of the STRS Closeness, Conflict, and Dependency scale and to further examine the discriminant validity of the STRS. Study 1 investigated convergence between the STRS scales and child‐ and peer‐reports of the same constructs based on a multi‐trait multi‐method approach. Study 2 examined the pattern of associations between the STRS and indicators of teacher–child relationship quality rated by external observers. Support was found for the convergent validity and to a lesser extent the discriminant validity of the STRS Closeness and Conflict scale. For the STRS Dependency scale, additional research remains necessary. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Configural and featural processing during face perception: A new stimulus set

A new stimulus set of 60 male-face stimuli in seven in-depth orientations was developed. The set can be used in research on configural versus featural mechanisms of face processing. Configural, or holistic, changes are produced by changing the global form of the face, whereas featural, or part-based, changes are attained by altering the local form of internal facial features. For each face in the set, there is one other face that differs only by its global form and one other face that differs only by its internal features. In all faces, extrafacial cues have been eliminated or standardized. The stimulus set also contains a color-coded division of each face in areas of interest, which is useful for eye movement research on face scanning strategies. We report a matching experiment with upright and inverted face pairs that demonstrates that the face stimulus set is indeed useful for research on configural and featural face perception. The stimulus set may be downloaded from the Psychonomic Society’s archive (brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental) or from our Web site (http://ppw.kuleuven .be/labexppsy/ newSite/resources)     

Enactive intersubjectivity: Participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation

Current theories of social cognition are mainly based on a representationalist view. Moreover, they focus on a rather sophisticated and limited aspect of understanding others, i.e. on how we predict and explain others’ behaviours through representing their mental states. Research into the ‘social brain’ has also favoured a third-person paradigm of social cognition as a passive observation of others’ behaviour, attributing it to an inferential, simulative or projective process in the individual brain. In this paper, we present a concept of social understanding as an ongoing, dynamical process of participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation. This process may be described (1) from a dynamical agentive systems point of view as an interaction and coordination of two embodied agents; (2) from a phenomenological approach as a mutual incorporation, i.e. a process in which the lived bodies of both participants extend and form a common intercorporality. Intersubjectivity, it is argued, is not a solitary task of deciphering or simulating the movements of others but means entering a process of embodied interaction and generating common meaning through it. This approach will be further illustrated by an analysis of primary dyadic interaction in early childhood.     

Body-extension versus body-incorporation: Is there a need for a body-model?

This paper investigates the role of a pre-existing body-model that is an enabling constraint for the incorporation of objects into the body. This body-model is also a basis for the distinction between body extensions (e.g., in the case of tool-use) and incorporation (e.g., in the case of successful prosthesis use). It is argued that, in the case of incorporation, changes in the sense of body-ownership involve a reorganization of the body-model, whereas extension of the body with tools does not involve changes in the sense of body-ownership.     

Failure to loose fear: The impact of cognitive load and trait anxiety on extinction

Exposure therapy is an effective technique for fear reduction. However, whether effective exposure requires attentional allocation to the feared situation remains a debated clinical issue. In the present study, the impact of attention allocation in extinction was investigated in an experimental conditioning study. Through a between-subjects manipulation of cognitive load, we created a condition in which participants could allocate their attention to the feared stimulus during extinction (low load condition), and a condition in which attentional allocation was impaired (high load condition). The influence of cognitive load on extinction was examined by comparing electrodermal responses and verbal ratings for the conditioned stimuli in the two extinction load conditions. The results show less successful extinction in the high load condition than in the low load condition. However, this effect was found only in low anxious participants, and it was prominent only on the skin conductance responses. The present results suggest that extinction is not automatic but requires cognitive resources.     

Geometric analogue of holographic reduced representation

Holographic reduced representations (HRRs) are distributed representations of cognitive structures based on superpositions of convolution-bound n-tuples. Restricting HRRs to n-tuples consisting of ±1, one reinterprets the variable binding as a representation of the additive group of binary n-tuples with addition modulo 2. Since convolutions are not defined for vectors, the HRRs cannot be directly associated with geometric structures. Geometric analogues of HRRs are obtained if one considers a projective representation of the same group in the space of blades (geometric products of basis vectors) associated with an arbitrary n-dimensional Euclidean (or pseudo-Euclidean) space. Switching to matrix representations of Clifford algebras, one can always turn a geometric analogue of an HRR into a form of matrix distributed representation. In typical applications the resulting matrices are sparse, so that the matrix representation is less efficient than the representation directly employing the rules of geometric algebra. A yet more efficient procedure is based on ‘projected products’, a hierarchy of geometrically meaningful n-tuple multiplication rules obtained by combining geometric products with projections on relevant multivector subspaces. In terms of dimensionality the geometric analogues of HRRs are in between holographic and tensor-product representations.     

How emotion communication guides reciprocity: Establishing cooperation through disappointment and anger

Emotions fulfill many social functions, but data on their essential function of establishing cooperation are lacking. We investigated how communicating anger and disappointment guides reciprocal cooperative behavior. Although anger may force cooperation by announcing retaliation, we predicted that communicating disappointment was less likely to backfire. A laboratory study in which participants played against the reciprocal strategy of tit-for-tat showed that communicated disappointment established more cooperation than did anger. This effect also carried over to future cooperation decisions. Partners communicating disappointment evoked less anger, were evaluated more positively and as forgiving rather than retaliatory. Communication of disappointment thus appears conducive to establishing mutually beneficial relationships.