Social discounting of pain

Impatience can be formalized as a delay discount rate, describing how the subjective value of reward decreases as it is delayed. By analogy, selfishness can be formalized as a social discount rate, representing how the subjective value of rewarding another person decreases with increasing social distance. Delay and social discount rates for reward are correlated across individuals. However no previous work has examined whether this relationship also holds for aversive outcomes. Neither has previous work described a functional form for social discounting of pain in humans. This is a pertinent question, since preferences over aversive outcomes formally diverge from those for reward. We addressed this issue in an experiment in which healthy adult participants (N = 67) chose the timing and intensity of hypothetical pain for themselves and others. In keeping with previous studies, participants showed a strong preference for immediate over delayed pain. Participants showed greater concern for pain in close others than for their own pain, though this hyperaltruism was steeply discounted with increasing social distance. Impatience for pain and social discounting of pain were weakly correlated across individuals. Our results extend a link between impatience and selfishness to the aversive domain.     

Evaluating the influence of time of day on activity engagement in persons with dementia

Dementia is a serious disease affecting a growing number of people. With the onset of dementia comes a decline in social activity engagement that can negatively impact multiple aspects of a person's life. Research suggests that time of day may influence a person with dementia's behavior, including activity engagement, but such research is limited. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of time of day on engagement in activities in persons diagnosed with dementia. An alternating treatments design was used with three participants to measure activity engagement during two times of day, morning and afternoon, and during two activities, a moderately preferred and a low preferred. Results showed no differentiation in engagement between morning and afternoon activities for all three participants, with high levels of engagement during both times of day. For two participants, results showed no differentiation in engagement between moderately preferred and low preferred activities. For one participant, levels of engagement were higher during moderately preferred activities than during low preferred activities.     

Cell phones and grades: examining mediation by perceived control and anxiety

Social Psychology of Education - Considerable evidence shows that cell phone use (CPU) is detrimental to students’ academic achievement. However, researchers have yet to consider whether or...     

基于脑结构像的精神分裂症机器学习分类

将机器学习应用于精神疾患的临床和基础研究是近年来的趋势。研究者将机器学习应用于精神分裂症患者及高危人群的T1加权像和弥散张量成像的脑影像数据中, 为了解疾病的生理病理学机制提供帮助。回顾以往研究发现额叶及颞叶的脑结构特征具有较高的区分能力, 行为数据和脑影像数据结合的分类效果优于单模态数据。现阶段研究存在样本量不足和泛化能力欠缺的局限, 未来研究应注意扩大样本量、制定标准化的分类方法, 从而进一步探究机器学习在精神疾患中的作用。     

Effects of chlordiazepoxide on pausing during rich-to-lean transitions

Extended pausing during discriminable transitions from rich-to-lean conditions can be viewed as escape (i.e., rich-to-lean transitions function aversively). Thus, an anxiolytic drug would be predicted to mitigate the aversiveness and decrease pausing. In the current experiment, pigeons' key pecking was maintained by a multiple fixed-ratio fixed-ratio schedule of rich (i.e., larger) or lean (i.e., smaller) reinforcers. Intermediate doses (3.0-10.0 mg/kg) of chlordiazepoxide differentially decreased median pauses during rich-to-lean transitions. Relatively small decreases in pauses occurred during lean-to-lean and rich-to-rich transitions. Effects of chlordiazepoxide on pausing occurred without appreciable effects on run rates. These findings suggest that signaled rich-to-lean transitions function aversively.     

The Use of the Term Virtual Reality in Post-Stroke Rehabilitation: A Scoping Review and Commentary

Virtual reality (VR) offers many opportunities for post-stroke rehabilitation. However, “VR” can refer to several types of computer-based rehabilitation systems. Since these systems may impact the feasibility and the efficacy of VR interventions, consistent terminology is important. In this study, we aimed to optimize the terminology for VR-based post-stroke rehabilitation by assessing whether and how review papers on this topic defined VR and what types of mixed reality systems were discussed. In addition, this review can inspire the use of consistent terminology for other researchers working with VR. We assessed the use of the term VR in review papers on post-stroke rehabilitation extracted from Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed. We also developed a taxonomy distinguishing 16 mixed reality systems based on three factors: immersive versus semi-immersive displays, the way in which real and virtual information is mixed, and the main input device. 64% of the included review papers (N = 121) explicitly defined VR and 33% of them described different subtypes of VR, with immersive and non-immersive VR as the most common distinction. The most frequently discussed input devices were motion-capture cameras and handheld devices, while regular 2D monitors were the most frequently mentioned output devices. Our analysis revealed that reviews on post-stroke VR rehabilitation did not or only broadly defined “VR” and did not focus on a specific system. Since the efficacy and feasibility of rehabilitation may depend on the specific system, we propose a new data-driven taxonomy to distinguish different systems, which is expected to facilitate communication amongst researchers and clinicians working with virtual reality.     

What Do Religion Scholars Really Want? Scholarly Values in the Scientific Study of Religion

This article presents selected findings of the Values in Scholarship on Religion (VISOR) project. Conversations about the values and norms that ought to shape the academic study of religion are quite common but typically based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience. The goal of VISOR was to gather data that could ground debates about the values that scholars of religion prize. Here, we present statistical analyses of VISOR data that shed light on the values guiding members of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) and the ways in which these compare with the values of members of other academic associations and other disciplines that study religion. Compared to current members of SSSR, members of the broader field of scholars whose approach to religion is sociological are more likely to be younger, female, liberal, and nonreligious. This sea change will put pressure on the SSSR to adapt.     

Horses feel emotions when they watch positive and negative horse–human interactions in a video and transpose what they saw to real life

Animal Cognition - Animals can indirectly gather meaningful information about other individuals by eavesdropping on their third-party interactions. In particular, eavesdropping can be used to...