Chlordiazepoxide effects on ethanol self-administration: dependence on concurrent conditions.

Experiments examined the effects of acute doses of chlordiazepoxide upon ethanol self-administration in the rat. A concurrent-schedule procedure was used that employed choice between ethanol (5%) and a second fluid (either water or a 1% sucrose solution). When ethanol and water were the available fluids, chlordiazepoxide at doses of 15 and 20 mg/kg reduced ethanol-reinforced responding and intake, with a greater reduction occurring at the 20 mg/kg dose. However, when ethanol and sucrose were concurrently available, in many rats only the 20 mg/kg dose of chlordiazepoxide reduced ethanol-reinforced responding. The differences in dose response function occurred in most animals without large changes in the baseline ethanol-reinforced responding across the two concurrent conditions. Thus the dose-effect curve relating chlordiazepoxide and ethanol self-administration can be altered, dependent upon the nature of the concurrently available reinforcers.     

Humour as emotion regulation: the differential consequences of negative versus positive humour

Humour is often seen as an adaptive coping strategy; however, the empirical literature is inconclusive. One possible explanation is that different types of humour have different adaptive consequences. In the present research, we predicted that positive (good-natured) humour would be more effective at regulating negative emotions than negative (mean-spirited) humour. In Study 1, participants were shown negative pictures two times. First, they simply viewed the pictures and rated their levels of positive and negative emotions. Second, they were instructed to: (a) view; (b) use positive humour; or (c) use negative humour, and then rate their reactions. Compared to negative humour, positive humour was more successful at down-regulating negative and up-regulating positive emotion. In Study 2, we replicated these findings and showed that these effects cannot be explained by differences in difficulty between the two humour conditions, participants' expectations, or social desirability. Taken together, these findings suggest that positive (but not negative) humour may be an effective form of emotion regulation.     

There is more to mind reading than having theory of mind concepts: new directions in theory of mind research

For more than 30 years, researchers have focused on the important transition that children undergo between the ages of 3 and 5, when they start to solve mind‐reading problems that require reasoning about complex mental states, such as beliefs. The main question for debate has been whether, during that transition, children acquire new concepts about how the mind works (i.e. a more sophisticated ‘theory of mind’) or whether their more general cognitive abilities improve and help them deal with the general task demands. Recently, researchers have started to explore mind‐reading abilities in individuals outside of the classic 3–5 age span, showing early theory of mind abilities in ever‐younger children and infants, but also far from flawless performance in adults. In this article, we show how the results of these two new lines of research converge on the idea that there is more to mind reading than having theory of mind concepts: there are various processes required to efficiently implement theory of mind concepts in our reasoning, and there may be, in fact, multiple mind‐reading routes available. We then highlight the emergent new directions for future research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

State-dependent changes of prefrontal–posterior coupling in the context of affective processing: Susceptibility to humor

The aim of the present study was to examine whether interindividual differences in the coupling or decoupling of prefrontal and posterior cortices during the exposure to social–emotional information may predict an individual’s positive emotional responsiveness. Susceptibility to humor was assessed in a behavioral paradigm several weeks after the EEG recordings. State-dependent changes of prefrontal–posterior EEG beta coherence were recorded during stimulation with other people’s auditory expressions of cheerfulness and sadness. Greater decreases of coherence during the stimulation with positive affect expressions prospectively predicted greater positive emotional responsiveness, indicated by higher amusement ratings in response to cartoons and higher scores in a questionnaire measure of exhilarability. Greater increases of coherence during the stimulation with negative affect expressions did not predict perceived funniness but were related to shorter response latencies to the amusement ratings. The results further support the notion that a more loose prefrontal–posterior coupling may be related to loosening of control of the prefrontal cortex over incoming emotional information and, thus, to a propensity to deeper emotional involvement and a greater impact of perceptual input, whereas increased prefrontal–posterior coupling may be related to strong control and the propensity to protect oneself from becoming emotionally affected.     

The cost of thinking about false beliefs: evidence from adults' performance on a non-inferential theory of mind task

Much of what we know about other people's beliefs comes non-inferentially from what people tell us. Developmental research suggests that 3-year-olds have difficulty processing such information: they suffer interference from their own knowledge of reality when told about someone's false belief (e.g., [Wellman, H. M., & Bartsch, K. (1988). Young children's reasoning about beliefs. Cognition, 30, 239-277.]). The current studies examined for the first time whether similar interference occurs in adult participants. In two experiments participants read sentences describing the real colour of an object and a man's false belief about the colour of the object, then judged the accuracy of a picture probe depicting either reality or the man's belief. Processing costs for picture probes depicting reality were consistently greater in this false belief condition than in a matched control condition in which the sentences described the real colour of one object and a man's unrelated belief about the colour of another object. A similar pattern was observed for picture probes depicting the man's belief in most cases. Processing costs were not sensitive to the time available for encoding the information presented in the sentences: costs were observed when participants read the sentences at their own pace (Experiment 1) or at a faster or a slower pace (Experiment 2). This suggests that adults' difficulty was not with encoding information about reality and a conflicting false belief, but with holding this information in mind and using it to inform a subsequent judgement.     

Rape myth acceptance and judgments of vulnerability to sexual assault: an Internet experiment

Processing strategies in risk assessment were studied in an Internet experiment. Women (N = 399) who were either low or high in rape myth acceptance (RMA) were asked to recall either two or six behaviors that either increase or decrease the risk of being sexually assaulted. Later they judged their personal vulnerability to sexual assault under either no time pressure (no response deadline) or time pressure (response deadline of 5 s). Without time pressure, the results were opposite to previous research: Women low in RMA relied on ease of recall and reported higher vulnerability after recalling few rather than many risk increasing behaviors, or many rather than few risk-decreasing behaviors; women high in RMA relied on the amount of information recalled, which resulted in an opposite pattern of vulnerability judgments. No influences of ease of recall or amount recalled on vulnerability judgments were detected under time pressure.     

Eliciting positive,negative and mixed emotional states: A film library for affective scientists

We describe the creation of a film library designed for researchers interested in positive (amusing), negative (repulsive), mixed (amusing and repulsive) and neutral emotional states. Three hundred 20- to 33-second film clips videotaped by amateurs were selected from video-hosting websites and screened in laboratory studies by 75 female participants on self-reported amusement and repulsion (Experiments 1 and 2). On the basis of pre-defined cut-off values, 51 positive, 39 negative, 59 mixed and 50 neutral film clips were selected. These film clips were then presented to 411 male and female participants in a large online study to identify film clips that reliably induced the target emotions (Experiment 3). Depending on the goal of the study, researchers may choose positive, negative, mixed or neutral emotional film clips on the basis of Experiments 1 and 2 or Experiment 3 ratings.     

How emotional auditory stimuli modulate time perception

Emotional and neutral sounds rated for valence and arousal were used to investigate the influence of emotions on timing in reproduction and verbal estimation tasks with durations from 2 s to 6 s. Results revealed an effect of emotion on temporal judgment, with emotional stimuli judged to be longer than neutral ones for a similar arousal level. Within scalar expectancy theory (J. Gibbon, R. Church, & W. Meck, 1984), this suggests that emotion-induced activation generates an increase in pacemaker rate, leading to a longer perceived duration. A further exploration of self-assessed emotional dimensions showed an effect of valence and arousal. Negative sounds were judged to be longer than positive ones, indicating that negative stimuli generate a greater increase of activation. High-arousing stimuli were perceived to be shorter than low-arousing ones. Consistent with attentional models of timing, this seems to reflect a decrease of attention devoted to time, leading to a shorter perceived duration. These effects, robust across the 2 tasks, are limited to short intervals and overall suggest that both activation and attentional processes modulate the timing of emotional events.     

Reading other people's mind: Insights from neuropsychology

When trying to make sense of other people's behaviour we usually invoke their mental states, such as their intentions, beliefs or emotions. This mind reading ability has been traditionally investigated in developmental psychology and comparative psychology but is now receiving increasing attention from the cognitive neurosciences. I will show the important role that neuropsychology plays in unravelling the cognitive and neural basis of our mind reading abilities. I will illustrate this by showing how cases of adults with acquired brain lesions can help us tease apart the different mechanisms that underlie mind reading abilities and can help us understand the nature of these mechanisms, especially their relation to language and executive function.