THE SIMILARITY OF BRAIN ACTIVITY ASSOCIATED WITH TRUE AND FALSE RECOGNITION MEMORY DEPENDS ON TEST FORMAT

Abstract— Event-related potentials (ERPs) were compared for correct recognitions of previously presented words and false recognitions of associatively related, nonpresented words (lures). When the test items were presented blocked by test type (old, new, lure), waveforms for old and lure items were different, especially at frontal and left parietal electrode sites, consistent with previous positron emission tomography (PET) data (Schacter, Reiman, et. al., 1996). When the test format randomly intermixed the types of items, waveforms for old and lure items were more similar. We suggest that test format affects the type of processing subjects engage in, consistent with expectations from the source-monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). These results also indicate that brain activity as assessed by neuroimaging designs requiring blocked presentation of trials (e g, PET) do not necessarily reflect the brain activity that occurs in cognitive-behavioral paradigms, in which types of test trials are typically intermixed.     

Distinctive Preferences Toward Risk in the Substantive Domain of Sociality*

As with standard models of rationality, theorists generally treat prospect theory's demonstration of risk aversion in gains but risk tolerance in losses as domain‐general. Yet evolutionary psychology suggests that natural selection has designed a domain specific cognitive architecture—with systems specialized for some substantive domains but not others. Here we address risky choices through that lens asking whether humans' risk responses dispose them to enter social relationships even when doing so is counter to normative rationality and regardless of whether the “enter” versus “not enter” choice is framed as between gains and losses. Laboratory findings in five sites across three countries provide a positive answer to both possibilities. Participants could enter or not enter inherently risky social relationships. They were more willing to enter such relationships than rational choice models would predict and were equally so willing regardless of whether equivalent alternatives were framed as gains and as losses. With the “social context” extracted in otherwise identical games, participants' risk responses were consistent with prospect theory. The present findings suggest the possibility of adaptations designed to facilitate sociality—despite its risks and how those risks are framed.     

Normative Reasons Contextualism

This article argues for the view that statements about normative reasons are context‐sensitive. Specifically, they are sensitive to a contextual parameter specifying a relevant person's or group's body of information. The argument for normative reasons contextualism starts from the context‐sensitivity of the normative “ought” and the further premise that reasons must be aligned with oughts. It is incoherent, I maintain, to suppose that someone normatively ought to φ but has most reason not to φ. So given that oughts depend on context, a parallel view about normative reasons is needed. It is shown that the resulting view solves notorious puzzles involving apparently conflicting but equally plausible claims about reasons. These puzzles arise especially in cases where agents have limited information or false beliefs. In these cases, we feel torn between reasons claims that take into account the limitations of the agent's perspective and apparently conflicting claims that are made from a more objective point of view. The contextualist account developed here accommodates both objectivist and subjectivist intuitions. It shows that all of the claims in question can be true, provided that they are relativized to different values of the relevant information parameter. Also, contextualism yields a fruitful approach to the debate about having reasons and the alleged failure of the so‐called “factoring account”.     

Decision making in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART): Anterior cingulate cortex signals loss aversion but not the infrequency of risky choices

The inferior frontal gyrus/anterior insula (IFG/AI) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are key regions involved in risk appraisal during decision making, but accounts of how these regions contribute to decision making under risk remain contested. To help clarify the roles of these and other related regions, we used a modified version of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (Lejuez et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 75-84, 2002) to distinguish between decision-making and feedback-related processes when participants decided to pursue a gain as the probability of loss increased parametrically. Specifically, we set out to test whether the ACC and IFG/AI regions correspond to loss aversion at the time of decision making in a way that is not confounded with either reward-seeking or infrequency effects. When participants chose to discontinue inflating the balloon (win option), we observed greater ACC and mainly bilateral IFG/AI activity at the time of decision as the probability of explosion increased, consistent with increased loss aversion but inconsistent with an infrequency effect. In contrast, we found robust vmPFC activity when participants chose to continue inflating the balloon (risky option), consistent with reward seeking. However, in the cingulate and in mainly bilateral IFG regions, blood-oxygenation-level-dependent activation decreased when participants chose to inflate the balloon as the probability of explosion increased, findings that are consistent with a reduced loss aversion signal. Our results highlight the existence of distinct reward-seeking and loss-averse signals during decision making, as well as the importance of distinguishing between decision and feedback signals.     

How to Release Oneself from an Obligation: Good News for Duties to Oneself

In some cases, you may release someone from some obligation they have to you. For instance, you may release them from a promise they made to you, or an obligation to repay money they have borrowed from you. But most take it as clear that, if you have an obligation to someone else, you cannot in any way release yourself from that obligation. I shall argue the contrary. The issue is important because one standard problem for the idea of having duties to oneself relies on the impossibility of self-release. The argument (the ‘Release Argument’) is that a duty to oneself would be a duty from which one could release oneself, but that this is an absurdity, and so there can be no duties to oneself. This argument is to be rejected because a duty from which one can release oneself is perfectly possible, and such release occurs quite properly from time to time.     

Investigating the effectiveness of brief cognitive reappraisal training to reduce fear in adolescents

As adolescent anxiety is common and costly, identifying effective strategies to reduce symptoms is a priority. This study tested whether adolescents could learn to use cognitive reappraisal strategies to attenuate fear during extinction learning. Fifty-seven participants (12–15 years) viewed images of two neutral faces, one which was paired with a fearful expression and shrieking scream (conditioned threat stimulus) and the other that was never paired with the aversive outcome (conditioned safety stimulus) during fear acquisition. Before extinction, participants either received cognitive appraisal training, which explored alternative, benign meanings associated with the scream or a control activity. Self-reported fear ratings in the cognitive reappraisal group were significantly lower to both the conditioned threat and safety stimuli after extinction than the control group. These findings did not characterise fear-potentiated startle data. Potential reasons for the lack of consistency between measures are considered.     

The training and transfer of real-world perceptual expertise

A hallmark of perceptual expertise is that experts classify objects at a more specific, subordinate level of abstraction than novices. To what extent does subordinate-level learning contribute to the transfer of perceptual expertise to novel exemplars and novel categories? In this study, participants learned to classify 10 varieties of wading birds and 10 varieties of owls at either the subordinate, species (e.g., "great blue crown heron,"eastern screech owl") or the family ("wading bird,"owl") level of abstraction. During training, the amount of visual exposure was equated such that participants received an equal number of learning trials for wading birds and owls. Pre- and posttraining performance was measured in a same/different discrimination task in which participants judged whether pairs of bird stimuli belonged to the same or different species. Participants trained in species-level discrimination demonstrated greater transfer to novel exemplars and novel species categories than participants trained in family-level discrimination. These findings suggest that perceptual categorization, not perceptual exposure per se, is important for the development and generalization of visual expertise.     

The structure of goal contents across 15 cultures

The authors investigated the structure of goal contents in a group of 1,854 undergraduates from 15 cultures around the world. Results suggested that the 11 types of goals the authors assessed were consistently organized in a circumplex fashion across the 15 cultures. The circumplex was well described by positioning 2 primary dimensions underlying the goals: intrinsic (e.g., self-acceptance, affiliation) versus extrinsic (e.g., financial success, image) and self-transcendent (e.g., spirituality) versus physical (e.g., hedonism). The circumplex model of goal contents was also quite similar in both wealthier and poorer nations, although there were some slight cross-cultural variations. The relevance of these results for several theories of motivation and personality are discussed.