Risky behavior in young adult pedestrians: Personality determinants,correlates with risk perception,and gender differences

Based on the risk homeostasis theory, the aim of this study was to assess acceptable risk, measured by personality factors, and risk perception, measured by physiological arousal, as predictors of risky behavior in young adult pedestrians, as well as to assess for gender differences. Eighty-two young adults, aged 18–30, completed self-report measures about risky pedestrian behaviors and these personality traits: impulsiveness, conscientiousness and openness to experience. Sixty-four of these participants then took part in an experimental task designed to assess their perception of the level of risk in situations involving different interactions between cars and pedestrians. Risk perception was assessed by these physiological responses: heart rate, skin conductance level, and skin conductance response. Results showed that risky behavior had significant correlations with impulsiveness, conscientiousness, and skin conductance level. Gender differences also emerged in risky behavior, impulsiveness, conscientiousness, and skin conductance level. Finally, a structural equation model showed that impulsiveness, conscientiousness and the difference in skin conductance level between risky and neutral situations predicted risky pedestrian behaviors, and explained 23.6% of the its variance, after controlling the effect of gender. Implications for evaluation, prevention, and intervention for risky pedestrian behaviors are discussed.     

The effects of verbal labelling on psychophysiology: Objective but not subjective emotion labelling reduces skin-conductance responses to briefly presented pictures

Verbally labelling emotional stimuli has been shown to reliably decrease emotional responding. The present study compared the use of identical emotional labels during two types of verbal labelling: subjective labelling of one's own emotional response and objective labelling of the stimulus. We recorded skin conductance responses (SCRs) to emotional pictures presented at four brief durations preceding a backward mask. We observed that as the exposure duration increased, SCRs decreased during objective labelling of the stimuli. However, when participants subjectively labelled their own emotional state, SCRs increased as exposure duration increased. In addition, subjective labelling produced larger SCRs than objective labelling at a shorter exposure duration when the presented stimuli were biologically prepared. These results indicate that only objective labelling results in decreased emotional responding, and describe a novel interaction between bottom-up stimulus characteristics and top-down cognitive effects on physiological responses.     

Probabilistic Inferences Under Emotional Stress: How Arousal Affects Decision Processes

Many models of decision making neglect emotional states that could affect individuals' cognitive processes. The present work explores the effect of emotional stress on people's cognitive processes when making probabilistic inferences. Two contrasting hypotheses are tested against one another: the uncertainty‐reduction and attention‐narrowing hypotheses of how emotional stress affects decision making. In the experimental study, emotional stress was induced through the use of highly aversive pictures immediately before each decision. Emotional state was assessed by both subjective (state anxiety, arousal, and pleasantness ratings) and objective (skin conductance) measures. The results show that emotional stress impacts decision making; in particular, emotionally aroused participants seem to have focused on the most important information and selected simpler decision strategies relative to participants in a control condition. The results are in line with the attention‐narrowing hypothesis and suggest that emotional stress can impact decision making through limited predecisional information search and the selection of simpler decision strategies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Scrutinizing the Emotional Nature of Intuitive Coherence Judgments

Dual‐system models propose that cognitive processing can occur either intuitively or deliberately. Unlike deliberate decision strategies, intuitive ones are assumed to have an emotional component attached to the decision process. We tested if intuitive decisions are indeed accompanied by an emotional response while deliberate decisions are not. Specifically, we conducted a psychophysiological study in which participants were instructed to decide either intuitively or deliberately if three simultaneously presented words were semantically coherent or incoherent (triad task). The degree of emotionality of these two decision strategies (intuitive vs. deliberate) was compared using changes in electrodermal activity (EDA) and the reaction time (RT) effect of an affective priming paradigm as primary measurements. Based on a valence‐arousal model, our results revealed that intuitive and deliberate judgments do not differ as to their emotional valence but that they do differ in emotional arousal. Most notably, sympathetic activation during intuitive judgments was significantly lower compared to sympathetic activation during deliberate judgments. Our results reflect that a relaxed state of mind—manifested in low sympathetic activity—could underlie the holistic processing that is assumed to facilitate the proliferation of semantic associations during coherence judgments. This suggests that coherence judgments made under an (instructed) intuitive decision mode have a specific psychophysiological signature and that arousal is the differentiating component between intuitive and deliberate decision strategies. © 2016 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

The role of autonomic arousal in feelings of familiarity

Subjective feelings of familiarity associated with a stimulus tend to be strongest when specific information about the previous encounter with the stimulus is difficult to retrieve (e.g., the butcher-on-the-bus phenomenon; [Mandler, G. (1980). Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252-271.]). When a stimulus has been encountered previously and the circumstances of the encounter cannot be recollected, additional cognitive resources may be directed toward recollection processes; this resource allocation is accompanied by autonomic arousal [Dawson, M. E., Filion, D. L., & Schell, A. M. (1989). Is elicitation of the autonomic orienting response associated with allocation of processing resources?. Psychophysiology, 26, 560-572]. One easily measurable index of autonomic arousal is the skin conductance response (SCR). In the present study, participants studied lists of words and then gave recognition ratings to briefly displayed and masked studied and nonstudied test words while their SCRs were monitored. Results revealed a relationship between recognition ratings and the temporal characteristics of the SCR, supporting the idea that feelings of familiarity are indeed "feelings" in that they stem from autonomic arousal associated with cognitive resource allocation.     

Fear conditioning in posttraumatic stress disorder: evidence for delayed extinction of autonomic, experiential, and behavioural responses

Aversive conditioning has been proposed as an important factor involved in the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, it is not yet fully understood exactly which learning mechanisms are characteristic for PTSD. PTSD patients (n=36), and healthy individuals with and without trauma exposure (TE group, n=21; nTE group, n=34), underwent a differential fear conditioning experiment consisting of habituation, acquisition, and extinction phases. An electrical stimulus served as the unconditioned stimulus (US), and two neutral pictures as conditioned stimuli (CS+, paired; CS-, unpaired). Conditioned responses were quantified by skin conductance responses (SCRs), subjective ratings of CS valence and US-expectancy, and a behavioural test. In contrast to the nTE group, PTSD patients showed delayed extinction of SCRs to the CS+. Online ratings of valence and US-expectancy as well as the behavioural test confirmed this pattern. These findings point to a deficit in extinction learning and highlight the role of affective valence appraisals and cognitive biases in PTSD. In addition, there was some evidence that a subgroup of PTSD patients had difficulties in learning the CS-US contingency, thereby providing preliminary evidence of reduced discrimination learning.     

奖惩线索条件下内外倾个体的自主唤醒和行为反应

将停止信号任务和金钱激励延迟任务相结合,使用16导生理记录仪记录被试的生理指标,探讨内外倾者在动机凸显情景下的生理唤醒特点以及反应调节能力。结果发现,隐含奖励和惩罚线索呈现之后,内外倾者的心率增快,内倾者的皮肤电活动显著增强。在停止信号任务中的优势反应阶段,内外倾者表现为对奖励凸显线索刺激的反应时缩短;而在非优势反应阶段,和外倾者相比较,内倾者的抑制反应错误率增高。表明内外倾者在奖惩线索条件下表现出不同的生理唤醒特点和行为反应。     

Mindfulness Meditation for Symptom Reduction in Fibromyalgia: Psychophysiological Correlates

Objectives Fibromyalgia, a chronic pain syndrome, is often accompanied by psychological distress and increased basal sympathetic tone. In a previous report it was shown that mindfulness-based stress-reduction (MBSR) reduced depressive symptoms in patients with fibromyalgia with gains maintained at two months follow-up (Sephton et al., Arthr Rheum 57:77–85, 2007). This second study explores the effects of MBSR on basal sympathetic (SNS) activation among women with fibromyalgia. Methods Participants (n = 24) responded to a television news appearance, newspaper, and radio advertisements. Effects on anxiety, depressive symptoms, and SNS activation measures were tested before and after MBSR using a within-subjects design. Results The MBSR treatment significantly reduced basal electrodermal (skin conductance level; SCL) activity (t = 3.298, p = .005) and SCL activity during meditation (t = 4.389, p = .001), consistent with reduced SNS activation. Conclusions In this small sample, basal SNS activity was reduced following MBSR treatment. Future studies should assess how MBSR may help reduce negative psychological symptoms and attenuate SNS activation in fibromyalgia. Further clarification of psychological and physiological responses associated with fibromyalgia may lead to more beneficial treatment.     

奖惩对注意缺陷多动障碍儿童情感决策的影响

采用简化版儿童赌博任务,其中操纵了奖励和惩罚的强度,探察两种亚型（注意缺陷型和混合型）ADHD儿童的情感决策能力,同时采集儿童在任务中的皮肤电活动以探析ADHD儿童在情感决策中的生理机制。结果发现,在不同的奖惩强度下,ADHD儿童情感决策模式不同,在即刻奖励条件下,ADHD儿童情感决策的能力明显弱于正常对照组儿童,倾向于不利选择,所产生的预测性皮电振幅也明显低于正常对照组;在即刻惩罚条件下,ADHD儿童的情感决策能力未见异常。两种亚型ADHD儿童的表现模式相似。上述结果证明,ADHD儿童仅存在对奖励的异常敏感性,并确实影响了其决策能力,而其回避惩罚的能力正常。两种亚型ADHD儿童存在的问题相似     

Cognitive and physiological markers of emotional awareness in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

The ability to understand emotion in others is one of the most important factors involved in regulating social interactions in primates. Such emotional awareness functions to coordinate activity among group members, enable the formation of long-lasting individual relationships, and facilitate the pursuit of shared interests. Despite these important evolutionary implications, comparative studies of emotional processing in humans and great apes are practically nonexistent, constituting a major gap in our understanding of the extent to which emotional awareness has played an important role in shaping human behavior and societies. This paper presents the results of two experiments that examine chimpanzees' responses to emotional stimuli. First, changes in peripheral skin temperature were measured while subjects viewed three categories of emotionally negative video scenes; conspecifics being injected with needles (INJ), darts and needles alone (DART), and conspecific directing agonism towards the veterinarians (CHASE). Second, chimpanzees were required to use facial expressions to categorize emotional video scenes, i.e., favorite food and objects and veterinarian procedures, according to their positive and negative valence. With no prior training, subjects spontaneously matched the emotional videos to conspecific facial expressions according to their shared emotional meaning, indicating that chimpanzee facial expressions are processed emotionally, as are human expressions. Decreases in peripheral skin temperature, indicative of negative sympathetic arousal, were significantly lower when subjects viewed the INJ and DART videos, compared to the CHASE videos, indicating greater negative arousal when viewing conspecifics being injected with needles, and needles themselves, than when viewing conspecifics engaged in general agonism. Accepted after revision: 8 April 2001 ❚ Electronic Publication