Observed Variability and Values Matter: Toward a Better Understanding of Information Search and Decisions from Experience

The search for different options before making a consequential choice is a central aspect of many important decisions, such as mate selection or purchasing a house. Despite its importance, surprisingly little is known about how search and choice are affected by the observed and objective properties of the decision problem. Here, we analyze the effects of two key properties in a binary choice task: the options' observed and objective values, and the variability of payoffs. First, in a large public data set of a binary choice task, we investigate how the observed value and variability relate to decision‐makers' efforts and preferences during search. Furthermore, we test how these properties influence the chance of correctly identifying the objectively maximizing option, and how they affect choice. Second, we designed a novel experiment to systematically analyze the role of the objective difference between the options. We find that a larger objective difference between options increases the chance for correctly identifying the maximizing option, but it does not affect behavior during search and choice. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Metaphorical sense-making: visual-narrative language portraits of South African students

This article reflects on a creative visual-narrative approach to understanding South African students’ lived experiences of languages. Data were collected in two interviews: the first entailing a biographical history and the drawing of a linguistic portrait on a simple body outline and the second a narrative interview utilising the portrait generated in the first as a basis for talking about language and identity. Framing the research process in this creative visual mode shifts the focus of narrative talk, simultaneously grounding it in affective, embodied experience, and enabling a reflexive position from which to analyse the taken-for-granted role of language in the minutiae of everyday life. The theoretical lenses of identity and subjectivity are invigorated through these metaphorical representations, and new creative possibilities are released for analysing the role of language in mediating shifting power dynamics in post-apartheid and postcolonial South African life.     

小学生在交通情境中的视觉搜索：发展的观点

为探讨小学生在交通情境中的视觉搜索发展特点,研究以一、二、四和六年级小学生,以及成人为被试,采用“找不同”任务和过马路决策眼动任务进行实验。结果发现,一、二年级小学生“找不同”的效率低于成人;一年级小学生冒险及错失过马路比例均较高;小学生的眼跳特征与成人相似,但对兴趣区的关注低于成人;女生错失过马路比例高于男生,视觉搜索水平及搜索策略的性别差异不显著。研究表明,小学生的视觉搜索能力随年龄逐渐提高,但搜索的有效性低于成人,性别分化不明显。     

生命意义的缺失与追寻

生命意义(Meaning in life)指人们对自己生命中的目的、目标的认识和追求,主要包括意义存在(Presence of Meaning)和意义追求(Search for Meaning)两个维度。生命意义缺失(Absence of Meaning)指个体缺乏生活的目标、对自身存在价值和意义感的感知。意义缺失的体验一方面会带来焦虑、抑郁等消极影响,另一方面将激发起个体强烈的重构意义的动机,引导人们进行意义追求。未来研究应增加对生命意义的获取和提升、意义缺失的原因、含义与结构、意义追求的动机和效果的研究。     

Attentional biases to threat in social anxiety disorder: time to focus our attention elsewhere?

Background: Cognitive models propose that attentional biases to threat contribute to the maintenance of social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, the specific characteristics of such biases are still object to debate.

Objectives: The current study aimed to disentangle effects of trait and state social anxiety on attention allocation towards social stimuli.

Methods: Participants with SAD (n?=?67) and healthy controls (n?=?62) completed three visual search tasks while their eye movements were recorded. Half of the participants in each group were randomly assigned to a state anxiety induction.

Results: Contrary to our predictions, neither trait nor state social anxiety was associated with a facilitated attention to or a delayed disengagement from threat. However, participants with SAD did show reduced fixation durations for threatening stimuli, indicating an avoidance of threat. Induction of state anxiety led to an increased distractibility by threat.

Conclusions: We suggest that attention allocation in SAD is characterized by an avoidant rather than a vigilant attentional bias. Accordingly, our results contradict previous results that associate SAD with facilitated attention to threat and existing approaches to modify attentional biases, that aim to decrease attention towards threatening stimuli.     

Reappraisal inventiveness: impact of appropriate brain activation during efforts to generate alternative appraisals on the perception of chronic stress in women*

Background and objectives: Previous research indicated that more left-lateralized prefrontal activation during cognitive reappraisal efforts was linked to a greater capacity for generating reappraisals, which is a prerequisite for the effective implementation of cognitive reappraisal in everyday life. The present study examined whether the supposedly appropriate brain activation is relevant in terms of more distal outcomes, i.e., chronic stress perception.

Design and methods: Prefrontal EEG alpha asymmetry was recorded while female participants were generating reappraisals for stressful events and was correlated with their self-reported chronic stress levels in everyday life (n?=?80).

Results: Women showing less left-lateralized brain activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during cognitive reappraisal efforts reported experiencing more stress in their daily lives. This effect was independent of self-efficacy beliefs in managing negative emotions.

Conclusion: These findings underline the practical relevance of individual differences in appropriate brain activation during emotion regulation efforts and the assumedly related basic capacity for the generation of cognitive reappraisals to the feeling of being stressed. Implications include the selection of interventions for the improvement of coping with stress in women in whom the capability for appropriate brain activation during reappraisal efforts may be impaired, e.g., due to depression or old age.     

Repetition priming reveals hemispheric differences in compound word processing

The left (LH) and right (RH) hemispheres are thought to implement different mechanisms for visual word recognition; the LH’s parallel encoding strategy is more efficient than the RH’s serial, letter-by-letter analysis. Here we examine differences in hemispheric language processing strategy by investigating repetition priming of compound words (e.g. buttercup) and their constituents (e.g. butter, cup). Eighty-eight right-handed participants (29 M, 59 F) completed a lexical decision experiment in which centrally-presented compounds primed related (whole compound, first constituent, second constituent) and unrelated targets presented laterally to the left or right visual field; participants made button-press word/nonword decisions. Consistent with the LH parallel/RH serial distinction, repetition priming prompted an RH advantage for first constituents, whereas the LH performed equally efficiently in response to both first and second constituents. These data thus highlight differences in the hemispheres’ language processing strategies, offering new evidence supporting a relative parallel/serial distinction in LH/RH visual word recognition.     

The relationship between visual search and categorization of own- and other-age faces

Young adult participants are faster to detect young adult faces in crowds of infant and child faces than vice versa. These findings have been interpreted as evidence for more efficient attentional capture by own-age than other-age faces, but could alternatively reflect faster rejection of other-age than own-age distractors, consistent with the previously reported other-age categorization advantage: faster categorization of other-age than own-age faces. Participants searched for own-age faces in other-age backgrounds or vice versa. Extending the finding to different other-age groups, young adult participants were faster to detect young adult faces in both early adolescent (Experiment 1) and older adult backgrounds (Experiment 2). To investigate whether the own-age detection advantage could be explained by faster categorization and rejection of other-age background faces, participants in experiments 3 and 4 also completed an age categorization task. Relatively faster categorization of other-age faces was related to relatively faster search through other-age backgrounds on target absent trials but not target present trials. These results confirm that other-age faces are more quickly categorized and searched through and that categorization and search processes are related; however, this correlational approach could not confirm or reject the contribution of background face processing to the own-age detection advantage.