Psychological Consequences of Pregnancy Loss and Infant Death in a Sample of Bereaved Parents

This study aimed to explore a broad range of psychological reactions to trauma in a sample of bereaved parents in order to assess whether the traumatic framework is adequate for describing the entire range of emotional reactions to infant death. A sample of bereaved parents (N = 455) who lost their child through perinatal or postnatal loss were compared to a control group of parents (N = 110) who gave birth to a healthy child. Multivariate regression analysis clearly demonstrated that bereaved parents scored significantly higher on the Depression, Anxiety, Dissociation, Sleep Disturbances, Somatization, Interpersonal Sensitivity, and Aggression subscales of the Trauma Symptom Checklist. Consistent with previous studies, the results showed that for up to 5 years postloss bereaved parents expressed elevated levels of trauma-specific and psychological outcomes, in particular interpersonal sensitivity and aggression.     

Prenatal auditory experience and its sequelae

Towards the end of the second trimester of gestation, a human fetus is able to register environmental sounds. This in utero auditory experience is characterized by comprising strongly low-pass-filtered versions of sounds from the external world. Here, we present computational tests of the hypothesis that this early exposure to severely degraded auditory inputs serves an adaptive purpose—it may induce the neural development of extended temporal integration. Such integration can facilitate the detection of information carried by low-frequency variations in the auditory signal, including emotional or other prosodic content. To test this prediction, we characterized the impact of several training regimens, biomimetic and otherwise, on a computational model system trained and tested on the task of emotion recognition. We find that training with an auditory trajectory recapitulating that of a neurotypical infant in the pre-to-postnatal period results in temporally extended receptive field structures and yields the best subsequent accuracy and generalization performance on the task of emotion recognition. This strongly suggests that the progression from low-pass-filtered to full-frequency inputs is likely to be an adaptive feature of our development, conferring significant benefits to later auditory processing abilities relying on temporally extended analyses. Additionally, this finding can help explain some of the auditory impairments associated with preterm births, suggests guidelines for the design of auditory environments in neonatal care units, and points to enhanced training procedures for computational models.     

Are our samples representative? Understanding whether temperament influences infant dropout rates at 3 and 7 months

In this study, we examined whether infant temperament predicted study dropout at 3.5 and 7 months and whether dropout was stable across time. Dropout was measured across four experimental tasks (free-play, ERP, still-face, and eye tracking). Temperament was not related to dropout at either timepoint. Dropout was not stable across time, nor was it stable across tasks. These findings suggest that individual differences in temperament are not systematically related to study completion across experimental tasks with varied requirements. These findings additionally suggest that dropout is not consistent across tasks, which may support the utility of multi-study data collection methods.     

睡眠不足对人际交互的影响及其认知神经机制

睡眠不足会对人的认知、情感和人际交互产生诸多影响。这种影响在社会情绪层面表现为个体情绪共情和认知共情的减少,易激惹性与愤怒情绪的增加;在社会行为层面则表现为亲社会行为的减少和攻击行为的增加。在睡眠不足状态下,情绪系统和认知系统功能连接的减弱可能是这些变化的潜在机制。未来应结合生态效度较高的睡眠操作手段,系统考察睡眠不足如何导致各种高级社会情绪的改变,以及这些社会情绪的变化如何导致社会行为的变化。     

Emotional responses to behavioral economic incentives for health behavior change

Many people aim to change their lifestyle, but have trouble acting on their intentions. Behavioral economic incentives and related emotions can support commitment to personal health goals, but the related emotions remain unexplored. In a regret lottery, winners who do not attain their health goals do not get their prize but receive feedback on what their forgone earnings would have been. This counterfactual feedback should provoke anticipated regret and increase commitment to health goals. We explored which emotions were actually expected upon missing out on a prize due to unsuccessful weight loss and which incentive-characteristics influence their likelihood and intensity. Participants reported their expected emotional response after missing out on a prize in one of 12 randomly presented incentive-scenarios, which varied in incentive type, incentive size and deadline distance. Participants primarily reported feeling disappointment, followed by regret. Regret was expected most when losing a lottery prize (vs. a fixed incentive) and intensified with prize size. Multiple features of the participant and the lottery incentive increase the occurrence and intensity of regret. As such, our findings can be helpful in designing behavioral economic incentives that leverage emotions to support health behavior change.     

ATTACKS ON LINKING OR A DRIVE TO COMMUNICATE? TOLERATING THE PARADOX

The notion of attacks on linking, as described by Bion, may depict a patient's drive to communicate the internalization of a destructive relationship between a primary object and an infant. This may be enacted between patient and analyst in the here and now of the analysis, whereby fragmentation and numbing of thinking may point to a primitive catastrophe relived in the psychoanalytic setting. The patient's material may seem incoherent, but incoherence might be the communication the patient is unconsciously trying to convey. Thus, the notion of attacks on linking depicts a paradoxical, caesural experience in which the attack on linking is itself a link.     

The Swedish Hayling task,and its relation to working memory,verbal ability,and speech‐recognition‐in‐noise

Cognitive functions and speech‐recognition‐in‐noise were evaluated with a cognitive test battery, assessing response inhibition using the Hayling task, working memory capacity (WMC) and verbal information processing, and an auditory test of speech recognition. The cognitive tests were performed in silence whereas the speech recognition task was presented in noise. Thirty young normally‐hearing individuals participated in the study. The aim of the study was to investigate one executive function, response inhibition, and whether it is related to individual working memory capacity (WMC), and how speech‐recognition‐in‐noise relates to WMC and inhibitory control. The results showed a significant difference between initiation and response inhibition, suggesting that the Hayling task taps cognitive activity responsible for executive control. Our findings also suggest that high verbal ability was associated with better performance in the Hayling task. We also present findings suggesting that individuals who perform well on tasks involving response inhibition, and WMC, also perform well on a speech‐in‐noise task. Our findings indicate that capacity to resist semantic interference can be used to predict performance on speech‐in‐noise tasks.     

‘Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!’: Effects of Streaks on Confidence and Betting in a Binary Choice Task

Human choice under uncertainty is influenced by erroneous beliefs about randomness. In simple binary choice tasks, such as red/black predictions in roulette, long outcome runs (e.g. red, red, red) typically increase the tendency to predict the other outcome (i.e. black), an effect labeled the “gambler's fallacy.” In these settings, participants may also attend to streaks in their predictive performance. Winning and losing streaks are thought to affect decision confidence, although prior work indicates conflicting directions. Over three laboratory experiments involving red/black predictions in a sequential roulette task, we sought to identify the effects of outcome runs and winning/losing streaks upon color predictions, decision confidence and betting behavior. Experiments 1 (n = 40) and 3 (n = 40) obtained trial‐by‐trial confidence ratings, with a win/no win payoff and a no loss/loss payoff, respectively. Experiment 2 (n = 39) obtained a trial‐by‐trial bet amount on an equivalent scale. In each experiment, the gambler's fallacy was observed on choice behavior after color runs and, in experiment 2, on betting behavior after color runs. Feedback streaks exerted no reliable influence on confidence ratings, in either payoff condition. Betting behavior, on the other hand, increased as a function of losing streaks. The increase in betting on losing streaks is interpreted as a manifestation of loss chasing; these data help clarify the psychological mechanisms underlying loss chasing and caution against the use of betting measures (“post‐decision wagering”) as a straightforward index of decision confidence. © 2014 The Authors. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

禀赋效应的心理机制及其影响因素

禀赋效应是指个体在拥有某物品时对该物品的估价高于没有拥有该物品时的估价的现象。这一现象在行为经济学中普遍存在。禀赋效应的研究范式包括经典研究范式与物物交换范式。禀赋效应的心理机制主要包括损失规避与查询理论。禀赋效应的影响因素主要包括认知角度、动机、情绪、交易物品的特征、研究设计的选择等。未来的研究需要从禀赋效应的适用条件、产生根源、研究范式的改进等方面进一步探讨。