Bulletin of NTU "KhPI". Series: Problems of Electrical Machines and Apparatus Perfection. The Theory and Practice / Вісник Національного технічного університету "ХПІ". Серія: Проблеми удосконалювання електричних машин і апаратів. Теорія і практика
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High spatial frequency information in primes hastens happy faces categorization in autistic adults.
No full textWhere does the remarkable human ability to quickly identify facial emotion come from? Coarse-to-Fine integration of visual information may play a critical role. Coarse information of a visual stimulus is conveyed by Low Spatial Frequencies (LSF) and is thought to be rapidly extracted to generate predictions. This may guide inhibition of irrelevant information and facilitate fast recognition with the subsequent integration of fine information, conveyed by High Spatial Frequencies (HSF). In autism, emotional face recognition is challenging and may contribute to socio-emotional difficulties. It has been suggested that perceptual changes, such as a bias toward HSF or a reduced LSF processing, could partly explain atypical face processing in autism. However, alterations in predictive processes related to LSF have not been investigated so far. Here, we analyzed the data of 27 autistic adults and 34 matched typically developing (TD) controls on an emotional Stroop task (i.e., emotional face with congruent or incongruent emotional word) with spatially filtered primes (HSF vs. LSF). We hypothesized that LSF primes would generate predictions leading to faster categorization of the target face stimulus in the context of incongruent information, compared to HSF primes, in the control group but not in the autistic group. Surprisingly, HSF primes led to faster categorization than LSF primes in both groups and irrespective of the congruency. Moreover, whereas the advantage of HSF vs. LSF primes was stronger for angry than happy faces in the control group, it was stronger for happy than angry faces in autistic participants. Additional exploratory analyses using drift diffusion modelling confirmed HSF advantage for achieving the task and showed a longer non-decision time (i.e., encoding and motor response) in autism compared to control. Our main hypothesis of predictive impairments in autism in relation to LSF was not corroborated by our data. However, our analyses suggest specificities in autistic individuals according to the type of emotion processed and in the slower non-decision-related processes
College student interest in teletherapy and self-guided mental health supports during the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textObjective: The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened college students’ mental health while simultaneously creating new barriers to traditional in-person care. Teletherapy and online self-guided mental health supports are two potential avenues for addressing unmet mental health needs when face-to-face services are less accessible, but little is known about factors that shape interest in these supports. Participants: 1,224 U.S. undergraduate students (mean age=20.7; 72.5% female; 40.0% White) participated. Methods: Students completed an online questionnaire assessing interest in teletherapy and self-guided supports. Predictors included age, sex, ethnicity, sexual minority status, and anxiety and depression symptomatology. Results: Interest rates were 20% and 25% for at-cost supports and 70% and 72% for free supports. Older age, higher anxiety symptomatology, and identifying as Asian significantly predicted greater interest levels. Conclusions: Results may inform universities’ efforts to optimize students’ engagement with nontraditional, digital mental health supports, including teletherapy and self-guided programs
Emotions in the context of environmental protection: Theoretical considerations concerning emotion types, eliciting processes, and affect generalization
No full textEmotions seem to be significant for pro-environmental behavior. Yet, questions about the differentiation, elicitation, and effects of emotions in the context of environmental protection remain. Specifically, current typologies of environmentally relevant emotions each cover only a subset of the relevant emotions. Furthermore, central environmental-psychological constructs such as emotional affinity towards nature are not explained well by current appraisal and emotion theories. Finally, the causal effects of emotions on pro-environmental behavioral intentions in experiments are rather weak and diminish over time, which conflicts with strong correlations between emotions and environmentally relevant intentions. The current work addresses these issues by (1) synthesizing types of environmentally relevant emotions, (2) differentiating paths to emotional reactions towards nature, and (3) considering the process of affect generalization for the consequences of emotion for environmentally relevant behavior. Partitioning affect along these dimensions helps capturing the broad range of environmentally relevant emotions, understanding how these emotions are elicited, and when they affect pro-environmental behavior
Periodic and Aperiodic Contributions to Theta-Beta Ratios Across Adulthood
No full textThe ratio of fronto‐central theta (4–7 Hz) to beta oscillations (13–30 Hz), known as the theta-beta ratio, is negatively correlated with attentional control, reinforcement learning, executive function, and age. Although theta-beta ratios have been found to decrease with age in adolescents and young adults, theta has been found to increase with age in older adults. Moreover, age‐related decreases in individual alpha peak frequency and flattening of the 1/f aperiodic component may artifactually inflate the association between theta-beta ratio and age. These factors lead to an incomplete understanding of how theta-beta ratio varies across the lifespan and the extent to which variation is due to a conflation of aperiodic and periodic activity. We conducted a partially preregistered analysis examining the cross‐sectional associations between age and resting canonical fronto-central theta-beta ratio, individual alpha peak frequency, and aperiodic component (n = 268; age 36–84, M = 55.8, SD = 11.0). Age was negatively associated with theta-beta ratios, individual peak alpha frequencies, and the aperiodic exponent. The correlation between theta-beta ratios and age remained after controlling for individual peak alpha frequencies, but was non-significant when controlling for the aperiodic exponent. Aperiodic exponent fully mediated the relationship between theta-beta ratio and age, although beta remained significantly associated with age after controlling for theta, individual peak alpha, and aperiodic exponent. Results replicate previous observations and show age‐related decreases in theta-beta ratios are not due to age‐related decreases in individual peak alpha frequencies but primarily explained by flattening of the aperiodic component with age
Abstracting time in memory
No full textPlanning the future relies on the ability to remember how long events last, yet, how durations are stored in memory is unknown. Here, we developed a novel n-item delayed duration reproduction task to assess whether elapsed time is stored as a continuous feature or as a discrete item in memory. In three experiments (N = 58), participants were presented with non-isochronous sequences composed of empty time intervals delimited by brief tones. Time intervals varied in number (n-items) and in duration. Participants had to reproduce as precisely as possible the duration of all time intervals in the sequence following a delay period. We manipulated the number of time intervals (n-item) and the sequence duration to separate their effects on recall precision. In all three experiments, the precision of recall decreased with the number of items in the sequence, showing that durations can be stored as discrete items in working memory. Our analyses emphasize the distinction between reproduction biases that are captured by relative reproduction, and decreased precision which indexes working memory load. Future research is needed to spell out the conditions under which durations are fully abstracted in working memory
Tears do not influence competence in general, but only under specific circumstances: A systematic investigation across 41 countries
No full textResearch on the effect of emotional tears on perceived competence has yielded an inconsistent pattern of findings, with some studies showing that tearful individuals may be perceived as less competent, while others report no such effect. These mixed results point to the likely existence of third variables influencing the link between tears and perceived competence and suggest that crying may affect competence only in specific circumstances. In the current project, we re-examine this link using a large, openly available dataset of responses to tearful faces collected across 41 countries and 7,007 participants (Zickfeld et al., 2021). Our results show that tears have no general effect on perceptions of competence, but do reduce competence when crying is regarded as inappropriate (e.g., there is no clear reason for shedding tears) or when the target is perceived as helpless. Moreover, shedding tears increases competence when the target is perceived as honest. As emotional tears have been found to signal both helplessness and honesty, the interplay of these effects might result in no overall effect of tears on perceptions of competence. The present findings suggest that the link between emotional tears and perceived competence is highly context dependent
Impact of crisis communication strategies on people’s attitudes toward behavioral guidelines regarding COVID-19 and on their trust in local officials
No full textIntroduction: The communication patterns of commercial organizations are generally guided by Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), but the impact of different crisis communication strategies for public messaging on COVID-19 has not been thoroughly examined. As such, we test how crisis communication strategies affect trust in mayors and the acceptance of behavioral measures, specifically regarding the buffering effect of a mayor’s pre-crisis reputation as well whether trust mediates the link between crisis communication strategies and acceptance of behavioral measures. Methods: A total of 561 participants (53% female; mean age 50 yrs) took part in an online experiment in which we systematically manipulated the mayor’s crisis communication strategy (deny vs. diminish, vs. rebuild, vs. bolstering, vs. no response) and pre-crisis reputation (good past crisis management, bad past crisis management). Age, gender and education served as covariates. In an exploratory analysis, we also tested the predictive power of personal concern regarding the COVID-19 pandemic as well as internal and external control convictions. Results: In our pre-planned analysis, we found that crisis communication strategies and pre-crisis reputation had no significant effect on participants’ ratings of acceptance of certain behaviors or their behavioral intentions. However, the different communication strategies did affect participants’ trust in the mayor and intention to vote for him. Specifically, we found that while the strategy of denying was overall unsuccessful, all other strategies fared similarly when the mayor’s pre-crisis reputation was high. When his pre-crisis reputation was low, differences emerged between the other strategies. The exploratory analysis corroborated earlier findings about the importance of individual concern and trust as predictors of behavioral measures. Discussion: Overall, SCCT seems to be an adequate description the effects of communication strategies on reputation in local officials during a pandemic. Yet, neither direct effects of communication strategies on acceptance of behavioral measures nor indirect effects on behavioral measures could not be shown. Since trust is an important aspect, we advise local officials to carefully choose their communication style
Let the Algorithm Speak: How to Use Neural Networks for Automatic Item Generation in Psychological Scale Development
No full textMeasurement is at the heart of scientific research. As many—perhaps most—psychological constructs cannot be directly observed, there is a steady demand for reliable self-report scales to assess latent constructs. However, scale development is a tedious process that requires researchers to produce good items in large quantities. In this tutorial, we introduce, explain, and apply the Psychometric Item Generator (PIG), an open-source, free-to-use, self-sufficient natural language processing algorithm that produces large-scale, human-like, customised text output within a few mouse clicks. The PIG is based on the GPT-2, a powerful generative language model, and runs on Google Colaboratory—an interactive virtual notebook environment that executes code on state-of-the-art virtual machines at no cost. Across two demonstrations and a pre-registered five-pronged empirical validation with two Canadian samples (NSample1 = 501, NSample2 = 773), we show that the PIG is equally well-suited to generate large pools of face-valid items for novel constructs (i.e., wanderlust) and create parsimonious short scales of existing constructs (i.e., Big Five personality traits) that yield strong performances when tested in the wild and benchmarked against current gold standards for assessment. The PIG does not require any prior coding skills or access to computational resources and can easily be tailored to any desired context by simply switching out short linguistic prompts in a single line of code. In short, we present an effective, novel machine learning solution to an old psychological challenge. As such, the PIG will not require you to learn a new language—but instead, speak yours
Justify Your Alpha: A Primer on Two Practical Approaches
No full textThe default use of an alpha level of 0.05 is suboptimal for two reasons. First, decisions based on data can be made more efficiently by choosing an alpha level that minimizes the combined Type 1 and Type 2 error rate. Second, it is possible that in studies with very high statistical power p-values lower than the alpha level can be more likely when the null hypothesis is true, than when the alternative hypothesis is true (i.e., Lindley's paradox). This manuscript explains two approaches that can be used to justify a better choice of an alpha level than relying on the default threshold of 0.05. The first approach is based on the idea to either minimize or balance Type 1 and Type 2 error rates. The second approach lowers the alpha level as a function of the sample size to prevent Lindley's paradox. An R package and Shiny app are provided to perform the required calculations. Both approaches have their limitations (e.g., the challenge of specifying relative costs and priors), but can offer an improvement to current practices, especially when sample sizes are large. The use of alpha levels that have a better justification should improve statistical inferences and can increase the efficiency and informativeness of scientific research
Cohort differences in aging self-perceptions among Japanese older adults
No full textVarious individual resources for successful aging have improved during the last decades. However, a limited number of studies have examined historical changes in how older individuals view their own aging. This study examined cohort differences in aging self-perceptions among Japanese older adults. Using nationally representative data obtained nine years apart in 1987 and 1996, we compared two cohorts born in the 1920s versus the 1930s. To control for relevant correlates, we identified case-matched controls based on age, sex, and education (age range = 60–65 years; n = 499 per cohort). Results indicated that the later-born cohort held more positive self-perceptions of aging than the earlier-born cohort, even after adjusting for relevant correlates. The correlates with self-perceptions of aging did not differ across cohorts. Our findings suggest that self-perceptions of aging have improved over the historical time. We discuss the potential role of societal forces on personal views on aging