Centro Universitário Farias Brito: FB UNI Portal de Periódicos
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Human Exploration Strategically Balances Approaching and Avoiding Uncertainty
No full textA central purpose of exploration is to reduce goal-relevant uncertainty. Consequentially, individuals often explore by focusing on areas of uncertainty in the environment. However, people sometimes adopt the opposite strategy, one of avoiding uncertainty. How are the conflicting tendencies to approach and avoid uncertainty reconciled in human exploration? We hypothesized that the balance between avoiding and approaching uncertainty can be understood by considering capacity constraints. Accordingly, people are expected to approach uncertainty in most cases, but to avoid it when overall uncertainty is highest. To test this, we developed a new task and used modeling to compare human choices to a range of plausible policies. The task required participants to learn the statistics of a simulated environment by active exploration. On each trial, participants chose to explore a better-known or lesser-known option. Participants generally chose to approach uncertainty, however, when overall uncertainty about the choice options was highest, they instead avoided uncertainty and chose to sample better-known objects. This strategy was associated with faster decisions and, despite reducing the rate of observed information, it did not impair learning. We suggest that balancing approaching and avoiding uncertainty reduces the cognitive costs of exploration in a resource-rational manner
Structural consequences of cyclical change for marginal group employment
No full textIn Sweden and many other countries, young people and immigrants are facing increasing difficulties in finding employment. We suggest that the decline in employment prospects for marginal groups to a significant extent can be explained by skill upgrading and over-education. In two recent papers focusing on youth and immigrants, respectively, we find support for these hypotheses. The present paper examines how the long-term evolution of youth male employment is linked to cyclical economic change, and in particular to recessions. We base our empirical analyses on data from 31 OECD countries, 1970 to 2018. A basic hypothesis we aim to test is whether the distribution of cyclical points around the line of long-run evolution of general employment has a vertically asymmetrical pattern with respect to marginal employment, such that the relative employment rate of marginal groups declines more in economic downturns (recessions) than it rises in economic upturns. If this asymmetry occurs systematically (repeatedly) over extended periods of time, cyclical change will have structural effects. We find support for this hypothesis based on our analysis of youth male employment. We suggest that two kinds of mechanism are at work in the interaction between cyclical and structural change. The first mechanism is operating from the structure to the cycle: low-skill jobs become increasingly unviable economically, but only slowly and gradually until a marked loss in general demand triggers significant employment decline tilted toward low-skill jobs. Restructuring of work organizations in the wake of the recession makes the return of low-skill jobs in the recovery less than complete. The second kind of mechanism operates in the other direction, i.e., from the cycle to the structure: the rate of educational expansion typically accelerates in recessions. This will in turn speed up the rate of over-education which tends to have a negative impact on marginal employment. We provide descriptive empirical evidence indicating that both these mechanisms are indeed active. In sum, recessions accelerate upward shifts in the skill structure that in turn depress the labor market prospects of male youth, with both links in the chain being of a lasting rather than temporary kind
Reliving emotional memories: Episodic memory retrieval elicits affective psychophysiological responses
No full textMemories of emotional events can guide behavior in the present. One way to fulfill this adaptive function might be through psychophysiological responses that signal desirable and undesirable outcomes. However, it remains unknown whether remembering emotional episodes indeed re-elicits corresponding affective psychophysiological responses. We addressed this question in two experiments (N1 = 48, N2 = 59). Young adults watched positive, negative, and neutral movie clips and recalled these episodes one day later. To index the psychophysiological expression of positive and negative affect, we measured smiling (zygomaticus major) and frowning (corrugator supercilii), respectively. Participants smiled more when remembering positive compared to neutral and negative episodes. Moreover, they frowned more when remembering negative compared to positive but not neutral episodes. We also explored whether the magnitude of expressed affect during remembering was proportional to the expressed affect during the corresponding original experience, but results were mixed. Our findings underscore that recalling emotional episodes can evoke affective psychophysiological responses. However, whether the exact magnitude of expressed affect during retrieval maps onto the original experience remains an open question. Future studies into emotional episodic memories would benefit from incorporating affective psychophysiological indices because they may represent essential motivational components that inform future behavior
The more the merrier? A systematic review and meta-analysis of working memory capacity and category learning
No full textThe role of working memory capacity (WMC) in category learning (CL) remains theoretically contested. While the COVIS model posits that information-integration (II) learning is WMC-independent, empirical findings are mixed. Through a systematic review and subsequent three-level meta-analysis of 21 articles (164 effect sizes), we synthesized the WMC–CL relationship. Results revealed a significant overall positive correlation (r = 0.258; trim-and-fill adjusted r = 0.118). Notably, category structure (rule-based vs. information-integration) did not significantly moderate this relationship, challenging the COVIS prediction that implicit learning is independent of WMC. However, WMC task-specific moderation revealed significantly weaker correlations for reading span compared to operation span, memory updating, and spatial storage. No moderating effects were found for age, gender, or stimulus modality. These findings suggest that performance across diverse category structures shares a common reliance on WMC
Oxytocin Facilitates Adaptive Communication by Upregulating Prefrontal Aperiodic Activity
No full textOxytocin plays a key role in recipient design, the process by which communicators adapt their utterances based on their knowledge of an addressee. This form of adaptive communication requires cognitive exploration and flexibility, as individuals must integrate prior expectations with newly gathered interactional evidence to dynamically adjust their communicative behavior. Here, we investigate the electrophysiological mechanisms supporting recipient design and how oxytocin modulates this process. Fifty-one male participants received a double-blind intranasal administration of either oxytocin or placebo before undergoing magnetoencephalography (MEG) while engaging in a real-time communicative game. They interacted with two presumed addressees—a child and an adult—both portrayed by a role-blind confederate who exhibited consistent communicative behavior across roles. Initially, participants relied on prior expectations, communicating more emphatically with the presumably less competent child. Over time, however, individuals in the oxytocin group adapted more rapidly to interaction-based evidence of matched communicative ability across both addressees. This dynamic adjustment was associated with sustained increases in broadband aperiodic power, a macroscopic correlate of postsynaptic activity, in the right ventral prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest that oxytocin facilitates adaptive communication by upregulating broadband aperiodic activity in a brain region critical for integrating prior beliefs with real-time social cues
Anxiety symptoms interact with approach motivations in adolescent risk-taking
No full textBackground: Adolescence is a critical period of brain and behavioral development during which anxiety disorders often onset. While anxiety is associated with avoidance, adolescent approach motivations and associated neural circuitry may interact with anxiety to influence behavioral and symptom trajectories. This knowledge is crucial for understanding which individuals develop more significant anxiety in adolescence and to inform targeted interventions. Methods: We investigated 3 preregistered aims in a sample of diverse adolescents as they completed a decision-making task involving risk-taking and inhibitory control during fMRI. First, we tested whether approach motivations moderate the association between anxiety and task behavior. Next, we tested the competing influence of anxiety and approach motivations on neural connectivity between the amygdala, ventral striatum (VS), and prefrontal cortex (PFC) during risky decision-making. Finally, we examined how anxiety and approach motivations relate to intrinsic connectivity between these regions at rest. Results: Approach motivations moderated the association between anxiety and task behavior such that youth with high anxiety and low approach were risk-averse and inhibited, while youth with high anxiety and high approach were risk-taking and impulsive. Approach motivations were associated with reduced amygdala-PFC and VS-PFC connectivity during risk-taking paralleled by increased connectivity between these regions at rest, whereas anxiety was associated with heightened amygdala-PFC connectivity during risk-taking and showed an interaction with age on amygdala-PFC connectivity at rest. Conclusions: This study sheds light on the interplay between approach motivations and anxiety on decision-making and neural functioning in adolescence and highlights the importance of considering adolescent brain and behavioral development across multiple domains
Universal interpretations of vocal music
No full textDespite the variability of music across cultures, some types of human songs share acoustic characteristics. For example, dance songs tend to be loud and rhythmic and lullabies tend to be quiet and melodious. Human perceptual sensitivity to the behavioural contexts of songs, on the basis of these musical features, raises the possibility that basic properties of music are mutually intelligible, independent of linguistic or cultural content. Whether these effects reflect universal interpretations of vocal music, however, is unclear, because prior studies focus almost exclusively on English-speaking participants, a group that is not representative of humans writ large. Here we report shared intuitions concerning the behavioural contexts of unfamiliar songs produced in unfamiliar languages, in participants living in Internet-connected industrialised societies (n = 5,516 native speakers of 28 languages) or smaller-scale societies with limited access to global media (n = 116 native speakers of 3 non-English languages). Participants listened to songs randomly selected from a representative sample of human vocal music, originally used in four behavioural contexts, and rated the degree to which they believed the song was used for each context. Listeners in both industrialised and smaller-scale societies reliably inferred the contexts of dance songs, lullabies, and healing songs, but not love songs. Within and across the cohorts, inferences were mutually consistent. Further, increased linguistic or geographical proximity between listeners and singers only minimally increased the accuracy of the inferences. These results demonstrate that the behavioural contexts of three common forms of music are mutually intelligible across cultures and imply that musical diversity, shaped by cultural evolution, is nonetheless grounded in some universal perceptual phenomena
Retrieving past experiences to inform novel decisions through a process of cascading episodic sampling.
No full textWe can guide our decisions in novel situations by drawing on our past experiences (episodic memories). While at times we can retrieve relevant episodes via cued recall, other situations may require a process of memory search. But what mechanisms underlie this search? In this work we synthesize six key principles concerning the storage and retrieval of episodic memories, and build on these principles to propose a cognitive mechanism which allows for the retrieval of relevant past experiences through a process of cascading recall. In this process, observing a stimulus triggers the cued recall of a past event. If this memory does not provide sufficient information to warrant a decision, then it next reinstates all the memory’s constituent features. These features then form the inputs to sample an additional memory in a subsequent recall step, which in turn reinstates its own features and so forth. This process continues until a suitable past experience is retrieved. We provide empirical support for key predictions of this cascading process through three online experiments in which participants interacted with unfamiliar stimuli. The results indicate that participants rely on cued recall of similar past experiences (experiment 1), and on indirectly related experiences when cued recall is not informative (experiment 2). Additionally, participants were substantially more likely to retrieve a predicted memory, and did so faster, when relying on cued recall versus cascading memory search (experiment 3). We conclude by discussing how this cascading recall process bridges several influential models of memory-based decision-making, as well as offering promising directions for future research
An observational analysis of the trope "A p-value of less-than 0.05 was considered statistically significant" and other cut-and-paste statistical methods
No full textAppropriate descriptions of statistical methods are essential for evaluating research quality and reproducibility. Despite continued efforts to improve reporting in publications, inadequate descriptions of statistical methods persist. At times, reading statistical methods sections can conjure feelings of deja vu, with content resembling cut-and-pasted or "boilerplate text" from already published work.
Instances of boilerplate text suggest a mechanistic approach to statistical analysis, where the same default methods are being used and described using standardized text. To investigate the extent of this practice, we analyzed text extracted from published statistical methods sections from PLOS ONE and the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR). Topic modeling was applied to analyze data from 111,731 papers published in PLOS ONE and 9,523 studies registered with the ANZCTR. PLOS ONE topics emphasized definitions of statistical significance, software and descriptive statistics. One in three PLOS ONE papers contained at least 1 sentence that was a direct copy from another paper. 12,675 papers (11%) closely matched to the sentence "a p-value
< 0.05 was considered statistically significant". Common topics across ANZCTR studies differentiated between study designs and analysis methods, with matching text found in approximately 3% of sections.
Our findings quantify a serious problem affecting the reporting of statistical methods and shed light on perceptions about the communication of statistics as part of the scientific process. Results further emphasize the importance of rigorous statistical review to ensure that adequate descriptions of methods are prioritized over relatively minor details such as p-values and software when reporting research outcomes
EEG and ERP Methods - Preregistration Template
No full textThis preregistration template guides researchers who wish to preregister their EEG projects, more specifically studies investigating event-related potentials (ERPs) in the sensor space