38978 research outputs found
Sort by
Safety-relevant experience reshapes neural codes for ambiguous threat in adolescents
No full textVisually threatening stimuli often carry ambiguous meanings, but experience can alter their representation toward safety. No existing studies have examined how neural representations are reshaped during this process. Adolescence is marked by the ongoing maturation of neural circuits supporting flexible contextual processing, which may shape how safety experience alters threat representations. This study created a safety-relevant context in which visually threatening stimuli (animals, weapons) acquired meanings in relation to personal safety, with animals signaling danger and weapons conferring protection. Using 7T fMRI, we measured neural responses in 33 adolescents (MAge = 14.88 years, 19 females) during passive viewing before (Pre-task) and after (Post-task) the safety experience. At Post-task, protection stimuli elicited greater activation in the hippocampus, precuneus, and insula, reflecting experience-dependent updating. Threat stimuli showed more restricted changes in the precuneus, suggesting persistence of initial threat representations. Both stimuli showed greater Pre-task activation in higher-level visual processing regions, reflecting stimulus novelty. MVPA indicated greater representational updating for protection than threat and convergent neural patterns for stimuli matched in safety value at Post-task. These findings may inform anxiety interventions explicitly training adolescents to recognize and use protective resources in aversive contexts to enhance safety updating, complementing traditional threat-extinction approaches
Computational tools for quantifying schemas in autobiographical narratives
No full textAccording to schema theory, human knowledge is functionally organized in network-like structures called "schemas". Schemas are known to influence memory encoding and recall, and have been proposed to similarly structure our imagination of the future. An automated, general-purpose, and scalable means of quantifying reliance on schemas in autobiographical narratives would therefore be an invaluable tool in research on memory and imagination. Here, we introduce several novel computational measures of narrative schematicity and present a systematic comparison of these with previously published measures. We compare these measures to human judgments of schematicity (180 human raters, 300 narratives) and examine their ability to differentiate between schematic versus idiosyncratic narratives produced by experimental manipulation (over 7000 narrratives across two datasets). We show that the most promising measure is based on identifying the largest network of related concepts that can be extracted from a narrative. The measures of schematicity considered here are available at pypi.org/project/narsche/
The “Normative Structure” of Social Science: Merton’s Ideas as a Story of Success and Side Effects
No full textDirectional Invariance and Control Geometry in Bistable Systems (Preprint)
No full textThis project hosts the manuscript and computational resources for the study: "Directional Invariance and Control Geometry in Bistable Systems."
The paper develops a geometric theory of parameter sensitivity in a class of bistable dynamical systems characterized by multiplicative–additive separation. We prove that, near any non-degenerate equilibrium, the ratio of sensitivities between two control channels becomes directionally invariant. This invariant depends solely on the fixed-point position and the intrinsic structure of the demand function, remains independent of any smooth deformations of the recovery term
Do Humans Exhibit Functional Speciesism? An Experimental Investigation
No full textAn experimental study of how the animal’s cultural role affects assessments of moral status and competence. The impact of the animal’s cultural role on its perceived warmth and willingness to interact with it will also be controlled
Future Time Perspective, Self-Efficacy, and Self-Concept Clarity Among Forcibly Displaced Ukrainian Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study
No full textAt the end of 2024, 49 million children and adolescents around the world had been forced to relocate from their homes due to war, conflict, or persecution (UNHCR, 2025). In addition to facing other challenges, forcibly displaced adolescents face the critical developmental task of establishing a clear sense of self. An important aspect of the self includes self-concept clarity, —that is, beliefs about the self that are clearly defined, internally consistent, and stable over time (Campbell et al., 1996). Self-concept clarity has been linked to various indices of good mental health and requires stability in daily life (Benner et al., 2018). Forcibly displaced adolescents, however, often lack such stability, and often feel uncertain about the future and their ability to control their lives. Here, we focus on two psychological factors that may shape adolescents’ ability and motivation to explore and commit to life domains, with potential consequences for self-concept-clarity, that is, future time perspective and sense of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997; Maehler & Hernández-Torrano, 2025). As self-concept clarity is a predictor of wellbeing and central to self-development, it is crucial to understand more about future time perspective and self-efficacy as potential predictors of self-concept clarity. Insight into these associations may inform the development of interventions that can facilitate self-concept clarity, and thereby general wellbeing, of young refugees. Using a two-wave prospective longitudinal design, we will investigate how self-concept clarity develops over time, and how future time perspective and self-efficacy are associated with changes in self-concept clarity among Ukrainian adolescents who fled to the Netherlands amidst the war between Russia and Ukraine starting in 2022
Experiment 1a (Turkish): Selectional restrictions
No full textAccording to Keller (2000) "Gradience in Grammar: Experimental and Computational Aspects of Degrees of Grammaticality", each grammatical constraint is associated with a violation impact and the impacts of multiple violations of the same constraint is predicted to combine in a linear fashion. This hypothesis will be tested in the current experiment through multiple violations of the same selectional requirement constraint with four Turkish predicates.
In Turkish, clausal complements are typically nominalized. However, a very limited set of predicates, most notably İSTE- 'to want', can take root clauses as complements as well. Interestingly, İSTE- 'to want' is the only volitional predicate that readily takes a root clause complement, whereas other volitional predicates seem to require nominalized complements (Predolac 2017 "The Syntax of Sentential Complementation in Turkish"). Therefore, this study will focus on four volitional predicates that do not typically take a root clause complement (based on corpus investigation): UM- 'hope', TALEP ET- 'request', TERCİH ET- 'prefer', and ARZU ET- 'desire'. Violations will be introduced by forcing these predicates to take a root clause complement. To increase the number of violations, each experimental item will feature a clausal coordination ([S & S]), with violations occurring separately within the coordinated clauses, e.g.,
(N) Serpil araştırma verilerinin gizli tutulmasını tercih ediyor, ama ben çalışmamızın kamuoyuyla paylaşılmasını tercih ediyorum. "Serpil prefers to keep the research data confidential, but I prefer that our study be shared with the public." (Zero violations)
(L) Serpil *araştırma verileri gizli tutulsun* tercih ediyor, ama ben çalışmamızın kamuoyuyla paylaşılmasını tercih ediyorum. "Serpil prefers to keep the research data confidential, but I prefer that our study be shared with the public." (One violation on left)
(R) Serpil araştırma verilerinin gizli tutulmasını tercih ediyor, ama ben *çalışmamız kamuoyuyla paylaşılsın* tercih ediyorum. "Serpil prefers to keep the research data confidential, but I prefer that our study be shared with the public." (One violation on right)
(LR) Serpil *araştırma verileri gizli tutulsun* tercih ediyor, ama ben *çalışmamız kamuoyuyla paylaşılsın* tercih ediyorum. "Serpil prefers to keep the research data confidential, but I prefer that our study be shared with the public." (Two violations; on left and right
Associations between childhood trauma and Cluster C personality disorder and personality functioning
No full textChildhood trauma (CT; emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect and physical neglect) is highly prevalent and related to development of various psychiatric disorders, including personality disorders (PDs) (Oral et al., 2016, Broekhof et al., 2024). Most research has been conducted on the relationship between CT and Cluster B PD. Nevertheless, research on the association between CT and Cluster C PDs is still in its infancy, and studies have shown contrasting findings. In addition, we aim to explore the associations between CT and a broader perspective of personality pathology, operationalized in terms of personality organization, a concept formulated by Kernberg (1967) and schema modes, a theoretical concept stemming from schema therapy (Arntz & Jacob, 2017). More specifically, the research questions are:
1. How do the four Cluster C PDs (i.e. avoidant, dependent and obsessive-compulsive PD and otherwise specified PD with mainly Cluster C traits) compare in the five types of childhood trauma (CT)?
2. a. What is the association between the five types of CT and the self-reported severity of the Cluster C PD (ADP-IV)?
b. In addition: explore which of the types of CT are essential in predicting total Cluster C severity based on model selection with best fit model.
The severity of the primary cluster-C PD is also assessed with the following severity indices: AVPDSI (for avoidant PD), the DEPDSI (for dependent PD) and the OCPDSI (for obsessive compulsive PD). These are semi-structured interviews for assessing the frequency of various manifestations of the DSM-5 criteria of the Cluster C PD. For patients diagnosed with an otherwise specified PD, a personalized selection of the Cluster C traits derived from the AVPDSI, DEPDSI and OCPDSI is made.
3. a. What is the association between the five types of CT and the interview-based severity index of Cluster C PD?
b. In addition: explore which of the types of CT are essential in predicting the Cluster C severity based on model selection with best fit model.
Exploratory, we will also examine the following research questions:
4. What is the association between the five types of CT and personality functioning, i.e.:
a. severity of personality pathology (IPO-83) (three main scales Identity Diffusion, Primitive Defenses, Reality Testing, and two additional scales Aggression and Moral Values)
b. schema modes (SMI-2)?
This study is a secondary analysis of the baseline data from the FORCE studies. FORCE consists of two large pragmatic randomized clinical trials (G-FORCE and I-FORCE) that started at 2020 the NPI, a Dutch mental health center specialized in the treatment of personality disorders. The G-FORCE trial compares the differential (cost-) effectiveness of three forms of group psychotherapy: psychodynamic group therapy, schema focused group therapy and group schema therapy for cluster C. I-FORCE investigates (cost)-effectiveness of three individual psychotherapies: schema therapy (ST), short-term psychodynamic supportive psychotherapy (SPSP), and affect phobia therapy (APT). The main research question of FORCE is if there is a difference in effectiveness between the treatment modalities on the severity of the cluster-C pathology, measured with the APD-IV
Cultural Adaptation of a Positive Psychology Intervention for Migrants Using Social Services
No full textThis publication outlines the cultural adaptation of a positive psychology intervention for migrants and its implementation within Finland’s social services