Performance monitoring of aggressive behavior in impulsive individuals: threat sensitivity or response inhibition

The main objective of the research is to conduct an analysis of the framework for alternate execution of workflows under intrusion threat with respect to different types of threats. Framework for alternate execution of workflows under threat makes the system available to the end user no matter if it is under attack by some intrusion threat. The assessment is required to be made for the framework in consideration in terms of what types of threats and how many types of threats for which it may work. For this purpose, 34 different types of threats as described by SOPHOS have been considered. Firstly the types of threats have been categorized based on their goals. Then for each category, framework in consideration is assessed. On the basis of that assessment it is analyzed for what types of threats, the framework can be enabled completely and partially. The number of threats for which the framework is enabled completely is also found. Based on the analysis, the recommendations have been made for possible extensions in the framework where it is enabled partially.KeywordsAlternate executionData HibernationSOPHOSWorkflows

Neural correlates of response inhibition and performance monitoring in binge watching

The complex phenomenon of prejudice has been the focus of interest among social psychologists since the mid-20th century. The Intergroup Threat Theory (ITT) is one of the most efficient theoretical frameworks to identify the triggers of prejudice. In this study, using experimental design, we examined the effects of symbolic and realistic threats on prejudice that was measured by means of a modified social distance scale. The study participants were 611 undergraduate students from the country of Georgia. In addition to providing further support for ITT, the study showed that the level of religiosity moderated the effects between both types of threats and prejudice, although it had different indications for realistic and symbolic threats, while gender interacted only with symbolic threat. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Extensive research has found hostility between the political parties in the United States. While it is generally accepted that the parties perceive threats from each other, there is little empirical research investigating whether these perceived threats exist among the public. This article utilizes social identity theory and intergroup threat theory to examine relationships between partisan media use and perceived symbolic and realistic threats from the opposing political party. Using cross-sectional data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we ran mediation models. We found that the use of in-group media is associated with higher levels of both the symbolic and realistic threats that emanate from the opposing political party. We also examine whether these two types of threats are related to political engagement in the form of political participation. Our results reveal that symbolic threats are associated with engagement, while realistic threats are not. Finally, we examined a full moderated mediated model where media use predicts engagement through our two types of threats. Implications and areas for future research are discussed.

Previous research has found that populist attitudes and conspiracy mentality – here summarised as anti-establishment attitudes – increase when people feel threatened. Two types of intergroup threat have been distinguished, namely realistic threats (pertaining to socio-economic resources, climate, or health), and symbolic threats (pertaining to cultural values). However, there is no agreement on which types of threat and corresponding appraisals would be most important in predicting anti-establishment attitudes. We hypothesise that it is the threat itself, irrespective of its cause, that predicts anti-establishment attitudes. In the current paper, we conducted new (multilevel) regression analyses on previously collected data from four high-powered studies with multiple time points (Study 1) or collected in multiple nations (Studies 2–4). All studies included a populist attitudes scale, a conspiracy mentality scale, and different types of threat and emotion measures, reflecting both realistic and symbolic threats. Across studies, both realistic and symbolic threats positively predicted anti-establishment attitudes. The results support an emotional appraisal approach to anti-establishment attitudes, which highlights the importance of anxiety and feeling threatened regardless of what type of event elicits the threat.

Research ProblemCyber attacks are targeting the cloud computing systems, where enterprises, governments, and individuals are outsourcing their storage and computational resources for improved scalability and dynamic management of their data. However, the different types of cyber attacks, as well as the different attack goals, create difficulties providing the right security solution needed. This is because different cyber attacks are associated with different threats in the cloud computing systems, where the importance of threats varies based on the cloud user requirements. For example, a hospital patient record system may prioritize the security of cyber attacks tampering patient records, while a media storage system may prioritize the security of cyber attacks carrying out a denial of service attack for ensuring a high availability. As a result, it is of paramount importance to analyze the risk associated with the cloud computing systems taking into account the importance of threats based on different cloud user requirements.However, the current risk evaluation approaches focus on evaluating the risk associated with the asset, rather than the risk associated with different types of threats. Such a holistic approach to risk evaluation does not show explicitly how different types of threats contribute to the overall risk of the cloud computing systems. Consequently, This makes it difficult for security administrators to make fine-grained decisions in order to select security solutions based on different importance of threats given the cloud user requirements. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the risk of the cloud computing systems taking into account the different importance of threats, which enables the allocation of resources to reduce particular threats, identify the risk associated with different threats imposed, and identify different threats associated with cloud components.Proposed SolutionThe STRIDE threat modeling framework (short for STRIDE) is proposed by Microsoft, which can be used for threat categorization. Using the STRIDE, we propose a threat-guided risk evaluation approach for the cloud computing systems, which can evaluate the risk associated with each threat category from the STRIDE explicitly. Further, we utilize seven different types of security metrics to evaluate the risk namely: \textit{component, component-threat, threat-category, snapshot, path-components, path-threat}, and \textit{overall asset}. Component, component-threat, threat-cateory, and snapshot risks measure the total risk on a component, component risk for a particular threat category, total snapshot risk for a single threat, and the total risk of the snapshot considering all threat categories, respectively. Path-components, path-threat, and overall asset measure the total risk of components in an attack path, the risk of a single threat category in the attack path, and the overal risk to an asset considering all attack paths, respectively. These metrics makes it possible to measure the contribution of each threat category to the overall risk more precisely.When a vulnerability is discovered in a component (e.g. a Virtual Machine) of the Cloud deployment, the administrator first determines which types of threats could be posed should the vulnerability be successfully exploited, and what would be the impacts of each of those threats on the asset. The impact assignment of each threat type is weighted depending on the importance of the component. For example, a Virtual Machine (VM) that acts a Web Server in a medical records management application could be assigned a higher weighting for \textit{denial-of-service} threats because if such attacks are successfully launched then the rest of the VMs that are reached through the Web Server will be unavailable. On the other hand, a vulnerability discovered in a VM that hosts a database of medical records would be rated highest impact for \textit{information disclosure} because if it is compromised confidentiality of the medical history of patients will be violated.By multiplying the probability of successfully exploiting the vulnerability with the threat impact, we compute the risk of each threat type. The variation in the assignment of impact for different threat types enables our approach to compute risks associated with the threats - thus empowering the security administrator with the ability to make fine-grained decisions on how much resources to allocate for mitigating which type of threat and which threats to prioritize. We evaluated the usefulness of our approach through its application to attack scenarios in an example Cloud deployment. Our results show that it is more effective and informative to administrators compared to asset-based approaches to risk evaluation.

Current research focuses on delineating the neurobiological boundaries between familial risk for schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD). Available evidence suggests that inhibitory control may be affected in both disorders. Inhibitory control relies on the dual processes of contextual information maintenance and response inhibition. This study investigated the effect of familial risk of SZ or BD on these two aspects of inhibitory control. Seventeen healthy first-degree relatives of patients with BD (BD-R), 15 healthy relatives of patients with SZ (SZ-R) and 23 demographically matched controls were compared in terms of their performance during Controlled Oral Word Association (COWA), which measures contextually driven response selection, and during the Hayling Sentence Completion Test (HSCT), which assesses contextual response selection and inhibition. Compared to controls and BD-R, SZ-R showed deficits in contextual information processing that resulted in spontaneous errors in the COWA as well as deficits in response inhibition during the HSCT that resulted in higher error rates. BD-R also showed deficits in response inhibition during the HSCT relative to controls, which were, however, less pronounced than for SZ-R. Both relatives groups had longer response times. Our results suggest that failure in contextual maintenance is primarily associated with familial risk for SZ, while response inhibition may be a shared marker of familial risk for both disorders.

Virtual reality lets the user be immersed in a 3-dimensional environment, which can enhance certain emotional responses to stimuli relative to experiencing them on a flat computer screen. We here tested whether displaying two different types of threats in immersive virtual reality enhanced threat related autonomic responses measured by skin conductance responses (SCRs). We studied innate and learned threat responses because these types of threats have been shown to depend on different neural circuits in animals. Therefore, it is possible that immersive virtual reality may modulate one of these threats but not the other. Innate threat responses were provoked by the sudden appearance of characters at proximal egocentric distance, which were compared to the sudden appearance of distant characters (proximal threat). Learned threat responses were studied by conditioning two of the characters to an electric shock (conditioned threat) and contrasting SCRs to these characters with SCRs to two other characters that were never paired with shock. We found that displaying stimuli in immersive virtual reality enhanced proximal threat responses but not conditioned threat responses. Findings show that immersive virtual reality can enhance an innate type of threat responses without affecting a learned threat response, suggesting that separate neural pathways serve these threat responses.

Evidence suggests that acute exercise benefits inhibitory control, but it remains unclear how physical and cognitive load influence this ability in preadolescent children, when faced with different types of distractors. We examined their moderating effects along with changes in prefrontal cortex hemodynamics. Using a crossover design, 29 participants completed 10 min of exercise (with an interactive training wall) at 1) low physical and low cognitive load, 2) low physical and high cognitive load, 3) high physical and low cognitive load, and 4) high physical and high cognitive load in a randomized order. Before and after each condition, they performed a Standard and Affective Stroop task. During both tasks, the lateral oxygenation difference in the prefrontal cortex was measured by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. For the Standard Stroop task, there was no effect of physical and cognitive load on performance. In contrast, exercise with low compared with high cognitive load was associated with a greater reduction of reaction time and increase in accuracy on the Affective Stroop task. This was accompanied by a decrease in lateral oxygenation difference on trials with low inhibitory control demands. Acute exercise with low compared with high cognitive demand benefits the ability to resolve emotional conflict, but the control over inhibition of nonemotional information remains unaffected. This effect of cognitive load is complemented by an increased efficiency of the left prefrontal cortex, when no emotional conflict resolution is required.

This study examines a specific effect of hostile intent attribution within intergroup relationships. Based on our application of integrated threat theory, we hypothesised that different types of symbolic and realistic threats had a mediating effect on relations between basic human values (traditionalism and universalism) and hostile intent attribution. We conducted a survey among two university population samples of Chinese and Japanese respondents. The results for our first sample of Chinese undergraduate students (N = 201) revealed that both traditionalism and universalism predicted hostile intent attribution and that these relations were fully mediated by symbolic threats, but not by realistic threats. However, the results for the second sample of Japanese undergraduate students (N = 256) differed, indicating that traditionalism, but not universalism, predicted hostile intent attribution, and that this relation was fully mediated by both symbolic and realistic threats. In conclusion, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Individual differences in decisiveness: ERP correlates of response inhibition and error monitoring.

Dysfunctional response preparation and inhibition during a visual Go/Nogo task in children with two subtypes of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

Background: Nicotine withdrawal produces increased craving for cigarettes and deficits in response inhibition, and these withdrawal symptoms are predictive of relapse. Although it is well established that these symptoms emerge early during abstinence, there is mixed evidence regarding whether they occur simultaneously. Given the importance of the early withdrawal period, this study examined craving and response inhibition at 24 h and 72 h abstinence. Methods: Twenty-one non-treatment seeking adult smokers were evaluated at baseline, 24 h, and 72 h abstinence for craving (Questionnaire on Smoking Urges – Brief) and response inhibition (Stop Signal Task, Stroop Task, Continuous Performance Task). Generalised linear regression models were used for primary outcomes, and Pearson correlations for examining the association between craving and response inhibition. Results: Factor 2 craving (anticipated relief of negative affect) increased from baseline to 24 h abstinent (p = 0.004), which subsided by 72 h (p = 0.08). Deficits in response inhibition measured by the Stop Signal Task were observed at 72 h (p = 0.046), but not 24 h (p = 0.318). No correlation was found between response inhibition and craving at any time point (p values>0.19), except between the Stroop Task and the factor 1 craving at baseline (p = 0.025). Conclusions: Factor 2 craving peaked at 24 h, whereas deficits in response inhibition did not emerge until 72 h, indicating that need to target craving and cognitive function during early abstinence may not occur simultaneously. Further characterizing the time course of withdrawal symptoms may guide development of targeted treatments for smoking cessation.

Oculomotor Anomalies in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Evidence for Deficits in Response Preparation and Inhibition

Neuropsychological correlates of psychopathic traits in a non-incarcerated sample