Perspective-taking accessibility informs prosocial judgments in sacrificial scenarios: Evidence across cognitive priming tasks.

Background: Mental fatigue can impair sport, exercise and cognitive performance. Warmup activities can improve performance when the individual is rested. However, their effectiveness when the individual is fatigued has yet to be established. The research objectives were to evaluate the effects of physical and combined physical plus cognitive warmup activities on subsequent sport, exercise, and cognitive performance when rested and fatigued by sleep restriction in athletes (Study 1) and older adults (Study 2). Methods: In Study 1, 31 padel players completed a padel performance test and Stroop task after physical and combined warmups when rested and fatigued by sleep deprivation. In Study 2, 32 older adults completed sit-stand, arm curl, walking, Stroop, and psychomotor vigilance tests after no warmup, physical warmup, and combined warmup when rested and fatigued by sleep deprivation. In both studies, combined warmups intermixed short-, medium-, or long-duration cognitive tasks between physical warmup activities. Mental fatigue was measured using visual analog scale ratings. Results: In both studies, sleep deprivation increased mental fatigue and impaired performance. In Study 1, relative to a physical warmup, padel and Stroop performance were improved by combined warmups (with short-to-medium cognitive tasks) when rested and fatigued. In Study 2, relative to no warmup, sit-stand, arm curl, walking, Stroop, and reaction time performance were improved by physical and combined warmups (with short-to-medium cognitive tasks) when rested and fatigued. Conclusions: The negative effects of sleep deprivation on sport, exercise, and cognitive performance were best mitigated by combined warmups with short-to-medium cognitive tasks. Combined warmups are effective countermeasures against the deleterious effects of mental fatigue on performance.

This research follows from the “rape proclivity” literature to evaluate whether proclivity actually predicts sexual coercion. One hundred forty-two heterosexual males attending a Canadian university participated. Participants completed the sexual coercion proclivity questionnaire packet to determine high or low sexual coercion proclivity, and were randomly assigned to complete either an innocuous or a sexually aggressive cognitive priming task. Sexual coercion was operationalized by having men read increasingly graphic sexual material to an increasingly uncomfortable confederate. Regardless of condition, high sexual coercion proclivity males were more likely to engage in sexual coercion than low sexual coercion proclivity males. When the effects of discomfort were controlled, a significant interaction emerged between sexual coercion proclivity and the priming condition on sexual coercion. Although engaging in significantly less sexual coercion than the high sexual coercion proclivity males when assigned to the innocuous cognitive priming task, the low sexual coercion proclivity males assigned to the sexually aggressive cognitive priming task were indistinguishable from the high sexual coercion proclivity group. The nature of this relationship differed for Caucasian and Chinese men. These findings suggest that even those not previously inclined toward sexual coercion can do so under opportunistic circumstances, following an increase in discomfort associated with exposure to and involvement with sexually aggressive material. The prevention implications associated with this are discussed.

Using a brief mindfulness strategy to reduce chocolate consumption. An exploration of effects and mediators

In this paper, we explore the role of cognition in bilingual syntactic processing by employing a structural priming paradigm. A group of Norwegian-English bilingual children and an age-matched group of Norwegian monolingual children were tested in a priming task that included both a within-language and a between-language priming condition. Results show that the priming effect between-language was not significantly smaller than the effect within-language. We argue that this is because language control mechanisms do not affect the access to the shared grammar. In addition, we investigate the interaction between the children’s performance in the priming task and in a non-linguistic cognitive task and find that the two measures are not correlated; however, we find a correlation between the cognitive task and language control, which we measured by counting the number of trials produced in the non-target language. Our findings suggest that language control and domain-general executive control overlap only partially.

Behavioural and ERP correlates of bilingual language control and general-purpose inhibitory control predicted by L1 and L2 proficiency

Analysis of the pattern of altered cognition observed in schizophrenia provides better insight into neurocognitive deficits. It reveals a potential novel target for schizophrenia research. To understand this target we reviewed the findings of neuroimaging studies on implicit [nonconscious] memory. These studies have consistently reported attenuated activity in the area V3A of the extrastriate cortex during retrieval of studied items. It was suggested that the attenuation limits the pool of information available for further cognitive processing. Therefore, if V3A is functionally damaged, individuals will have access to a larger pool of information for cognitive processing. Since cognitive tasks that are not dependent on attention [attention independent] process a larger pool of information more efficiently, performance in these tasks is likely to improve after V3A is damaged. Conversely, tasks that are dependent on attentional resources are more efficient in processing smaller pool of information. Performance in these tasks therefore is expected to deteriorate if a large pool of information is made available following V3A damage. A review of cognitive performance in schizophrenia suggests that patients perform at above normal level in attention independent priming tasks and perform at subnormal level in attention dependent episodic and working memory tasks. These findings indicate possible impairment of V3A activity. It could therefore be a potentially important unstudied target for schizophrenia research, particularly because a number of investigators have reported that the activity in this area is altered in schizophrenia.

Automatic and strategic processes in semantic priming can be investigated with masked and unmasked priming tasks. Unmasked priming is thought to enable strategic processes due to the conscious processing of primes, while masked priming exclusively depends on automatic processes due to the invisibility of the prime. Besides task properties, interindividual differences may alter priming effects. In a recent study, masked and unmasked priming based on mean response time (RT) and error rate (ER) differed as a function of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism (Sanwald et al., 2020). The BDNF Val66Met polymorphism is related to the integrity of several cognitive executive functions and might thus influence the magnitude of priming. In the present study, we reanalyzed this data with drift-diffusion models. Drift-diffusion models conjointly analyze single trial RT and ER data and serve as a framework to elucidate cognitive processes underlying priming. Masked and unmasked priming effects were observed for the drift rates ν, presumably reflecting semantic preactivation. Priming effects on nondecision time t0 were especially pronounced in unmasked priming, suggesting additional conscious processes to be involved in the t0 modulation. Priming effects on the decision thresholds a may reflect a speed-accuracy tradeoff. Considering the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism, we found lowered drift rates and decision thresholds for Met allele carriers, possibly reflecting a superficial processing style in Met allele carriers. The present study shows that differences in cognitive tasks between genetic groups can be elucidated using drift-diffusion modeling.

Does inhibitory control spill over to eating behaviors? Two preregistered studies of inhibitory spillover effects on food intake and reactions to food stimuli

A hierarchical dynamical map is proposed as the basic framework for sensory cortical mapping. To show how the hierarchical dynamical map works in cognitive processes, we applied it to a typical cognitive task known as priming, in which cognitive performance is facilitated as a consequence of prior experience. Prior to the priming task, the network memorizes a sensory scene containing multiple objects presented simultaneously using a hierarchical dynamical map. Each object is composed of different sensory features. The hierarchical dynamical map presented here is formed by random itinerancy among limit-cycle attractors into which these objects are encoded. Each limit-cycle attractor contains multiple point attractors into which elemental features belonging to the same object are encoded. When a feature stimulus is presented as a priming cue, the network state is changed from the itinerant state to a limit-cycle attractor relevant to the priming cue. After a short priming period, the network state reverts to the itinerant state. Under application of the test cue, consisting of some feature belonging to the object relevant to the priming cue and fragments of features belonging to others, the network state is changed to a limit-cycle attractor and finally to a point attractor relevant to the target feature. This process is considered as the identification of the target. The model consistently reproduces various observed results for priming processes such as the difference in identification time between cross-modality and within-modality priming tasks, the effect of interval between priming cue and test cue on identification time, the effect of priming duration on the time, and the effect of repetition of the same priming task on neural activity.

Social anhedonia associated with poor evaluative processing but not with poor cognitive control

Biases in attention, interpretation, memory, and associations in children with varying levels of spider fear: Inter-relations and prediction of behavior

The current studies examine mechanisms that may account for why evaluations made by participants involved in conversations are more influenced by subliminal negative cues than are evaluations made by observers. In Study 1 a subliminal priming task was used to induce a positive, a negative, or no affective response toward a confederate. Participants under either a low or high cognitive load (CL) then evaluated a confederate engaged in a conversation. Evaluations made by high CL participants were most affected by the negative subliminal prime. In Study 2 an alternative CL induction was used and, in addition, we also induced self-presentation (SP) concerns. High SP participants rated confederates more positively, however, SP did not interact with priming. High CL participants again were most affected by the negative subliminal prime. Yet another CL induction was used in Study 3. The results of Study 3 replicate findings from Study 2. Results suggest that people are more susceptible to nonconscious processes when they are cognitively busy, nonconscious negative affect produces stronger effects than positive affect, and the effects of negative nonconscious affect on evaluations of conversations is dependent on the type of cognitive load task.

Semantic and affective priming are classic effects observed in cognitive and social psychology, respectively. The authors discovered that affect regulates such priming effects. In Experiment 1, positive and negative moods were induced before one of three priming tasks; evaluation, categorization, or lexical decision. As predicted, positive affect led to both affective priming (evaluation task) and semantic priming (category and lexical decision tasks). However, negative affect inhibited such effects. In Experiment 2, participants in their natural affective state completed the same priming tasks as in Experiment 1. As expected, affective priming (evaluation task) and category priming (categorization and lexical decision tasks) were observed in such resting affective states. Hence, the authors conclude that negative affect inhibits semantic and affective priming. These results support recent theoretical models, which suggest that positive affect promotes associations among strong and weak concepts, and that negative affect impairs such associations (Clore & Storbeck, 2006; Kuhl, 2000).

The effects of total sleep deprivation on semantic priming: Event-related potential evidence for automatic and controlled processing strategies

How are biases encoded in our representations of social categories? Philosophical and empirical discussions of implicit bias overwhelmingly focus onsalientorstatistical associationsbetween target features and representations of social categories. These are the sorts of associations probed by the Implicit Association Test and various priming tasks. In this paper, we argue that these discussions systematically overlook an alternative way in which biases are encoded, that is, in thedependency networksthat are part of our representations of social categories. Dependency networks encode information about how features in a conceptual representation depend on each other. This information determines the degree of centrality of a feature for a conceptual representation. Importantly, centrally encoded biases systematically disassociate from those encoded in salient‐statistical associations. Furthermore, the degree of centrality of a feature determines its cross‐contextual stability: in general, the more central a feature is for a concept, the more likely it is to survive into a wide array of cognitive tasks involving that concept. Accordingly, implicit biases that are encoded in the central features of concepts are predicted to be more resilient across different tasks and contexts. As a result, the distinction between centrally encoded and salient‐statistical biases has important theoretical and practical implications.