Processing Biases Research Articles

Categorization processes in emotion expression recognition: The roles of language and essentialism.

We examined categorical processing biases in the perception and recognition of facial expressions of emotion across two studies. In both studies, participants first learned to discriminate between two ambiguous facial expressions of emotion selected from the middle of a continuous array of blended expressions (i.e., an array created from morphing images of two facial expressions together, with still images selected in equidistant increments). Participants were then asked to recognize the specific expressions they were trained to discriminate. In Study 1, target expressions labeled with emotion words (e.g., more angry face) during discrimination and recognition tasks were misremembered as more perceptually distinct from one another and therefore more perceptually similar to the stereotypical expression for their labeled emotion category than they were in reality. Critically, in Study 2, these recognition biases were significantly reduced or absent in conditions where the target expressions were not labeled with emotion words (e.g., Face A), demonstrating the role of emotion words in promoting categorical processing biases in emotion recognition. Moreover, in the absence of emotion labels, peoples' beliefs about the nature of emotion categories were related to the extent to which they employed categorical processing during emotion perception and recognition. Specifically, people with more essentialist beliefs about emotion categories-believing emotion categories are more innate, biologically-based, and immutable-exhibited more pronounced categorical processing biases during emotion recognition. Findings shed light on the critical role of language and cognition in constructing emotion and add to empirical findings on categorical processing in emotion perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Mechanisms of action of antidepressive pharmacotherapy: brain and mind-body and environment

Novel antidepressive substances are challenging the explanations for the mechanisms of action of traditional psychopharmacology. What could be the shared effects of various antidepressants and in this context what role do extrapharmacological factors, such as the body and environment, play? The available literature on clinical and preclinical data for assumed combined active factors of serotonergic psychedelic drugs, (es)ketamine, monoaminergic antidepressants and zuranolone are presented and the influence of context factors on the individual mechanisms of action is discussed. There are many indications that classical and novel pharmacological approaches could share similar mechanisms of action in the treatment of depression. These mechanisms favor long-term neuroplasticity, which can trigger subsequent molecular cascades and vice versa. Furthermore, an improvement in the negative bias in emotional processing could be detected for most antidepressive substances. The influence of extrapharmacological factors appears to be necessary so that the biopsychological alterations can have an antidepressive effect. Instead of attributing factors such as environment, body and social interaction to placebo effects, they should be tested as essential components of the antidepressive effect and considered in the clinical practice.

Benchmark of Data Integration in Single-Cell Proteomics.

Single-cell proteomics (SCP) detected based on different technologies always involves batch-specific variations because of differences in sample processing and other potential biases. How to integrate SCP data effectively has become a great challenge. Integration of SCP data not only requires the conservation of true biological variances, but also realizes the removal of unwanted batch effects. In this study, benchmarking analysis of popular data integration methods was conducted to determine the most suitable method for SCP data. To comprehensively evaluate the performance of these integration methods, a novel evaluation system was proposed for integrating SCP data. This evaluation system consists of three objective measures from different perspectives: category (a), the efficacy of correcting batch effects; category (b), the power of conserving biological variances; and category (c), the ability to identify consistent markers. For this comprehensive evaluation, five benchmark data sets under different scenarios (containing substantial proteins, substantial cells, multiple batches, multiple cell types, and unbalanced data) were utilized for selecting the most suitable data integration method. As a result, three methods, ComBat, Scanorama, and Seurat version 3 CCA, were identified as the most recommended methods for integrating SCP data. Overall, this systematic evaluation might provide valuable guidance in choosing the appropriate method for data integration in the SCP.

Neural Sensitivity to Ambiguous Social Exclusion Reflects Information Processing Bias in Midadolescents With Higher Levels of Aggression.

Aggression is commonly associated with increased experiences of peer rejection and maladaptive social information processing biases throughout development. Little is known about the neural correlates of peer rejection that might underlie social information processing biases, and whether these neural correlates are common or different across early- and mid-adolescents on a continuum of aggression. Using the Cyberball task, we examined mediofrontal theta (4-7Hz) event-related EEG spectral power during conditions of explicit and ambiguous social exclusion in 117 participants (57 early adolescents, ages 10-12 years, and 60 mid-adolescents, ages 14-16 years). Participants with at least 10 artifact-free trials per condition were included in further EEG analysis. In total, 95 participants (42 early adolescents, 53 mid-adolescents) were included for further analyses of EEG spectral theta power. Results examining moderation effects between aggression level and age groups showed that mid-adolescents, but not early adolescents, with higher levels of aggression displayed enhanced theta power during the early processing (200-400ms) of ambiguous ("not my turn") exclusion events. The pattern of heightened neural sensitivity to ambiguous exclusion events reflects early detection and inclusion monitoring which might facilitate processing biases that are more prominent among mid-adolescents with higher levels of aggression.

Fabrication-aware inverse design with shape optimization for photonic integrated circuits

Inverse design (ID) is a computational method that systematically explores a design space to find optimal device geometries based on specific performance criteria. In silicon photonics, ID often generates design features that degrade significantly due to the fabrication process, limiting the applicability of these devices in scalable fabrication. We demonstrate a solution to this performance degradation through fabrication-aware inverse design (FAID), integrating lithography models for deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography and electron-beam lithography (EBL) into the shape optimization approach of ID. A Y-branch and a subwavelength grating (SWG)-to-strip converter were generated and fabricated with this new, to the best of our knowledge, approach. Simulation and measurement results verify that FAID yields devices with up to 0.7 dB lower insertion loss per device. The modified workflow enables designers to use ID to generate devices that adjust for process bias predicted by lithography models.

Disentangling the perceptual underpinnings of autism: Evidence from a face aftereffects experiment.

Existing literature has documented diminished norm-based adaptation (aftereffects) across several perceptual domains in autism. However, the exact underlying mechanisms, such as sensory dominance possibly caused by imprecise priors and/or increased sensory precision, remain elusive. The "Bayesian brain" framework offers refined methods to investigate these mechanisms. This study utilized both model-free (frequentist statistics) and model-based (hierarchical Drift Diffusion Modeling) analytical approaches to compare gender face aftereffects in male adolescents with autism (n = 29) to neurotypical controls (n = 39) using a behavioral choice experiment. Contrary to our initial hypotheses, our analyses did not find support for imprecise priors or increased sensory precision within the autistic group. Instead, we observed generally decreased drift rates towards male but not female stimuli in the autistic group. Thus, our findings suggest a lack of own-gender bias in face processing among the autistic participants. These findings align with more recent behavioral and neurophysiological research observing intact priors in individuals with autism, suggesting that other mechanisms may better explain the perceptual challenges in autism. Our study contributes to the ongoing discourse on perceptual processing in autism, emphasizing the necessity for more nuanced analytical approaches in order to unravel the complexity of this condition.

Spatial numerical bias in acute vestibular neuritis.

Number magnitude is often represented spatially in the mind by a mental number line, on which small numbers are located to the left of space and large numbers to the right. As vestibular dysfunction can affect aspects of spatial cognition, we wondered whether patients with acute vestibular loss would show a directional bias along the mental number line. We gave 18 patients with vestibular neuritis (VN) (eight left VN, ten right; mean age 54years, range 31-75years; four females) and 15 normal age- and education-matched controls (mean age 47years, range 26-75years; 11 females) a mental number bisection task. The patients with left VN underestimated the middle number (mean sum of signed errors -3.3, SE 1.5), while patients with right VN overestimated it (mean 1.9, SE 0.7). The direction of effect aligned with the direction of slow phase velocity. The results for the normal controls fell in between the two patient groups, and represented an underestimate of the middle number (mean -1.5, SE 0.8). In the patients, the effect was greater without visual fixation and in the acute stage compared to 1 or 2weeks later. The error rates were similar across all groups and conditions. Our results show that acute vestibular loss produces a temporary directional bias in numerical processing that is only present in the absence of visual cues. The effect is similar to that seen in patients with visuospatial neglect.

Attention modulates human visual responses to objects by tuning sharpening

Visual stimuli compete with each other for cortical processing and attention biases this competition in favor of the attended stimulus. How does the relationship between the stimuli affect the strength of this attentional bias? Here, we used functional MRI to explore the effect of target-distractor similarity in neural representation on attentional modulation in the human visual cortex using univariate and multivariate pattern analyses. Using stimuli from four object categories (human bodies, cats, cars, and houses), we investigated attentional effects in the primary visual area V1, the object-selective regions LO and pFs, the body-selective region EBA, and the scene-selective region PPA. We demonstrated that the strength of the attentional bias toward the target is not fixed but decreases with increasing target-distractor similarity. Simulations provided evidence that this result pattern is explained by tuning sharpening rather than an increase in gain. Our findings provide a mechanistic explanation for the behavioral effects of target-distractor similarity on attentional biases and suggest tuning sharpening as the underlying mechanism in object-based attention.

Attention modulates human visual responses to objects by tuning sharpening.

Visual stimuli compete with each other for cortical processing and attention biases this competition in favor of the attended stimulus. How does the relationship between the stimuli affect the strength of this attentional bias? Here, we used functional MRI to explore the effect of target-distractor similarity in neural representation on attentional modulation in the human visual cortex using univariate and multivariate pattern analyses. Using stimuli from four object categories (human bodies, cats, cars, and houses), we investigated attentional effects in the primary visual area V1, the object-selective regions LO and pFs, the body-selective region EBA, and the scene-selective region PPA. We demonstrated that the strength of the attentional bias toward the target is not fixed but decreases with increasing target-distractor similarity. Simulations provided evidence that this result pattern is explained by tuning sharpening rather than an increase in gain. Our findings provide a mechanistic explanation for the behavioral effects of target-distractor similarity on attentional biases and suggest tuning sharpening as the underlying mechanism in object-based attention.

Associations between attentional biases for emotional images and rumination in depression

ABSTRACT Rumination is a key feature of depression and contributes to its onset, maintenance, and recurrence. Researchers have proposed that biases in the attentional processing of emotional information may underlie rumination, and particularly, the brooding component. This investigation evaluated associations between attentional biases for emotional images and rumination, including both brooding and reflection, in currently and never depressed participants. In two separate studies, participants viewed sets of four emotional images (happy, sad, threatening, and neutral) for 8 s in a free-viewing eye-tracking paradigm. In both studies, currently depressed individuals attended to happy face images and happy naturalistic images significantly less than never depressed individuals. In Study 2, currently depressed individuals attended to sad naturalistic images significantly more than never depressed individuals. There were no statistically significant associations between attentional biases and any of the forms of rumination, independent of their shared relationship with depression symptoms. These findings call into question the robustness of the link between attentional biases and rumination.

Expressions of Interest: Exploring Cognitive Biases in Facial Emotion Processing in Loneliness

Expressions of Interest: Exploring Cognitive Biases in Facial Emotion Processing in Loneliness

Computational modeling of social evaluative decision-making elucidates individual differences in adolescent anxiety.

Adolescents experience significant developmental changes during a time of heightened sensitivity to social cues, particularly rejection by peers, which can be especially overwhelming for those with elevated levels of social anxiety. Social evaluative decision-making tasks have been useful in uncovering the neural correlates of information processing biases; however, linking youths' task-based performance to individual differences in psychopathology (e.g., anxiety symptoms) has proven more elusive. Here, we address this weakness with drift diffusion modeling to decompose youths' performance on the social judgment paradigm (SJP) to determine if this approach is useful in discovering individual differences in anxiety symptoms, as well as puberty, age, and sex. A sample of 103 adolescents (55 males, Mage = 14.49, SD = 1.69) completed the SJP and self-report measures of anxiety, as well as self- and parent-reported measures of puberty. The decision threshold parameter, reflecting the amount of evidence needed to make a social evaluative decision, predicted youth self-reported anxiety, above and beyond typical metrics of SJP performance. Our results highlight the potential advantage of parsing task performance according to the underlying cognitive processes. Future research would likely benefit from applying computational modeling approaches to social judgment tasks when attempting to uncover performance-based individual differences in psychopathology.

Making the Grade: Policy Design and Effects of Information about Government Performance

AbstractIncreasingly, governments report on public service quality, which has the potential to inform evaluations of performance that underlie voters’ opinions and behaviors. We argue these policies have important effects that go beyond informing voters. Specifically, we contend that the format in which policymakers choose to report information will steer the direction of opinion by exacerbating or mitigating biases in information processing. Using the case of school accountability systems in the United States and a variety of experimental and observational approaches, we find that letter grade systems for rating public school performance, as opposed to other reporting formats, exacerbate negativity bias. Public opinion proves more responsive to negative information than to positive information in letter grade systems than in alternate formats. Policymakers, then, do not simply inform public opinion; rather, their decisions about how to present information shape the interpretations that voters ultimately draw from the information provided.

Gender Bias in Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision: A Comparative Survey

Taking an interdisciplinary approach to surveying issues around gender bias in textual and visual AI, we present literature on gender bias detection and mitigation in NLP, CV, as well as combined visual-linguistic models. We identify conceptual parallels between these strands of research as well as how methodologies were adapted cross-disciplinary from NLP to CV. We also find that there is a growing awareness for theoretical frameworks from the social sciences around gender in NLP that could be beneficial for aligning bias analytics in CV with human values and conceptualising gender beyond the binary categories of male/female.

Do foster youth face harsher juvenile justice outcomes? Reinvestigating child welfare bias in juvenile justice processing

Do foster youth face harsher juvenile justice outcomes? Reinvestigating child welfare bias in juvenile justice processing

Anticipatory processing increases attentional biases to disgust faces in socially anxious individuals: Evidence from the N2pc and CDA

Attentional biases to socially threatening facial expressions (anger, disgust) have been repeatedly observed in socially anxious individuals. These biases are thought to arise, in part, because anticipatory processing of social situations increases the salience of negative social cues. Additionally, self-focused attention on somatic symptoms of anxiety (e.g., heart rate) is thought to interfere with attentional bias. The goal of this study was to examine how anticipatory processing and self-focused attention affect attentional biases as reflected by reliable, temporally precise event-related potentials (ERPs), namely the N2pc and contralateral delay activity (CDA), which index selective attention and working memory maintenance, respectively. One-hundred forty undergraduate students at two collaborating universities completed a mentation task in which they were randomly assigned to engage in prompt-guided anticipatory processing or neutral distraction after being told that they would be evaluated during a social interaction with a researcher at the end of the study. Participants then completed a dot-probe task with disgust/neutral face pairs. To manipulate self-focused attention, the fixation cross was randomly rotated between (+) or (×), and participants were told that one of these indicated an increase in their heart rate. Probes appeared 800 ms after face stimulus offset so that the CDA could be measured. N2pc and CDA amplitude were larger in the anticipatory processing condition compared to distraction for socially anxious individuals, and this effect remained when controlling for depression. There was no effect involving self-focused attention. The results support anticipatory processing as an important process that affects attentional bias in socially anxious individuals.

Temporal mechanisms underlying visual processing bias in peri-hand space.

The immediate space surrounding the hands has often been termed the peri-hand space (PHS), and is characterized by a smaller reaction time (RT), better detection, and enhanced accuracy for stimuli presented in this space, relative to those stimuli presented beyond this space. Such behavioral changes have been explained in terms of a biased allocation of cognitive resources such as perception, attention, and memory, for the efficient processing of information presented in the PHS. However, in two experiments, the current study shows that these cognitive biases seem to have an underlying temporal basis. The first experiment requires participants to perform a temporal bisection task, whereas the second experiment requires them to perform a verbal estimation task when stimuli are presented either near the hands or relatively far. Results from both experiments give evidence for slowing down of temporal mechanisms in the PHS - reflected in the form of temporal dilation for stimuli presented in the PHS relative to those presented further away. The slowing down of time in the PHS seems crucial in giving sufficient temporal allowance for the allocation of cognitive resources to prioritize the processing of information in the PHS. The findings are in line with the early anticipatory mechanisms associated with the PHS and seem to be driven by the switch/gate mechanism, and not the pacemaker component of the attentional gate model of time perception. Thus, the current study tries to integrate the theories of time perception with the peripersonal space literature.

Cognitive processing biases of social anxiety in adults who do and do not stutter

PurposeAdults who stutter are at risk of developing high levels of social anxiety, leading to negative outcomes and contributing towards stuttering relapse post treatment. To ensure that psychological treatments for social anxiety in stuttering adults are relevant and effective, a broader empirical understanding of the mechanisms of social anxiety in stuttering populations is required. Four key cognitive processing biases identified as maintenance factors in cognitive behavioral models of social anxiety were examined: self-focused attention, safety behavior use, negative self-imagery, and interpretation bias. MethodsAdults who stutter and non-stuttering adults (N = 186) were assessed via an online survey. Participants were categorised into two groups based on stuttering: formally diagnosed stuttering and non-stuttering. Within those groups, participants were further categorised as having low or high levels of social anxiety. Cognitive processing bias was assessed in response to two hypothetical social scenarios (i.e., social interaction and social performance). ResultsAs predicted, in both adults who stutter and who are non-stuttering, high social anxiety was related to greater self-focused attention, safety behavior use and negative self-imagery compared to low social anxiety. No significant effect of social anxiety or stuttering was found in relation to interpretation bias. A significant effect of social anxiety upon negative self-imagery was observed in formally-diagnosed adults who stutter compared to non-stuttering adults. ConclusionThe results support the use of cognitive behavioral models of social anxiety as a framework for research and treatment development within stuttering populations.

Fathers' rejection sensitivity: Links with fathers' and children's social information processing

AbstractObjectiveJoining efforts to reveal how fathers affect their children's social competence, we examined whether fathers' rejection sensitivity was associated with biases in their children's social information processing. We also explored whether this link was indirect via biases in fathers' social information processing of their children's peer interactions and, in particular, fathers' behavioral responses.BackgroundChildren's social information processing biases predict their social competence and well‐being. Studies have explored how mothers' rejection sensitivity may impact children's social information processing. Yet, little is known about the role of fathers in this context.MethodParticipants were 85 fathers living in Israel (68.24% Jewish; 31.76% Arab) and their kindergarten children (55.29% female; MChild age in months = 68.70, SD = 5.59). Fathers completed the Adult Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire and reported their attributions, emotions, and likely behaviors in ambiguous hypothetical scenarios that might suggest a rejection of their child by peers using the Peer Rejection Scenarios measure. Children were interviewed using the Social Information Processing Interview–Preschool Version, tapping hypothetical peer interactions.ResultsFathers' rejection sensitivity was indirectly related to children's generation of maladaptive responses to ambiguous peer interactions through fathers' reports of their more negative emotions and overinvolved behavioral responses.ConclusionResults underscore the role of fathers' rejection sensitivity and emotional and behavioral responses in children's social information processing.ImplicationsThe study points to the need to consider paternal rejection sensitivity in research and interventions focused on promoting children's social competence.

Trustworthy Social Bias Measurement

How do we design measures of social bias that we trust? While prior work has introduced several measures, no measure has gained widespread trust: instead, mounting evidence argues we should distrust these measures. In this work, we design bias measures that warrant trust based on the cross-disciplinary theory of measurement modeling. To combat the frequently fuzzy treatment of social bias in natural language processing, we explicitly define social bias, grounded in principles drawn from social science research. We operationalize our definition by proposing a general bias measurement framework DivDist, which we use to instantiate 5 concrete bias measures. To validate our measures, we propose a rigorous testing protocol with 8 testing criteria (e.g. predictive validity: do measures predict biases in US employment?). Through our testing, we demonstrate considerable evidence to trust our measures, showing they overcome conceptual, technical, and empirical deficiencies present in prior measures.