Disconfirmatory Evidence Research Articles

Inflexibility in Reasoning: Comparisons of Cognitive Flexibility, Explanatory Flexibility, and Belief Flexibility Between Schizophrenia and Major Depressive Disorder.

Introduction: Inflexibility in reasoning has been suggested to contribute to psychiatric disorders, such as explanatory flexibility in depression and belief flexibility in schizophrenia. However, studies tended to examine only one of the flexibility constructs, which could be related to each other, within a single group of patients. As enhancing flexibility in thinking has become one of the psychological treatment goals across disorders, this study aimed to examine three constructs of flexibility (cognitive flexibility, explanatory flexibility, and belief flexibility) in two psychiatric groups.Methods: We compared three groups of participants: (i) 56 outpatients with a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder and active delusions, (ii) 57 outpatients with major depressive disorder and at least a moderate level of depression, and (iii) 30 healthy controls. Participants were assessed on symptom severity and flexibility, using the Trail-Making Task, the Attributional Style Questionnaire, the Maudsley Assessment of Delusions Scale (MADS) and the Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence (BADE) Task.Results: Cognitive flexibility was reduced in the two clinical groups compared to controls. Explanatory flexibility was comparable across groups. The three groups differed in belief flexibility measured by MADS but not by the BADE task. Response to hypothetical contradiction was reduced in the delusion group than the other two groups, and the ability to generate alternative explanations was reduced in the delusion group than healthy controls.Discussion: We found an effect of diagnosis on cognitive flexibility, which might be confounded by differences in intellectual functioning. Reduced belief flexibility tended to be specific to delusions.

Conspiracy-Beliefs and Receptivity to Disconfirmatory Information: A Study Using the BADE Task

Conspiracy theory (CT) beliefs are thought to be related to a number of individual differences that make certain individuals more prone to this style of reasoning. In this study, we investigate (a) the relationship between CT beliefs and a standardized measure of judgment (the Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence task or BADE) and (b) the extent to which BADE scores are related to specific measures of psychopathology, including schizotypy and delusion-proneness, as measured by the Peters et al.’s Delusions Inventory. The BADE is an evidence integration bias and captures the extent to which individuals display a reduced willingness to integrate disconfirmatory evidence. A total of 358 individuals recruited from an online panel completed standardized measures of CT beliefs, measures of psychopathology, and a standardized BADE task. The results showed that CT-prone individuals showed a stronger BADE effect (i.e., biases against confirmatory and disconfirmatory evidence and a stronger liberal acceptance of absurd statements) and overall poorer evidence integration. Our results suggest that a reduced tendency to revise beliefs in the face of disconfirmatory evidence may contribute to the maintenance of CT beliefs, despite the availability of extensive counter-evidence.

Tribes and Temperament: Two Underappreciated Determinants of Market Actor Behavior, Motivations and Beliefs

This chapter, written for a volume on Hidden Fallacies in Corporate Law and Financial Regulation, argues that markets and market actors can be better understood by taking into account some neglected determinants of behavior, motivations and beliefs -- and ultimately, by embracing an expanded view of rationality. The neglected determinants are tribes, by which I mean communities with their own norms, rituals, and institutions, and temperament, which I use in its colloquial sense. Deal makers, for instance, can be said to have a community, with norms as to, among other things, ‘what’s market.” Knowing and abiding by the norms conveys information about a person’s willingness and ability to function as a member of the community. The community anoints certain experts who pass muster as experts for purposes of community judgments. Interestingly, the status as anointed expert can be sticky notwithstanding significant disconfirming evidence, as demonstrated by the continuing high market shares of the major rating agencies. Temperament figures in when a less confident investor, even a “sophisticated” institutional investor, rushes to buy “a hot new issue” because it is hot, notwithstanding ample cautionary disclosure. Temperament also figures in when a banker designs a financial instrument or sales strategy that honors the letter of the law while arguably violating its spirit. The chapter discusses temperament on two different dimensions: greater or lesser degrees of confidence in one’s own judgments, including, at the extremes, the least confident and the contrarians, and “regulatory focus,” a concept developed by psychologist and business school professor Tory Higgins, which distinguishes “prevention” focus (more vigilant, hate to lose) from “promotion” focus (less vigilant, love to win). My arguments succeed, or not, by persuasion rather than proof – it’s not clear what proof would look like in any event. Certainly, the personality types I describe are well-known, in the literature and in real life, as are, at some level of generality, the social dynamics I describe, such as herding, and the existence of market communities, broadly construed, that have norms, rituals and institutions. My burden is more to show that taking tribes and temperament into account in analyses of market behavior is feasible and desirable, and that not doing so unnecessarily sacrifices realism. Since around the mid-‘90s, there has been a push to make economics, and law and economics, more realistic. Exploring the neglect of tribes and temperament and how this could be remedied can be an effective means of doing so: rather than characterizing ways in which people are less rational than law and economics assumes them to be, law and economics can instead reconceive what rationality requires. The re-conception of rationality should, in my view, be radical as to economics’ ontology but not as to its conceptual toolbox. Underlying the standard economics worldview is a metaphorical or perhaps literal acceptance of the credo ‘survival of the fittest.’ But an alternative view, advanced by philosopher Daniel Milo, ‘survival of the good enough,’ seems far more plausible. Without the specter of extinction, many more courses of action become viable. Of course, if we try to fully capture the nuances, we will lose all possibility of a tractable theory. But we can do far better than we do now, by taking into account three things: that we live in a world of uncertainty (“unknown unknowns”), not just risk; that our cognitive capacity is limited; and that how people react to uncertainty and cognitive limitations turns on who they are and how they view themselves.

The role of the cognitive biases along the psychosis continuum: from pathophysiology to treatment options

Schizophrenia and related psychoses is primarily characterized by positive and negative symptoms, as well as cognitive disturbances. Cognitive factors crucial in the pathogenesis of psychosis are specifically studied in terms of cognitive biases that may play a role in the formation and maintenance of psychotic symptoms. Cognitive biases refer to systematic errors in both cognitive processing and content that deviate from logical thinking. Cognitive biases can affect attention, decision-making/reasoning, memory recall, motivation or even attributional style. Psychotic-like experiences and psychotic disorders have been associated with a tendency to jump to conclusions, bias against disconfirmatory evidence and bias against confirmatory evidence as well as liberal acceptance bias. Moreover, patients with schizophrenia tend to present higher belief inflexibility in comparison to healthy individuals and are overconfident in wrong judgments. In the monitoring tasks showing they show a higher tendency to misattribute internally-generated stimuli to external sources (externalizing bias) (1). Finally, patients with schizophrenia tend to have excessive attention toward irrelevant, neutral or familiar stimuli known as the salience aberrant bias. There are several specific psychological interventions designed to ameliorate cognitive biases, such as Metacognitive Training (2,3), Thinking Well (4), Social Cognition and Interaction Training (5). These trainings have been shown to teach patients about cognitive biases and how they contribute to symptoms of psychosis and consequently how they can affect their daily life. There is an increasing number of studies showing results of these interventions in reducing cognitive biases and positive symptoms as well as improving clinical and cognitive insight.

The impact of confirmation bias on reasoning and visual attention during analysis in engineering design: An eye tracking study

Concepts of problem and solution space are used to describe the design process. In this paper, confirmation bias is presented as an influencing factor on the problem space. Protocol and eye tracking data are used to assess information acquisition, misinterpretation and their effect on designers. The results show that disconfirming and neutral information is misinterpreted as confirming, leading to the acceptance of false problem causes. Low visual attention is a possible cause for this. Whilst information recognized as disconfirming is usually interpreted correctly. These results suggest that designers should more often use disconfirming evidence to challenge and refine their image of the problem space.

Annals for Hospitalists - 16 June 2020.

Annals for Hospitalists - 16 June 2020.

Confidence drives a neural confirmation bias

A prominent source of polarised and entrenched beliefs is confirmation bias, where evidence against one’s position is selectively disregarded. This effect is most starkly evident when opposing parties are highly confident in their decisions. Here we combine human magnetoencephalography (MEG) with behavioural and neural modelling to identify alterations in post-decisional processing that contribute to the phenomenon of confirmation bias. We show that holding high confidence in a decision leads to a striking modulation of post-decision neural processing, such that integration of confirmatory evidence is amplified while disconfirmatory evidence processing is abolished. We conclude that confidence shapes a selective neural gating for choice-consistent information, reducing the likelihood of changes of mind on the basis of new information. A central role for confidence in shaping the fidelity of evidence accumulation indicates that metacognitive interventions may help ameliorate this pervasive cognitive bias.

S45. EFFICACY OF A 4-SESSION METACOGNITIVE TRAINING FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA, DEPRESSION, AND BELIEF FLEXIBILITY

BackgroundMetacognitive training (MCT) was developed to increase awareness of cognitive biases (Moritz & Woodward, 2007). Each of the 8 MCT modules targets a specific reasoning bias, such as bias against disconfirmatory evidence, jumping to conclusions, and attributional biases. MCT has been shown to be effective in improving delusions. However, it remains unclear to what extent specific MCT modules are effective in ameliorating the reasoning biases that they target, and whether they may also be effective for other disorders characterized by similar cognitive biases. This study aimed to compare the efficacy of a 4-week MCT on belief flexibility among patients with schizophrenia and patients with major depressive disorder (MDD).MethodsThis study adopted a single-blind randomized controlled design. Adult patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder (N = 56) and MDD (N = 57) were respectively randomized into MCT or treatment as usual (TAU, i.e. standard psychiatric care). The MCT intervention consisted of the following modules: ‘attributions’, ‘changing beliefs’, ‘to empathise’, and ‘self-esteem and mood’. Patients were assessed at pre-treatment, post-treatment, 1-month and 6-month follow-ups. Belief flexibility was measured using the Maudsley Assessment of Delusions Scale (MADS) and the Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence (BADE) task (Wessely et al, 1993; Woodward et al, 2006).ResultsAmong the 113 participants, 27 patients with schizophrenia and 29 patients with MDD attended the 4-week MCT. For the schizophrenia arm, repeated-measures ANOVA revealed significant improvements in PANSS total score (p < .001, d = 0.87) and PSYRATS delusions score (p = .001, d = 0.69) after MCT. These treatment effects sustained at 1-month follow-up (ps < .01), and improvement in delusions sustained at 6 months (ps < .05). Mixed-design ANOVAs revealed that improvements in PANSS total score (ps < .05) and PSYRATS delusions score (ps < .01) on the MCT condition were significantly greater than TAU over the corresponding timeframes. McNemar tests revealed that one of the MADS measures, reaction to hypothetical contradiction (RTHC), improved after MCT (p = .004), and sustained at 1 month (p = 0.016) and 6 months (p = 0.002). There was no change in belief flexibility across timepoints on the TAU condition. Change in RTHC following MCT was not significantly greater than TAU. Symptom changes were not predicted by any of the belief flexibility variables.For the MDD arm, repeated-measures ANOVA revealed significant improvement in Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) (p < .001, d = 1.45) after MCT, which sustained at 1-month and 6-month follow-up (ps < .01). Mixed-design ANOVAs revealed that improvements in BDI-II on the MCT condition were significantly greater than TAU over the corresponding timeframes (ps < .001). Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that evidence integration (EI) improved after MCT (d = 0.57) and sustained at 1 month (p = 0.042) and 6 months (p = 0.041). There was no change in belief flexibility across timepoints on the TAU condition. Change in EI following MCT was not significantly greater than TAU. Symptom change was not predicted by any of the belief flexibility variables.DiscussionWe found large and persistent effects of reduction in delusions and depression, following a 4-week MCT, in two clinical groups. There is preliminary evidence that belief flexibility improved following MCT, although the effects were less stable and were of smaller sizes. Further research on the relationship between belief flexibility and various psychopathologies is warranted.

T70. DUAL-PROCESS THEORY, CONFLICT PROCESSING, AND DELUSIONAL BELIEF

BackgroundIndividuals endorsing delusions exhibit multiple reasoning biases, including a bias toward lower decision thresholds, a bias toward gathering less data before forming conclusions, and a bias toward discounting evidence against one’s beliefs. Although these biases have been repeatedly associated with delusions, it remains unclear how they might arise, how they might be interrelated, and whether any of them play a causal role in forming or maintaining delusions.Progress toward answering these questions may be made by examining delusion-related reasoning biases from the perspective of dual-process theories of reasoning. Dual-process theories posit that human reasoning proceeds via two systems: an intuitive system (which is autonomous, does not require working memory) and an analytic system (which relies on working memory, supports hypothetical thought). Importantly, when the outputs of one or both systems conflict with one another, successful detection of this conflict is thought to produce additional engagement in analytic reasoning. Thus, the detection of and ensuing neurocognitive response to conflict may modulate analytic reasoning engagement.Working from this dual-process perspective, recent theories have hypothesized that more limited engagement in analytic reasoning, perhaps resulting from conflict processing deficits, may engender delusion-inspiring reasoning biases in people with schizophrenia.MethodsGiven this hypothesis, a literature review (Bronstein et al., 2019, Clinical Psychology Review, 72, 101748) was conducted to critically evaluate whether impaired conflict processing might be a primary initiating deficit in pathways relevant to the generation of delusion-relevant reasoning biases and the formation and/or maintenance of delusions themselves.ResultsResearch examined in this review suggested that in healthy people, successful conflict detection raises decision thresholds. Conflict-processing deficits in delusional individuals with schizophrenia might impair this process. Consistent with this possibility, delusional individuals with schizophrenia (vs. healthy controls) make more decisions when they perceive their favored choice to be only marginally better than alternatives. Lower decision thresholds in individuals who endorse delusions may limit analytic thinking (which takes time). Reductions in decision-making thresholds and in analytic reasoning engagement may encourage these individuals to jump to conclusions, potentially promoting delusion formation, and may also increase bias against disconfirmatory evidence, which may help delusions persist.DiscussionExtant literature suggests that conflict processing deficits might encourage delusion-related cognitive biases, which is broadly consistent with the idea that these deficits may be causally primary in pathways leading to delusions. This conclusion lends credence to previous theories suggesting that reduced modulation toward analytic reasoning in the presence of conflict might promote delusions. Future research should attempt to more specifically determine the source of deficits related to analytic reasoning engagement in delusional individuals with schizophrenia. It is often unclear whether analytic-reasoning-related deficits observed in existing literature result from impairments in conflict detection, responsiveness to conflict, or both. Tasks used to study dual-process reasoning in the general population may be useful platforms for specifying the nature of analytic-reasoning-related deficits in delusional individuals with schizophrenia.

Exploring the impact of safety behaviour use on cognitive, psychophysiological, emotional and behavioural responses during a speech task.

There is a debate among researchers and clinicians regarding whether the judicious use of safety behaviours (SBs) during exposure therapy is helpful or detrimental. Central to this debate is the premise that SBs may interfere with one's ability to gather disconfirmatory evidence. No study to date has assessed how SB use may impact cognitive mechanisms implicated during an exposure-like task. We investigated multiple cognitive, emotional, psychophysiological and behavioural underpinnings of exposure with and without SBs. Speech anxious participants (n = 111) were randomly assigned to deliver an evaluated speech with or without SBs. Self-reported anxiety ratings and psychophysiological arousal measures were recorded at baseline, in anticipation of the speech, and following the speech. Measures of working memory, ability to gather disconfirmatory evidence, speech duration, objective and subjective speech performance, and speech task acceptability were administered. There were no differences between conditions on working memory, self-reported anxiety, psychophysiological arousal, ability to gather disconfirmatory evidence, speech duration, or objective and subjective speech performance. All participants were able to gather disconfirmatory evidence. However, condition did influence willingness to deliver future speeches. Our sample was largely female undergraduate students, and we offered only a small number of specific safety behaviours. Judicious SB use may not necessarily be detrimental, but clients may believe them to be more helpful than they actually are.

Advice weighting as a novel measure for belief flexibility in people with psychotic-like experiences

Jumping to conclusions and bias against disconfirmatory evidence are two cognitive biases common in people with psychotic-like experiences and psychosis. However, many participants show comprehension problems doing traditional tasks; new paradigms with additional applied scenarios are thus needed. A large MTurk community sample (N = 1422) was recruited and subdivided into participants with high levels of psychotic-like experiences (at least 2 SD above the mean, n = 79) and participants with low levels of psychotic-like experiences (maximum 0.5 SD above the mean, n = 1110), based on the positive subscale of the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE). In the context of a judge-advisor system, participants made an initial estimate and then received advice that was either confirmatory or disconfirmatory. Participants then gave a new, possibly revised estimate and were allowed to seek additional advice. Participants with high levels of psychotic-like experiences gave their final assessment after receiving significantly less advice and were significantly more confident in their decision than participants with low psychotic-like experiences, in line with previous studies on jumping to conclusions and overconfidence. Contrary to the hypothesis and earlier studies, however, no deficit in belief revision was found. In fact, participants with high psychotic-like experiences weighted advice significantly higher in the condition with disconfirmatory advice, but only for the first advice they received. The increased weighting of a single piece of disconfirmatory advice can be explained by the hypersalience of evidence-hypothesis matches theory, according to which more weight is attached to the most recently available information.

The reigning misperception about culture and Asian American achievement

ABSTRACTAsian Americans graduate from college at higher rates than other groups, and evince educational outcomes that match or exceed those of their parents. They comprise about 25 per cent of the student body in Ivy League institutions, despite making up only 6 per cent of the U.S. population. While it may be tempting to reduce Asian American academic achievement to Asian culture, and Confucian values more specifically, we provide disconfirming evidence, both within the United States and beyond, to show the fallacy of this logic. Contemporary U.S. Asian immigrants are “hyper-selected”: they are more likely to have graduated from college than their non-migrant counterparts, and also more likely to be college-educated than the U.S. mean. Hyper-selectivity and its spillover effects explain the exceptional educational outcomes of Asian Americans. It is time that we laid to rest the reigning misperception that Asian American academic achievement can be reduced to Asian culture or Confucian values.

Functional brain networks underlying evidence integration and delusional ideation

Cognitive biases affecting evidence integration contribute to delusions and delusional ideation in the psychosis continuum. In previously published work we observed hyperactivity in a visual attention network (VsAN) during confirmatory evidence integration, and hypoactivity in a cognitive evaluation network (CEN) during disconfirmatory evidence integration in schizophrenia patients with delusions, suggesting that a task-specific imbalance of these networks may contribute to delusion maintenance. In the current study, we investigated whether patterns of aberrant functional connectivity observed in past work were associated with delusional ideation in 41 healthy individuals by examining associations between cognitive biases, subclinical schizotypal traits, and functional brain activity during evidence integration. Behaviourally, we replicated positive associations between schizotypal traits and cognitive biases and further showed that this association was driven by delusional ideation specifically. Constrained principal component analysis for fMRI (fMRI-CPCA) revealed recruitment of the brain networks observed in our previous clinical and non-clinical evidence integration studies: default-mode network (DMN); cognitive evaluation network (CEN); and visual attention (VsAN) network. Moreover, as with clinically-significant delusions, delusional ideation was associated with decreased CEN activity during the processing of disconfirmatory evidence and increased VsAN activity during the processing of confirmatory evidence. These findings suggest that this altered pattern of activation across networks during evidence integration may underlie delusional ideation and delusions in the psychosis continuum.

Stress and cognitive biases in schizotypy: A two-site study of bias against disconfirmatory evidence and jumping to conclusions

The dysfunctional cognitive and reasoning biases which underpin psychotic symptoms are likely to present prior to the onset of a diagnosable disorder and should therefore be detectable along the psychosis continuum in individuals with schizotypal traits. Two reasoning biases, Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence (BADE) and Jumping to Conclusions (JTC), describe how information is selected and weighed under conditions of uncertainty during decision making. It is likely that states such as elevated stress exacerbates JTC and BADE in individuals with high schizotypal traits vulnerable to displaying these information gathering styles. Therefore, we evaluated whether stress and schizotypy interacted to predict these reasoning biases using separate samples from the US (JTC) and England (BADE). Generally speaking, schizotypal traits and stress were not independently associated with dysfunctional reasoning biases. However, across both studies, the interaction between schizotypy traits and stress significantly predicted reasoning biases such that increased stress was associated with increased reasoning biases, but only for individuals low in schizotypal traits. These patterns were observed for positive schizotypal traits (in both samples), for negative traits (in the England sample only), but not for disorganization traits. For both samples, our findings suggest that the presence of states such as stress is associated with, though not necessarily dysfunctional, reasoning biases in individuals with low schizotypy. These reasoning biases seemed, in some ways, relatively immutable to stress in individuals endorsing high levels of positive schizotypal traits.

Hungry people prefer larger bodies and objects: The importance of testing boundary effects.

Several lab-based studies have indicated that when people are hungry, they judge larger women's bodies as more attractive, compared to when they are satiated. These satiety-dependent judgements are assumed to provide explanatory power when it comes to the noted cross-cultural differences in attitudes towards women's adiposity, whereby people who live in regions that are under greater nutritional stress tend to have more favourable attitudes towards bigger bodies. However, it is premature to assume that women's bodies are the proper or actual domain of the satiety-dependent judgement shifts found within research study testing contexts until stimuli other than female bodies have also been tested: The research programme falls into the trap of confirmation bias unless we also seek out disconfirmatory evidence and test the boundaries of the effects of hunger. Accordingly, we collected attractiveness judgements of female and male bodies manipulated to vary in size by varying level of adiposity, and objects manipulated to vary in size, from 186 participants who also reported their current hunger level. We found that larger sizes of stimuli in general, and women's bodies in particular, especially when judged by women, were judged as more attractive by the hungrier participants. We discuss these patterns in the context of the Insurance Hypothesis, the Environmental Security Hypothesis, and the impact of hunger on acquisition.

The Interaction of REM Fragmentation and Night-Time Arousal Modulates Sleep-Dependent Emotional Memory Consolidation.

The sleep-to-forget, sleep-to-remember (SFSR) hypothesis states that the neurobiological environment provided by rapid-eye movement (REM)-rich sleep decouples the content of an emotional memory from its attendant emotional arousal. This decoupling allows divergent attenuation and enhancement effects (i.e., erosion of the memory’s emotional tone and simultaneous strengthening of its content). However, support for this proposal is mixed. An alternative account suggests there might be convergent attenuation and enhancement (i.e., elevated emotional arousal is positively coupled with enhanced emotional memory). We tested predictions emerging from the SFSR hypothesis using (a) individuals diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD; n = 21), (b) trauma-exposed non-PTSD individuals (n = 19), and (c) healthy controls (n = 20). We included PTSD-diagnosed individuals because they typically experience altered REM sleep, impaired emotional memory, and heightened emotional arousal in response to threatening stimuli. Participants were assessed before and after both an 8-h period of polysomnographically monitored sleep and an 8-h period of waking activity. The assessment included exposure to negatively valenced, positively valenced, and neutral pictures before the 8-h delay, and a recognition task afterward. We measured emotional arousal by recording psychophysiological responses to the pictures, both pre- and post-delay. Results indicated no significant between-group differences in emotional memory accuracy or arousal. However, after a sleep-filled delay, pictures of all categories were recognized with equal accuracy, whereas after a wake-filled delay, negative pictures were recognized preferentially. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that a sleep-filled delay was associated with attenuated emotional arousal to pictures of all categories, whereas a wake-filled delay was associated with a rise in emotional arousal across the day. Intriguingly, poorer recognition accuracy for valenced (but not neutral) pictures was predicted by an interaction of increased REM fragmentation and increased emotional arousal. In summary, we found some support for the SFSR hypothesis in the way it describes the REM- and arousal-based mechanisms that process emotional material. We also, however, found disconfirming evidence regarding the outcome of that process (i.e., sleep did not favor consolidation of emotional over neutral memory), and we demonstrated a convergence between attenuation of emotional arousal and weakening of emotional content relative to neutral content.

Functional Brain Networks Underlying Evidence Integration and Delusions in Schizophrenia.

Integrating evidence that contradicts a belief is a fundamental aspect of belief revision and is closely linked to delusions in schizophrenia. In a previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study on healthy individuals, we identified functional brain networks underlying evidence integration as visual attention network (VsAN; dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, insula, occipital regions), default-mode network (DMN), and cognitive evaluation network (CEN; orbitofrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, parietal cortex). In the current clinical fMRI study, we compared network-based activity during evidence integration between healthy controls (n = 41), nondelusional (n = 37), and delusional (n = 33) patients with schizophrenia, and related this activity to cognitive processing involved in evidence integration measured outside the scanner. Task-induced coordinated activation was measured using group-constrained principal component analysis for fMRI. Increased VsAN activation, reduced DMN deactivation, and reduced CEN activation were observed for schizophrenia, with this pattern being most pronounced for the delusional group. Importantly, poor evidence integration comprehensively measured outside the scanner was significantly associated with increased VsAN activation and reduced DMN deactivation when processing confirmatory evidence, and with reduced CEN activation when processing disconfirmatory evidence. This is the first comprehensive study of the functional brain networks associated with evidence integration in schizophrenia and highlights how an imbalance of functional brain networks responding to confirmatory and disconfirmatory evidence may underlie delusions in schizophrenia.

Did New Zealand's new alcohol legislation achieve its object of facilitating public input? Qualitative study of Māori communities.

The Treaty of Waitangi stipulates equality between Māori and non-Māori, yet Māori continue to have substantially poorer health, a driver of which is alcohol-related morbidity. In 2012, the New Zealand government introduced legislation claiming it would facilitate community input on decisions about alcohol. We investigated the experience of Māori communities with the new law. We obtained submissions made to local governments and invited a diverse range of submitters from iwi (tribes), hapū (sub-tribes/clan groups) and Māori service providers, to participate in semi-structured interviews with Māori researchers. We used template analysis to develop hypotheses, and searched for disconfirmatory evidence within interview transcripts and recordings. Participants had committed substantial human resources to write submissions informed by technical knowledge of liquor licensing and relevant research. They reported that local governments did not seem to engage meaningfully with the content of their submissions, and failed in many instances to update participants on how the consultation was progressing. Some observed that the alcohol industry had easier access to local politicians, and therefore expected outcomes to reflect industry interests. In their response to Māori constituents on proposed alcohol policies, local governments were felt to lack the inclination or capacity to consult meaningfully. By devolving responsibility for alcohol availability while failing to compel and resource local government to give regard to treaty obligations, the new legislation risks widening existing health inequalities between Māori and non-Māori.

How to modify persisting negative expectations in major depression? An experimental study comparing three strategies to inhibit cognitive immunization against novel positive experiences

Background:Research has shown that negative expectations in major depressive disorder (MDD) often persist despite positive disconfirming experiences. To explain this phenomenon, the concept of cognitive immunization has been introduced: that is, individuals with MDD reappraise disconfirming positive evidence in such a way that negative expectations are maintained. In this study, we examined whether it is possible to inhibit cognitive immunization to facilitate expectation update. Methods:We examined 113 people with MDD being treated in an inpatient psychosomatic hospital. Using a previously validated paradigm, participants worked on a standardized performance test; we examined changes in negative performance-related expectations after positive expectation-disconfirming feedback. One experimental group received additional information increasing the value of the positive feedback (‘INFORMATION’). Another group was instructed to recall the feedback after completing the task (‘RECALL’). In a third group, participants’ attention was shifted to potential expectation-disconfirming feedback (‘ATTENTION’). In addition, a control group underwent the standard procedure of the paradigm. Results:The results showed significant group differences in the change in generalized performance expectations, with the largest changes in participants from the INFORMATION group. All experimental groups had lower values for cognitive immunization than the control group. Limitations:Given that this proof-of-concept study was the first to examine strategies to inhibit cognitive immunization, the findings need to be replicated in future studies. Conclusions:The present study confirms that cognitive immunization in MDD can be inhibited, thus facilitating adjusting negative expectations. The most promising results were found for the INFORMATION group, providing information to emphasize the relevance of expectation-disconfirming information.

Persuasion: The Art of Changing Worldviews

Persuaders often face the task of changing their listeners’ world-view, which may involve conveying evidence that disconfirms that view. It has been shown, however, that people are often reluctant to change their worldviews. These aspects of persuasion cannot be captured in the standard Bayesian framework. The paper identifies the constraints, opportunities, and trade-offs of persuading people to change worldview. It finds necessary and sufficient conditions under which it is optimal for persuaders to do so. It also shows when and how they conceal disconfirming evidence and take advantage of their listener’s existing worldview. (JEL D82, D83, D91)