Trends Cogn Sci Research Articles

‘Should we laugh?’ Acoustic features of (in)voluntary laughters in spontaneous conversations

Laughter is one of the most common non-verbal features; however, contrary to the previous assumptions, it may also act as signals of bonding, affection, emotional regulation agreement or empathy (Scott et al. Trends Cogn Sci 18:618–620, 2014). Although previous research agrees that laughter does not form a uniform group in many respects, different types of laughter have been defined differently by individual research. Due to the various definitions of laughter, as well as their different methodologies, the results of the previous examinations were often contradictory. The analysed laughs were often recorded in controlled, artificial situations; however, less is known about laughs from social conversations. Thus, the aim of the present study is to examine the acoustic realisation, as well as the automatic classification of laughter that appear in human interactions according to whether listeners consider them to be voluntary or involuntary. The study consists of three parts using a multi-method approach. Firstly, in the perception task, participants had to decide whether the given laughter seemed to be rather involuntary or voluntary. In the second part of the experiment, those sound samples of laughter were analysed that were considered to be voluntary or involuntary by at least 66.6% of listeners. In the third part, all the sound samples were grouped into the two categories by an automatic classifier. The results showed that listeners were able to distinguish laughter extracted from spontaneous conversation into two different types, as well as the distinction was possible on the basis of the automatic classification. In addition, there were significant differences in acoustic parameters between the two groups of laughter. The results of the research showed that, although the distinction between voluntary and involuntary laughter categories appears based on the analysis of everyday, spontaneous conversations in terms of the perception and acoustic features, there is often an overlap in the acoustic features of voluntary and involuntary laughter. The results will enrich our previous knowledge of laughter and help to describe and explore the diversity of non-verbal vocalisations.

Separating weak integrated information theory into inspired and aspirational approaches.

Mediano etal. (The strength of weak integrated information theory. Trends Cogn Sci 2022;26: 646-55.) separate out strong and weak flavours of the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. They describe 'strong IIT' as attempting to derive a universal formula for consciousness and 'weak IIT' as searching for empirically measurable correlates of aspects of consciousness. We put forward that their overall notion of 'weak IIT' may be too weak. Rather, it should be separated out to distinguish 'aspirational-IIT', which aims to empirically test IIT by making trade-offs to its proposed measures, and 'IIT-inspired' approaches, which adopt high-level ideas of IIT while dropping the mathematical framework it reaches through its introspective, first-principles approach to consciousness.

Anhedonia and Hyperhedonia in Autism and Related Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

Although autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is defined by impaired social communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests, ASD is also characterized by impaired motivational processes. The "social motivation theory of autism" describes how social motivation disruptions in ASD in early childhood may impede the drive to engage in reciprocal social behaviors and ultimately interfere with the development of neural networks critical for social communication (Chevallier et al., Trends Cogn Sci 16:231-239, 2012b). Importantly, clinical studies and preclinical research using model organisms for ASD indicate that motivational impairments in ASD are not constrained to social rewards but are evident in response to a range of nonsocial rewards as well. Additionally, translational studies on certain genetically defined neurodevelopmental disorders associated with ASD indicate that these syndromic forms of ASD are also characterized by motivational deficits and mesolimbicdopamine impairments. In this chapter we summarize clinical and preclinical research relevant to reward processing impairments in ASD and related neurodevelopmental disorders. We also propose a nosology to describe reward processing impairments in these disorders that uses a three-axes model. In this triaxial nosology, the first axis defines the direction of the reward response (i.e., anhedonic, hyperhedonic); the second axis defines the construct of the reward process (e.g., reward liking, reward wanting); and the third axis defines the context of the reward response (e.g., social, nonsocial). A more precise nosology for describing reward processing impairments in ASD and related neurodevelopmental disorders will aid in the translation of preclinical research to clinical investigations which will ultimately help to speed up the development of interventions that target motivational systems for ASD and related neurodevelopmental disorders.

Reduced flexibility of cognitive control: reactive, but not proactive control, underpins the congruency sequence effect.

The congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to facilitated conflict processing following incongruent than congruent trials, and reflects enhanced cognitive control during conflict processing. Although this effect is mostly conceived as being reactive, proactive control can also unlock it under specific circumstances according to previous studies (e.g., when an informative cue is used). However, whether or not humans can flexibly switch between these two complementing control modes remains unclear. To address this question, 55 participants completed the confound-minimized Stroop task in different blocks where the cue about the upcoming trial's congruency was either informative or not, and orthogonally to it, the cue-stimulus interval (CSI) was either short or long. We tested if the size of the CSE could change depending on the specific combination of these two factors, which would indicate that cognitive control depends on the subtle balance between reactive and proactive control, and is therefore flexible. However, results showed that the CSE was significant and comparable across the four combinations of CSI and Cue type, suggesting that it primarily stemmed from reactive control. We discuss our results against the dual mechanism of control (DMC) framework (Braver in Trends Cogn Sci 16:106-113, 2012).

Non-magnitude sources of bias on duration judgements for blank intervals: conceptual relatedness of interval markers reduces subjective interval duration.

We report three experiments in which the events flanking a temporal interval were either related or unrelated, based on overlap in the letter identity of single letters (Experiment 1), in the conceptual congruency of color words and colored rectangles (Experiment 2), or in the conceptual congruency of sentence stems and their terminal words (Experiment 3). In all cases, we observed a bias for participants to judge the duration of temporal intervals as shorter when the flanking events were related. We draw an analogy between these temporal judgement distortions and those reported elsewhere (Alards-Tomalin et al. in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 40(2):555-566, 2014) that revealed that the similarity in the relative magnitude of flanking events generate the same type of bias on duration judgements. The observation that non-magnitude dimensions of relatedness between flanking events can also bias duration judgements raise questions about the applicability of two influential theoretical frameworks for understanding the distorting effects that non-temporal stimulus dimensions can have on duration judgments, A Theory of Magnitude (Buetl and Walsh in Philos Trans R Soc B Biol Sci 12:1831-1840, 2009, Walsh in Trends Cogn Sci 7:483-488, 2003) and the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (e.g., Lakoff and Johnson in Philosophy in the flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. Basic Books, New York, 1999). In our general discussion, we consider a number of alternative frameworks that may account for these findings.

Observing Plasticity of the Auditory System: Volumetric Decreases Along with Increased Functional Connectivity in Aspiring Professional Musicians.

Playing music relies on several sensory systems and the motor system, and poses strong demands on control processes, hence, offering an excellent model to study how experience can mold brain structure and function. Although most studies on neural correlates of music expertise rely on cross-sectional comparisons, here we compared within-person changes over time in aspiring professionals intensely preparing for an entrance exam at a University of the Arts to skilled amateur musicians not preparing for a music exam. In the group of aspiring professionals, we observed gray-matter volume decrements in left planum polare, posterior insula, and left inferior frontal orbital gyrus over a period of about 6 months that were absent among the amateur musicians. At the same time, the left planum polare, the largest cluster of structural change, showed increasing functional connectivity with left and right auditory cortex, left precentral gyrus, left supplementary motor cortex, left and right postcentral gyrus, and left cingulate cortex, all regions previously identified to relate to music expertise. In line with the expansion–renormalization pattern of brain plasticity (Wenger et al., 2017a. Expansion and renormalization of human brain structure during skill acquisition. Trends Cogn Sci. 21:930–939.), the aspiring professionals might have been in the selection and refinement period of plastic change.

Imitation, conscious will and social conditioning

This essay aims to explore imitation in social contexts. The argument that summarizes my claim is that the perception of other people’s behaviour conditions the agent in imitating that behaviour, as evidence from social psychology holds (Bargh and Chartrand in J Pers Soc Psychol 76(6):893–910, 1999; Bargh and Ferguson in Psychol Bull 126(6):925–945, 2000; Bargh and Ferguson in Trends Cogn Sci 8(1):33–39, 2004), but what the agent perceives and experiences becomes potential motives for her actions only through her identification with a particular way of being and acting. Therefore, although the agent’s actions are conditioned by perceptual stimuli, the latter are not the cause of the actions. The agent is the ultimate cause. That is, a convergence between perceptual stimuli and conscious will. I take this latter conclusion to suggest a compatibilist approach whereby action in a social situation would require the perceptual conditioning as much as the freedom and consciousness of the agent.

Study on brain structure network of patients with delayed encephalopathy after carbon monoxide poisoning: based on diffusion tensor imaging.

To analyze the network alteration characteristics of brain structure network in patients with delayed encephalopathy after CO poisoning (DEACMP) based on diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), and to explore the structural correlation neuroimaging mechanism of DEACMP cognitive impairment. DTI scanning was performed in 33 patients with DEACMP and 25 healthy controls (HCs) who were matched in age and sex. The whole brain was divided into 90 regions by automated anatomical marker templates. The continuous tracing method was used to reconstruct the brain fiber bundle connection and construct the brain structure weighted network. The global and regional properties were computed by graph theoretical analysis. To compare the brain network regional properties between the DEACMP group and the HCs group, two-sample t test (false discovery rate correction, P<0.05) was utilized. The correlations between the brain structural network properties and clinical parameters were further analyzed. Both of the two groups were found to follow the efficient small-world characteristics. The shortest path length of the DEACMP group increased (Lp = 0.86 ± 0.05), whereas global efficiency (Eglob = 9.60 ± 2.65) and local efficiency (Eloc = 17.98 ± 3.89) decreased. Moreover, the core nodes of the DEACMP group's default network, highlighting network, central execution network, and visual area, were decreased (P < 0.05, FDR correction). The left amygdala node degree of DEACMP group was positively correlated with MMSE and MoCA scores of the clinical scale (r = 0.863, P = 0.001, r = 0.525, P = 0.021). The node degree value of the left lingual gyrus was positively correlated with MoCA score (r = 0.406, P = 0.019) and negatively correlated with CDR score (r = -0.563, P = 0.016). The efficiency value of the right dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus in the DEACMP group was negatively correlated with the CDR score (r = -0.377, P = 0.031). By comparing the differences and changes in the topological properties and nodes of the brain structure network between DEACMP group and HCs group, the degree of related brain regions, especially the damage of higher brain functions in DEACMP patients, was verified, which was helpful to understand the cognitive damage caused by CO poisoning and to predict the efficacy of late remodeling. Small-worldness is a dynamic reorganization of the small-world topology and its community structure from the brain network to provide system-wide flexibility and adaptability (Barbey in Trends Cogn Sci 22(1):8-20, 2018). The combination with DTI is helpful for the accurate localization of brain structural damage, especially in DEACMP patients.

Rumination: Practicing Retrieval of Autobiographical Memories

People who ruminate about negative personal experiences seem to be engaged in practicing retrieval, with the expected consequences of perpetuating those very memories (see Roediger and Butler in Trends Cogn Sci 15:20–27, 2011). To provide an experimental model of the effect of retrieval practice on subsequent recall of autobiographical memories, we recruited students with low and high scores on the Ruminative Response Scale (Treynor et al. in Cogn Ther Res 27:247–259, 2003), gave them positive and ruminative cues to generate memories, and cued three rounds of practice of half of the memories from each valence. A week later, final cued recall for all memories showed strong practice effects, with the exception that ruminators benefited very little from the request to practice positive memories. Recalling personal memories benefits from prior practice in bringing them to mind. However, these results provide insufficient evidence to recommend training recall of positive autobiographical memories to counteract rumination.

PC-FACS

PC-FACS

Eye Tracking Effort Expenditure and Autonomic Arousal to Social and Circumscribed Interest Stimuli in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The social communicative deficits and repetitive behaviours seen in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may be affected by altered stimulus salience and reward attribution. The present study used eye tracking and a behavioural measure to index effort expenditure, arousal, and attention, during viewing of images depicting social scenes and subject-specific circumscribed interests in a group of 10 adults with ASD (mean age 25.4years) and 19 typically-developing controls (mean age 20.7years) Split-plot and one-way repeated measures ANOVAs were used to explore results. A significant difference between the ASD and control group was found in the amount of effort expended to view social and circumscribed images. The ASD group also displayed significant differences in pupillary response to social and circumscribed images, indicative of changes in autonomic arousal. Overall, the results support the social motivation hypothesis in ASD (Chevallier et al., Trends Cogn Sci 16(4):231-239, 2012) and suggest a role for autonomic arousal in the ASD symptom dyad.

Distractor-based retrieval in action control: the influence of encoding specificity.

If a target stimulus is presented together with a response irrelevant distractor stimulus, both stimuli can be encoded together with the response in an event file [see Hommel (Trends Cogn Sci 8:494-500, 2004)]. The repetition of the distractor can retrieve the encoded response. This kind of distractor-based retrieval is an important mechanism in action control. In the present experiment, we investigate whether and how distractor-based retrieval of event files is influenced by encoding specificity-a retrieval principle that has been suggested to affect retrieval in short-term and long-term memory. Using a prime-probe design, the number of identical distractors on each display was varied. The results showed that the distractor-based retrieval process is modulated by encoding specificity, in that only high (low) number of distractors retrieves former event files with high (low) number of distractors. Taken together, distractor-based retrieval in action control follows principles known from short-term memory and long-term memory retrieval.

The roles of consistency and exclusivity in perceiving body ownership and agency.

Previous rubber/virtual hand illusion studies have established important constraints for the illusion that an artificial effector becomes part of one's own body (perceived ownership), and that its actions are being caused by oneself (perceived agency). We can take these observed constraints to establish two of three Wegner's (Trends Cogn Sci 7:65-69; Wegner, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7:65-69, 2003) criteria for the perception of personal agency: priority and consistency, but not Wegner's third criterion-exclusivity. In this study we tested with virtual hand illusion, whether exclusivity (participant is certain who was controlling the virtual effector) can also be established. We manipulated two factors: exclusivity and consistency. Our results show that on both ownership and agency judgments, consistency and exclusivity produced main effects, and the two effects interacted in an underadditive fashion. Taken together, these findings provide support for our suggestion to extend Wegner's agency theory to explain perceived body ownership, which in turn provides an integrative framework for interpreting constraints on ownership and agency illusions.

Music Keeps the Hearing Brain Young

It's a story so familiar that it's become a clinical cliché: A retiree comes to the audiology clinic because she's having trouble hearing in daily settings. Her audiogram shows a sloping sensorineural hearing loss, and hearing aids are recommended. Two months later, she comes back for a check-up, and reports that the hearing aids have significantly helped her speech understanding in quiet settings, such as at home. Unfortunately, she still can't understand people in noisy environments like restaurants.hearing loss, music, cognitionSuccessful speech understanding in noisy environments hinges on factors that extend beyond the ear, including cognitive abilities and the integrity of sound processing in the brain. Musical training is a robust approach to strengthen these factors—and converging evidence shows that individuals with musical training hear better in noisy environments than their non-musician peers (Hear Res. 2017;352:49). What evidence is there that music might be a viable therapeutic approach for our retiree who needs more than her hearing aids? MUSIC AND THE AGING BRAIN Multiple studies have shown that a life of playing music mitigates age-related decline in the auditory brain. Music specifically strengthens the aspects of sound processing that are hallmarks of auditory aging. For example, older adults have slower neural responses to speech than younger adults. However, the brains of older adult musicians pick up the details of speech sounds as quickly as those of young, non-musician adults (Neurobiol Aging. 2012;33[7]:1483.e1). Older adults with musical training also have larger, more consistent, and more accurate neural responses to speech than older non-musicians with normal hearing or hearing loss (Front Aging Neurosci. 2012;4[30]). Moreover, older adult musicians show stronger functional connections between multiple auditory areas in the brain (J Neurosci. 2015;35[3]:1240). This suggests that musical training actively strengthens the brain mechanisms that support auditory processing, including in noisy environments. Together, this shows that a life of musical training mitigates age-related decline in auditory perception and the auditory brain. But is it too late for our retiree who needs more than hearing aids to boost her hearing skills? MUSIC AS AN INTERVENTION To date, relatively few studies have used musical training as an intervention for older adults. An encouraging piece of evidence comes from studies of more basic auditory training in older adults and animal models. For example, computerized auditory training speeds up neural timing and improves speech-in-noise perception in older adults (PNAS. 2013;12[11]:4357). This demonstrates that the aging brain still has the potential to benefit from training-induced neuroplasticity, providing support for a musical intervention. At the Neurosciences and Music VI – Music, Sound, and Health conference in Boston in June 2017, early results were presented from high-quality clinical trials of musical interventions for older adults. One major strength of these studies is that they employ medical models of research, including randomized assignment and placebo control groups. Although work is ongoing, early evidence suggests that musical training initiated later in life confers similar (albeit more modest) benefits as lifelong musical training. When evaluating clinical interventions, it's important to consider their economics in addition to their efficacy. These include the actual financial costs (such as instructors and classroom space), which are relatively low for group music classes. But another crucial factor in clinical interventions is the opportunity cost—in this case, the question is if patients undergoing musical training could spend their time more effectively doing something else. One of the reasons we think music has a low opportunity cost is because it confers health benefits beyond the hearing brain. There is emotional satisfaction that comes from engaging in music, and using a group lesson model for older adults provides an opportunity for social engagement. The high cognitive load involved in making music engages key systems such as attention and working memory. Music also engages the sensorimotor system through rhythm, which could mitigate older adults’ risk for falls. As we've discussed in previous columns in The Hearing Journal, hearing is connected to feeling, thinking, and moving—so the emotional, cognitive, and sensorimotor benefits of musical training could cascade to provide further reinforcement for hearing skills beyond their broader health benefits (Hearing Journal. 2017;70[9]:52; Trends Cogn Sci. 2015;19[11]:642). Ongoing research suggests musical training as a strategy to supplement amplification and aural rehabilitation to improve hearing health in older adults.Figure: Nina Kraus, PhDFigure: Travis White-Schwoch

The ‘Meeting of Bodies’: Empathy and Basic Forms of Shared Experiences

In recent years there has been an increasing focus on a crucial aspect of the ‘meeting of minds’ problem (Gallotti and Frith, Trends Cogn Sci 17(4):160–165, 2013), namely the ability that human beings have for sharing different types of mental states such as emotions, intentions, and perceptual experiences. In this paper I examine what counts as basic forms of ‘shared experiences’ and focus on a relatively overlooked aspect of human embodiment, namely the fact that we start our journey into our experiential life within the experiencing body of a second person, i.e. our mothers. For example, Zahavi and Rochat (Consciousness Cogn 36:543–553, 2015) recently draw on phenomenological insights and developmental studies in order to support the idea that empathy (with its preservation of self-other differentiation) must be considered a central precondition for experiential sharing. Here I suggest that the defence of the primacy of empathy over experiential sharing might reveal how we are often mislead in our understanding of more basic forms of shared experiences. I argue that while previous approaches mainly defined experiential sharing by using the case of visual experience as a paradigmatic example of ‘togetherness’ (e.g. face-to-face encounters, watching a movie together (Zahavi, Self and other: exploring subjectivity, empathy and shame, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), it is fruitful to consider the case of pregnancy and intersubjective touch in early infancy (skin-to-skin encounters) as a more basic model of experiential sharing in general. I conclude that shared experiences are phenomena emerging first and foremost from a ‘meeting of bodies’ rather than of minds and as such they precede rather than presuppose empathetic abilities.

Binding abstract concepts.

Binding theories assume that a stimulus and the response made to it are bound together in an event file (Hommel et al., Behav Brain Sci 24(05):849-937, 2001). Such bindings can occur even after single encounters. If the stimulus or parts of its features are repeated within the time frame in which the event file is still intact, the previously integrated response is retrieved. Stimulus-response binding can exist at a perceptual, conceptual or a response selection level (Henson et al., Trends Cogn Sci 18(7):376-384, 2014). The current experiments test whether the observed binding of concepts with responses can be extended from concrete to abstract concepts (detailedness) and whether abstract concepts can retrieve the previous response, in the absence of perceptual repetition. In the present experiment participants responded to a target feature (colour) while the detailedness of the stimulus was irrelevant to the task. The results showed a significant interaction of response relation and detailedness relation, even in the absence of perceptual repetition. This interaction is interpreted as evidence for response-retrieval due to abstract concept repetition. Thus, our data suggest a broader impact of binding mechanism on performance as even abstract concepts can be integrated into event-files and later modulate behaviour.

Target bottom-up strength determines the extent of attentional modulations on conscious perception.

A sufficient level of alerting, bottom-up stimulus strength, and attention have been proposed as important pre-requisites for conscious perception (Dehaene et al. in Trends Cogn Sci 10:204-211, 2006). The combination of different levels of each of these processes might differentially bias the access to consciousness, so that the impact of a specific factor on conscious access would depend on the levels of the other factors. To explore this possibility, we measured how the interaction between different levels of (phasic and tonic) alerting, stimulus bottom-up activation, and endogenous spatial attention, influences conscious perception. We observed that endogenous spatial attention affected conscious perception mainly when target bottom-up strength was low, by improving perceptual sensitivity and making the response criterion stricter. Attention-driven increases of perceptual sensitivity (without variations in response criterion) were also observed for higher levels of bottom-up strength, but only when tonic alerting decreased. Phasic alerting boosted perceptual sensitivity independently of target bottom-up strength, even though it differently affected response bias, yielding a more liberal response criterion when target bottom-up strength increases. These results suggest that a more exhaustive approach to the study of conscious perception should consider the interaction of the multiple factors that are susceptible to modulate perceptual consciousness, rather than studying their effects in isolation.

Examining the relationship between language and learning: Insights from the serial reaction time task

Examining the relationship between language and learning: Insights from the serial reaction time task

Auditory Brain Development in Children with Hearing Loss – Part Two

Auditory Brain Development in Children with Hearing Loss – Part Two

Parent-Endorsed Sex Differences in Toddlers with and Without ASD: Utilizing the M-CHAT

Sex differences in typical development can provide context for understanding ASD. Baron-Cohen (Trends Cogn Sci 6(6):248–254, 2002) suggested ASD could be considered an extreme expression of normal male, compared to female, phenotypic profiles. In this paper, sex-specific M-CHAT scores from N = 53,728 18-month-old toddlers, including n = 185 (32 females) with ASD, were examined. Results suggest a nuanced view of the “extreme male brain theory of autism”. At an item level, almost every male versus female disadvantage in the broader population was consistent with M-CHAT vulnerabilities in ASD. However, controlling for total M-CHAT failures, this male disadvantage was more equivocal and many classically ASD-associated features were found more common in non-ASD. Within ASD, females showed relative strengths in joint attention, but impairments in imitation.