How salience enhances inhibitory control: An analysis of electro-cortical mechanisms

Stop-signal tasks (SSTs) combined with human electro-cortical recordings (Event-Related Potentials, ERPs) have revealed mechanisms associated with successful stopping (relative to failed), presumably contributing to inhibitory control. The corresponding ERP signatures have been labeled stop N1 (+/- 100-ms latency), stop N2 (200 ms), and stop P3 (160-250 ms), and argued to reflect more proactive (N1) versus more reactive (N2, P3) mechanisms. However, stop N1 and stop N2, as well as latencies of stop-P3, appear to be quite inconsistent across studies. The present work addressed the possible influence of stop-signal salience, expecting high salience to induce clear stop N1s but reduced stop N2s, and short-latency stop P3s. Three SST varieties were combined with high-resolution EEG. An imperative visual (go) stimulus was occasionally followed by a subsequent (stop) stimulus that signalled to withhold the just initiated response. Stop-Signal Reaction Times (SSRTs) decreased linearly from visual-low to visual-high-salience to auditory. Auditory Stop N1 was replicated. A C1-like visual evoked potential (latency < 100 ms) was observed only with high salience, but not robustly associated with successful versus failed stops. Using the successful-failed contrast a visual stop-N1 analogue (112-156 ms post-stop-signal) was identified, as was right-frontal stop N2, but neither was sensitive to salience. Stop P3 had shorter latency for high than for low salience, and the extent of the early high-salience stop P3 correlated inversely with SSRT. These results suggest that salience-enhanced inhibitory control as manifest in SSRTs is associated with reactive rather than proactive electrocortical mechanisms.

Collateral Damage: The Relationship Between High-Salience Events and Variation in Racial Discrimination

To what extent are individual or organizational biases affected by racially salient events? We propose that acts of discrimination and the individual biases that undergird them are sensitive to high-salience events and will oscillate with the salience of the focal attribute. In short, that the propensity to discriminate reflects both individual and environmental differences, and therefore a given person may become more prone to discriminate in the aftermath of a high-salience event. We test our hypothesis in three online experiments that examine how varying the salience of race affects the evaluation of in-group or out-group founders. We find that respondents evaluate their in-group members more favorably, and out-group members less favorably, when exposed to a high-salience event, which translates into a significant disadvantage for the minority (African American) group. We complement these studies with an assessment of how police shootings affect fundraising outcomes on Kickstarter to confirm the external validity of our findings. Together, these studies indicate that racially salient events depress the quality evaluations and success odds of African American entrepreneurs relative to others. Hence, discrimination levels can be affected by salient yet unrelated events, and such events are consequential for the economic fortunes of individuals belonging to minority and disadvantaged groups.

Three is a Crowd: Using Reciprocity to Explain Involvement in Ongoing Disputes

I investigate the determinants of interstate political alignment, examining why states take part in ongoing conflicts and which side they take in them. The puzzle I seek to address is why some states are much more likely to gain support than others, and whether the likelihood of such support varies on the basis of the issue under dispute and the characteristics of the state itself. I emphasize the interests of rulers, particularly their need to obtain support on issues of high salience to them. The desire for future reciprocity lies at the heart of these alignment decisions. First, leaders consistently reciprocate positive and negative alignments. Second, rulers avoid positively aligning with leaders of unstable or politically unrepresentative states, as the latter are less likely to be in a position to return the favor. In order to test this alignment explanation, I compile a dataset of interventions into existing wars, MIDs, and sanctions regimes, covering the 1816–1999 time period. The results show that not all types of states are likely to enter an ongoing conflict. When those states do join a dispute, they do so on the side of those who helped them in the past.

The effect of sleep restriction on cognitive performance in elite cognitive performers: a systematic review

Study Objectives To synthesize original articles exploring the effects of sleep restriction on cognitive performance specifically for Elite Cognitive Performers, i.e. those who engage in cognitively demanding tasks with critical or safety-critical outcomes in their occupation or area of expertise. Methods Backward snowballing techniques, gray literature searches, and traditional database searches (Embase, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Google Scholar, PSYCinfo, and SportDiscus) were used to obtain relevant articles. A quality assessment was performed, and the risk of training effects was considered. Results were narratively synthesized. Fourteen articles fit the criteria. Cognitive outcomes were divided into three categories defined by whether cognitive demands were “low-salience,” “high-salience stable,” or “high-salience flexible.” Results Low-salience tests (i.e. psychomotor vigilance tasks & serial reaction tests), mainly requiring vigilance and rudimentary attentional capacities, were sensitive to sleep restriction, however, this did not necessarily translate to significant performance deficits on low-salience occupation-specific task performance. High-salience cognitive outcomes were typically unaffected unless when cognitive flexibility was required. Conclusions Sleep restriction is of particular concern to occupations whereby individuals perform (1) simple, low-salience tasks or (2) high-salience tasks with demands on the flexible allocation of attention and working memory, with critical or safety-critical outcomes.

Cue reliability, salience and early comprehension of agreement: Evidence from Greek

Previous studies across languages (English, Spanish, French) have argued that perceptual salience and cue reliability can explain cross-linguistic differences in early comprehension of verbal agreement. Here we tested this hypothesis further by investigating early comprehension in Greek, where markers have high salience and reliability (compared to Spanish and English) predicting early comprehension, as in French. We investigated two and three-year-old Greek-speaking children's ability to distinguish third person singular and plural agreement in a picture-selection task. We also examined the frequency of these morphemes in child-directed speech to address input effects. Results showed that three-year-olds are sensitive to both singular and plural agreement, earlier than children acquiring English and Spanish, but later than French, and despite singular agreement being more frequent than plural agreement in the child corpus. These findings provide further support for the role of salience and reliability during early acquisition, while highlighting a potential effect of morpheme position.

Does the Format of Internal Control Disclosures Matter? An Experimental Investigation of Nonprofessional Investor Behavior

We investigate whether the format of internal control weakness (ICW) disclosures required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 influences perceptions of nonprofessional investors. Using a 2 x 2 between-participants experiment, we examine two facets of ICW disclosure formats: ICW presentation salience (high versus low) and ICW disaggregation type (disaggregated versus aggregated). We hypothesize and find evidence of an interactive effect between presentation salience and disaggregation type, such that investors perceive ICWs as less negative when they are saliently disclosed and this effect is enhanced when the material weakness is disaggregated into its individual control deficiencies. We also find evidence of moderated mediation such that high salience of ICW disclosures has a positive indirect effect on investing judgments through management trust, but only when the ICW is disaggregated into its individual control deficiencies.

Bully Pulpit? Twitter Users’ Engagement With President Trump’s Tweets

With nearly all political candidates, officeholders, and organizations using the platform, Twitter has become an important venue for political communication and engagement. In particular, Twitter lowers the cost of entry for political activity, with the result that millions of people follow and interact with political elites online. However, most studies of the political uses of twitter focus on the substance and content of tweets themselves. In contrast, we ask what influences the rates at which users engage with the tweets posted by political elites. To do this, we obtained the number of likes and retweets for each of President Trump’s tweets over a 14-month time span. Using these data, we find first that engagement varies with Trump’s net approval in the broader electorate. Second, we find that engagement varies with the substantive content of the tweet: negatively toned tweets and tweets involving foreign policy receive higher levels of engagement than other tweets. Third, we find that high-salience events—for example, the recusal of Jeff Sessions—lead to more engagement. Fourth, we find some evidence that engagement levels vary with the timing of the electoral cycle. Overall, we argue that the factors influencing Twitter engagement are in some ways similar to the factors influencing political activity more broadly, though it is possible that the fact that Trump’s use of Twitter is unique among politicians drives some of our results.

EU Accession Immigration and the Rise of UKIP

This chapter explains how the powerful issue dimensions of the EU and immigration were combined in the 2004 decision for open immigration with EU accession countries. As immigration rose in the 2000s, the salience of immigration increased substantially. The 2004 immigration decision had two key consequences. Firstly, it greatly constrained the ability of UK governments to change the level of immigration in response to public opinion, and secondly, it closely linked the previously separate issues of immigration and Europe. The salience of immigration was related most strongly to media coverage of the issue, which in turn closely tracked the actual rates of immigration. UKIP capitalized on this combined EU/immigration dimension and substantial numbers of voters switched to UKIP from the major parties in 2015 on this basis. We show that without the high salience of immigration between 2010 and 2015, the defections to UKIP would have been relatively small.