scholarly journals Boosting serotonin increases information gathering by reducing subjective cognitive costs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen Michely ◽  
Ingrid M. Martin ◽  
Raymond J. Dolan ◽  
Tobias U. Hauser
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Physical Effort ◽  
Sampling Process ◽  
Serotonergic Antidepressant

Serotonin is implicated in the valuation of aversive costs, such as delay or physical effort. However, its role in governing sensitivity to cognitive effort, for example deliberation costs during information gathering, is unclear. We show that week-long treatment with a serotonergic antidepressant enhances a willingness to gather information when trying to maximize reward. Using computational modelling, we show this arises from a diminished sensitivity to subjective deliberation costs during the sampling process. This result is consistent with the notion that serotonin alleviates sensitivity to aversive costs in a domain-general fashion, with implications for its potential contribution to a positive impact on motivational deficits in psychiatric disorders.

scholarly journals Look up what you cannot solve in your mind! Children increase information gathering to counteract imprecise planning abilities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aislinn Bowler ◽  
Johanna Habicht ◽  
Madeleine E Moses-Payne ◽  
Nikolaus Steinbeis ◽  
Michael Moutoussis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Late Adolescents ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Computational Capacity ◽  
The World ◽  
Developmental Feature ◽  
Planning Task

Knowing how the world works is critical for successfully navigating it. This requires two key components: knowledge about the world and the computational capacity to plan flexibly. Children are inherently limited in both domains but building a better understanding of the world is a functional imperative for development. To examine how youths overcome their constraints, we asked 107 children (8-9 years), early (12-13 years) and late adolescents (16-17 years) to perform a planning task. We find that children gather significantly more information before making a decision compared to adolescents, but only if it does not come with explicit costs. Using computational modelling, we find that this is because children have limited planning abilities, which they counteract by reduced subjective sampling costs. Our findings thus demonstrate how children level out their computational constraints by deploying excessive information gathering, a developmental feature that could inform aberrant information gathering in psychiatric disorders.

scholarly journals Functional neuroimaging in psychiatry

1999 ◽  
Vol 354 (1387) ◽  
pp. 1359-1370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia H. Y. Fu ◽  
Philip K. McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Psychiatric Research ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Powerful Means ◽  
Methodological Approaches

Functional neuroimaging is one of the most powerful means available for investigating the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. In this review, we shall focus on the different ways that it can be employed to this end, describing the major findings in the field in the context of different methodological approaches. We will also discuss practical issues that are particular to studying psychiatric disorders and the potential contribution of functional neuroimaging to future psychiatric research.

Refugees in Education

2018 ◽  
pp. 252-267
Author(s):  
Pierre Léna
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Refugee Children ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Family Culture ◽  
The Family ◽  
Displaced Children

This chapter focuses on one particular aspect of education for refugee children, namely science education, in the various contexts these refugees encounter, especially when immersed in cultures away from their mother language and bridges with the family culture. The universal character of natural sciences makes is precious for these displaced children. Renovating science education has been the subject of international efforts and remarkable innovative pilot projects since two decades A number of such projects, in various developing or developed countries, are reported here, with the positive impact which was observed in multi-cultural contexts. Although none of these projects yet dealt with extreme situations such as refugee camps, the lessons learned suggest to act in this direction, using the pedagogical ressources now available in many languages, as well as a potential contribution of the scientific community.

Women at physical work stations – limitations resulting from gender and age

2019 ◽  
Vol 573 (6) ◽  
pp. 12-15
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Łastowiecka
Keyword(s):  
Older Women ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Body Position ◽  
Work Load ◽  
Physical Work ◽  
Recreational Physical Activity ◽  
Physical Effort ◽  
Functional Changes ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Gender And Age

Contemporary studies indicate the lack of a positive impact of high physical effort in professional work on health, especially in connection with the deficit of recreational physical activity during leisure time. Women, due to physiological conditions, are not able to perform all activities at work equally with men. This applies in particular to work related to physical effort, transport of weights and forced body position. In the case of older women, apart from the physiological differences dictated by gender, functional changes occurring in the ageing human body, which also significantly reduce the ability to perform physical work, are added. The problem of employers disregarding hard physical labour leads to adverse effects for both them and their companies. Excessive work load and, associated with it, fatigue of employees result in inferior quality and work efficiency and the increase in sick leave due to ailments and illnesses. Therefore, it seems obvious to adapt the work station and working conditions to the needs of older women that perform physical work.

Weight as an Embodiment of Importance

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 1169-1174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nils B. Jostmann ◽  
Daniël Lakens ◽  
Thomas W. Schubert
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Abstract Concept ◽  
Physical Effort ◽  
Monetary Value ◽  
Concrete Objects ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Important Study

Four studies show that the abstract concept of importance is grounded in bodily experiences of weight. Participants provided judgments of importance while they held either a heavy or a light clipboard. Holding a heavy clipboard increased judgments of monetary value (Study 1) and made participants consider fair decision-making procedures to be more important (Study 2). It also caused more elaborate thinking, as indicated by higher consistency between related judgments (Study 3) and by greater polarization of agreement ratings for strong versus weak arguments (Study 4). In line with an embodied perspective on cognition, these findings suggest that, much as weight makes people invest more physical effort in dealing with concrete objects, it also makes people invest more cognitive effort in dealing with abstract issues.

scholarly journals Exploring Destination Choice Intention by Using the Tourism Photographic: From the Perspectives of Visual Esthetic Processing

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiwei Deng ◽  
Yingxing Lin ◽  
Lijun Chen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Processing Fluency ◽  
Destination Choice ◽  
Visual Appeal ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
First Impression ◽  
Practical Implications

This study aims to deepen the understanding of tourism photography by developing and testing a theoretical model that accounts for the relationships between visual esthetics and destination choice intention of tourists. Thus, we sought to use a stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) paradigm to predict destination choice intention, which includes three variables related to visual esthetics: first impression, visual appeal, and esthetic emotion. We used the combination of self-reported and eye movement data to examine the cognitive processes of tourists that visual esthetic formation. We found that compared to the built environment and amateur esthetic images, natural environment and professional esthetic images can get (1) higher visual appeal, (2) better first impression, and (3) higher visual processing fluency (or less cognitive effort) and positive esthetic emotions. Furthermore, visual appeal, first impression, and esthetic emotion deriving from environment esthetics and photograph esthetics have a positive impact on destination choice intention. This study has practical implications for destination planning and management.

scholarly journals Apparent preferences for cognitive effort fade when multiple forms of effort and delay are interleaved in a foraging environment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Toro-Serey ◽  
Gary Kane ◽  
Joseph McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Prey Selection ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Acceptance Rate ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Physical Effort ◽  
Delay Duration ◽  
Cost Of Time ◽  
Acceptance Rates

Cognitive and physical effort are typically regarded as costly, but demands for effort also seemingly boost the value of prospects under certain conditions. One contextual factor that might influence the perceived value of effort is the mix of different demand types a decision maker encounters in a given environment. Here, we embedded both cognitive and physical effort in a "prey selection" foraging task, which required decision makers not only to evaluate the magnitude and delay of a focal prospective reward but also to estimate the general opportunity cost of time. In two experiments, participants encountered prospective rewards that required equivalent intervals of cognitive effort, physical effort, or unfilled delay. Monetary offers varied per trial, and the two experiments differed in whether the type of effort or delay cost was the same on every trial (between-participant manipulation, n=21 per condition), or varied across trials (within-participant manipulation, n=48). When each participant faced only one type of cost, cognitive effort persistently produced the highest acceptance rate compared to trials with an equivalent period of either physical effort or unfilled delay. We theorized that if cognitive effort were intrinsically rewarding, we would observe the same pattern of preferences when participants foraged for varying cost types in addition to rewards. Contrary to this prediction, in the within-participant experiment, an initially higher acceptance rate for cognitive effort trials disappeared over time amid an overall decline in acceptance rates as participants gained experience with all three conditions. Our results indicate that cognitive demands may reduce the discounting effect of delays, but not because decision makers assign intrinsic value to cognitive effort. Rather, the results suggest that a cognitive effort requirement might influence contextual factors such as subjective delay duration estimates, which can be recalibrated if multiple forms of demand are interleaved.

scholarly journals The computational cost of active information sampling prior to decision making under uncertainty

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Petitet ◽  
Bahaaeddin Attaallah ◽  
Sanjay G Manohar ◽  
Masud Husain
Keyword(s):  
Time Pressure ◽  
Computational Cost ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Related Factor ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Hidden Cost ◽  
Information Sampling

Humans often seek information to minimise the pervasive effect of uncertainty on decisions. Current theories explain how much knowledge people should gather prior to a decision, based on the cost-benefit structure of the problem at hand. Here, we demonstrate that this framework omits a crucial agent-related factor: the cognitive effort expended while collecting information. Using a novel paradigm, we unveil a speed-efficiency trade-off whereby more informative samples actually take longer to find. Crucially, under sufficient time pressure, humans can break this trade-off, sampling both faster and more efficiently. Computational modelling demonstrates the existence of a hidden cost of cognitive effort which, when incorporated into theoretical models, provides a better account of people's behaviour and also predicts self-reported fatigue accumulated during active sampling. By measuring metacognitive accuracy and uncertainty-reward preferences on a static, passive version of the task, we further validate the theoretical constructs captured by our model. Overall, the results show that the way people seek knowledge to guide their decisions is shaped not only by task-related costs and benefits, but also crucially by the quantifiable computational costs incurred.

scholarly journals Agriculture Residue: A Potential Source for Biogas Production

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raja IA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Source ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Waste Treatment ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Biogas Production ◽  
Organic Wastes ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Microbial Conversion ◽  
Agriculture Residue

To achieve energy security and to address energy related environmental issues attempts have been made to find out such energy resources that are economically viable and environmentally friendly. Biogas appears as a sustainable, renewable and carbon neutral energy source, a substitute to reduce the global fossil fuels dependency. Agricultural activities generate huge amounts of organic residues annually worldwide. Microbial conversion of agriculture residue and organic wastes to produce biogas offers an attractive way for energy supply, resource recovery and waste treatment. Energy generated is renewable can have positive impact on environment, replacing fossil fuels and mitigating greenhouse gases emissions. In addition to a clean and cost effective energy source, it improves the management of manure and organic wastes and replaces inorganic fertilizer. Biogas production in the agricultural sector is a fast growing market particularly in many European countries. This article is aimed to review and investigate the potential contribution of biogas from agricultural residues. Techniques for quantitative assessment of the residue from different crops that can be recovered sustainably as a potential resource for biogas production are discussed.

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