Emerging Self-Representation Presents a Challenge for Perspective Tracking in Infancy

The capacity to track another’s perspective is present from early in life, with young infants ostensibly able to predict others’ behaviour even when the self and other perspective are at odds. Yet, infants’ abilities are difficult to reconcile with the well-documented challenge that older children face when they need to ignore their own perspective. Here we provide evidence that it is the emergence of self-representation, from around 18 months, that likely creates a perspective conflict between self and other. Using mirror self-recognition as a measure of self-awareness and pupil dilation to index conflict processing, our results show that mirror recognisers perceive greater conflict than non-recognisers when viewing a scenario in which the self and other have divergent perspectives, specifically when the conflict between self and other is salient. These results suggest that infants’ perspective tracking abilities may benefit from an initial absence of self-representation.

Dejudicialization and Proceduralism Based on the Nature of Conflicts and According to the Brazilian Constitution

The objective of this paper is to show that Access to Justice is a broader concept than Access to the Judiciary. Apart from the movements for access to justice, it is the intention to prove that the Alternative Means of Dispute Resolution and the studies of Conflict Perspective are equally relevant, having in mind that they both defend a plurality of conflict processing institutions (state or not), based on the hypothesis that dejudicialization is an important way to strengthen institutions and promote economic and social development. Therefore, the deductive approach method was used in conjunction with the propositional-juridical method to demonstrate that the exhaustion of the state-owned model in solving conflicts shows that it is possible (and necessary) to develop the Proceduralism beyond the scope of the Judiciary, in order to institutionally expand forms of conflict resolution in civil society. From this, the concept of Proceduralism arises, interconnected with the due process and which is also suitable for the out-of-court ways of dispute resolution, in order to achieve adequate, effective and due process protection, so that pacification is carried out along the lines of constitutional guarantees, with constitutional procedurality also acting on the unjudicialized means of resolving conflicts.

Dynamic cognitive characteristics of emotional conflict in subthreshold depressed patients: An Event-Related Potential Study

Subthreshold depression (SubD) has a considerable impact on an individual’s subjective well-being and psychosocial functioning, and is a risk factor for Major depression disorder (MDD). The inability to effectively control and resolve emotional conflict is a typical symptom of certain mood disorders, and the aim of this study was to confirm impairments in cognitive processing mechanisms for emotional conflict processing in SubD patients with event-related potential (ERP) recording. The study of the mechanisms of emotional conflict in subthreshold depression may provide an ideal model for understanding the neurophysiological mechanisms and developing preventive strategies in patients with MDD. Methods:The Healthy control (HC) and SubD groups were recruited, with 32 subjects in each group completing the word-face Stroop paradigm, during which ERP amplitudes and latencies were recorded. Results:Compared to HC group, the SubD group had lower accuracy and longer response times in both the "consistent stimulus" and "inconsistent stimulus" conditions. Regardless of the stimulus condition, the SubD group had a greater N2 amplitude in the prefrontal mid-lobe region. In the SubD group, the N450 amplitude was also found to be greater in the prefrontal middle region for the "incongruent stimulus minus congruent stimulus" and the conflict SP amplitude was smaller in the parieto-occipital region for the "incongruent stimulus minus congruent stimulus". Conclusions:The findings suggest that, supported by behavioural and brain evidence, people with SubD have dynamic cognitive deficits in emotional conflict processing, specifically greater sensitivity to early processing of emotional stimuli and sharper detection of emotional conflict, but more delayed adaptation and response options following emotional conflict resolution.

Stimulus-Response Conflict Tasks and Their Use in Clinical Psychology

This article reviews the historical usage of the concept of ‘conflict’ in psychology and delineates the design and development of three basic conflict tasks (Stroop, Flanker, Stop Signal). Afterwards, important theoretical concepts to account for conflict processing are introduced. In the second part, the usage of these tasks in clinical psychology is considered. The article closes with some reflections regarding factors that may have been hitherto largely neglected in this respect.

Positive emotion enhances conflict processing in preschoolers

The rapid detection and resolution of conflict between opposing action tendencies is crucial for our ability to engage in goal-directed behavior. Research in adults suggests that emotions might serve as a ‘relevance detector’ that alarms attentional and sensory systems, thereby leading to more efficient conflict processing. In contrast, previous research in children has almost exclusively stressed the impeding influence of emotion on the attentional system, as suggested by the protracted development of performance in ‘hot’ executive function tasks. How does emotion modulate conflict processing in development? We addressed this question applying a modified version of a color flanker task that either involved or did not involve emotional stimuli in preschool children (N = 43, with preregistered Bayesian sequential design, aged 2.8 – 7.0 years). Our results show a robust conflict effect with higher error rates in incongruent compared to congruent trials. Crucially, conflict resolution was faster in emotional compared to neutral conditions. Furthermore, while efficient conflict processing increases with age, we find evidence against an age-related change in the influence of emotion on conflict processing. Taken together, these findings provide first indication that emotion can trigger efficient control processes already from early on in life. In contrast to previous findings and theories in developmental psychology, this indicates that, depending on the role that emotion has in conflict processing, emotion may show a facilitative or impeding effect.

Lessons Learned From Three Iterative Studies on Creativity Interventions

Previous work by the authors suggested that performing conflict-processing tasks improved subsequent creative output on the Alternative Uses Test (AUT). Although a positive relationship was established, the number of conflict levels was limited, i.e., previous work included only conflict and no-conflict conditions. Two online follow-up studies included an additional high-conflict level to better understand the relationship between conflict processing and creative performance. These two follow-up studies did not replicate the previous study’s results, but revealed similar, yet non-significant trends. The current paper compares the three studies, emphasizing differences between them, including study environments, instructions, types of tasks used as interventions, and participant backgrounds, etc. Key conclusions relevant to future, particularly online, studies in design creativity and beyond are as follows. Effective in-person studies may not translate well to online studies, where participant distraction and lack of motivation are more difficult to detect, monitor and control. Imposing a minimum number of correct responses to complete study tasks may reduce the effects of distraction and lack of motivation. Without in-person presence of both the researcher and the study participant, enhanced feedback for online responses may promote comprehension of instructions. However, enabling online participants to ask questions directly can further reduce confusion and improve task completion.

Selective reinforcement of conflict processing in the Stroop task

Motivation signals have been shown to influence the engagement of cognitive control processes. However, most studies focus on the invigorating effect of reward prospect, rather than the reinforcing effect of reward feedback. The present study aimed to test whether people strategically adapt conflict processing when confronted with condition-specific congruency-reward contingencies in a manual Stroop task. Results show that the size of the Stroop effect can be affected by selectively rewarding responses following incongruent versus congruent trials. However, our findings also suggest important boundary conditions. Our first two experiments only show a modulation of the Stroop effect in the first half of the experimental blocks, possibly due to our adaptive threshold procedure demotivating adaptive behavior over time. The third experiment showed an overall modulation of the Stroop effect, but did not find evidence for a similar modulation on test items, leaving open whether this effect generalizes to the congruency conditions, or is stimulus-specific. More generally, our results are consistent with computational models of cognitive control and support contemporary learning perspectives on cognitive control. The findings also offer new guidelines and directions for future investigations on the selective reinforcement of cognitive control processes.