Fearful temperament in middle childhood predicts adolescent attention bias and anxiety symptoms: The moderating role of frontal EEG asymmetry

The current study provided first analyses of the moderating effect of baseline-to-task frontal EEG asymmetry on the associations between 9-year fearful temperament and adolescent attention bias to threat as well as anxiety symptoms. Participants include a community sample of 122 children (60 boys, 62 girls; Mage = 14.66 years; Range = 11.82–18.13 years). Baseline-to-task frontal EEG asymmetry at age 9 moderated the relation between fearful temperament at age 9 and adolescent anxiety symptoms. Specifically, fearful temperament predicted adolescent anxiety symptoms when children showed greater right activation from baseline to an executive function task, but not greater left activation. Baseline-to-task frontal EEG asymmetry moderated the association between fearful temperament and sustained (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony is 1250 ms) but not automatic attention bias (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony is 500 ms). Children with greater left frontal activation from baseline to task more efficiently direct attention away from threat. Adolescent automatic attention bias to threat was related to concurrent anxiety symptoms. These findings illustrate the importance of considering frontal EEG asymmetry to shape how fearful children process threat and to influence their behavioral problems.

EXPRESS: Controlled or automatic? Influence of congruency proportion and stimulus onset asynchrony on the brightness-valence and space-valence metaphoric congruency effects

Whether a cognitive process is operated automatically or in a controlled manner has been a long-standing question in cognitive psychology. However, this issue has not been investigated in the activation of metaphoric association. A primed word valence judgment task is often used to test the activation of metaphoric association, in which participants first see a prime (bright/dark square or fixation point moving up or down from the center of the screen) and then make a valence judgment to a target word. Metaphoric congruency effect occurs when participants make faster judgments to the target with valence being matched with the prime (good followed bright/top prime) than being mismatched with the prime (good followed dark/bottom prime). In the present two experiments, we manipulated prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) and proportion of metaphorically congruent trials (congruency proportion) to tease apart the effects of automatic and controlled activation of brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric associations on word valence judgments. Results showed an overall effect of congruency proportion on brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect, which was independent of prime-target SOA. The effect was enhanced or reversed when congruency proportion was higher or lower than 0.5, respectively, suggesting that the activation of metaphoric association could be modulated by strategic control. The implications of these findings on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and semantic priming theories are discussed.

A question of (perfect) timing: A preceding head turn increases the head-fake effect in basketball

In many kinds of sports, deceptive actions are frequently used to hamper the anticipation of an opponent. The head fake in basketball is often applied to deceive an observer regarding the direction of a pass. To perform a head fake, a basketball player turns the head in one direction, but passes the ball to the opposite direction. Several studies showed that reactions to passes with head fakes are slower and more error-prone than to passes without head fakes (head-fake effect). The aim of a basketball player is to produce a head-fake effect for as large as possible in the opponent. The question if the timing of the deceptive action influences the size of the head-fake effect has not yet been examined systematically. The present study investigated if the head-fake effect depends on the temporal lag between the head turn and the passing movement. To this end, the stimulus onset asynchrony between head turn, and pass was varied between 0 and 800 ms. The results showed the largest effect when the head turn precedes the pass by 300 ms. This result can be explained better by facilitating the processing of passes without head fake than by making it more difficult to process passes with a head fake. This result is discussed regarding practical implications and conclusions about the underlying mechanism of the head–fake effect in basketball are drawn.

Does Self-Associating a Geometric Shape Immediately Cause Attentional Prioritization?

In many cognitive tasks, stimuli associated with one’s self elicit faster responses than stimuli associated with others. This is true for familiar self-representations (e.g., one’s own name), for new self-associated stimuli, and for combinations of both. The current research disentangles the potential of self- versus stranger-representations for familiar, new, and paired (familiar + new) stimuli to guide attention. In Study 1 ( N = 34), responses to familiar and new self- versus other representations were tested in a dot-probe task with a short stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA; 100 ms). Study 2 ( N = 31) and Study 3 ( N = 35) use a long SOA (1,000 ms) to test whether the findings are mirrored in inhibition of return (IOR). We observe significant performance differences for targets following self- versus stranger-associated stimuli (i.e., a cuing effect or IOR depending on the SOA length), yet only when familiar representations are present. This indicates that, under conditions of attentional competition between self- and stranger-representations, familiar self-representations impact the distribution of attention while new self-representations alone do not.

To stay or not to stay: The stability of choice perseveration in value-based decision making

In real life, decisions are often naturally embedded in decision sequences. In contrast, in the laboratory, decisions are oftentimes analysed in isolation. Here, we investigated the influence of decision sequences in value-based decision making and whether the stability of such effects can be modulated. In our decision task, participants needed to collect rewards in a virtual two-dimensional world. We presented a series of two reward options that were either quick to collect but were smaller in value or took longer to collect but were larger in value. The subjective value of each option was driven by the options’ value and how quickly they could be reached. We manipulated the subjective values of the options so that one option became gradually less valuable over the course of a sequence, which allowed us to measure choice perseveration (i.e., how long participants stick to this option). In two experiments, we further manipulated the time interval between two trials (inter-trial interval), and the time delay between the onsets of both reward options (stimulus onset asynchrony). We predicted how these manipulations would affect choice perseveration using a computational attractor model. Our results indicate that both the inter-trial interval and the stimulus onset asynchrony modulate choice perseveration as predicted by the model. We discuss how our findings extend to research on cognitive stability and flexibility.

Perceived and one’s own motion in response priming

In response priming, motor pre-activations from a prime to the response to a target can be measured, as a function of whether they require the same (compatible) or different (incompatible) responses. With moving primes and static arrow targets, the results depend on the stimulus onset asynchrony between prime and target: with short SOAs, there were faster responses to compatible than incompatible targets, with longer SOAs, the pattern reverses. However, this reversal was not found with more biological motions. The current study comprised 3 experiments in order to replicate several findings from previous research and add evidence regarding the interplay of one’s own and perceived motions. Subjects performed a response priming task with moving prime stimuli while in motion themselves. With this paradigm, we tested the general influence of motion on responding and compatibility effects in response priming with moving prime stimuli. Furthermore, we assessed specific interactions of features of the perceived stimuli (e.g., moving vs. static; direction of the prime or target) and the own motion (e.g., walking vs. standing; direction of being rotated). We used two different own motions (walking on a treadmill, Exp. 1 & 3; rotating in a human gyroscope, Exp. 2) and two different visual stimulus types (rows-of-dots, Exp. 1 & 2; point light displays, Exp. 3). Compatibility effects were, in general, neither increased nor decreased during motion. Their size depended on the stimulus type, the velocity of one’s own motion, and several interactions of perceived and own motion. We discuss our findings with respect to perception-action interactions and previous findings on response priming with moving prime stimuli.

Supramodal executive control of attention: evidence from unimodal and crossmodal dual conflict effects

Although we have demonstrated that the executive control of attention acts supramodally as shown by significant correlation between conflict effects measures in visual and auditory tasks, no direct evidence of the equivalence in the computational mechanisms governing the allocation of executive control resources within and across modalities has been found. Here, in two independent groups of 40 participants, we examined the interaction effects of conflict processing in both unimodal (visual) and crossmodal (visual and auditory) dual-conflict paradigms (flanker conflict processing in Task 1 and then in the following Task 2) with a manipulation of the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). In both the unimodal and the crossmodal dual-conflict paradigms, the conflict processing of Task 1 interfered with the conflict processing of Task 2 when the SOA was short, reflecting an additive interference effect of Task 1 on Task 2 under the time constraints. These results suggest that there is a unified entity that oversees conflict processing acting supramodally by implementing comparable mechanisms in unimodal and crossmodal scenarios.