Lower Levels of Directed Exploration and Reflective Thinking Are Associated With Greater Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety and depression are often associated with strong beliefs that entering specific situations will lead to aversive outcomes – even when these situations are objectively safe and avoiding them reduces well-being. A possible mechanism underlying this maladaptive avoidance behavior is a failure to reflect on: (1) appropriate levels of uncertainty about the situation, and (2) how this uncertainty could be reduced by seeking further information (i.e., exploration). To test this hypothesis, we asked a community sample of 416 individuals to complete measures of reflective cognition, exploration, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found significant associations between each of these measures in expected directions (i.e., positive relationships between reflective cognition and strategic information-seeking behavior or “directed exploration”, and negative relationships between these measures and anxiety/depression symptoms). Further analyses suggested that the relationship between directed exploration and depression/anxiety was due in part to an ambiguity aversion promoting exploration in conditions where information-seeking was not beneficial (as opposed to only being due to under-exploration when more information would aid future choices). In contrast, reflectiveness was associated with greater exploration in appropriate settings and separately accounted for differences in reaction times, decision noise, and choice accuracy in expected directions. These results shed light on the mechanisms underlying information-seeking behavior and how they may contribute to symptoms of emotional disorders. They also highlight the potential clinical relevance of individual differences in reflectiveness and exploration and should motivate future research on their possible contributions to vulnerability and/or maintenance of affective disorders.

Lower levels of directed exploration and reflective thinking are associated with greater anxiety and depression

Anxiety and depression are often associated with strong beliefs that entering specific situations will lead to aversive outcomes – even when these situations are objectively safe and avoiding them reduces well-being. A possible mechanism underlying this maladaptive avoidance behavior is a failure to reflect on: 1) appropriate levels of uncertainty about the situation, and 2) how this uncertainty could be reduced by seeking further information (i.e., exploration). To test this hypothesis, we asked a community sample of 417 individuals to complete measures of reflective cognition, exploration, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found significant associations between each of these measures in expected directions (i.e., positive relationships between reflective cognition and strategic information-seeking behavior or “directed exploration”, and negative relationships between these measures and anxiety/depression symptoms). Further analyses suggested that the relationship between directed exploration and depression/anxiety was due to an ambiguity aversion promoting exploration in conditions where information-seeking was not beneficial (as opposed to under-exploration when more information would aid future choices). In contrast, reflectiveness was associated with greater exploration in appropriate settings and separately accounted for differences in reaction times, decision noise, and choice accuracy in expected directions. These results shed light on the mechanisms underlying information-seeking behavior and how they may contribute to symptoms of emotional disorders. They also highlight the possibility that reflectiveness and exploration could represent novel treatment targets for those who show low levels of these tendencies – consistent with the need to develop individualized precision medicine approaches within computational psychiatry.

Higher emotional awareness is associated with greater domain-general reflective tendencies

The tendency to reflect on the emotions of self and others is a key aspect of emotional awareness (EA) – a trait widely recognized as relevant to mental health. However, the degree to which EA draws on general reflective cognition vs. specialized socio-emotional mechanisms remains unclear. Based on a synthesis of work in neuroscience and psychology, we recently proposed that EA is best understood as a learned application of domain-general cognitive processes to socio-emotional information. In this paper, we report a study in which we tested this hypothesis in 448 (125 male) individuals who completed measures of EA and both general reflective cognition and socio-emotional performance. As predicted, we observed a significant relationship between EA measures and both general reflectiveness and socio-emotional measures, with the strongest contribution from measures of the general tendency to engage in effortful, reflective cognition. This is consistent with the hypothesis that EA corresponds to the application of general reflective cognitive processes to socio-emotional signals.

Lower emotional awareness is associated with greater early adversity and faster life history strategy

Recent theoretical work suggests that emotional awareness (EA) depends on the harshness/predictability of early social interactions – and that low EA may actually be adaptive in harsh environments that lack predictable interpersonal interactions. In evolutionary psychology, this process of psychological “calibration” to early environments corresponds to life history strategy (LHS). In this paper, we tested the relationship between EA and LHS in 177 (40 male) individuals who completed the levels of emotional awareness scale (LEAS), Arizona Life History Battery (short form: K-SF-42), and two measures of early abuse/neglect. Significantly lower EA was observed in those with faster LHS and who had experienced greater early adversity. Notably, LEAS was associated with differences in 1) general reflective cognition, and 2) emotional support from parents during childhood. This suggests that EA may be learned during development based on the benefits of cognitive reflection in environments with different levels of harshness and social predictability.

Knowledge and Perception of Eponyms in Chemistry by University Students in Belarus and the United States

Introduction. The didactic principle of education-in-studies is one of the most important instruments of quality education at all levels. Compliance with this principle enhances the results of methodological means educators choose. A positive example is considered a widely recognised and effective method of education and upbringing. As such examples, in education it is recommended to use personal and scientific biographies of scholars whose names became a part of scientific eponyms – terms meaning phenomena, laws, theories, inventions, etc. derived from the names of their originators. Eponyms are researched from the prospective of many sciences, including pedagogy. According to the principles of humanisation and historicism declared in governmental documents on education, eponyms can be utilised as means of upbringing while studying natural and other disciplines. However, the research data about this role of eponyms are scarce. In particular, it is unknown how students perceive this component of language and if there is a difference in perception between school and university students. This gap in methodology and teaching technique applies to a number of disciplines including chemistry.The aims of this research publication were to study attitudes of university students in two countries – Belarus and the USA – to chemical eponyms, and to identify correlations between their reflective cognition and solid knowledge of the future professionals.Methodology and research methods. A 27-item questionnaire with different types of answers was developed by the author of the present research. The questionnaire was administered via the Internet for the survey of students at University of Oregon and Belarusian State University. Analysis of the data collected was done in IBM® SPSS® package using descriptive (mean, standard deviation, variance) and inferential (Mann–Whitney and Pearson tests) statistics.Results and scientific novelty. The survey showed that students in both countries recognise chemical eponyms by association better than by their content. Belarusian respondents exhibited a bit higher level of eponym knowledge than American respondents, which is explained by populations (the former one had more chemistry majors), timing and duration of chemistry courses. Recognition of chemical eponyms differs; it is promoted by their repeatability, uniqueness, and phoneticity. The majority of students in both countries perceive eponyms non-reflexively, and the students’ attitude towards eponyms is mostly uncertain. It was found that the determinant factor for good knowledge and reflective positive attitude towards eponyms is the student’s motivation for learning. This motivation, in turn, is determined by the chosen major. Naturally, the profile majors “Chemistry” and “Chemistry Teaching” motivate students the most. It has been concluded that on the one hand, for implementation of the humanisation and historicism principles, one should not rely exclusively on eponyms. To avoid mistakes, one should keep a systemic approach that implies a set of pedagogical means and methods. On the other hand, systematic, regular work with chemical eponyms helps to get an in-depth understanding of chemical phenomena and to get the chemical theory-and-practice synthesis quick and balanced. Unfortunately, less and less attention is paid in educational literature to both eponyms and scholar personalities as their sources, and that is fundamentally wrong.Practical significance. The research materials and the results obtained in this research will be useful for teachers and instructors of chemistry in the development of lessons, lectures, seminars and laboratory classes as well as in writing tutorials and textbooks.

Retrospection and future perspectives

As the concluding chapter, the story of the book’s content is revisited and summarized. Essentially, our embodied minds come into being due to an evolutionary predisposed cognitive developmental process, which builds progressively more abstract, conceptual, compositional predictive encodings based on actively gathered sensorimotor experiences. The chapter also acknowledges several under-represented, but important topics in cognitive science. Finally, the matter of consciousness is addressed, emphasizing that the mind emerges from a recurrent, self-maintaining, and self-regulating system, that is, our brain–body system. Combined with developing self-referential, social, event-oriented, conceptualizing predictive encodings, self-reflective cognition becomes possible. We conclude that despite pursuing a computational approach to embodied cognitive science, cognitive models in this direction are just at their beginning. Future cognitive modeling efforts promise to shed much further light on the exact details about how our minds come into being and how we may create useful, artificial, cognitive systems in the future.