Age differences in conspiracy beliefs around Covid-19 pandemic and (dis)trust in the government

Objective: Times of societal crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, during which people need to make sense of a chaotic world and to protect their health and lives, according to psychological research, represent suitable ground for the development of conspiracy theories about origins, spread, and treatment of the threat (coronavirus). Although numerous studies have been conducted on this issue since the beginning of the pandemic until today, most of the studies were conducted on the adult population with limited insights into development of the conspiracy beliefs in adolescence or over the lifespan. Objective of this study is precisely to explore how conspiracy beliefs regarding COVID-19 pandemic differentiate between multiple age groups (cross-sectional design), what are their sources and contexts, and how do they relate with the tendency to trust the government. Methodology: Data were gathered through eight focus group discussions with four age groups (11-12, 14-15, 18-19, 30+) in Serbia. Results: Based on critical discourse analysis, this paper identifies the differences in content and the sources of conspiracy thinking and how it relates to trust in the government. Study shows that high distrust in Serbian government is associated with conspiracy beliefs both within youth and adults. However, while among adolescents this finding is exclusively related with their beliefs that ruling structures have financial gain from the pandemic, against the interests of citizens, among adults it is related to the belief that the government (un)intentionally submits to the new global order that is managed by one or more powerful actors who are coordinated in secret action to achieve an outcome that is of public interest, but not public knowledge. Conclusion: The results will be discussed within current socio-political climate in Serbia, as well as the basis for understanding psychological factors which may underlie these tendencies in conspiracy theorizing, such as social identification, collective narcissism, authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation

White matter connectome associations with reading functions in children

This thesis investigated associations between the white matter connectome and reading in children with a wide range of reading abilities. It is well established that the connectome supports the interplay among brain regions and connections within an integrated system. In this dissertation, I examine the hypothesis that it could therefore represent multiple mapping processes among reading components and further explain variations in reading performance. Such associations between the organization of the connectome and reading skills have not been well explored. This thesis aimed to address this issue by considering both the relationship between connectome measures and standardized reading performance out of scanner, and neural activations during in-scanner reading tasks. Chapter 2 examined the rich-club organization of the white matter connectome and its association with sight word reading, phonemic decoding, reading comprehension, and rapid automatized naming in children. I found that feeder connections that link hub and reading network regions were associated with word-level reading skills. Chapter 3 further examined how the left thalamus influences reading skills by coordinating information flow between the reading network and hub regions. Results showed that the efficiency metrics and routing cost of the left thalamus within a subnetwork, which contains the reading network and hub regions, were associated with rapid automatized naming and phonemic decoding scores, respectively. Chapter 4 applied network control theory to investigate if the white matter connectome could explain the dynamics of functional activation. Specifically, I examined if control energy, which reflects the level of cognitive demands from a task, showed differences across different conditions of an in-scanner rhyming task. I found that conditions requiring more effort were associated with higher control energy within reading network areas. In addition, the control energy of the superior temporal gyrus and fusiform gyrus showed dissociations regarding different modalities of stimulus presentation. Moreover, children with better word-level reading scores required lower control energy. Chapter 5 summarizes the findings and discusses their implications to the connectome-reading relationship

Neuronal basis of emotion processing and regulation in conduct disorder

Emotion regulation, a key component of healthy development, has been shown to be deficient in several psychiatric conditions, including conduct disorder. Conduct disorder is a neuropsychiatric disorder of childhood and adolescence characterized by severe aggressive behavior and violation of societal norms. It is highly prevalent and results in substantial economic costs and negative social consequences. Neuroimaging evidence has revealed brain activity alterations in several regions, including prefrontal, temporal, and limbic cortex (amygdala, insula, and cingulate gyrus). While the neuronal basis of emotion processing in conduct disorder has been intensely investigated, the brain correlates of implicit and explicit emotion regulation remain unclear. The main aim of this dissertation was to extend current knowledge by investigating the neuronal mechanisms of emotion regulation in children and adolescents with conduct disorder. First, we conducted a meta-analysis in order to identify the neuronal correlates of emotion processing in adolescents with aggressive behavior. We then developed an affective Stroop task designed to investigate the interplay between emotion and cognition in a paediatric population, and validated it in healthy young adults. We then employed the task to study the neuronal characteristics of implicit emotion-cognition interaction in children and adolescents with conduct disorder. Finally, we investigated explicit emotion regulation by cognitive reappraisal (i.e., reinterpretation of the meaning of an emotional stimulus) in conduct disorder. We here present findings on altered brain function during tasks assessing implicit and explicit emotion regulation in adolescents with conduct disorder that are in agreement with behaviorally observed deficits. Our meta-analysis on emotion processing in conduct disorder summarized previous literature indicating prefrontal and limbic brain structure and function alterations. The results from our study employing the affective Stroop task in healthy adults validated the usefulness of our task design and replicated previous findings suggesting that emotion significantly impacts cognition on a behavioral and neuronal level. Using the affective Stroop and cognitive reappraisal tasks in adolescents with conduct disorder revealed neuronal alterations within prefrontal and limbic regions, brain areas implicated in both emotion and cognition. Overall, the results of this dissertation provide novel evidence on the neuronal basis of emotion regulation deficits in conduct disorder. Future studies shall further investigate emotion regulation in specific subgroups of conduct disorder, for example those with psychopathic traits or high levels of anxiety with the ultimate goal of influencing the child’s immediate environment and society as a whole

Semantic radical consistency and character transparency effects in Chinese: an ERP study

BACKGROUND: This event-related potential (ERP) study aims to investigate the representation and temporal dynamics of Chinese orthography-to-semantics mappings by simultaneously manipulating character transparency and semantic radical consistency. Character components, referred to as radicals, make up the building blocks used dur...postprin