Stranger, Lover, Friend? : The Pain of Rejection Does Not Depend

Social exclusion, even from minimal game-based interactions, induces negative consequences. We investigated whether the nature of the relationship with the excluder modulates the effects of ostracism. Participants played a virtual ball-tossing game with a stranger and a friend (friend condition) or a stranger and their romantic partner (partner condition) while being fully included, fully excluded, excluded only by the stranger, or excluded only by their close other. Replicating previous findings, full exclusion impaired participants' basic-need satisfaction and relationship evaluation most severely. While the degree of exclusion mattered, the relationship to the excluder did not: Classic null hypothesis testing and Bayesian statistics showed no modulation of ostracism effects depending on whether participants were excluded by a stranger, a friend, or their partner

When eyes beat lips: speaker gaze affects audiovisual integration in the McGurk illusion

Eye contact is a dynamic social signal that captures attention and plays a critical role in human communication. In particular, direct gaze often accompanies communicative acts in an ostensive function: a speaker directs her gaze towards the addressee to highlight the fact that this message is being intentionally communicated to her. The addressee, in turn, integrates the speaker’s auditory and visual speech signals (i.e., her vocal sounds and lip movements) into a unitary percept. It is an open question whether the speaker’s gaze affects how the addressee integrates the speaker’s multisensory speech signals. We investigated this question using the classic McGurk illusion, an illusory percept created by presenting mismatching auditory (vocal sounds) and visual information (speaker’s lip movements). Specifically, we manipulated whether the speaker (a) moved his eyelids up/down (i.e., open/closed his eyes) prior to speaking or did not show any eye motion, and (b) spoke with open or closed eyes. When the speaker’s eyes moved (i.e., opened or closed) before an utterance, and when the speaker spoke with closed eyes, the McGurk illusion was weakened (i.e., addressees reported significantly fewer illusory percepts). In line with previous research, this suggests that motion (opening or closing), as well as the closed state of the speaker’s eyes, captured addressees’ attention, thereby reducing the influence of the speaker’s lip movements on the addressees’ audiovisual integration process. Our findings reaffirm the power of speaker gaze to guide attention, showing that its dynamics can modulate low-level processes such as the integration of multisensory speech signals

Stranger, Lover, Friend?

Social exclusion, even from minimal game-based interactions, induces negative consequences. We investigated whether the nature of the relationship with the excluder modulates the effects of ostracism. Participants played a virtual ball-tossing game with a stranger and a friend (friend condition) or a stranger and their romantic partner (partner condition) while being fully included, fully excluded, excluded only by the stranger, or excluded only by their close other. Replicating previous findings, full exclusion impaired participants’ basic-need satisfaction and relationship evaluation most severely. While the degree of exclusion mattered, the relationship to the excluder did not: Classic null hypothesis testing and Bayesian statistics showed no modulation of ostracism effects depending on whether participants were excluded by a stranger, a friend, or their partner

In the blink of an eye? Evidence for a reduced attentional blink for eyes

Eye contact serves as an important social signal and humans show a special sensitivity for detecting eyes. Here, we asked whether people’s sensitivity to eyes would enable them to overcome temporal limitations in visual attention. We used an "attentional blink" (AB) paradigm, in which the second of two visual stimuli presented in quick succession typically cannot be detected. Participants performed a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task and were asked to identify, within a stream of symbols, a target and to detect whether the target was succeeded by a probe. The probe was either an image of an eye (with direct gaze) or of a star. As expected, participants' detection rate for the star was poor, demonstrating the typical attentional blink. Crucially, detection rate for the eye was significantly better. This reduced attentional blink suggests that people's sensitivity to eyes is strong enough to circumvent fundamental limitations in visuotemporal attention

Risk factors for internalizing symptoms: The influence of empathy, theory of mind, and negative thinking processes.

Publication status: PublishedInternalizing symptoms such as elevated stress and sustained negative affect can be important warning signs for developing mental disorders. A recent theoretical framework suggests a complex interplay of empathy, theory of mind (ToM), and negative thinking processes as a crucial risk combination for internalizing symptoms. To disentangle these relationships, this study utilizes neural, behavioral, and self-report data to examine how the interplay between empathy, ToM, and negative thinking processes relates to stress and negative affect. We reanalyzed the baseline data of N = 302 healthy participants (57% female, Mage  = 40.52, SDage  = 9.30) who participated in a large-scale mental training study, the ReSource project. Empathy and ToM were assessed using a validated fMRI paradigm featuring naturalistic video stimuli and via self-report. Additional self-report scales were employed to measure internalizing symptoms (perceived stress, negative affect) and negative thinking processes (rumination and self-blame). Our results revealed linear associations of self-reported ToM and empathic distress with stress and negative affect. Also, both lower and higher, compared to average, activation in the anterior insula during empathic processing and in the middle temporal gyrus during ToM performance was significantly associated with internalizing symptoms. These associations were dependent on rumination and self-blame. Our findings indicate specific risk constellations for internalizing symptoms. Especially people with lower self-reported ToM and higher empathic distress may be at risk for more internalizing symptoms. Quadratic associations of empathy- and ToM-related brain activation with internalizing symptoms depended on negative thinking processes, suggesting differential effects of cognitive and affective functioning on internalizing symptoms. Using a multi-method approach, these findings advance current research by shedding light on which complex risk combinations of cognitive and affective functioning are relevant for internalizing symptoms

Changing the social brain: plasticity along macro-scale axes of functional connectivity following social mental training

Despite the importance of our ability to understand the thoughts and feelings of others, the social brain remains incompletely understood. Here, we studied the plasticity of social brain function in healthy adults following the targeted training of attention-mindfulness, socio-affective, and socio-cognitive skills for 9 months. All participants were followed with repeated multimodal neuroimaging and behavioral testing. Longitudinal analyses of functional networks indicated marked and specific reorganization following mental training. Socio-cognitive training resulting in an increased integration of multiple demand and default mode regions whereas attention-mindfulness resulted in their segregation. Socio-affective training resulted in an increased functional integration of ventral attention network with these regions. Changes in functional network organization were robust after varying analysis parameters, and predictive of change in behavioral markers of compassion and perspective-taking. Our results advance the understanding of the social brain, describing its intrinsic functional organization and reorganization following mental training