Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for extraversion:Findings from the Genetics of Personality Consortium

Extraversion is a relatively stable and heritable personality trait associated with numerous psychosocial, lifestyle and health outcomes. Despite its substantial heritability, no genetic variants have been detected in previous genome-wide association (GWA) studies, which may be due to relatively small sample sizes of those studies. Here, we report on a large meta-analysis of GWA studies for extraversion in 63,030 subjects in 29 cohorts. Extraversion item data from multiple personality inventories were harmonized across inventories and cohorts. No genome-wide significant associations were found at the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) level but there was one significant hit at the gene level for a long non-coding RNA site (LOC101928162). Genome-wide complex trait analysis in two large cohorts showed that the additive variance explained by common SNPs was not significantly different from zero, but polygenic risk scores, weighted using linkage information, significantly predicted extraversion scores in an independent cohort. These results show that extraversion is a highly polygenic personality trait, with an architecture possibly different from other complex human traits, including other personality traits. Future studies are required to further determine which genetic variants, by what modes of gene action, constitute the heritable nature of extraversion

Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = 0.49 [0.43, 0.55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by country-level GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood.</p

Back propagation is sensitive to initial conditions

This paper explores the effect of initial weight selection on feed-forward networks learning simple functions with the back-propagation technique. We first demonstrate, through the use of Monte Carlo techniques, that the magnitude of the initial condition vector (in weight space) is a very significant parameter in convergence time variability. In order to further understand this result, additional deterministic experiments were performed. The results of these experiments demonstrate the extreme sensitivity of back propagation to initial weigh

Fool&apos;s Gold: Extracting Finite State Machines From Recurrent Network Dynamics

Several recurrent networks have been proposed as representations for the task of formal language learning. After training a recurrent network, the next step is to understand the information processing carried out by the network. Some researchers (Giles et al., 1992; Watrous &amp; Kuhn, 1992; Cleeremans et al., 1989) have resorted to extracting finite state machines from the internal state trajectories of their recurrent networks. This paper describes two conditions, sensitivity to initial conditions and frivolous computational explanations due to discrete measurements (Kolen &amp; Pollack, 1993), which allow these extraction methods to return illusionary finite state descriptions

Multiassociative Memory

This paper discusses the problem of how to implement many-to-many, or multi-associative, mappings within connectionist models. Traditional symbolic approaches wield explicit representation of all alternatives via stored links, or implicitly through enumerative algorithms. Classical pattern association models ignore the issue of generating multiple outputs for a single input pattern, and while recent research on recurrent networks is promising, the field has not clearly focused upon multi-associativity as a goal. In this paper, we define multiassociative memory MM, and several possible variants, and discuss its utility in general cognitive modeling. We extend sequential cascaded networks (Pollack 1987, 1990a) to fit the task, and perform several initial experiments which demonstrate the feasibility of the concept. This paper appears in The Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. August 7-10, 1991. Multiassociative Memory 1 John F. Kolen Jorda..

Resonance and the Perception of Musical Meter

Many connectionist approaches to musical expectancy and music composition let the question of &quot;What next?&quot; overshadow the equally important question of &quot;When next?&quot;. One cannot escape the latter question, one of temporal structure, when considering the perception of musical meter. We view the perception of metrical structure as a dynamic process where the temporal organization of external musical events synchronizes, or entrains, a listener&apos;s internal processing mechanisms. This article introduces a novel connectionist unit, based upon a mathematical model of entrainment, capable of phase- and frequency-locking to periodic components of incoming rhythmic patterns. Networks of these units can self-organize temporally structured responses to rhythmic patterns. The resulting network behavior embodies the perception of metrical structure. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of our approach for theories of metrical structure and musical expectancy

Multiassociative Memory

This paper discusses the problem of how to implement many-to-many, or multi-associative, mappings within connectionist models. Traditional symbolic approaches wield explicit representation of all alternatives via stored links, or implicitly through enumerative algorithms. Classical pattern association models ignore the issue of generating multiple outputs for a single input pattern, and while recent research on recurrent networks is promising, the field has not clearly focused upon multi-associativity as a goal. In this paper, we define multiassociative memory MM, and several possible variants, and discuss its utility in general cognitive modeling. We extend sequential cascaded networks (Pollack 1987, 1990a) to fit the task, and perform several initial experiments which demonstrate the feasibility of the concept