Development and cross‑national investigation of a model explaining participation in WHO‑recommended and placebo behaviours to prevent COVID‑19 infection

To protect themselves from COVID-19, people follow the recommendations of the authorities, but they also resort to placebos. To stop the virus, it is important to understand the factors underlying both types of preventive behaviour. This study examined whether our model (developed based on the Health Belief Model and the Transactional Model of Stress) can explain participation in WHO-recommended and placebo actions during the pandemic. Model was tested on a sample of 3346 participants from Italy, Japan, Poland, Korea, Sweden, and the US. It was broadly supported: objective risk and cues to action showed both direct and indirect (through perceived threat) associations with preventive behaviours. Moreover, locus of control, decision balance, health anxiety and preventive coping moderated these relationships. Numerous differences were also found between countries. We conclude that beliefs about control over health and perceived benefits of actions are critical to the development of interventions to improve adherence to recommendations

Learning and representation of relational categories

Relation-based category learning is based on very different principles than feature-based category learning. It has been shown that relational categories are learned by a process akin to structured intersection discovery, which is formally powerful than feature-based associative learning, but which fails catastrophically with probabilistic category structures. This research provided consistent evidence that relational concepts are qualitatively different from featural concepts, and they are also learned in a qualitatively different manner. Experiment 1 showed that relational category learning with probabilistic structures can be improved by comparing systematic pairs of exemplars, where shared relations between the exemplars can be abstracted. Experiment 2 showed that comparing the exemplars to the prototype can improve learners’ ability to learn probabilistic relational categories in terms of prototype-plus-exception rules. Experiment 3 and 4 examined further the distinction between feature-and relation-based category learning using a dual task methodology. Experiment 3 revealed that featural category learning was more impaired by a visuospatial dual task than by a verbal dual task, whereas relational category learning was more impaired by the verbal dual task. Experiment 4 examined how the dual task that involves more relational information interacts with feature-and relation-based category learning. The results showed that there was no reliable difference between two category learning. Taken together, Experiment 3 and 4 results suggest that in contrast to featural category learning, which may involve mainly non-verbal mechanisms, relational category learning appears to place greater demands on more explicit and attention-demanding verbal or verbally-related learning mechanisms. The findings presented in this dissertation contribute to the growing body of theoretical and empirical results suggesting that relational thought is a qualitatively different thing than the kinds of thinking and learning afforded by feature-based representations of the world

Making probabilistic relational categories learnable

Kittur, Hummel and Holyoak (2004) showed that people have great difficulty learning relation-based categories with a probabilistic (i.e., family resemblance) structure. In Experiment 1, we investigated interventions hypothesized to facilitate learning family-resemblance relational categories. Changing the description of the task from learning about categories to choosing the “winning” object in each stimulus had the greatest impact on subjects’ ability to learn probabilistic relation-based categories. Experiment 2 tested two hypotheses about how the “who’s winning” task works. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the task invokes a “winning” schema that encourages learners to discover a higher-order relation that remains invariant over members of a category. Experiment 3 reinforced and further clarified the nature of this effect. Together, our findings suggest that people learn relational concepts by a process of intersection discovery akin to schema induction, and that any task that encourages people to discover a higher-order relation that remains invariant over members of a category will facilitate the learning of putatively probabilistic relational concepts

Probabilistic relational categories are learnable as long as you don’t know you’re learning probabilistic relational categories

Kittur, Hummel and Holyoak (2004) showed that people have great difficulty learning relation-based categories with a probabilistic (i.e., family resemblance) structure. We investigated three interventions hypothesized to facilitate learning family-resemblance based relational categories: Naming the relevant relations, providing a hint to look for a family resemblance structure, and changing the description of the task from learning about categories to choosing the “winning ” object in each stimulus, which was predicted to encourage subjects to form an invariant higher-order relation. We crossed these variables orthogonally in a factorial design. Of the three, the change in task description had by far the greatest impact on subjects ’ ability to learn probabilistic relation-based categories. For subjects in the category learning task, naming the relations and the “no single relation ” clue both improved performance individually, but in combination, they substantially impaired learning. These results suggest that the best way to learn a probabilistic relation-based category is to discover a higher-order relation that remains invariant over the category’s exemplars

Progressive Alignment Facilitates Learning of Deterministic But Not Probabilistic Relational Categories

Kotovsky and Gentner (1996) showed that presenting progressively aligned examples helped children discover relational similarities: Comparisons based on initially exemplars helped the discovery of higher-order relational similarities. We investigated whether progressive alignment can aid learning of relational categories with either a deterministic (in which one relation reliably predicts category membership) or a probabilistic structure (in which each relation predicts category membership with 75 % reliability). Progressive alignment helped participants learn relational categories with the deterministic structure. However, progressive alignment did not help participants learn the probabilistic relational categories. The results show that learning relational categories with a deterministic structure can be improved by progressive alignment, consistent with previous findings (e.g., Kotovsky & Gentner, 1996), but also support previous findings suggesting that relational categories are represented as a schemas, which are learned by a process of intersection discovery that fails catastrophically wit

Effect of behavioral inhibition system and childhood emotional neglect on serotonergic activity, negative affect, and rejection sensitivity in non-clinical adults.

INTRODUCTION:Behavioral inhibition system (BIS) has a strong genetic basis, and emotional neglect (EN) in childhood is one of many environmental experiences that can affect individuals. This study aimed to examine the effects and interaction between BIS and EN on central serotonergic activity and other negative affect and cognition. METHODS:A total of 153 non-clinical volunteers (54 men and 99 women; average age, 27.72 years, standard deviation = 6.40) were included in the analyses. The Behavioral Inhibition System scale, Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, and negative affect and cognition (Beck Depression Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire) were measured. As a biomarker of central serotonergic activity, the loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials was measured. RESULTS:High EN was associated with higher loudness dependence of auditory evoked potential (LDAEP) levels and low EN was associated with lower LDAEP levels in high BIS people only. People with high EN people showed significantly higher levels of depression and state anxiety than did those with low EN. Moreover, of people with low BIS, those who had more EN experience had higher levels of rejection sensitivity than did those with less EN experience, while people with high BIS did not show different patterns of rejection sensitivity regardless of the difference of EN. CONCLUSIONS:This study revealed different effects on physiological (loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials), intrapersonal (depression and state anxiety), and interpersonal aspects (rejection sensitivity) based on the interaction of BIS and EN. Our results suggest that the physiological and interpersonal aspects, but not the intrapersonal aspect, are significantly influenced by the interactive effect of BIS and EN