The potential role of temporal dynamics in approach biases: delay-dependence of a general approach bias in an alcohol approach-avoidance task

Attractive cues have been shown to evoke automatic approach biases in tasks such as the Automatic Approach Task or Stimulus Response Compatibility task. An important but as yet not studied question is the role of temporal dynamics in such tasks: the impact of automatic processes may depend on the interval between cue and response. The current proof of principle study tested this hypothesized time-dependence of the approach bias. Secondary goals included the exploration of effects of alcohol cues and virtual hand stimuli. 22 participants performed an SRC task in which the delay between the presentation of the cue and the possibility to select the response was manipulated. Results revealed an approach bias that decayed over longer delays. Thus, the approach bias was indeed dependent on processes that are transiently evoked by cues. The results did not show significant effects of alcohol cues or a virtual hand. Temporal dynamics may be an essential feature of approach biases

Anticipated attack slows responses in a cued virtual attack emotional sternberg task

Threatening stimuli have varying effects, including reaction time increase in working memory tasks. This could reflect disruption of working memory or, alternatively, a reversible state of freezing. In the current series of experiments, reversible slowing due to anticipated threat was studied using the cued Virtual Attack Emotional Sternberg Task (cVAEST). In this task visually neutral cues indicate whether a future virtual attack could or could not occur during the maintenance period of a Sternberg task. Three studies (N = 47, 40, and 40, respectively) were performed by healthy adult participants online. The primary hypothesis was that the cVAEST would evoke anticipatory slowing. Further, the studies aimed to explore details of this novel task, in particular the interval between the cue and probe stimuli and the memory set size. In all studies it was found that threat anticipation slowed RTs on the working memory task. Further, Study 1 (memory set size 3) showed a decrease in RT when the attack occurred over all CSIs. In Study 2 a minimal memory set of one item was used, under which circumstances RTs following attacks were only faster shortly after cue presentation (CSI 200 and 500 ms), when RTs were high for both threat and safe cues. Study 3 replicated results of Study 2 with more fine-grained time intervals. The results confirm that anticipation of attack stimuli can reversibly slow responses on an independent working memory task. The cVAEST may provide a useful method to study such threat-induced response slowing

Spatial anticipatory attentional bias for threat: reliable individual differences with RT-based online measurement

Cues that predict the future location of emotional stimuli may evoke an anticipatory form of automatic attentional bias. The reliability of this bias towards threat is uncertain: experimental design may need to be optimized or individual differences may simply be relatively noisy in the general population. The current study therefore aimed to determine the split-half reliability of the bias, in a design with fewer factors and more trials than in previous work. A sample of 63 participants was used for analysis, who performed the cued Visual Probe Task online, which aims to measure an anticipatory attentional bias. The overall bias towards threat was tested and split-half reliability was calculated over even and odd blocks. Results showed a significant bias towards threat and a reliability of around 0.7. The results support systematic individual differences in anticipatory attentional bias and demonstrate that RT-based bias scores, with online data collection, can be reliable

A Clinical Trial with Combined Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation and Attentional Bias Modification in Alcohol Dependent Patients

Modifying attentional processes with attentional bias modification (ABM) might be a relevant add-on to treatment in addiction. This study investigated whether influencing cortical plasticity with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) could increase training effects. tDCS could also help alcohol-dependent patients to overcome craving and reduce relapse, independent of training. These approaches were combined to investigate effects in the treatment of alcoholism. Ninety-eight patients (analytical sample = 83) were randomly assigned to 4 groups in a 2-by-2 factorial design. Patients received 4 sessions of ABM (control or real training) combined with 2 mA tDCS (active: 20 minutes or sham: 30 seconds) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Alcohol bias and craving were assessed, and treatment outcome was measured as relapse after 1 year. Attentional bias scores indicated that during the training only the group with active tDCS and real ABM displayed an overall avoidance bias (p  0.2). However, effects on relapse after active tDCS were in the expected direction. There was no evidence of a beneficial effect of tDCS or ABM or the combination. Whether the absence of effect was due to issues with the outcome measurements (e.g., lack of craving, high dropout, and unreliable measurements) or aspects of the intervention should be further investigated. [Abstract copyright: © 2018 The Authors Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Research Society on Alcoholism.

Effects of appraisal training on responses to a distressing autobiographical event

Dysfunctional appraisals are a key factor suggested to be involved in the development and maintenance of PTSD. Research has shown that experimental induction of a positive or negative appraisal style following a laboratory stressor affects analogue posttraumatic stress symptoms. This supports a causal role of appraisal in the development of traumatic stress symptoms and the therapeutic promise of modifying appraisals to reduce PTSD symptoms. The present study aimed to extend previous findings by investigating the effects of experimentally induced appraisals on reactions to a naturally occurring analogue trauma and by examining effects on both explicit and implicit appraisals. Participants who had experienced a distressing life event were asked to imagine themselves in the most distressing moment of that event and then received either a positive or negative Cognitive Bias Modification training targeting appraisals (CBM-App). The CBM-App training induced training-congruent appraisals, but group differences in changes in appraisal over training were only seen for explicit and not implicit appraisals. However, participants trained positively reported less intrusion distress over the subsequent week than those trained negatively, and lower levels of overall posttraumatic stress symptoms. These data support the causal relationship between appraisals and trauma distress, and further illuminate the mechanisms linking the two

Reduced Affective Biasing of Instrumental Action With tDCS Over the Prefrontal Cortex

AbstractBackgroundInstrumental action is well known to be vulnerable to affective value. Excessive transfer of affective value to instrumental action is thought to contribute to psychiatric disorders. The brain region most commonly implicated in overriding such affective biasing of instrumental action is the prefrontal cortex.ObjectiveThe aim of the present study was to reduce affective biasing of instrumental action using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in young healthy human volunteers.MethodsIn a double-blind, randomized between-group design, 120 participants received anodal, cathodal and sham tDCS while at the same time (online) performing a task that assessed affective biasing of instrumental action. We placed tDCS electrodes over the anterior part of the prefrontal cortex based on evidence from brain stimulation work demonstrating the role of this brain region in controlling affective biasing of instrumental action.ResultsWe showed that prefrontal tDCS reduced affective biasing of instrumental action. Specifically, prefrontal tDCS reduced the degree to which aversive (versus appetitive) cues potentiated instrumental avoidance and suppressed instrumental approach. Contrary to our hypothesis, this effect was seen for cathodal tDCS rather than anodal tDCS.ConclusionThe results demonstrate the potential utility of prefrontal tDCS as a tool for reducing affective biasing of instrumental behavior, thus opening avenues for interventional research on psychiatric disorders that implicate excessive transfer of affective value

Predictive cues and spatial attentional bias for alcohol: manipulations of cue-outcome mapping

Previous studies suggest that cues predicting the outcome of attentional shifts provide a measure of anticipatory alcohol-related attentional bias that is correlated with risky drinking and has high reliability. However, this is complicated by potential contributions of visual features of cues to reliability, unrelated to their predictive value. Further, little is known of the sensitivity of the bias to variations in cue-outcome mapping manipulations, limiting our theoretical and methodological knowledge: Does the bias robustly follow varying cue-outcome mappings, or are there automatic cue-related associative processes involved? The current studies aimed to address these issues. Participants performed variations of the cued Visual Probe Task (cVPT) in which cues were non-predictive; in which there were multiple cue pairs, used simultaneously and serially; and in which the cue-outcome mapping was reversed. The major findings were, first, that previously found reliability cannot be attributed to aspects of the cues not related to outcome-prediction; second, that reliability of the bias does not survive deviations from a simple, consistent cue-outcome mapping; third, that all predictive versions of the task showed a bias towards alcohol; fourth, that the bias did not simply follow awareness of the cue-outcome mapping; and finally, that only in the case of simultaneous multiple cue pairs, an association with risky drinking was replicated. The results provide support for the reliability of the anticipatory attentional bias for alcohol, suggest that relatively persistent associative processes underlie the bias in the alcohol context, and provide a foundation for future work using the cVPT

Segment-Wise Genome-Wide Association Analysis Identifies a Candidate Region Associated with Schizophrenia in Three Independent Samples

Recent studies suggest that variation in complex disorders (e.g., schizophrenia) is explained by a large number of genetic variants with small effect size (Odds Ratio∼1.05–1.1). The statistical power to detect these genetic variants in Genome Wide Association (GWA) studies with large numbers of cases and controls (∼15,000) is still low. As it will be difficult to further increase sample size, we decided to explore an alternative method for analyzing GWA data in a study of schizophrenia, dramatically reducing the number of statistical tests. The underlying hypothesis was that at least some of the genetic variants related to a common outcome are collocated in segments of chromosomes at a wider scale than single genes. Our approach was therefore to study the association between relatively large segments of DNA and disease status. An association test was performed for each SNP and the number of nominally significant tests in a segment was counted. We then performed a permutation-based binomial test to determine whether this region contained significantly more nominally significant SNPs than expected under the null hypothesis of no association, taking linkage into account. Genome Wide Association data of three independent schizophrenia case/control cohorts with European ancestry (Dutch, German, and US) using segments of DNA with variable length (2 to 32 Mbp) was analyzed. Using this approach we identified a region at chromosome 5q23.3-q31.3 (128–160 Mbp) that was significantly enriched with nominally associated SNPs in three independent case-control samples. We conclude that considering relatively wide segments of chromosomes may reveal reliable relationships between the genome and schizophrenia, suggesting novel methodological possibilities as well as raising theoretical questions

Effects of tDCS during inhibitory control training on performance and PTSD, aggression and anxiety symptoms: a randomized-controlled trial in a military sample

Background: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and impulsive aggression are linked to transdiagnostic neurocognitive deficits. This includes impaired inhibitory control over inappropriate responses. Prior studies showed that inhibitory control can be improved by modulating the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in combination with inhibitory control training. However, its clinical potential remains unclear. We therefore aimed to replicate a tDCS-enhanced inhibitory control training in a clinical sample and test whether this reduces stress-related mental health symptoms. Methods: In a preregistered double-blind randomized-controlled trial, 100 active-duty military personnel and post-active veterans with PTSD, anxiety, or impulsive aggression symptoms underwent a 5-session intervention where a stop-signal response inhibition training was combined with anodal tDCS over the right IFG for 20 min at 1.25 mA. Inhibitory control was evaluated with the emotional go/no-go task and implicit association test. Stress-related symptoms were assessed by self-report at baseline, post-intervention, and after 3-months and 1-year follow-ups. Results: Active relative to sham tDCS neither influenced performance during inhibitory control training nor on assessment tasks, and did also not significantly influence self-reported symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, impulsive aggression, or depression at post-assessment or follow-up. Conclusions: Our results do not support the idea that anodal tDCS over the right IFG at 1.25 mA enhances response inhibition training in a clinical sample, or that this tDCS-training combination can reduce stress-related symptoms. Applying different tDCS parameters or combining tDCS with more challenging tasks might provide better conditions to modulate cognitive functioning and stress-related symptoms

Cognitive frames in corporate sustainability: managerial sensemaking with paradoxical and business case frames

Corporate sustainability confronts managers with tensions between complex economic, environmental, and social issues. Drawing on the literature on managerial cognition, corporate sustainability, and strategic paradoxes, we develop a cognitive framing perspective on corporate sustainability. We propose two cognitive frames—a business case frame and a paradoxical frame—and explore how differences between them in cognitive content and structure influence the three stages of the sensemaking process—that is, managerial scanning, interpreting, and responding with regard to sustainability issues. We explain how the two frames lead to differences in the breadth and depth of scanning, differences in issue interpretations in terms of sense of control and issue valence, and different types of responses that managers consider with regard to sustainability issues. By considering alternative cognitive frames, our argument contributes to a better understanding of managerial decision making regarding ambiguous sustainability issues, and it develops the underlying cognitive determinants of the stance that managers adopt on sustainability issues. This argument offers a cognitive explanation for why managers rarely push for radical change when faced with complex and ambiguous issues, such as sustainability, that are characterized by conflicting yet interrelated aspects