Data sharing in the age of predictive psychiatry: an adolescent perspective

Background: Advances in genetics and digital phenotyping in psychiatry have given rise to testing services targeting young people, which claim to predict psychiatric outcomes before difficulties emerge. These services raise several ethical challenges surrounding data sharing and information privacy. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate young people’s interest in predictive testing for mental health challenges and their attitudes towards sharing biological, psychosocial and digital data for such purpose. Methods: Eighty UK adolescents aged 16–18 years took part in a digital role-play where they played the role of clients of a fictional predictive psychiatry company and chose what sources of personal data they wished to provide for a risk assessment. After the role-play, participants reflected on their choices during a peer-led interview. Findings: Participants saw multiple benefits in predictive testing services, but were highly selective with regard to the type of data they were willing to share. Largely due to privacy concerns, digital data sources such as social media or Google search history were less likely to be shared than psychosocial and biological data, including school grades and one’s DNA. Participants were particularly reluctant to share social media data with schools (but less so with health systems). Conclusions: Emerging predictive psychiatric services are valued by young people; however, these services must consider privacy versus utility trade-offs from the perspective of different stakeholders, including adolescents. Clinical implications: Respecting adolescents’ need for transparency, privacy and choice in the age of digital phenotyping is critical to the responsible implementation of predictive psychiatric services

The influence of emotional stimuli on P300 in an oddball paradigm

Čustveni dražljaji so tako pomembni za optimalno delovanje v okolju, da avtomatsko izzovejo povišano pozornost, kar omogoča prednost pri nadaljnjem procesiranju in ustrezen vedenjski odziv. Vpliv čustev na pozornost lahko preučujemo s pomočjo elektroencefalografije (EEG), specifično z uporabo z dogodkom povezanih potencialov. Val P300 je pozitivni potencial z največjo amplitudo na sredini skalpa, ki se pojavi okrog 300 ms po prikazu dražljaja pri nalogi prepoznavanja redkih dražljajev. Odraža procese kategorizacije in primerjave novega dražljaja s starim ter posodabljanje mentalne reprezentacije v delovnem spominu. Namen raziskave je bil preučiti, kako na val P300 vplivajo čustvena vsebina dražljaja (negativni ali nevtralni), tip dražljaja (tarča ali motilec) in vsebina kategorizacije (glede na čustveno vsebino ali prisotnost ljudi). 32 udeležencev je med beleženjem EEG-signala izvajalo nalogo vidnega prepoznavanja redkih dražljajev s štirimi pogoji: prepoznavanje negativnih dražljajev, nevtralnih dražljajev, dražljajev z ljudmi in dražljajev brez ljudi. V vseh pogojih smo zabeležili P300 z največjo amplitudo parietalno 500 ms po prikazu dražljaja in pozni pozitivni potencial, ki je vztrajal do 1000 ms po dražljaju ali dlje. Negativni dražljaji so tako v vlogi tarč kot motilcev vzbudili večjo amplitudo P300 in poznega pozitivnega potenciala od nevtralnih v časovnem intervalu med 370 in 1200 ms po dražljaju. Vsebina kategorizacije ni vplivala na amplitudo P300 in poznega pozitivnega potenciala, prav tako ne tip dražljaja. Zaključili smo, da čustveni dražljaji zaradi svoje intrinzične motivacijske relevantnosti pritegnejo dodatne pozornostne vire ne glede na to, ali so relevantni za nalogo in ali smo nanje načrtno pozorni.Due to their relevance to one\u27s optimal adaptation to their environment, emotional stimuli automatically capture heightened attention which facilitates their further processing and optimal behavioral outcomes. The influence of emotion on attention can be investigated with electroencephalography (EEG), specifically by employing the event-related potentials technique. P300 is positive potential with the maximal amplitude approximately 300 ms post-stimulus at midline electrodes which is usually elicited in an oddball task. It reflects categorization, comparison of new stimuli with previous ones and updating of the mental model in the working memory. The aim of our study was to investigate how the P300 is affected by the emotional content of the stimuli (negative or neutral), stimuli type (target or distractor) and categorization (based on emotional content or the presence of humans). During EEG recording 32 participants performed a visual three-stimuli oddball task with four conditions: identify negative stimuli, neutral stimuli, stimuli with people, and stimuli without people. In every condition we identified the P300 with the maximal parietal amplitude 500 ms post-stimulus and the late positive potential which persisted up to 1000 ms post-stimulus or longer. Both negative targets and negative distractors elicited larger P300 and late positive potential amplitudes than neutral ones between 370 and 1200 ms post-stimulus. Neither the type of categorization nor the type of stimuli affected the P300 and late positive potential amplitudes

Bridging the Gap between the Normative and the Descriptive: Bounded Epistemic Rationality

The aim of the article is to propose bounded epistemic rationality as a concept that blurs the divide between normative and descriptive approaches to the study of rationality. I illustrate the contrast between philosophy as a normative discipline and psychology as the empirical study of cognition and show that unattainable standards and the arbitration problem pose a challenge for normative theories of rationality. I then outline three possible types of relations between normative and descriptive theories of rationality, the third being the proposal for hybrid concepts, such as bounded epistemic rationality, that include both normative and descriptive elements. I continue by describing Herbert Simon’s notion of bounded rationality and Gerd Gigerenzer’s ecological rationality, and consider the role of bounded rationality in epistemology. I reflect on the relationship between norms of epistemic and bounded rationality and finally, drawing on the work of David Thorstad, I suggest some features that I believe should be included in an account of bounded epistemic rationality. I aim to show that an understanding of epistemic rationality that is compatible with bounded rationality can help to avoid overly strict, idealized, as-if theories of rationality, narrow the gap between the normative and the descriptive, and bring us closer to a comprehensive understanding of epistemic rationality

Data sharing in the age of predictive psychiatry: an adolescent perspective

Background: advances in genetics and digital phenotyping in psychiatry have given rise to testing services targeting young people, which claim to predict psychiatric outcomes before difficulties emerge. These services raise several ethical challenges surrounding data sharing and information privacy.Objectives: this study aimed to investigate young people’s interest in predictive testing for mental health challenges and their attitudes towards sharing biological, psychosocial and digital data for such purpose.Methods: eighty UK adolescents aged 16–18 years took part in a digital role-play where they played the role of clients of a fictional predictive psychiatry company and chose what sources of personal data they wished to provide for a risk assessment. After the role-play, participants reflected on their choices during a peer-led interview.Findings: participants saw multiple benefits in predictive testing services, but were highly selective with regard to the type of data they were willing to share. Largely due to privacy concerns, digital data sources such as social media or Google search history were less likely to be shared than psychosocial and biological data, including school grades and one’s DNA. Participants were particularly reluctant to share social media data with schools (but less so with health systems).Conclusions: emerging predictive psychiatric services are valued by young people; however, these services must consider privacy versus utility trade-offs from the perspective of different stakeholders, including adolescents.Clinical implications: respecting adolescents’ need for transparency, privacy and choice in the age of digital phenotyping is critical to the responsible implementation of predictive psychiatric services.<br/

Not lost in translation: Successfully replicating Prospect Theory in 19 countries

Kahneman and Tversky’s 1979 article on Prospect Theory is one of the most influential papers across all of the behavioural sciences. The study tested a series of binary financial (risky) choices, ultimately concluding that judgments formed under uncertainty deviate significantly from those presumed by expected utility theory, which was the prevailing theoretical construct at the time. In the forty years since publication, this study has had a remarkable impact on science, policy, and other real-world applications. At the same time, a number of critiques have been raised about its conclusions and subsequent constructs that were founded on it, such as loss aversion. In an era where such presumed canonical theories have increasingly drawn scrutiny for inability to replicate, we attempted a multinational study of N = 4,099 participants from 19 countries and 13 languages. The same methods and procedures were used as in the original paper, adjusting only currencies to make them relative to current values, and requiring all participants to respond to all items. Overall, we found that results replicated for 94% of the 17 choice items tested. At most, results from the 1979 study were attenuated in our findings, which is most likely due to a more robust sample. Twelve of the 13 theoretical contrasts presented by Kahneman and Tversky also replicated, with a further 89% replication rate of the total contrasts possible when separating by location, up to 100% replication in some countries. We conclude that the principles of Prospect Theory replicate beyond any reasonable thresholds, and provide a number of important insights about replications, attenuation, and implications for the study of human decision-making at population-level