How Much Does Effortful Thinking Underlie Observers’ Reactions to Victimization?

From blaming to helping innocent victims, just-world research has revealed that observers react to victimization in a variety of ways. Recent research suggests that such responses to victimization require effortful thought, whereas other research has shown that people can react to these situations intuitively. Along with manipulating just-world threat, across seven experiments, we manipulated or measured participants’ level of mental processing before assessing judgments of victim derogation, blame, willingness to help, and ultimate justice reasoning. The effect of just-world threat on these responses held constant over a range of manipulations/measures, suggesting that the processes involved in maintaining a belief in a just world are not restricted to the rational, deliberative level of mental processing but also occur intuitively

Transient Cognitive Impairment and White Matter Hyperintensities in Severely Depressed Older Patients Treated With Electroconvulsive Therapy

BACKGROUND: Although electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a safe and effective treatment for patients with severe late life depression (LLD), transient cognitive impairment can be a reason to discontinue the treatment. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the association between structural brain characteristics and general cognitive function during and after ECT. METHODS: A total of 80 patients with LLD from the prospective naturalistic follow-up Mood Disorders in Elderly treated with Electroconvulsive Therapy study were examined. Magnetic resonance imaging scans were acquired before ECT. Overall brain morphology (white and grey matter) was evaluated using visual rating scales. Cognitive functioning before, during, and after ECT was measured using the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). A linear mixed-model analysis was performed to analyze the association between structural brain alterations and cognitive functioning over time. RESULTS: Patients with moderate to severe white matter hyperintensities (WMH) showed significantly lower MMSE scores than patients without severe WMH (F(1,75.54) = 5.42, p = 0.02) before, during, and post-ECT, however their trajectory of cognitive functioning was similar as no time × WMH interaction effect was observed (F(4,65.85) = 1.9, p = 0.25). Transient cognitive impairment was not associated with medial temporal or global cortical atrophy (MTA, GCA). CONCLUSION: All patients showed a significant drop in cognitive functioning during ECT, which however recovered above baseline levels post-ECT and remained stable until at least 6 months post-ECT, independently of severity of WMH, GCA, or MTA. Therefore, clinicians should not be reluctant to start or continue ECT in patients with severe structural brain alterations

The British Lexicon Project: Lexical decision data for 28,730 monosyllabic and disyllabic English words

We present a new database of lexical decision times for English words and nonwords, for which two groups of British participants each responded to 14,365 monosyllabic and disyllabic words and the same number of nonwords for a total duration of 16 h (divided over multiple sessions). This database, called the British Lexicon Project (BLP), fills an important gap between the Dutch Lexicon Project (DLP; Keuleers, Diependaele, & Brysbaert, Frontiers in Language Sciences. Psychology, 1, 174, 2010) and the English Lexicon Project (ELP; Balota et al., 2007), because it applies the repeated measures design of the DLP to the English language. The high correlation between the BLP and ELP data indicates that a high percentage of variance in lexical decision data sets is systematic variance, rather than noise, and that the results of megastudies are rather robust with respect to the selection and presentation of the stimuli. Because of its design, the BLP makes the same analyses possible as the DLP, offering researchers with a new interesting data set of word-processing times for mixed effects analyses and mathematical modeling. The BLP data are available at http://crr.ugent.be/blp and as Electronic Supplementary Materials

Susceptibility to Ebbinghaus and Muller-Lyer illusions in autistic children: a comparison of three different methods

Background Studies reporting altered susceptibility to visual illusions in autistic individuals compared to that typically developing individuals have been taken to reflect differences in perception (e.g. reduced global processing), but could instead reflect differences in higher-level decision-making strategies. Methods We measured susceptibility to two contextual illusions (Ebbinghaus, Müller-Lyer) in autistic children aged 6–14 years and typically developing children matched in age and non-verbal ability using three methods. In experiment 1, we used a new two-alternative-forced-choice method with a roving pedestal designed to minimise cognitive biases. Here, children judged which of two comparison stimuli was most similar in size to a reference stimulus. In experiments 2 and 3, we used methods previously used with autistic populations. In experiment 2, children judged whether stimuli were the ‘same’ or ‘different’, and in experiment 3, we used a method-of-adjustment task. Results Across all tasks, autistic children were equally susceptible to the Ebbinghaus illusion as typically developing children. Autistic children showed a heightened susceptibility to the Müller-Lyer illusion, but only in the method-of-adjustment task. This result may reflect differences in decisional criteria. Conclusions Our results are inconsistent with theories proposing reduced contextual integration in autism and suggest that previous reports of altered susceptibility to illusions may arise from differences in decision-making, rather than differences in perception per se. Our findings help to elucidate the underlying reasons for atypical responses to perceptual illusions in autism and call for the use of methods that reduce cognitive bias when measuring illusion susceptibility

Making oneself predictable: reduced temporal variability facilitates joint action coordination

Performing joint actions often requires precise temporal coordination of individual actions. The present study investigated how people coordinate their actions at discrete points in time when continuous or rhythmic information about others’ actions is not available. In particular, we tested the hypothesis that making oneself predictable is used as a coordination strategy. Pairs of participants were instructed to coordinate key presses in a two-choice reaction time task, either responding in synchrony (Experiments 1 and 2) or in close temporal succession (Experiment 3). Across all experiments, we found that coactors reduced the variability of their actions in the joint context compared with the same task performed individually. Correlation analyses indicated that the less variable the actions were, the better was interpersonal coordination. The relation between reduced variability and improved coordination performance was not observed when pairs of participants performed independent tasks next to each other without intending to coordinate. These findings support the claim that reducing variability is used as a coordination strategy to achieve predictability. Identifying coordination strategies contributes to the understanding of the mechanisms involved in real-time coordination

Investigating the impact of mindfulness meditation training on working memory: A mathematical modeling approach

We investigated whether mindfulness training (MT) influences information processing in a working memory task with complex visual stimuli. Participants were tested before (T1) and after (T2) participation in an intensive one-month MT retreat, and their performance was compared with that of an age- and education-matched control group. Accuracy did not differ across groups at either time point. Response times were faster and significantly less variable in the MT versus the control group at T2. Since these results could be due to changes in mnemonic processes, speed–accuracy trade-off, or nondecisional factors (e.g., motor execution), we used a mathematical modeling approach to disentangle these factors. The EZ-diffusion model (Wagenmakers, van der Maas, & Grasman, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 14:(1), 3–22, 2007) suggested that MT leads to improved information quality and reduced response conservativeness, with no changes in nondecisional factors. The noisy exemplar model further suggested that the increase in information quality reflected a decrease in encoding noise and not an increase in forgetting. Thus, mathematical modeling may help clarify the mechanisms by which MT produces salutary effects on performance

Nutrient Administration and Resistance Training

Skeletal muscle tissue is tightly regulated throughout our bodies by balancing its synthesis and breakdown. Many factors are known to exist that cause profound changes on the overall status of skeletal muscle, some of which include exercise, nutrition, hormonal influences and disease. Muscle hypertrophy results when protein synthesis is greater than protein breakdown. Resistance training is a popular form of exercise that has been shown to increase muscular strength and muscular hypertrophy. In general, resistance training causes a stimulation of protein synthesis as well as an increase in protein breakdown, resulting in a negative balance of protein. Providing nutrients, specifically amino acids, helps to stimulate protein synthesis and improve the overall net balance of protein. Strategies to increase the concentration and availability of amino acids after resistance exercise are of great interest and have been shown to effectively increase overall protein synthesis. [1-3] After exercise, providing carbohydrate has been shown to mildly stimulate protein synthesis while addition of free amino acids prior to and after exercise, specifically essential amino acids, causes a rapid pronounced increase in protein synthesis as well as protein balance.[1,3] Evidence exists for a dose-response relationship of infused amino acids while no specific regimen exists for optimal dosing upon ingestion. Ingestion of whole or intact protein sources (e.g., protein powders, meal-replacements) has been shown to cause similar improvements in protein balance after resistance exercise when compared to free amino acid supplements. Future research should seek to determine optimal dosing of ingested intact amino acids in addition to identifying the cellular mechanistic machinery (e.g. transcriptional and translational mechanisms) for causing the increase in protein synthesis

Is there an orthographic boost for ambiguous words during their processing?

The present study explores the issue of why ambiguous words are recognized faster than unambiguous ones during word recognition. To this end we contrasted two different hypotheses: the semantic feedback hypothesis (Hino and Lupker in J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 22:1331-1356, 1996. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.22.6.1331 ), and the hypothesis proposed by Borowsky and Masson (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cognit 22:63-85, 1996. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.22.1.63 ). Although both hypotheses agree that ambiguous words benefit during recognition in that they engage more semantic activation, they disagree as to whether or not this greater semantic activation feeds back to the orthographic level, hence speeding up the orthographic coding of ambiguous words. Participants were presented with ambiguous and unambiguous words in two tasks, a lexical decision task (LDT) and a two-alternative forced-choice task (2AFC). We found differences between ambiguous and unambiguous words in both the LDT and the 2AFC tasks. These results suggest that the orthographic coding of ambiguous words is boosted during word processing. This finding lends support to the semantic feedback hypothesis.This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PSI2015-63525-P) and by the Research Promotion Program of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (2016PFR-URV-B2-37). This has also been partially supported by the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) through the state budget with Reference IF/00784/2013/CP1158/CT0013. The first author also holds a grant from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (2015PMF-PIPF-16)