Explore with Me: Peer Observation Decreases Risk-Taking but Increases Exploration Tendencies across Adolescence

It has been assumed that adolescents increase risk-taking tendencies when peers are present but findings on experimental decision-making have been inconclusive. Most studies focus on risk-taking tendencies, ignoring the effects peer presence can exert over other cognitive processes involved in decision-making, as well as any other underlying developmental and individual differences. In the present study, the trial-by-trial choice behavior was analyzed in a task in which adolescents adjust to dynamically changing risk probabilities. Using Bayesian modeling, the study aimed to infer about peer presence effects on risk-taking tendencies but also on reactions to, exploration of, and learning from positive and negative outcomes of risk-taking. 184 pre- to late adolescents (M = 14.09 years, min = 8.59, max = 18.97, SD = 2.95, 47% female) conducted the Balloon Analog Risk Task under two conditions: Once alone and once in the presence of a (non-existent) peer observing them virtually. Findings revealed that (a) peer observation reduced risk-taking but increased exploration tendencies and (b) that individual differences modulated this effect. Especially female pre-adolescents increased their openness to explore different choice outcomes when a peer observed their behavior. These results support the assumption that the occurrence and direction of peer influences on risk-taking depend on a person-environment interaction, emphasizing the dynamic role peers play in adolescent risk-taking

Effects of prediction error on episodic memory retrieval: evidence from sentence reading and word recognition

Prediction facilitates word processing in the moment, but the longer-term consequences of prediction remain unclear. We investigated whether prediction error during language encoding enhances memory for words later on. German-speaking participants read sentences in which the gender marking of the pre-nominal article was consistent or inconsistent with the predictable noun. During subsequent word recognition, we probed participants’ recognition memory for predictable and unpredictable nouns. Our results indicate that individuals who demonstrated early prediction error during sentence reading, showed enhanced recognition memory for nouns overall. Results from an exploratory step-wise regression showed that prenominal prediction error and general reading speed were the best proxies for recognition memory. Hence, prediction error may facilitate recognition by furnishing memory traces built during initial reading of the sentences. Results are discussed in the light of hypotheses positing that predictable words show a memory disadvantage because they are processed less thoroughly

Action–effect learning in early childhood: does language matter?

Previous work showed that language has an important function for the development of action control. This study examined the role of verbal processes for action–effect learning in 4-year-old children. Participants performed an acquisition phase including a two-choice key-pressing task in which each key press (action) was followed by a particular sound (effect). Children were instructed to either (1) label their actions along with the corresponding effects, (2) verbalize task-irrelevant words, (3) or perform without verbalization. In a subsequent test phase, they responded to the same sound effects either under consistent or under inconsistent sound-key mappings. Evidence for action–effect learning was obtained only if action and effects were labeled or if no verbalization was performed, but not if children verbalized task-irrelevant labels. Importantly, action–effect learning was most pronounced when children verbalized the actions and the corresponding effects, suggesting that task-relevant verbal labeling supports the integration of event representations

Predictability effects in degraded speech comprehension are reduced as a function of attention

The aim of this study was to examine the role of attention in understanding linguistic information even in a noisy environment. To assess the role of attention, we varied task instructions in two experiments in which participants were instructed to listen to short sentences and thereafter to type in the last word they heard or to type in the whole sentence. We were interested in how these task instructions influence the interplay between top-down prediction and bottom-up perceptual processes during language comprehension. Therefore, we created sentences that varied in the degree of predictability (low, medium, and high) as well as in the degree of speech degradation (four, six, and eight noise-vocoding channels). Results indicated better word recognition for highly predictable sentences for moderate, though not for high, levels of speech degradation, but only when attention was directed to the whole sentence. This underlines the important role of attention in language comprehension

Feature Integration Across the Lifespan: Stickier Stimulus–Response Bindings in Children and Older Adults

Humans integrate the features of perceived events and of action plans into episodic event files. Here we investigated whether children (9–10 years), younger adults (20–31 years), and older adults (64–76 years) differ in the flexibility of managing (updating) event files. Relative to young adults, performance in children and older adults was more hampered by partial mismatches between present and previous stimulus–response relations, suggesting less efficient updating of episodic stimulus–response representations in childhood and old age. Results are discussed in relation to changes in cortical neurochemistry during maturation and senescence

Punishment sensitivity modulates the processing of negative feedback but not error-induced learning

Accumulating evidence suggests that individual differences in punishment and reward sensitivity are associated with functional alterations in neural systems underlying error and feedback processing. In particular, individuals highly sensitive to punishment have been found to be characterized by larger mediofrontal error signals as reflected in the error negativity/error-related negativity (Ne/ERN) and the feedback-related negativity (FRN). By contrast, reward sensitivity has been shown to relate to the error positivity (Pe). Given that Ne/ERN, FRN, and Pe have been functionally linked to flexible behavioral adaptation, the aim of the present research was to examine how these electrophysiological reflections of error and feedback processing vary as a function of punishment and reward sensitivity during reinforcement learning. We applied a probabilistic learning task that involved three different conditions of feedback validity (100%, 80%, and 50%). In contrast to prior studies using response competition tasks, we did not find reliable correlations between punishment sensitivity and the Ne/ERN. Instead, higher punishment sensitivity predicted larger FRN amplitudes, irrespective of feedback validity. Moreover, higher reward sensitivity was associated with a larger Pe. However, only reward sensitivity was related to better overall learning performance and higher post-error accuracy, whereas highly punishment sensitive participants showed impaired learning performance, suggesting that larger negative feedback-related error signals were not beneficial for learning or even reflected maladaptive information processing in these individuals. Thus, although our findings indicate that individual differences in reward and punishment sensitivity are related to electrophysiological correlates of error and feedback processing, we found less evidence for influences of these personality characteristics on the relation between performance monitoring and feedback-based learning

Ratings of name agreement and semantic categorization of 247 colored clipart pictures by young German children

Developmental and longitudinal studies with children increasingly use pictorial stimuli in cognitive, psychologic, and psycholinguistic research. To enhance validity and comparability within and across those studies, the use of normed pictures is recommended. Besides, creating picture sets and evaluating them in rating studies is very time consuming, in particular regarding samples of young children in which testing time is rather limited. As there is an increasing number of studies that investigate young German children's semantic language processing with colored clipart stimuli, this work provides a first set of 247 colored cliparts with ratings of German native speaking children aged 4 to 6 years. We assessed two central rating aspects of pictures: Name agreement (Do pictures elicit the intended name of an object?) and semantic categorization (Are objects classified as members of the intended semantic category?). Our ratings indicate that children are proficient in naming and even better in semantic categorization of objects, whereas both seems to improve with increasing age of young childhood. Finally, this paper discusses some features of pictorial objects that might be important for children's name agreement and semantic categorization and could be considered in future picture rating studies

Training and Transfer of Cue Updating in Older Adults Is Limited: Evidence From Behavioral and Neuronal Data

Cognitive control processes, such as updating task-relevant information while switching between multiple tasks, are substantially impaired in older adults. However, it has also been shown that these cognitive control processes can be improved by training interventions, e.g., by training in task switching. Here, we applied an event-related potential (ERP) approach to identify whether a cognitive training improves task-preparatory processes such as updating of relevant task goals. To do so, we applied a pretest-training-posttest design with eight training sessions. Two groups of older adults were either trained in task switching (treatment group) or in performing single tasks (control group) and we compared their performance to a group of untrained younger adults. To foster cue updating in the treatment group, we applied a cue-based switching task in which the two task cues were randomly selected prior to target presentation so that participants had time to prepare for the upcoming task. In contrast, the control group also received task cues but those were redundant as only one task had to be performed. We also examined whether training in cue updating during task switching can be transferred to a similar cognitive control task measuring updating of context information, namely a modified version of the AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT). The results revealed training-specific improvements in task switching, that is, a larger improvement in blocks requiring switching in comparison to single tasks at the behavioral level. In addition, training specific-effects were also found at the neuronal level. Older adults trained in cue updating while switching showed a reduction in mixing costs in the cue-related P3, indicating an improvement in preparatory updating processes. Additionally, P3 topography changed with training from a very broad to a parietally focused scalp distribution similar to the one found in younger adults. However, we did not obtain training-specific improvements in context updating in the AX-CPT neither at the behavioral level nor at the neuronal level. Results are discussed in the context of the ongoing debate on whether transfer of cognitive training improvements is possible

Hedging Bets in Linguistic Prediction : Younger and Older Adults Vary in the Breadth of Predictive Processing

Language processing is predictive in nature, but it is unknown whether language users generate multiple predictions about upcoming content simultaneously or whether spreading activation from one pre-activated word facilitates other words downstream. Simultaneously, developmental accounts of predictive processing simultaneously highlight potential tension among spreading activation vs. multiple activation accounts. We used self-paced reading to investigate if younger and older readers of German generate (multiple) graded predictions about the grammatical gender of nouns. Gradedness in predictions was operationalized as the difference in cloze probability between the most likely and second-most likely continuation that could complete a sentence. Sentences with a greater probabilistic difference were considered as imbalanced and more biased towards one gender. Sentences with lower probabilistic differences were considered to be more balanced towards multiple genders. Both young and older adults engaged in predictive processing. However, only younger adults activated multiple predictions, with slower reading times (RTs) when gender representations were balanced, but facilitation when one gender was more likely than others. In contrast, older adults’ RTs did not pattern with imbalance but merely with predictability, showing that, while able to generate predictions based on context, older adults did not predict multiple gender continuations. Hence, our findings suggest that (younger) language users generate graded predictions about upcoming content, by weighing possible sentence continuations according to their difference in cloze probability. Compared to younger adults, older adults’ predictions are reduced in scope. The results provide novel theoretical insights into the developmental mechanisms involved in predictive processing