NoiseFrontiersV3

Abstract Lexical decision is one of the most frequently used tasks in word recognition research. Theoretical conclusions are typically derived from a linear model on the reaction times (RTs) of correct word-trials only (e.g., linear regression and ANOVA). Although these models estimate random measurement error for RTs, considering only correct trials implicitly assumes that word/nonword categorizations are without noise: Words receive a yes-response because they have been recognized, and they receive a no-response when they are not known. Hence, when participants are presented with the same stimuli on two separate occasions, they are expected to give the same response. We demonstrate that this not true and that responses in a lexical decision task suffer from inconsistency in participants' response choice, meaning that RTs of "correct" word responses include RTs of trials on which participants did not recognize the stimulus . We obtained estimates of this internal noise using established methods from sensory psychophysic

Why do I like you when you behave like me? Neural mechanisms mediating positive consequences of observing someone being imitated." Social Neuroscience 5(4

Abstract Social psychological and developmental research revealed that imitation serves a fundamental social function. It has been shown that human beings have the tendency to automatically mirror the behaviour of others -the so called chameleon effect. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that being imitated leads to positive feelings towards the imitator. But why do we feel more positive about someone who imitates us? In the current fMRI study we aimed at exploring the neural correlates of the positive consequences of being imitated by means of an observation paradigm. Our results indicate that being imitated compared to not being imitated activates brain areas that have been associated with emotion and reward processing, namely medial orbitofrontal cortex/ ventromedial prefrontal cortex (mOFC/vmPFC, GLM whole-brain contrast). Moreover mOFC/vmPFC shows higher effective connectivity with striatum and mid-posterior insula during being imitated compared to not being imitated. 142 words