Mapping the differential impact of spontaneous and conversational laughter on brain and mind: an fMRI study in autism.

Spontaneous and conversational laughter are important socio-emotional communicative signals. Neuroimaging findings suggest that non-autistic people engage in mentalizing to understand the meaning behind conversational laughter. Autistic people may thus face specific challenges in processing conversational laughter, due to their mentalizing difficulties. Using fMRI, we explored neural differences during implicit processing of these two types of laughter. Autistic and non-autistic adults passively listened to funny words, followed by spontaneous laughter, conversational laughter, or noise-vocoded vocalizations. Behaviourally, words plus spontaneous laughter were rated as funnier than words plus conversational laughter, and the groups did not differ. However, neuroimaging results showed that non-autistic adults exhibited greater medial prefrontal cortex activation while listening to words plus conversational laughter, than words plus genuine laughter, while autistic adults showed no difference in medial prefrontal cortex activity between these two laughter types. Our findings suggest a crucial role for the medial prefrontal cortex in understanding socio-emotionally ambiguous laughter via mentalizing. Our study also highlights the possibility that autistic people may face challenges in understanding the essence of the laughter we frequently encounter in everyday life, especially in processing conversational laughter that carries complex meaning and social ambiguity, potentially leading to social vulnerability. Therefore, we advocate for clearer communication with autistic people.

Intention offloading: Domain-general versus task-specific confidence signals.

Intention offloading refers to the use of external reminders to help remember delayed intentions (e.g., setting an alert to help you remember when you need to take your medication). Research has found that metacognitive processes influence offloading such that individual differences in confidence predict individual differences in offloading regardless of objective cognitive ability. The current study investigated the cross-domain organization of this relationship. Participants performed two perceptual discrimination tasks where objective accuracy was equalized using a staircase procedure. In a memory task, two measures of intention offloading were collected, (1) the overall likelihood of setting reminders, and (2) the bias in reminder-setting compared to the optimal strategy. It was found that perceptual confidence was associated with the first measure but not the second. It is shown that this is because individual differences in perceptual confidence capture meaningful differences in objective ability despite the staircase procedure. These findings indicate that intention offloading is influenced by both domain-general and task-specific metacognitive signals. They also show that even when task performance is equalized via staircasing, individual differences in confidence cannot be considered a pure measure of metacognitive bias.

Partially Overlapping Neural Correlates of Metacognitive Monitoring and Metacognitive Control.

Metacognition describes the process of monitoring one's own mental states, often for the purpose of cognitive control. Previous research has investigated how metacognitive signals are generated (metacognitive monitoring), for example, when people (both female/male) judge their confidence in their decisions and memories. Research has also investigated how metacognitive signals are used to influence behavior (metacognitive control), for example, setting a reminder (i.e., cognitive offloading) for something you are not confident you will remember. However, the mapping between metacognitive monitoring and metacognitive control needs further study on a neural level. We used fMRI to investigate a delayed-intentions task with a reminder element, allowing human participants to use their metacognitive insight to engage metacognitive control. Using multivariate pattern analysis, we found that we could separately decode both monitoring and control, and, to a lesser extent, cross-classify between them. Therefore, brain patterns associated with monitoring and control are partially, but not fully, overlapping.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Models of metacognition commonly distinguish between monitoring (how metacognition is formed) and control (how metacognition is used for behavioral regulation). Research into these facets of metacognition has often happened in isolation. Here, we provide a study which directly investigates the mapping between metacognitive monitoring and metacognitive control at a neural level. We applied multivariate pattern analysis to fMRI data from a novel task in which participants separately rated their confidence (metacognitive monitoring) and how much they would like to use a reminder (metacognitive control). We find support for the notion that the two aspects of metacognition overlap partially but not fully. We argue that future research should focus on how different metacognitive signals are selected for control.

Stubborn Predictions in Primary Visual Cortex.

Perceivers can use past experiences to make sense of ambiguous sensory signals. However, this may be inappropriate when the world changes and past experiences no longer predict what the future holds. Optimal learning models propose that observers decide whether to stick with or update their predictions by tracking the uncertainty or "precision" of their expectations. However, contrasting theories of prediction have argued that we are prone to misestimate uncertainty-leading to stubborn predictions that are difficult to dislodge. To compare these possibilities, we had participants learn novel perceptual predictions before using fMRI to record visual brain activity when predictive contingencies were disrupted-meaning that previously "expected" events became objectively improbable. Multivariate pattern analyses revealed that expected events continued to be decoded with greater fidelity from primary visual cortex, despite marked changes in the statistical structure of the environment, which rendered these expectations no longer valid. These results suggest that our perceptual systems do indeed form stubborn predictions even from short periods of learning-and more generally suggest that top-down expectations have the potential to help or hinder perceptual inference in bounded minds like ours.

Individual differences in working memory capacity predict benefits to memory from intention offloading.

Research suggests that individuals with lower working memory have difficulty remembering to fulfil delayed intentions. The current study examined whether the ability to offload intentions onto the environment mitigated these deficits. Participants (N = 268) completed three versions of a delayed intention task with and without the use of reminders, along with three measures of working memory capacity. Results showed that individuals with higher working memory fulfilled more intentions when having to rely on their own memory, but this difference was eliminated when offloading was permitted. Individuals with lower working memory chose to offload more often, suggesting that they were less willing to engage in effortful maintenance of internal representations when given the option. Working memory was not associated with metacognitive confidence or optimal offloading choices based on point value. These findings suggest offloading may help circumvent capacity limitations associated with maintaining and remembering delayed intentions.

Neural representation of current and intended task sets during sequential judgements on human faces.

Engaging in a demanding activity while holding in mind another task to be performed in the near future requires the maintenance of information about both the currently-active task set and the intended one. However, little is known about how the human brain implements such action plans. While some previous studies have examined the neural representation of current task sets and others have investigated delayed intentions, to date none has examined the representation of current and intended task sets within a single experimental paradigm. In this fMRI study, we examined the neural representation of current and intended task sets, employing sequential classification tasks on human faces. Multivariate decoding analyses showed that current task sets were represented in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and fusiform gyrus (FG), while intended tasks could be decoded from lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC). Importantly, a ventromedial region in PFC/OFC contained information about both current and delayed tasks, although cross-classification between the two types of information was not possible. These results help delineate the neural representations of current and intended task sets, and highlight the importance of ventromedial PFC/OFC for maintaining task-relevant information regardless of when it is needed.

Excessive use of reminders: Metacognition and effort-minimisation in cognitive offloading.

People often use external reminders to help remember delayed intentions. This is a form of "cognitive offloading". Individuals sometimes offload more often than would be optimal (Gilbert et al., 2020). This bias has been linked to participants' erroneous metacognitive underconfidence in their memory abilities. However, underconfidence is unlikely to fully explain the bias. An additional, previously-untested factor that may contribute to the offloading bias is a preference to avoid cognitive effort associated with remembering internally. The present Registered Report examined evidence for this hypothesis. One group of participants received payment contingent on their performance of the task (hypothesised to increase cognitive effort, and therefore reduce the bias towards offloading); another group received a flat payment for taking part, as in the earlier experiment. The offloading bias was significantly reduced (but not eliminated) in the rewarded group, suggesting that a preference to avoid cognitive effort influences cognitive offloading.

The effect of recent reminder setting on subsequent strategy and performance in a prospective memory task.

The technological advancement that is rapidly taking place in today's society allows increased opportunity for "cognitive offloading" by storing information in external devices rather than relying on internal memory. This opens the way to fundamental questions regarding the interplay between internal and external memory and the potential benefits and costs of placing information in the external environment. This article reports the results of three pre-registered online experiments investigating the consequences of prior cognitive offloading on A) subsequent unaided ability, and B) strategic decisions whether to engage in future cognitive offloading. We administered a web-based task requiring participants to remember delayed intentions for a brief period and manipulated the possibility of setting reminders to create an external cue. Earlier cognitive offloading had little effect upon individuals' subsequent unaided ability, leading to a small and nonsignificant drop in subsequent performance. However, there was a strong effect on participants' subsequent likelihood of setting reminders. These findings suggest that the short-term impact of cognitive offloading is more likely to be seen on individuals' strategy choices rather than basic memory processes.

Decoding intentions of self and others from fMRI activity patterns.

Previous studies using multi-voxel pattern analysis have decoded the content of participants' delayed intentions from patterns of fMRI data. Here we investigate whether this technique can be used to decode not only participants' own intentions, but also their representation of the intentions held by other people. In other words: if Sam is thinking about Hoki, can we decode the content of Hoki's intention by scanning Sam's brain? We additionally distinguished two components of intentions: action-plans versus goals, and included novel control analyses that allowed us to distinguish intending an outcome from simply expecting it to occur or simulating its consequences. Regions of frontal, parietal, and occipital cortex contained patterns from which it was possible to decode intentions of both self and other. Furthermore, crossclasification between self and other was possible, suggesting overlap between the two. Control analyses suggested that these results reflected visuo-spatial processes by which intentions were generated in our paradigm, rather than anything special about intentions per se. There was no evidence for any representation of intentions as mental states distinct from visuospatial processes involved in generating their content and/or simulating their outcomes. These findings suggest that the brain activity patterns decoded in intention-decoding fMRI studies may reflect domain-general processes rather than being intention-specific.

Development of Children's Use of External Reminders for Hard-to-Remember Intentions.

This study explored under what conditions young children would set reminders to aid their memory for delayed intentions. A computerized task requiring participants to carry out delayed intentions under varying levels of cognitive load was presented to 63 children (aged between 6.9 and 13.0 years old). Children of all ages demonstrated metacognitive predictions of their performance that were congruent with task difficulty. Only older children, however, set more reminders when they expected their future memory performance to be poorer. These results suggest that most primary school-aged children possess metacognitive knowledge about their prospective memory limits, but that only older children may be able to exercise the metacognitive control required to translate this knowledge into strategic reminder setting.

Creating external reminders for delayed intentions: dissociable influence on "task-positive" and "task-negative" brain networks.

Studies of prospective memory and other paradigms requiring participants to remember delayed intentions typically reveal a distinction between lateral and medial rostral prefrontal cortex, whereby the experimental condition yields increased signal in the former region and decreased signal in the latter. These regions comprise nodes of larger "task-positive" and "task-negative" networks that often show opposite patterns of signal change in response to diverse cognitive demands. However, it is not clear to what extent activity in these networks is A) inverse but equivalent, or B) functionally dissociable. In order to address this question, participants performed an "intention-offloading" task while undergoing fMRI. On each trial they remembered a delayed intention, which they had the opportunity to fulfill after a brief filled delay. In one condition they were required to set an external reminder of this intention, while in the other they acted without any external memory aid. Results indicated a clear functional dissociation between the two networks. Compared with a control task with no delayed intention, there was a highly significant reduction in task-negative deactivation when participants used an external memory aid. However, there was no reduction in task-positive activation. These results are consistent with previous evidence that medial rostral prefrontal cortex plays a prominent role in representing the content of delayed intentions, accompanied by a reduction in BOLD signal and potentially increased theta-band oscillatory activity. This role is no longer required once an external reminder has been created. By contrast, lateral rostral prefrontal cortex may play a content-free role, unaffected by the offloading of content into the external environment.

Strategic use of reminders: Influence of both domain-general and task-specific metacognitive confidence, independent of objective memory ability.

How do we decide whether to use external artifacts and reminders to remember delayed intentions, versus relying on unaided memory? Experiment 1 (N=400) showed that participants' choice to forgo reminders in an experimental task was independently predicted by subjective confidence and objective ability, even when the two measures were themselves uncorrelated. Use of reminders improved performance, explaining significant variance in intention fulfilment even after controlling for unaided ability. Experiment 2 (N=303) additionally investigated a pair of unrelated perceptual discrimination tasks, where the confidence and sensitivity of metacognitive judgments was decorrelated from objective performance using a staircase procedure. Participants with lower confidence in their perceptual judgments set more reminders in the delayed-intention task, even though confidence was unrelated to objective accuracy. However, memory confidence was a better predictor of reminder setting. Thus, propensity to set reminders was independently influenced by (a) domain-general metacognitive confidence; (b) task-specific confidence; and (c) objective ability.

Cognitive offloading is value-based decision making: Modelling cognitive effort and the expected value of memory.

How do people decide between maintaining information in short-term memory or offloading it to external reminders? How does this affect subsequent memory? This article presents a simple computational model based on two principles: A) items stored in brain-based memory occupy its limited capacity, generating an opportunity cost; B) reminders incur a small physical-action cost, but capacity is effectively unlimited. These costs are balanced against the value of remembering, which determines the optimal strategy. Simulations reproduce many empirical findings, including: 1) preferential offloading of high-value items; 2) increased offloading at higher memory loads; 3) offloading can cause forgetting of offloaded items ('Google effect') but 4) improved memory for other items ('saving-enhanced memory'); 5) reduced saving-enhanced-memory effect when reminders are unreliable; 6) influence of item-value: people may preferentially offload high-value items and store additional low-value items in brain-based memory; 7) greatest sensitivity to the effort of reminder-setting at intermediate rather than highest/lowest levels of task difficulty; 8) increased offloading in individuals with poorer memory ability. Therefore, value-based decision-making provides a simple unifying account of many cognitive offloading phenomena. These results are consistent with an opportunity-cost model of cognitive effort, which can explain why internal memory feels effortful but reminders do not.

Metacognition guides intention offloading and fulfillment of real-world plans.

Reminders such as calendar entries and digital alerts are highly effective at helping people remember what they need to do. Recent work has explored the triggers of reminder setting, also known as intention offloading, finding that low confidence is associated with more offloading in laboratory tasks. This supports a metacognitive model of cognitive offloading. Here, we investigated whether this model generalizes to real-world intentions. We asked 112 participants about their upcoming plans and subsequent fulfillment of those plans in two online surveys conducted in 2022. Participants were more likely to set reminders for plans that (a) they were less confident they would remember and (b) they judged to be more important. Participants with lower confidence that they would remember to return for the second survey were more likely to set a reminder for this plan. This, in turn, predicted greater fulfillment. Therefore, ironically, lower confidence predicted greater success. These findings show that intention offloading predicts fulfillment of real-world intentions. They also point toward metacognition as a target for interventions to facilitate this. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Rostral prefrontal cortex and the focus of attention in prospective memory.

Prospective memory (PM) denotes the function to realize intentions after a delay while being immersed in distracting ongoing (OG) activity. Here, we scrutinize the often-reported involvement of rostral prefrontal cortex (rPFC; approximating Brodmann area 10) in such situations: This region might mediate attention between external stimuli and the internally maintained intention, that is, between stimulus-oriented (SO) and stimulus-independent (SI) processing. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we orthogonally crossed 1) PM versus OG activity only, with 2) SO versus SI attention. In support of the hypothesis, common regions of medial rPFC exhibited greater blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal for the contrasts of both OG task only versus PM and SO versus SI attending. However, activation related to the former contrast extended more superiorly, suggesting a functional gradient along a dorsal-ventral axis within this region. Moreover, region-of-interest analyses revealed that PM versus OG task only was associated with greater BOLD signal in left lateral rPFC, reflecting the requirement to maintain delayed intentions. Distinct aspects of this region were also transiently engaged at transitions between SO and SI conditions. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that some of the rostral prefrontal signal changes associated with PM performance reflect relative differences in SO versus SI processing.

Influence of the physical effort of reminder-setting on strategic offloading of delayed intentions.

Intention offloading involves using external reminders such as diaries, to-do lists, and digital alerts to help us remember delayed intentions. Recent studies have provided evidence for various cognitive and metacognitive factors that guide intention offloading, but little research has investigated the physical cost of reminder-setting itself. Here, we present two pre-registered experiments investigating how the cost of physical effort associated with reminder-setting influences strategic intention offloading under different levels of memory load. At all memory loads, reminder-setting was reduced when it was more effortful. The ability to set reminders allowed participants to compensate for the influence of memory load on accuracy in the low-effort condition; this effect was attenuated in the high-effort condition. In addition, there was evidence that participants with less confidence in their memory abilities were more likely to set reminders. Contrary to prediction, physical effort had the greatest effect on reminder-setting at intermediate memory loads. We speculate that the physical costs of reminder-setting might have the greatest impact when participants are uncertain about their strategy choice. These results demonstrate the importance of physical effort as one of the factors relevant to cost-benefit decision-making about cognitive offloading strategies.

Value-based routing of delayed intentions into brain-based versus external memory stores.

Individuals have the option of remembering delayed intentions by storing them in internal memory or offloading them to an external store such as a diary or smartphone alert. How do we route intentions to the appropriate store, and what are the consequences of this? We report three experiments (two preregistered) investigating the role of value. In Experiment 1, participants preferentially offloaded high-value intentions to the external environment. This improved memory for both high- and low-value content. Experiment 2 replicated the low-value memory enhancement even when only high-value intentions were offloaded. This provides evidence for a cognitive spillover effect: When high-value content is offloaded, internal memory becomes reallocated to low-value content instead. Experiment 3 confirmed a theoretical prediction of this account: participants had superior memory for low- than high-value content when the external store was removed. These results imply that value-based offloading can lead to a cognitive spillover effect from high- to low-value content, similar to the automatic allocation of "spare" capacity that has been proposed in the domain of visual attention. Individuals prioritize high-value information for external memory; consequently, they can be left with predominantly low-value information if it fails. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Outsourcing Memory to External Tools: A Review of 'Intention Offloading'.

How do we remember delayed intentions? Three decades of research into prospective memory have provided insight into the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in this form of memory. However, we depend on more than just our brains to remember intentions. We also use external props and tools such as calendars and diaries, strategically placed objects, and technologies such as smartphone alerts. This is known as 'intention offloading'. Despite the progress in our understanding of brain-based prospective memory, we know much less about the role of intention offloading in individuals' ability to fulfil delayed intentions. Here, we review recent research into intention offloading, with a particular focus on how individuals decide between storing intentions in internal memory versus external reminders. We also review studies investigating how intention offloading changes across the lifespan and how it relates to underlying brain mechanisms. We conclude that intention offloading is highly effective, experimentally tractable, and guided by metacognitive processes. Individuals have systematic biases in their offloading strategies that are stable over time. Evidence also suggests that individual differences and developmental changes in offloading strategies are driven at least in part by metacognitive processes. Therefore, metacognitive interventions could play an important role in promoting individuals' adaptive use of cognitive tools.

Optimal cognitive offloading: Increased reminder usage but reduced proreminder bias in older adults.

Research into prospective memory suggests that older adults may face particular difficulties remembering delayed intentions. One way to mitigate these difficulties is by using external reminders but relatively little is known about age-related differences in such cognitive offloading strategies. We examined younger and older adults' (N = 88) performance on a memory task where they chose between remembering delayed intentions with internal memory (earning maximum reward per item) or external reminders (earning a reduced reward). This allowed us to distinguish (a) the absolute number of reminders used versus (b) the proreminder or antireminder bias, compared with each individual's optimal strategy. Older adults used more reminders overall, as might be expected, because they also had poorer memory performance. However, when compared against the optimal strategy weighing the costs versus benefits of reminders, it was only the younger adults who had a proreminder bias. Younger adults overestimated the benefit of reminders, whereas older adults underestimated it. Therefore, even when aging is associated with increased use of external memory aids overall, it can also be associated with reduced preference for external memory support, relative to the objective need for such support. This age-related difference may be driven at least in part by metacognitive processes, suggesting that metacognitive interventions could lead to improved use of cognitive tools. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Decoding the content of delayed intentions.

Rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC) plays a key role in our ability to postpone the execution of intended behaviors until after another activity has been performed. However, it is poorly understood in computational terms. One crucial question is whether RLPFC represents the content of delayed intentions or plays a nonspecific role. In this human functional magnetic resonance imaging study (n = 32), RLPFC was active while participants stored delayed intentions during a distracting ongoing task. Multivariate analysis showed that the intended cue for future action and the intended behavior could be decoded from distinct posterior brain regions. However, the content of intentions could not be decoded from RLPFC itself. Functional connectivity analysis showed that RLPFC increased its coupling with content-representing regions during intention storage. Furthermore, trials with relatively high RLPFC activity were associated with enhanced decoding. Thus, RLPFC may enable realization of delayed intentions via interactions with posterior brain regions, which represent their content.