Zooming in and out of semantics: proximal-distal construal levels and prominence hierarchies.

We argue that the "Prominence Hierarchy" within linguistics can be subsumed under the "Construal Level Theory" within psychology and that a wide spectrum of grammatical phenomena, ranging from case assignment to number, definiteness, verbal agreement, voice, direct/inverse morphology, and syntactic word-order respond to Prominence Hierarchies (PH), or semantic scales. In fact, the field of prominence hierarchies, as expressed through the languages of the world, continues to be riddled with riddles. We identify a set of conundrums: (A) vantage point and animacy, (B) individuation and narrow reference phenomena, (C) fronting mechanisms, (D) abstraction, and (E) cultural variance and flexibility. We here propose an account for the existence of these hierarchies and their pervasive effects on grammar by relying on psychological Construal Level Theory (CLT). We suggest that both PH and CLT structure the external world according to proximity or distance from the "Me, Here and Now" (MHN) perspective. In language, MHN has the effect of structuring grammars; in cognition, it structures our lives, our preferences, and choices.

The underlying architecture of musical sensibility: One general factor, four subdimensions, and strong genetic effects.

Current evidence suggests moderate heritability of music phenotypes, such as music listening and achievement. However, other fundamental traits underlying people's interest in music and its relevance for their lives have been largely neglected, and little is known about the genetic and environmental etiology of what we refer to as musical sensibility-the tendency to be emotionally and aesthetically engaged by music. This study investigated the latent structure, as well as the genetic and environmental factors influencing individual variability in multiple domains of musical sensibility, and the etiological architecture of the relationship between the dimensions. To this end, we used phenotypic confirmatory factor analytic and biometric twin modeling to analyze self-reported ratings on four dimensions of musical sensibility in a sample of Norwegian twins (N = 2600). The results indicate a phenotypic higher-order structure, whereby both the resulting general musical sensibility factor and the conceptually narrower domains were strongly heritable (49-65%). Multivariate analyses of the genetic and environmental covariance further revealed substantial overlap in genetic variance across domains.

Tunnel motion: Pupil dilations to optic flow within illusory dark holes.

We showed to the same observers both dynamic and static 2D patterns that can both evoke distinctive perceptions of motion or optic flow, as if moving in a tunnel or into a dark hole. At all times pupil diameters were monitored with an infrared eye tracker. We found a converging set of results indicating stronger pupil dilations to expansive growth of shapes or optic flows evoking a forward motion into a dark tunnel. Multiple regression analyses showed that the pupil responses to the illusory expanding black holes of static patterns were predicted by the individuals' pupil response to optic flows showing spiraling motion or "free fall" into a black hole. Also, individuals' pupil responses to spiraling motion into dark tunnels predicted the individuals' sense of illusory expansion with the static, illusory expanding, dark holes. This correspondence across individuals between their pupil responses to both dynamic and static, illusory expanding, holes suggests that these percepts reflect a common perceptual mechanism, deriving motion from 2D scenes, and that the observers' pupil adjustments reflect the direction and strength of motion they perceive and the expected outcome of an increase in darkness.

The effect of aging on the dual-route model of emotion processing applied to memory recognition.

OBJECTIVE: Emotional faces are automatically processed in the human brain through a cortical route (conscious processing based on high spatial frequencies, HSF) and a subcortical route (subliminal processing based on low spatial frequencies, LSF). How each route contributes to emotional face recognition is still debated, and little is known about this process in aging. METHOD: Here, 147 younger adults (YA) and 137 older adults (OA) were passively presented with neutral, happy, and angry faces, shown as (a) unfiltered, (b) filtered at LSF, and (c) hybrid (emotional LSF superimposed to the neutral HSF of the same face). In a succeeding recognition phase, the same faces and new faces were shown as unfiltered, and participants were asked whether each face had been already presented in the encoding phase. RESULTS: Despite the better performance by YA compared with OA for neutral faces presented as unfiltered (cortical route), the performance of OA was better than that of YA for angry faces presented as hybrid and for happy faces presented at LSF and as hybrid. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the activity of the subcortical route during the encoding phase facilitates emotional recognition in aging. Results are discussed in accordance with the dual-route model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Illusory light drives pupil responses in primates.

In humans, the eye pupils respond to both physical light sensed by the retina and mental representations of light produced by the brain. Notably, our pupils constrict when a visual stimulus is illusorily perceived brighter, even if retinal illumination is constant. However, it remains unclear whether such perceptual penetrability of pupil responses is an epiphenomenon unique to humans or whether it represents an adaptive mechanism shared with other animals to anticipate variations in retinal illumination between successive eye fixations. To address this issue, we measured the pupil responses of both humans and macaque monkeys exposed to three chromatic versions (cyan, magenta, and yellow) of the Asahi brightness illusion. We found that the stimuli illusorily perceived brighter or darker trigger differential pupil responses that are very similar in macaques and human participants. Additionally, we show that this phenomenon exhibits an analogous cyan bias in both primate species. Beyond evincing the macaque monkey as a relevant model to study the perceptual penetrability of pupil responses, our results suggest that this phenomenon is tuned to ecological conditions because the exposure to a "bright cyan-bluish sky" may be associated with increased risks of dazzle and retinal damages.

Suicide attempt risk predicts inconsistent self-reported suicide attempts: A machine learning approach using longitudinal data.

INTRODUCTION: Inconsistent self-reports of lifetime suicide attempts (LSAs) are a major obstacle for accurate assessment of suicidal behavior. This study is the first to posit that adolescents at higher risk report LSAs more consistently than those at lower risk, revealing a link between suicide attempt risk and consistent reporting. METHODS: A machine learning model was trained with 70 % of the baseline assessment data of a longitudinal sample of Norwegian adolescents (n = 10,739). The model was used to estimate the LSA risk score for the remaining 30 % of the testing dataset. The relationship between these baseline risk scores and the consistency of reporting LSAs was assessed using a 2-year follow-up reassessment of the testing dataset. RESULTS: Internalizing problems, optimism about the future, conduct problems, substance use, and disordered eating were important factors associated with suicide attempt risk. Of the participants, 63.41 % had inconsistent self-reports at the two-year follow-up. Adolescents who consistently reported LSAs had significantly higher scores of suicide attempt risk at baseline. Two logistic regression analyses confirmed an association between suicide attempt risk and inconsistent self-reported LSAs and showed that sex (being male), and lower levels of depression and conduct problems significantly predicted such inconsistencies. Those who inconsistently reported LSAs were more likely than the others to be classified by the model as false negatives at the baseline risk assessment due to their lower estimated risk scores. LIMITATIONS: Suicide attempts were measured with a single item in this study. CONCLUSION: These risk factors support the theory of adolescent suicidality (TAS) and could improve suicide attempt risk assessment. Inconsistent self-reported LSAs signal lower suicide attempt risk.

Oscillatory attention in groove.

Attention is not constant but rather fluctuates over time and these attentional fluctuations may prioritize the processing of certain events over others. In music listening, the pleasurable urge to move to music (termed 'groove' by music psychologists) offers a particularly convenient case study of oscillatory attention because it engenders synchronous and oscillatory movements which also vary predictably with stimulus complexity. In this study, we simultaneously recorded pupillometry and scalp electroencephalography (EEG) from participants while they listened to drumbeats of varying complexity that they rated in terms of groove afterwards. Using the intertrial phase coherence of the beat frequency, we found that while subjects were listening, their pupil activity became entrained to the beat of the drumbeats and this entrained attention persisted in the EEG even as subjects imagined the drumbeats continuing through subsequent silent periods. This entrainment in both the pupillometry and EEG worsened with increasing rhythmic complexity, indicating poorer sensory precision as the beat became more obscured. Additionally, sustained pupil dilations revealed the expected, inverted U-shaped relationship between rhythmic complexity and groove ratings. Taken together, this work bridges oscillatory attention to rhythmic complexity in relation to musical groove.

Detecting implicit and explicit facial emotions at different ages.

Emotions are processed in the brain through a cortical route, responsible for detailed-conscious recognition and mainly based on image High Spatial Frequencies (HSF), and a subcortical route, responsible for coarse-unconscious processing and based on Low SF (LSF). However, little is known about possible changes in the functioning of the two routes in ageing. In the present go/no-go online task, 112 younger adults and 111 older adults were asked to press a button when a happy or angry face appeared (go) and to inhibit responses for neutral faces (no-go). Facial stimuli were presented unfiltered (broadband image), filtered at HSF and LSF, and hybrids (LSF of an emotional expression superimposed to the HSF of the same face with a neutral expression). All stimuli were also presented rotated on the vertical axis (upside-down) to investigate the global analysis of faces in ageing. Results showed an overall better performance of younger compared to older participants for all conditions except for hybrid stimuli. The expected face-inversion effect was confirmed in both age groups. We conclude that, besides an overall worsening of the perceptual skill with ageing, no specific impairment in the functioning of both the cortical and the subcortical route emerged.

Unveiling Adolescent Suicidality: Holistic Analysis of Protective and Risk Factors Using Multiple Machine Learning Algorithms.

Adolescent suicide attempts are on the rise, presenting a significant public health concern. Recent research aimed at improving risk assessment for adolescent suicide attempts has turned to machine learning. But no studies to date have examined the performance of stacked ensemble algorithms, which are more suitable for low-prevalence conditions. The existing machine learning-based research also lacks population-representative samples, overlooks protective factors and their interplay with risk factors, and neglects established theories on suicidal behavior in favor of purely algorithmic risk estimation. The present study overcomes these shortcomings by comparing the performance of a stacked ensemble algorithm with a diverse set of algorithms, performing a holistic item analysis to identify both risk and protective factors on a comprehensive data, and addressing the compatibility of these factors with two competing theories of suicide, namely, The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide and The Strain Theory of Suicide. A population-representative dataset of 173,664 Norwegian adolescents aged 13 to 18 years (mean = 15.14, SD = 1.58, 50.5% female) with a 4.65% rate of reported suicide attempt during the past 12 months was analyzed. Five machine learning algorithms were trained for suicide attempt risk assessment. The stacked ensemble model significantly outperformed other algorithms, achieving equal sensitivity and a specificity of 90.1%, AUC of 96.4%, and AUCPR of 67.5%. All algorithms found recent self-harm to be the most important indicator of adolescent suicide attempt. Exploratory factor analysis suggested five additional risk domains, which we labeled internalizing problems, sleep disturbance, disordered eating, lack of optimism regarding future education and career, and victimization. The identified factors provided stronger support for The Interpersonal Theory of Suicide than for The Strain Theory of Suicide. An enhancement to The Interpersonal Theory based on the risk and protective factors identified by holistic item analysis is presented.

From pre-processing to advanced dynamic modeling of pupil data.

The pupil of the eye provides a rich source of information for cognitive scientists, as it can index a variety of bodily states (e.g., arousal, fatigue) and cognitive processes (e.g., attention, decision-making). As pupillometry becomes a more accessible and popular methodology, researchers have proposed a variety of techniques for analyzing pupil data. Here, we focus on time series-based, signal-to-signal approaches that enable one to relate dynamic changes in pupil size over time with dynamic changes in a stimulus time series, continuous behavioral outcome measures, or other participants' pupil traces. We first introduce pupillometry, its neural underpinnings, and the relation between pupil measurements and other oculomotor behaviors (e.g., blinks, saccades), to stress the importance of understanding what is being measured and what can be inferred from changes in pupillary activity. Next, we discuss possible pre-processing steps, and the contexts in which they may be necessary. Finally, we turn to signal-to-signal analytic techniques, including regression-based approaches, dynamic time-warping, phase clustering, detrended fluctuation analysis, and recurrence quantification analysis. Assumptions of these techniques, and examples of the scientific questions each can address, are outlined, with references to key papers and software packages. Additionally, we provide a detailed code tutorial that steps through the key examples and figures in this paper. Ultimately, we contend that the insights gained from pupillometry are constrained by the analysis techniques used, and that signal-to-signal approaches offer a means to generate novel scientific insights by taking into account understudied spectro-temporal relationships between the pupil signal and other signals of interest.

Are false positives in suicide classification models a risk group? Evidence for "true alarms" in a population-representative longitudinal study of Norwegian adolescents.

Introduction: False positives in retrospective binary suicide attempt classification models are commonly attributed to sheer classification error. However, when machine learning suicide attempt classification models are trained with a multitude of psycho-socio-environmental factors and achieve high accuracy in suicide risk assessment, false positives may turn out to be at high risk of developing suicidal behavior or attempting suicide in the future. Thus, they may be better viewed as "true alarms," relevant for a suicide prevention program. In this study, using large population-based longitudinal dataset, we examine three hypotheses: (1) false positives, compared to the true negatives, are at higher risk of suicide attempt in future, (2) the suicide attempts risk for the false positives increase as a function of increase in specificity threshold; and (3) as specificity increases, the severity of risk factors between false positives and true positives becomes more similar. Methods: Utilizing the Gradient Boosting algorithm, we used a sample of 11,369 Norwegian adolescents, assessed at two timepoints (1992 and 1994), to classify suicide attempters at the first time point. We then assessed the relative risk of suicide attempt at the second time point for false positives in comparison to true negatives, and in relation to the level of specificity. Results: We found that false positives were at significantly higher risk of attempting suicide compared to true negatives. When selecting a higher classification risk threshold by gradually increasing the specificity cutoff from 60% to 97.5%, the relative suicide attempt risk of the false positive group increased, ranging from minimum of 2.96 to 7.22 times. As the risk threshold increased, the severity of various mental health indicators became significantly more comparable between false positives and true positives. Conclusion: We argue that the performance evaluation of machine learning suicide classification models should take the clinical relevance into account, rather than focusing solely on classification error metrics. As shown here, the so-called false positives represent a truly at-risk group that should be included in suicide prevention programs. Hence, these findings should be taken into consideration when interpreting machine learning suicide classification models as well as planning future suicide prevention interventions for adolescents.

Recognition of brief sounds in rapid serial auditory presentation.

Two experiments were conducted to test the role of participant factors (i.e., musical sophistication, working memory capacity) and stimulus factors (i.e., sound duration, timbre) on auditory recognition using a rapid serial auditory presentation paradigm. Participants listened to a rapid stream of very brief sounds ranging from 30 to 150 milliseconds and were tested on their ability to distinguish the presence from the absence of a target sound selected from various sound sources placed amongst the distracters. Experiment 1a established that brief exposure to stimuli (60 to 150 milliseconds) does not necessarily correspond to impaired recognition. In Experiment 1b we found evidence that 30 milliseconds of exposure to the stimuli significantly impairs recognition of single auditory targets, but the recognition for voice and sine tone targets impaired the least, suggesting that the lower limit required for successful recognition could be lower than 30 milliseconds for voice and sine tone targets. Critically, the effect of sound duration on recognition completely disappeared when differences in musical sophistication were controlled for. Participants' working memory capacities did not seem to predict their recognition performances. Our behavioral results extend the studies oriented to understand the processing of brief timbres under temporal constraint by suggesting that the musical sophistication may play a larger role than previously thought. These results can also provide a working hypothesis for future research, namely, that underlying neural mechanisms for the processing of various sound sources may have different temporal constraints.

Caressed by music: Related preferences for velocity of touch and tempo of music?

Given that both hearing and touch are 'mechanical senses' that respond to physical pressure or mechanical energy and that individuals appear to have a characteristic internal or spontaneous tempo, individual preferences in musical and touch rhythms might be related. We explored this in two experiments probing individual preferences for tempo in the tactile and auditory modalities. Study 1 collected ratings of received stroking on the forearm and measured the velocity the participants used for stroking a fur. Music tempo preferences were assessed as mean beats per minute of individually selected music pieces and via the adjustment of experimenter-selected music to a preferred tempo. Heart rate was recorded to measure levels of physiological arousal. We found that the preferred tempo of favorite (self-selected) music correlated positively with the velocity with which each individual liked to be touched. In Study 2, participants rated videos of repeated touch on someone else's arm and videos of a drummer playing with brushes on a snare drum, both at a variety of tempos. We found that participants with similar rating patterns for the different stroking speeds did not show similar rating patterns for the different music beats. The results suggest that there may be a correspondence between preferences for favorite music and felt touch, but this is either weak or it cannot be evoked effectively with vicarious touch and/or mere drum beats. Thus, if preferences for touch and music are related, this is likely to be dependent on the specific type of stimulation.

Using Automated Speech Processing for Repeated Measurements in a Clinical Setting of the Behavioral Variability in the Stroop Task.

The Stroop interference task is indispensable to current neuropsychological practice. Despite this, it is limited in its potential for repeated administration, its sensitivity and its demands on professionals and their clients. We evaluated a digital Stroop deployed using a smart device. Spoken responses were timed using automated speech recognition. Participants included adult nonpatients (N = 113; k = 5 sessions over 5 days) and patients with psychiatric diagnoses (N = 85; k = 3-4 sessions per week over 4 weeks). Traditional interference (difference in response time between color incongruent words vs. color neutral words; M = 0.121 s) and facilitation (neutral vs. color congruent words; M = 0.085 s) effects were robust and temporally stable over testing sessions (ICCs 0.50-0.86). The performance showed little relation to clinical symptoms for a two-week window for either nonpatients or patients but was related to self-reported concentration at the time of testing for both groups. Performance was also related to treatment outcomes in patients. The duration of response word utterances was longer in patients than in nonpatients. Measures of intra-individual variability showed promise for understanding clinical state and treatment outcome but were less temporally stable than measures based solely on average response time latency. This framework of remote assessment using speech processing technology enables the fine-grained longitudinal charting of cognition and verbal behavior. However, at present, there is a problematic lower limit to the absolute size of the effects that can be examined when using voice in such a brief 'out-of-the-laboratory condition' given the temporal resolution of the speech-to-text detection system (in this case, 10 ms). This resolution will limit the parsing of meaningful effect sizes.

The lateralized flash-lag illusion: A psychophysical and pupillometry study.

The flash-lag illusion (FLI) is a visual phenomenon where a flashed object, either co-localized or in physical alignment with another continuously moving object, is perceived to lag behind the path of the moving object. In the present study, we reveal an anisotropy of the FLI between the lateral visual fields that was expressed psychophysically as different points of subjective equality, depending on the hemifield in which the stimuli appeared. Specifically, the study confirmed that, as seen in two previous studies, the FLI was significantly larger in the left visual field (LVF) than in the right (RVF). In addition, pupil dilations were larger in the RVF than in the LVF as well as returning to baseline levels more rapidly in the LVF. We interpret these findings as converging on revealing more efficient spatial and attentional processing and, in turn, extrapolation of motion in the LVF/right hemisphere than in the RVF/left hemisphere.

Beat alignment ability is associated with formal musical training not current music playing.

The ability to perceive the beat in music is crucial for both music listeners and players with expert musicians being notably skilled at noticing fine deviations in the beat. However, it is unclear whether this beat perception ability is enhanced in trained musicians who continue to practice relative to musicians who no longer play. Thus, we investigated this by comparing active musicians', inactive musicians', and nonmusicians' beat alignment ability scores on the Computerized Adaptive Beat Alignment Test (CA-BAT). 97 adults with diverse musical experience participated in the study, reporting their years of formal musical training, number of instruments played, hours of weekly music playing, and hours of weekly music listening, in addition to their demographic information. While initial tests between groups indicated active musicians outperformed inactive musicians and nonmusicians on the CA-BAT, a generalized linear regression analysis showed that there was no significant difference once differences in musical training had been accounted for. To ensure that our results were not impacted by multicollinearity between music-related variables, nonparametric and nonlinear machine learning regressions were employed and confirmed that years of formal musical training was the only significant predictor of beat alignment ability. These results suggest that expertly perceiving fine differences in the beat is not a use-dependent ability that degrades without regular maintenance through practice or musical engagement. Instead, better beat alignment appears to be associated with more musical training regardless of continued use.

Human voices escape the auditory attentional blink: Evidence from detections and pupil responses.

Attentional selection of a second target in a rapid stream of stimuli embedding two targets tends to be briefly impaired when two targets are presented in close temporal proximity, an effect known as an attentional blink (AB). Two target sounds (T1 and T2) were embedded in a rapid serial auditory presentation of environmental sounds with a short (Lag 3) or long lag (Lag 9). Participants were to first identify T1 (bell or sine tone) and then to detect T2 (present or absent). Individual stimuli had durations of either 30 or 90 ms, and were presented in streams of 20 sounds. The T2 varied in category: human voice, cello, or dog sound. Previous research has introduced pupillometry as a useful marker of the intensity of cognitive processing and attentional allocation in the visual AB paradigm. Results suggest that the interplay of stimulus factors is critical for target detection accuracy and provides support for the hypothesis that the human voice is the least likely to show an auditory AB (in the 90 ms condition). For the other stimuli, accuracy for T2 was significantly worse at Lag 3 than at Lag 9 in the 90 ms condition, suggesting the presence of an auditory AB. When AB occurred (at Lag 3), we observed smaller pupil dilations, time-locked to the onset of T2, compared to Lag 9, reflecting lower attentional processing when 'blinking' during target detection. Taken together, these findings support the conclusion that human voices escape the AB and that the pupillary changes are consistent with the so-called T2 attentional deficit. In addition, we found some indication that salient stimuli like human voices could require a less intense allocation of attention, or noradrenergic potentiation, compared to other auditory stimuli.

Pupil drift rate indexes groove ratings.

Groove, understood as an enjoyable compulsion to move to musical rhythms, typically varies along an inverted U-curve with increasing rhythmic complexity (e.g., syncopation, pickups). Predictive coding accounts posit that moderate complexity drives us to move to reduce sensory prediction errors and model the temporal structure. While musicologists generally distinguish the effects of pickups (anacruses) and syncopations, their difference remains unexplored in groove. We used pupillometry as an index to noradrenergic arousal while subjects listened to and rated drumbeats varying in rhythmic complexity. We replicated the inverted U-shaped relationship between rhythmic complexity and groove and showed this is modulated by musical ability, based on a psychoacoustic beat perception test. The pupil drift rates suggest that groovier rhythms hold attention longer than ones rated less groovy. Moreover, we found complementary effects of syncopations and pickups on groove ratings and pupil size, respectively, discovering a distinct predictive process related to pickups. We suggest that the brain deploys attention to pickups to sharpen subsequent strong beats, augmenting the predictive scaffolding's focus on beats that reduce syncopations' prediction errors. This interpretation is in accordance with groove envisioned as an embodied resolution of precision-weighted prediction error.

The Eye Pupil Adjusts to Illusorily Expanding Holes.

Some static patterns evoke the perception of an illusory expanding central region or "hole." We asked observers to rate the magnitudes of illusory motion or expansion of black holes, and these predicted the degree of dilation of the pupil, measured with an eye tracker. In contrast, when the "holes" were colored (including white), i.e., emitted light, these patterns constricted the pupils, but the subjective expansions were also weaker compared with the black holes. The change rates of pupil diameters were significantly related to the illusory motion phenomenology only with the black holes. These findings can be accounted for within a perceiving-the-present account of visual illusions, where both the illusory motion and the pupillary adjustments represent compensatory mechanisms to the perception of the next moment, based on shared experiences with the ecological regularities of light.

Environmental risks to humans, the first database of valence and arousal ratings for images of natural hazards.

Due to their relevance for the entire society, environmental hazards have largely been investigated in terms of their psychological effects. However, a complete image database comprising different categories of catastrophes has not been proposed yet. We selected 200 photographs of the most frequent natural disasters with the aim to collect the emotional reactions of observers. In particular, 20 stimuli were selected for each of the following 10 categories: earthquake, volcanic activity, lightning, hailstorm, drought, fire, landslide, epidemic, and neutral and positive images as control categories. A sample of 605 participants completed an online survey, in which they were asked to rate either the valence or the arousal of each stimulus, by using a Self-Assessment Manikin. The Environmental Risk to Humans database associates the emotional reactions to these visual stimuli, together with the demographics of the sample (e.g., gender, age, marital status, income, previous experience of natural disasters). The database constitutes a tool to explore human reactions to natural hazards, providing a controlled set of stimuli for different types of catastrophes.