How the environment evokes actions that lead to different goals: the role of object multi-functionality in pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer.

Research shows that stimuli in the environment can trigger behavior via the activation of goal representations. This process can be tested in the Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) paradigm, where stimuli can only affect behavior through the activation of the representation of its desired outcome (i.e., the PIT effect). Previous research has demonstrated that the PIT effect is stronger when the goal is more desirable. While this research only looked at actions that have single outcomes (e.g., obtaining a snack to satisfy appetite), in the present paper, we reason that actions that are instrumental in obtaining outcomes that are desirable in multiple ways (e.g., obtaining a snack to satisfy one's appetite, giving it to a friend, trading it for money) should produce stronger PIT effects. In two experiments, participants learned to perform left and right key presses to earn a snack, either framed as having a single function or multiple functions. Participants also learned to associate the two differently framed snacks with two cues. In a PIT test, they were required to press the keys as fast as possible upon exposure to the cues (i.e., the PIT effect). We found that cues associated with the multi-functional snack facilitated the actions that earned those snacks before, while cues associated with the single-functional snack did not facilitate such actions. We discuss these findings in the context of research on free choice and personal autonomy and how people appreciate the multi-functional nature of their goal-directed behavior in the environment. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-023-04612-2.

Habit formation of preventive behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal study of physical distancing and hand washing.

BACKGROUND: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, physical distancing and hand washing have been used as effective means to reduce virus transmission in the Netherlands. However, these measures pose a societal challenge as they require people to change their customary behaviours in various contexts. The science of habit formation is potentially useful for informing policy-making in public health, but the current literature largely overlooked the role of habit in predicting and explaining these preventive behaviours. Our research aimed to describe habit formation processes of physical distancing and hand washing and to estimate the influences of habit strength and intention on behavioural adherence. METHODS: A longitudinal survey was conducted between July and November 2020 on a representative Dutch sample (n = 800). Respondents reported their intentions, habit strengths, and adherence regarding six context-specific preventive behaviours on a weekly basis. Temporal developments of the measured variables were visualized, quantified, and mapped onto five distinct phases of the pandemic. Regression models were used to test the effects of intention, habit strength, and their interaction on behavioural adherence. RESULTS: Dutch respondents generally had strong intentions to adhere to all preventive measures and their adherence rates were between 70% and 90%. They also self-reported to experience their behaviours as more automatic over time, and this increasing trend in habit strength was more evident for physical-distancing than for hand washing behaviours. For all six behaviours, both intention and habit strength predicted subsequent adherence (all ps < 2e-16). In addition, the predictive power of intention decreased over time and was weaker for respondents with strong habits for physical distancing when visiting supermarkets (B = -0.63, p <.0001) and having guests at home (B = -0.54, p <.0001) in the later phases of the study, but not for hand washing. CONCLUSIONS: People's adaptations to physical-distancing and hand washing measures involve both intentional and habitual processes. For public health management, our findings highlight the importance of using contextual cues to promote habit formation, especially for maintaining physical-distancing practices. For habit theories, our study provides a unique dataset that covers multiple health behaviours in a critical real-world setting.

Perceiving emotions in visual stimuli: social verbal context facilitates emotion detection of words but not of faces.

Building on the notion that processing of emotional stimuli is sensitive to context, in two experimental tasks we explored whether the detection of emotion in emotional words (task 1) and facial expressions (task 2) is facilitated by social verbal context. Three different levels of contextual supporting information were compared, namely (1) no information, (2) the verbal expression of an emotionally matched word pronounced with a neutral intonation, and (3) the verbal expression of an emotionally matched word pronounced with emotionally matched intonation. We found that increasing levels of supporting contextual information enhanced emotion detection for words, but not for facial expressions. We also measured activity of the corrugator and zygomaticus muscle to assess facial simulation, as processing of emotional stimuli can be facilitated by facial simulation. While facial simulation emerged for facial expressions, the level of contextual supporting information did not qualify this effect. All in all, our findings suggest that adding emotional-relevant voice elements positively influence emotion detection.

Lateralization of facial emotion processing and facial mimicry.

The two halves of the brain are believed to play different roles in emotional processing. In studies involving chimeric faces, emotional expressions in the left visual field are more strongly perceived as emotional than those in the right visual field. Notably, the role of facial mimicry has not been studied in relation to hemispheric lateralization. In the current study, which used a novel stimulus set of chimeric faces, we proposed and found that emotional intensity judgments replicate the left visual field bias for facial expressions of emotions. While a general facial mimicry effect to the chimeric faces occurred for the corrugator muscle, these mimicry effects were not related to the visual field bias. The results suggest that encoding the emotionality of another person's facial expression might occur independent from the mere mimicry of the facial expression itself.

From sterile labs to rich VR: Immersive multisensory context critical for odors to induce motivated cleaning behavior.

Extending traditional research methods for studying the effects of odor on behavior, this study applied virtual reality (VR) to create a real-world, immersive context that was compared with a traditional sterile, non-immersive lab setting. Using precise odor administration with olfactometry, participants were exposed to three odors (cleaning-related pleasant smell, cleaning-unrelated pleasant smell: vanillin, and odorless air). Our aim was to tease apart whether participants' motivation to clean was driven by cleaning associations and/or odor pleasantness, and how context would accentuate these effects. The results indeed showed that, in VR only, the cleaning-related smell elicited faster and more energetic cleaning behavior on a custom-designed cleaning task, and faster and more voluminous olfactory sampling compared with controls (vanillin, air). These effects were not driven by odor valence, given the general absence of significant differences between the pleasant control odor vanillin and odorless air. In sum, combining rigorous experimental control with high ecological validity, this research shows the context dependency of (congruent) odors affecting motivated behavior in an immersive context only.

Multisensory integration underlying body-ownership experiences in schizophrenia and offspring of patients: a study using the rubber hand illusion paradigm

Background: Schizophrenia is a disorder of basic self-disturbance. Evidence suggests that people with schizophrenia may have aberrant experiences of body ownership: they may feel that they are not the subject of their own body experiences. However, little is known about the development of such disturbances. Methods: Using a rubber hand illusion paradigm, we assessed body ownership in patients with schizophrenia (n = 54), healthy controls (n = 56), children/adolescents at increased familial risk of developing schizophrenia (n = 24) or mood disorders (n = 33), and children/adolescents without this risk (n = 18). In this paradigm, a rubber hand (visible) and a participant's real hand (invisible) were stroked synchronously and asynchronously; we then measured subjective illusory experiences and proprioceptive drift. Results: All groups showed the expected effect of the rubber hand illusion: stronger proprioceptive drift and increased subjective illusory experiences after synchronous versus asynchronous stroking. The effect of synchronicity on subjective experiences was significantly weaker in patients with schizophrenia than in healthy controls, and subjective ratings were positively correlated with delusions in patients. We found no significant differences between children/adolescents with and without increased familial risk. Limitations: Large individual differences raised questions for future research. Conclusion: We found subtle disturbances in body-ownership experiences in patients with schizophrenia, which were associated with delusions. We found no evidence for impairments in children/adolescents at increased familial risk of developing schizophrenia or a mood disorder. Longitudinal data might reveal whether impairments in body ownership are predictive of psychosis onset.

Quantifying the informational value of classification images.

Reverse correlation is an influential psychophysical paradigm that uses a participant's responses to randomly varying images to build a classification image (CI), which is commonly interpreted as a visualization of the participant's mental representation. It is unclear, however, how to statistically quantify the amount of signal present in CIs, which limits the interpretability of these images. In this article, we propose a novel metric, infoVal, which assesses informational value relative to a resampled random distribution and can be interpreted like a z score. In the first part, we define the infoVal metric and show, through simulations, that it adheres to typical Type I error rates under various task conditions (internal validity). In the second part, we show that the metric correlates with markers of data quality in empirical reverse-correlation data, such as the subjective recognizability, objective discriminability, and test-retest reliability of the CIs (convergent validity). In the final part, we demonstrate how the infoVal metric can be used to compare the informational value of reverse-correlation datasets, by comparing data acquired online with data acquired in a controlled lab environment. We recommend a new standard of good practice in which researchers assess the infoVal scores of reverse-correlation data in order to ensure that they do not read signal in CIs where no signal is present. The infoVal metric is implemented in the open-source rcicr R package, to facilitate its adoption.

An examination of the sequential trial effect on experiences of agency in the Simon task.

Previous research shows that agency experiences are reduced when response selection is dysfluent. Expanding on this work, we report two experiments addressing the influence of Simon response conflict on agency. Participants responded to congruent and incongruent Simon task trials and indicated their experienced agency after each response. Results show that incongruent trials were related to reduced agency experiences, thus replicating earlier work on the response-selection agency-link. Furthermore, the data further showed an interesting sequence effect: The congruency effect on experienced agency mainly emerged when a trial was preceded by a congruent trial. There was however no congruency effect on experienced agency when a trial was preceded by an incongruent trial. These findings are briefly discussed in the context of research on response selection and experiences of agency.

All for one or some for all? Evaluating informative hypotheses using multiple N = 1 studies.

Analyses are mostly executed at the population level, whereas in many applications the interest is on the individual level instead of the population level. In this paper, multiple N = 1 experiments are considered, where participants perform multiple trials with a dichotomous outcome in various conditions. Expectations with respect to the performance of participants can be translated into so-called informative hypotheses. These hypotheses can be evaluated for each participant separately using Bayes factors. A Bayes factor expresses the relative evidence for two hypotheses based on the data of one individual. This paper proposes to "average" these individual Bayes factors in the gP-BF, the average relative evidence. The gP-BF can be used to determine whether one hypothesis is preferred over another for all individuals under investigation. This measure provides insight into whether the relative preference of a hypothesis from a pre-defined set is homogeneous over individuals. Two additional measures are proposed to support the interpretation of the gP-BF: the evidence rate (ER), the proportion of individual Bayes factors that support the same hypothesis as the gP-BF, and the stability rate (SR), the proportion of individual Bayes factors that express a stronger support than the gP-BF. These three statistics can be used to determine the relative support in the data for the informative hypotheses entertained. Software is available that can be used to execute the approach proposed in this paper and to determine the sensitivity of the outcomes with respect to the number of participants and within condition replications.

Uncovering effects of self-control and stimulus-driven action selection on the sense of agency.

The sense of agency refers to feelings of causing one's own action and resulting effect. Previous research indicates that voluntary action selection is an important factor in shaping the sense of agency. Whereas the volitional nature of the sense of agency is well documented, the present study examined whether agency is modulated when action selection shifts from self-control to a more automatic stimulus-driven process. Seventy-two participants performed an auditory Simon task including congruent and incongruent trials to generate automatic stimulus-driven vs. more self-control driven action, respectively. Responses in the Simon task produced a tone and agency was assessed with the intentional binding task - an implicit measure of agency. Results showed a Simon effect and temporal binding effect. However, temporal binding was independent of congruency. These findings suggest that temporal binding, a window to the sense of agency, emerges for both automatic stimulus-driven actions and self-controlled actions.

The implicit power motive predicts action selection.

Previous research has indicated that implicit motives can reliably predict which behaviors people select or decide to perform. However, so far, the question of how these motives are able to predict this action selection process has received little attention. Based on ideomotor theory, we argue that implicit motives can predict action selection when an action has become associated with a motive-congruent (dis)incentive through repeated experiences with the action-outcome relationship. This idea was investigated by examining whether the implicit need for power (nPower) would come to predict action selection (i.e., choosing to press either of two buttons) when these actions had repeatedly resulted in motive-congruent (dis)incentives (i.e., submissive or dominant faces). Both Studies 1 and 2 indicated that participants became more likely to select the action predictive of the motive-congruent outcome as their history with the action-outcome relationship increased. Study 2 indicated that this effect stemmed from both an approach towards incentives and an avoidance of disincentives. These results indicate that implicit motives (particularly the power motive) can predict action selection as a result of learning which actions yield motive-congruent (dis)incentives. Our findings therefore offer a model of how implicit motives can come to predict which behaviors people select to perform.

Individual differences in action co-representation: not personal distress or subclinical psychotic experiences but sex composition modulates joint action performance.

Successful social interaction requires the ability to integrate as well as distinguish own and others' actions. Normally, the integration and distinction of self and other are a well-balanced process, occurring without much effort or conscious attention. However, not everyone is blessed with the ability to balance self-other distinction and integration, resulting in personal distress in reaction to other people's emotions or even a loss of self [e.g., in (subclinical) psychosis]. Previous research has demonstrated that the integration and distinction of others' actions cause interference with one's own action performance (commonly assessed with a social Simon task). The present study had two goals. First, as previous studies on the social Simon effect employed relatively small samples (N < 50 per test), we aimed for a sample size that allowed us to test the robustness of the action interference effect. Second, we tested to what extent action interference reflects individual differences in traits related to self-other distinction (i.e., personal distress in reaction to other people's emotions and subclinical psychotic symptoms). Based on a questionnaire study among a large sample (N = 745), we selected a subsample (N = 130) of participants scoring low, average, or high on subclinical psychotic symptoms, or on personal distress. The selected participants performed a social Simon task. Results showed a robust social Simon effect, regardless of individual differences in personal distress or subclinical psychotic symptoms. However, exploratory analyses revealed that the sex composition of interaction pairs modulated social Simon effects. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.

Attentional control and inferences of agency: Working memory load differentially modulates goal-based and prime-based agency experiences.

Previous research indicates that people can infer self-agency, the experience of causing outcomes as a result of one's own actions, in situations where information about action-outcomes is pre-activated through goal-setting or priming. We argue that goal-based agency inferences rely on attentional control that processes information about matches and mismatches between intended and actual outcomes. Prime-based inferences follow an automatic cognitive accessibility process that relies on matches between primed and actual information about outcomes. We tested an improved task for a better examination of goal-based vs. primed-based agency inferences, and examined the moderating effect of working memory load on both types of inferences. Findings of four studies showed that goal-based, but not prime-based agency inferences dwindled under working memory load. These findings suggest that goal-based (vs. primed-based) agency inferences indeed rely on attentional control, thus rendering goal-based agency inferences especially prone to conditions that modulate goal-directed control processes.

Distinct neural responses to conscious versus unconscious monetary reward cues.

Human reward pursuit is often assumed to involve conscious processing of reward information. However, recent research revealed that reward cues enhance cognitive performance even when perceived without awareness. Building on this discovery, the present functional MRI study tested two hypotheses using a rewarded mental-rotation task. First, we examined whether subliminal rewards engage the ventral striatum (VS), an area implicated in reward anticipation. Second, we examined differences in neural responses to supraliminal versus subliminal rewards. Results indicated that supraliminal, but not subliminal, high-value reward cues engaged brain areas involved in reward processing (VS) and task performance (supplementary motor area, motor cortex, and superior temporal gyrus). This pattern of findings is striking given that subliminal rewards improved performance to the same extent as supraliminal rewards. So, the neural substrates of conscious versus unconscious reward pursuit are vastly different-but despite their differences, conscious and unconscious reward pursuit may still produce the same behavioral outcomes.

A new perspective on human reward research: how consciously and unconsciously perceived reward information influences performance.

The question of how human performance can be improved through rewards is a recurrent topic of interest in psychology and neuroscience. Traditional, cognitive approaches to this topic have focused solely on consciously communicated rewards. Recently, a largely neuroscience-inspired perspective has emerged to examine the potential role of conscious awareness of reward information in effective reward pursuit. The present article reviews research employing a newly developed monetary-reward-priming paradigm that allows for a systematic investigation of this perspective. We analyze this research to identify similarities and differences in how consciously and unconsciously perceived rewards impact three distinct aspects relevant to performance: decision making, task preparation, and task execution. We further discuss whether conscious awareness, in modulating the effects of reward information, plays a role similar to its role in modulating the effects of other affective information. Implications of these insights for understanding the role of consciousness in modulating goal-directed behavior more generally are discussed.

Targeting impulsive processes of eating behavior via the internet. Effects on body weight.

Because eating behavior can take on an impulsive nature many people experience difficulty with dieting to lose weight. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to test the effectiveness of two interventions targeting impulsive processes of eating behavior to facilitate weight loss: Implementation intentions to remind people about dieting versus a go/no-go task to change impulses toward palatable foods. Dieters performed an online training program (four times in 4 weeks) in which they were randomly assigned to a 2 (implementation intention condition: dieting versus control) × 2 (go/no-go task condition: food versus control) design. They formed either dieting implementation intentions (e.g., If I open the fridge I will think of dieting!) or control implementation intentions. Furthermore, they received either a go/no-go task in which behavioral stop signals were presented upon presentation of palatable foods (food go/no-go task), or upon control stimuli. Participants' weight was measured in the laboratory before and after the intervention. Strength of participants' dieting goal and their Body Mass Index (BMI; as a proxy for impulsiveness toward food) were examined as moderators. Results showed that both dieting implementation intentions and the food go/no-go task facilitated weight loss. Moreover, dieting implementation intentions facilitated weight loss particularly among people with a strong current dieting goal, whereas the food go/no-go task facilitated weight loss independent of this factor. Instead, the food go/no-go task, but not formation of dieting implementation intentions, was primarily effective among dieters with a relatively high BMI. These results provide the first preliminary evidence that interventions aimed at targeting impulsive eating-related processes via the internet can facilitate weight loss.

Non-essential genes form the hubs of genome scale protein function and environmental gene expression networks in Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium.

BACKGROUND: Salmonella Typhimurium is an important pathogen of human and animals. It shows a broad growth range and survives in harsh conditions. The aim of this study was to analyze transcriptional responses to a number of growth and stress conditions as well as the relationship of metabolic pathways and/or cell functions at the genome-scale-level by network analysis, and further to explore whether highly connected genes (hubs) in these networks were essential for growth, stress adaptation and virulence. RESULTS: De novo generated as well as published transcriptional data for 425 selected genes under a number of growth and stress conditions were used to construct a bipartite network connecting culture conditions and significantly regulated genes (transcriptional network). Also, a genome scale network was constructed for strain LT2. The latter connected genes with metabolic pathways and cellular functions. Both networks were shown to belong to the family of scale-free networks characterized by the presence of highly connected nodes or hubs which are genes whose transcription is regulated when responding to many of the assayed culture conditions or genes encoding products involved in a high number of metabolic pathways and cell functions.The five genes with most connections in the transcriptional network (wraB, ygaU, uspA, cbpA and osmC) and in the genome scale network (ychN, siiF (STM4262), yajD, ybeB and dcoC) were selected for mutations, however mutagenesis of ygaU and ybeB proved unsuccessful. No difference between mutants and the wild type strain was observed during growth at unfavorable temperatures, pH values, NaCl concentrations and in the presence of H2O2. Eight mutants were evaluated for virulence in C57/BL6 mice and none differed from the wild type strain. Notably, however, deviations of phenotypes with respect to the wild type were observed when combinations of these genes were deleted. CONCLUSION: Network analysis revealed the presence of hubs in both transcriptional and functional networks of S. Typhimurium. Hubs theoretically confer higher resistance to random mutation but a greater susceptibility to directed attacks, however, we found that genes that formed hubs were dispensable for growth, stress adaptation and virulence, suggesting that evolution favors non-essential genes as main connectors in cellular networks.

Successful restrained eating and trait impulsiveness.

Restrained eaters with high scores on the Perceived Self-Regulatory Success in Dieting Scale (PSRS) are more successful than low scorers in regulating their food intake. According to the theory of temptation-elicited goal activation (Fishbach, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2003), they have become successful because, due to earlier repeated instances of successful self-control, they formed an associative link between temptations and thoughts of dieting. It is unclear, however, why they should have been more successful in earlier attempts at self-control than their unsuccessful counterparts. We examined whether trait impulsiveness plays a role by investigating the associations between dietary restraint, trait impulsiveness, and PSRS. Results showed that the interaction between dietary restraint and impulsiveness predicted dieting success: A lower level of impulsiveness was associated with greater dieting success among restrained eaters. These results suggest that restrained eaters who are less impulsive are more likely to become successful restrained eaters as identified with the PSRS.

The effects of social presence on cooperative trust with algorithms.

Algorithms support many processes in modern society. Research using trust games frequently reports that people are less inclined to cooperate when believed to play against an algorithm. Trust is, however, malleable by contextual factors and social presence can increase the willingness to collaborate. We investigated whether situating cooperation with an algorithm in the presence of another person increases cooperative trust. Three groups of participants played a trust game against a pre-programmed algorithm in an online webhosted experiment. The first group was told they played against another person who was present online. The second group was told they played against an algorithm. The third group was told they played against an algorithm while another person was present online. More cooperative responses were observed in the first group compared to the second group. A difference in cooperation that replicates previous findings. In addition, cooperative trust dropped more over the course of the trust game when participants interacted with an algorithm in the absence another person compared to the other two groups. This latter finding suggests that social presence can mitigate distrust in interacting with an algorithm. We discuss the cognitive mechanisms that can mediate this effect.

Environmental control of social goals: using Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer to test cue-based pro-self and pro-social outcome responses.

A large amount of literature demonstrates that social behaviour can be triggered by environmental cues. A long-standing debate involves the question of whether such stimuli trigger behaviour directly (i.e. habits) or whether these effects mediate goals. As studies on automatic goal pursuit typically use real-world cues that are already associated with the behaviour and potentially the goal, it is impossible to make strong claims about the nature of the effects. In the present paper, we use a paradigm inspired by the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) literature to examine how the environment can trigger goal-directed behaviour. Building on the essence of pro-self and pro-social motives in humans, two experiments explored the PIT effect when the outcomes were framed in terms of self- versus other-interest. Participants performed actions to earn money for themselves or a charity. Each outcome was linked to a different cue. The results showed that a cue predictive of self-interest outcomes facilitated responses instrumental in gaining the outcome, while such specific PIT effect for other-interest outcomes only emerged when participants were free to donate the money. We briefly discuss these findings reflecting on whether the PIT effect in our paradigm is indeed sensitive to the value of social goals.