Interpersonal matching of autistic trait levels in typically developed individuals is associated with spontaneous gaze following and initiation during face-to-face social interaction.

OBJECTIVES: People with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) usually exhibit typical behaviours and thoughts that are called autistic traits. Autistic traits are widely and continuously distributed among typically developed (TD) and ASD populations. Previous studies have found that people with ASD have difficulty in following the eye gaze of social peers. However, it remains unknown whether TD adults with high or low autistic traits also differ in spontaneous gaze following and initiation in face-to-face social interactions. To fill this gap, this study used a novel and naturalistic gaze-cueing paradigm to examine this research question. DESIGN: A 4 (group: high-high, high-low, low-high or low-low autistic traits) × 3 (congruency: congruent, neutral, or incongruent) mixed-measures design was used. METHODS: Typically developed adults who were high or low in autistic traits completed a visual search task while a confederate who was high or low in autistic traits sat facing them. Critically, the match of autistic traits within a participant-confederate pair was manipulated. The confederate gazed at (congruent) or away from (incongruent) the location of the target prior to the appearance of the target. Participants were not explicitly instructed to follow the confederate's gaze. RESULTS: Autistic traits were associated with spontaneous gaze following and initiation in face-to-face social interactions. Specifically, only when both the participant and confederate were low in autistic traits did the incongruent gaze cues of confederates interfere with the participants' responses. CONCLUSIONS: Autistic traits impeded gaze following and initiation by TD adults. This study has theoretical and practical implications regarding autistic trait-induced social deficits and indicates a new approach for social skill interventions.

Autistic traits predict social avoidance and distress: The chain mediating role of perceived stress and interpersonal alienation.

Social avoidance and distress are the primary aspects of social anxiety. Nonautistic people with high levels of autistic traits are more likely to exhibit social avoidance and distress. However, research has yet to reveal how autistic traits induce social avoidance and distress. To fill this gap, the present study recruited 708 participants to complete the 25-item Autism Spectrum Quotient, Social Avoidance and Distress Scale, Chinese Perceived Stress Scale, and Interpersonal Alienation Subscale. The results indicated that autistic traits significantly predicted social avoidance and distress in nonautistic people. In addition, autistic traits induced social avoidance and distress through perceived stress and interpersonal alienation, respectively. Importantly, perceived stress and interpersonal alienation (including the subdimensions of interpersonal alienation: sense of loneliness, sense of social isolation, and alienation between family members) partially mediated the relationships between autistic traits and social avoidance and distress. Overall, autistic traits predict social avoidance and distress via perceived stress and interpersonal alienation. This finding extends the hypothetical model of clinical anxiety in autism spectrum disorders. Furthermore, reducing perceived stress and interpersonal alienation in nonautistic people with high levels of autistic traits may be a valid intervention method to prevent and eliminate their social avoidance and distress.

ERP evidence for asymmetric orthographic transfer between traditional and simplified Chinese.

Transferring orthographic processing skills from one language to new languages is important for language learning. However, the specific orthography hypothesis and condition-based transfer hypothesis have debated orthographic transfer. No study has ever examined these debates in a logographic language, and the neural correlates of orthographic transfer in a logographic language remain unknown. Therefore, the present study uses event-related potentials to examine orthographic transfer with Hong Kong (Experiment 1) and mainland China (Experiment 2) participants who only use traditional or simplified Chinese, respectively. The participants sequentially read two of the same (repetition) or different (nonrepetition) traditional or simplified Chinese characters and judged whether they were identical. The results showed that the orthography-related N200 component was smaller in the repetition condition than in the nonrepetition condition. Importantly, for traditional Chinses users, this effect was more salient in traditional Chinese than in simplified Chinese, suggesting limited transfer from traditional to simplified Chinese. For simplified Chinese users, this effect was comparable in traditional and simplified Chinese, suggesting a smooth transfer from simplified to traditional Chinese. The results supported the condition-based transfer hypothesis, and showed asymmetric transfer between simple orthographic rules and complex ones. That is, simple orthographic rules can be transferred to complex ones smoothly, but not vice versa.

The presence of other-race people disrupts spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking.

Visual perspective taking is an essential skill for effective social interaction. Previous studies have tested various perceiver-based factors that affect intentional perspective taking; however, the factors affecting spontaneous perspective taking remain unknown. To fill this gap, the present study used a novel spontaneous visual perspective taking paradigm to explore how an agent's race and emotion affect spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking. In Experiment 1, the participants completed a mental rotation task while a human agent simultaneously gazed at the target with positive, negative, or neutral facial expressions. The agent was African, Caucasian, or Chinese. The results revealed that the other-race agents disrupted the participants' spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking, while emotion weakly affected it. Experiment 2 retested whether emotion could affect spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking while only own-race agents were used. The participants completed the same task as that in Experiment 1. The results revealed that emotions weakly affected spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking. In summary, the present study first examined what target-based factors affect spontaneous level-2 visual perspective taking. The results extend the representation and incorporation of the close others' responses (RICOR) model. Specifically, people routinely construct representations of other people's points of view when they share the same racial group.

Effect of perceptual load on conceptual processing: an extension of Vermeulen's theory.

The effect of color and shape load on conceptual processing was studied. Perceptual load effects have been found in visual and auditory conceptual processing, supporting the theory of embodied cognition. However, whether different types of visual concepts, such as color and shape, share the same perceptual load effects is unknown. In the current experiment, 32 participants were administered simultaneous perceptual and conceptual tasks to assess the relation between perceptual load and conceptual processing. Keeping color load in mind obstructed color conceptual processing. Hence, perceptual processing and conceptual load shared the same resources, suggesting embodied cognition. Color conceptual processing was not affected by shape pictures, indicating that different types of properties within vision were separate.

Altered Brain Connectivity Patterns of Individual Differences in Insightful Problem Solving.

Insightful problem solving (IPS) attracts widespread attention in creative thinking domains. However, the neural underpinnings of individual differences in IPS are still unclear. The purpose of this research was to investigate inherent full-brain connectivity patterns at voxel-level in IPS. Sixty-two healthy participants were enrolled in the study. We used a voxelwise full-brain network measurement, degree centrality (DC), to depict the characteristics of cerebral network involved in individual differences in IPS. For each participant, we employed a chunk decomposition paradigm, using Mandarin characters as stimuli, to estimate the individual differences in IPS. Results showed that DC in the inferior frontal gyrus, and the middle frontal gyrus/precentral gyrus positively correlated with IPS, while the anterior cingulate cortex, and the brainstern/cerebellum/thalamus exhibited negative correlations with IPS. Using each cluster above as a seed, we performed seed-based functional connectivity analysis further. Results showed that IPS was mainly involved in the default mode network, containing the key regions of precuneus and medial prefrontal cortex. All in all, this research may shed new lights on understanding the neural underpinnings of individual differences in IPS.

Chinese Children with Congenital and Acquired Blindness Represent Concrete Concepts in Vertical Space through Tactile Perception.

Many studies have tested perceptual symbols in conceptual processing and found that perceptual symbols contain experiences from multisensory channels. However, whether the disability of one sensory channel affects the processing of the perceptual symbols and then affects conceptual processing is still unknown. This line of research would extend the perceptual symbol theory and have implications for language rehabilitation and mental health for people with disabilities. Therefore, the present study filled in this gap and tested whether Chinese children with congenital and acquired blindness have difficulty in recruiting perceptual symbols in the processing of concrete concepts. Experiment 1 used the word-pair-matching paradigm to test whether blind children used vertical space information in understanding concrete word pairs. Experiment 2 used the word-card-pairing paradigm to test the role of tactile experiences in the processing of concrete concepts for blind children. Results found that blind children automatically activated the spatial information of referents in the processing of concepts through the tactile sensory channel even when the visual sensory channel was disabled. This finding supported the compensatory phenomenon of other sensory channels in conceptual representation. In addition, the difference between elementary school blind children and middle school blind children in judging the spatial position of concrete words also indicated the vital influence of perceptual experiences on perceptual symbols in conceptual representation. Interestingly, there were no significant differences between children with congenital or acquired blindness. This might suggest that the compensatory of other sensory channels did not have a sensitive period. This study not only provided new evidence for the perceptual symbol theory but also found that perceptual symbols could be developed by a compensatory mechanism. This compensatory mechanism can be used to develop a rehabilitation program for improving language learning in blind children. Improved language ability in blind children will also improve their mental health problems caused by difficulties in social interaction (e.g., social anxiety).

Controlled or automatic? Influence of congruency proportion and stimulus-onset asynchrony on the brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effects.

Whether a cognitive process is operated automatically or in a controlled manner has been a long-standing question in cognitive psychology. However, this issue has not been investigated in the activation of metaphoric association. A primed word valence judgement task is often used to test the activation of metaphoric association, in which participants first see a prime (bright/dark square or fixation point moving up or down from the centre of the screen) and then make a valence judgement to a target word. Metaphoric congruency effect occurs when participants make faster judgements to the target with valence being matched with the prime (good followed bright/top prime) than being mismatched with the prime (good followed dark/bottom prime). In the present two experiments, we manipulated prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) and proportion of metaphorically congruent trials (congruency proportion) to tease apart the effects of automatic and controlled activation of brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric associations on word valence judgements. Results showed an overall effect of congruency proportion on brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect, which was independent of prime-target SOA. The effect was enhanced or reversed when congruency proportion was higher or lower than 0.5, respectively, suggesting that the activation of metaphoric association could be modulated by strategic control. The implications of these findings on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and semantic priming theories are discussed.

Brain Structural Correlates of Dispositional Insight and the Mediation Role of Neuroticism in Young Adults.

Studies on the neural correlates of episodic insight have made significant progress in the past decades. However, the neural mechanisms underlying dispositional insight are largely unknown. In the present study, we recruited forty-four young, healthy adults and performed several analyses to reveal the neural mechanisms of dispositional insight. Firstly, a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) technique was used to explore the structural brain mechanisms of dispositional insight. We found that dispositional insight was significantly and negatively correlated with the regional gray matter volume (rGMV) in the left thalamus (TLM.L), right temporoparietal junction (TPJ.R), and left dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC.L). Secondly, we performed a seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) analysis to complement the findings of VBM analysis further. The brain regions of TLM.L, DMPFC.L, and TPJ.R were selected as seed regions. We found that dispositional insight was associated with altered RSFC between the DMPFC.L and bilateral TPJ, between the TPJ.R and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, DMPFC.L, TPJ.L, right insula, and right cerebellum. Finally, a mediation analysis found that the personality of neuroticism partially mediated the relationship between the brain region of TLM.L and dispositional insight. These findings imply that dispositional insight has a specific functional and structural neural mechanism. The personality of neuroticism may play a pivotal role in the processes of dispositional insight.

Positive Valence Bias in L2 Vocabulary Acquisition: Evidence From Chinese Emotion Idioms.

Positive valence bias refers to speakers responding faster to positive than negative information in L2 emotion words. Few researchers paid attention to the initial learning phase of L2 Chinese emotion idioms in which whether positive valence bias was acquired, based on the three-stage model of L2 vocabulary acquisition. Besides, whether the semantic information would modulate positive valence bias at the initial learning phase remained unclear. This study reports two experiments on speakers learning Chinese as a second language (CSL) to investigate positive valence bias in the initial learning phase of new Chinese emotion idioms and the modulation of semantic information on positive valence bias. Chinese as a second language speakers, who had acquired new Chinese emotion idioms and passed the test for learned Chinese idioms with a high accuracy rate before formal experiments, participated in Experiments 1 and 2. In Experiment 1, target materials were new Chinese idioms with positive and negative information. Positive valence bias at the initial learning phase of Chinese idioms was investigated with valence judgments. Experiment 2 used a semantic relatedness decision task further to explore the semantic effect on positive valence bias. The result in the first experiment showed that positive valence bias appeared in Chinese emotion idioms even at the initial learning phase of the acquisition. Meanwhile, semantic information of Chinese emotion idioms appeared to affect positive valence bias in the infant learning phase in Experiment 2. The findings revealed that semantic information would affect the performance of positive valence bias, suggesting that the semantic processing would automatically access the valence at the infant learning phase L2 Chinese emotion idioms. The research results provided evidence that positive valence bias would form in the infant learning phase of Chinese emotion idiom acquisition, based on the L2 vocabulary acquisition model.

Common and specific neural correlates underlying insight and ordinary problem solving.

Previous studies have investigated the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying insight problem solving (INPS). However, it is still unclear which mechanisms are common to both INPS and ordinary problem solving (ORPS), and which are distinctly involved in only one of these processes. In this study, we selected two types of Chinese character chunk decompositions, ordinary Chinese character chunk decomposition (OCD) and creative Chinese character chunk decomposition (CCD), as representatives of ORPS and INPS, respectively. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activations when subjects executed OCD or CCD operations, we found that both ORPS and INPS resulted in significant activations in the widespread frontoparietal cognitive control network, including the middle frontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and inferior parietal lobe. Furthermore, compared with ORPS, INPS led to greater activations in higher-level brain regions related to symbolic processing in the default mode network, including the anterior cingulate cortex, superior temporal gyrus, angular gyrus, and precuneus. Conversely, ORPS induced greater activations than INPS in more posterior brain regions related to visuospatial attention and visual perception, such as the inferior temporal gyrus, hippocampus, and middle occipital gyrus/superior parietal gyrus/fusiform gyrus. In addition, an ROI analysis corroborated the neural commonalities and differences between ORPS and INPS. These findings provide new evidence that ORPS and INPS rely on common as well as distinct cognitive processes and cortical mechanisms.

The neural correlates of moral comparison.

Moral comparison supports the moral judgment that then evaluates social behaviors and restrains social interactions. However, previous studies have not investigated what neural networks support the process of moral comparison. The present study examined neural networks of moral and physical size comparisons using a distance paradigm and functional magnetic resonance imaging. In the experiment, participants judged which picture/sentence presented a more moral scenario in the moral comparison run or which picture/sentence had a larger physical size in the physical comparison run. Results demonstrated that both moral and physical comparisons induced a distance effect-participants' responses were faster for high than low distance comparisons. Moreover, moral and physical comparisons recruited similar neural networks, including the bilateral dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, bilateral intraparietal sulcus, and bilateral insula. Interestingly, compared with physical size comparisons, moral comparisons elicited stronger activity in the bilateral precuneus, bilateral angular gyrus, and bilateral superior frontal gyrus. Meanwhile, compared with moral comparisons, physical size comparisons elicited stronger activity in the right inferior parietal lobule. Together, these results suggest that the neural substrates of moral and physical comparisons not only share the frontoparietal network but also rely on specific neural underpinnings, depending on the specific comparison recruited.

The modality switching costs of Chinese-English bilinguals in the processing of L1 and L2.

Modality switching cost indicates that people's performance becomes worse when they judge sequential information that is related to different sensory modalities than judging information that is related to the same modality. In this study, we conducted three experiments on proficient and non-proficient bilingual individuals to investigate the modality switching costs in L1 and L2 processing separately. In Experiment 1, materials were L1 and L2 words that were either conceptually related to a visual modality (e.g., light) or related to an auditory modality (e.g., song). The modality switching costs were investigated in a lexical decision task in both L1 and L2. Experiment 2 further explored the modality switching costs while weakening the activation level of the perceptual modality by adding a set of fillers. Experiment 3 used a word-naming task to explore the modality switching effect in language production in L1 and L2. Results of these experiments showed that the modality switching costs appeared in both language comprehension and production in L1 and L2 conditions. The magnitude of the modality switching costs was conditionally modulated by the L2 proficiency level, such as in the L2 condition in Experiment 1 and in both L1 and L2 conditions in Experiment 3. These results suggest that sensorimotor simulation is involved in not only language comprehension but also language production. The sensorimotor simulation that is acquired in L1 can be transferred to L2.

Interhemispheric functional connectivity and its relationships with creative problem solving.

Creative problem solving (CPS) is a particular mental process when people solve problems. Findings from previous research, which used functional MRI, showed that CPS could involve specific neural mechanisms. However, few studies have directly explored the changes of interhemispheric resting-state functional connectivity during CPS. Recently, a validated voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) method has been widely used to calculate the interhemispheric resting-state functional connectivity. In this study, we recruited 60 participants and used a revised chunk decomposing task to estimate participants' individual differences during CPS. Then, the VMHC method was used to explore neural correlates underlying individual differences of CPS. Results showed that altered VMHC in the bilateral middle frontal gyrus/precentral gyrus, bilateral hippocampus/insula/amygdala, and bilateral fusiform gyrus/cerebellum/middle occipital gyrus was related to individual differences of CPS. These brain regions reflect the information integration of both hemispheres might be critical for CPS. Therefore, our results may shed light on the neural correlates of CPS.

The bidirectional congruency effect of brightness-valence metaphoric association in the Stroop-like and priming paradigms.

The conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, 1999) postulates a unidirectional metaphoric association between abstract and concrete concepts: sensorimotor experience activated by concrete concepts facilitates the processing of abstract concepts, but not the other way around. However, this unidirectional view has been challenged by studies that reported a bidirectional metaphoric association. In three experiments, we tested the directionality of the brightness-valence metaphoric association, using Stroop-like paradigm, priming paradigm, and Stroop-like paradigm with a go/no-go manipulation. Both mean and vincentile analyses of reaction time data were performed. We showed that the directionality of brightness-valence metaphoric congruency effect could be modulated by the activation level of the brightness/valence information. Both brightness-to-valence and valence-to-brightness metaphoric congruency effects occurred in the priming paradigm, which could be attributed to the presentation of prime that pre-activated the brightness or valence information. However, in the Stroop-like paradigm the metaphoric congruency effect was only observed in the brightness-to-valence direction, but not in the valence-to-brightness direction. When the go/no-go manipulation was used to boost the activation of word meaning in the Stroop-like paradigm, the valence-to-brightness metaphoric congruency effect was observed. Vincentile analyses further revealed that valence-to-brightness metaphoric congruency effect approached significance in the Stroop-like paradigm when participants' reaction times were slower (at around 490ms). The implications of the current findings on the conceptual metaphor theory and embodied cognition are discussed.

Electroencephalography delta, theta, and alpha oscillations in valence-space metaphorical associations.

Conceptual metaphor theory holds that understanding abstract affective words relies on concrete spatial information, known as valence-space metaphorical associations. Previous studies show that these metaphorical associations are related to several event-related potentials. However, we know nothing about the neural oscillations underlying these associations. The present study adopted a priming paradigm and the electroencephalographic time-frequency analysis to reveal the brain oscillatory activities related to the processing of valence-space associations. In the experiment, participants first memorized a positive or a negative word. Then, a dot was presented at the higher or lower position of the screen and was horizontally centered. Participants detected the location of the cue and made behavioral responses while their brain electrical activities were recorded. Results found that (a) when participants memorized a negative word and judged the lower spatial cue, the power of the delta band was suppressed compared with memorizing a positive word; (b) when participants memorized a positive word and judged the higher spatial cue, the power of the theta band was suppressed compared with memorizing a negative word; (c) when participants memorized a negative word and judged the lower spatial cue, the power of the alpha band was suppressed compared with memorizing a positive word. These event-related desynchronization results suggest that the processing of valence-space associations is related to inhibition, attention, working memory, and semantic process. The present study provides the first evidence of cortical oscillations involved in conceptual metaphors.

Mental Rotation in False Belief Understanding.

This study examines the spontaneous use of embodied egocentric transformation (EET) in understanding false beliefs in the minds of others. EET involves the participants mentally transforming or rotating themselves into the orientation of an agent when trying to adopt his or her visuospatial perspective. We argue that psychological perspective taking such as false belief reasoning may also involve EET because of what has been widely reported in the embodied cognition literature, showing that our processing of abstract, propositional information is often grounded in concrete bodily sensations which are not apparently linked to higher cognition. In Experiment 1, an agent placed a ball into one of two boxes and left. The ball then rolled out and moved either into the other box (new box) or back into the original one (old box). The participants were to decide from which box they themselves or the agent would try to recover the ball. Results showed that false belief performance was affected by increased orientation disparity between the participants and the agent, suggesting involvement of embodied transformation. In Experiment 2, false belief was similarly induced and the participants were to decide if the agent would try to recover the ball in one specific box. Orientation disparity was again found to affect false belief performance. The present results extend previous findings on EET in visuospatial perspective taking and suggest that false belief reasoning, which is a kind of psychological perspective taking, can also involve embodied rotation, consistent with the embodied cognition view.

Universal Phonological Features.

The Theory of universal grammar suggests that human languages may share some similarities at the phonological level. Based on this hypothesis, we further propose a language generalization effect (LGE) and hypothesize that people may inherit the universal phonological features from their native languages and then transfer them to foreign languages. To test this hypothesis, in two experiments, participants listened to a pair of normal and syllable reversed recordings (Experiments 1a-1d) or normal and phonemic reversed recordings (Experiments 2a-2d) in unknown and native languages and reported their similarities. The results indicated that participants were more sensitive to the dissimilarities of normal recordings than to reversed ones. These results suggest that participants could identify the universal phonological features from normal recordings, but not reversed ones, and then adopt these features to better verify the dissimilarities of normal recordings. In sum, the current study first proposed the LGE and reported primary evidence to support it.

Situations restructure the congruency between action and valence in the action-evaluation effect.

The action-evaluation effect indicates that the processing of affective valence is affected by bodily actions. However, whether this effect is based on bodily simulation or situational priming is unknown. Moreover, P2 is a neural marker for this effect, suggesting the integration between valence and actions. Whether the P2 component is modulated by the situation is also unknown. In this study, we tested this effect in multiple situations to examine (1) whether this effect is dependent on the situation and (2) the amplitude of P2 is modulated by the situation. During the experiments, participants pushed/pulled computer mice to verify the valence of affective words in far-near (Experiment 1), front-back (Experiments 2a-2b), and up-down (Experiments 3a-3b) situations. Pulling (or pushing) mice responding to positive (or negative) words were treated as the congruent condition, while the opposite combination was the incongruent condition. In the far-near situation, participants' response times were faster and the amplitude of the P2 component was smaller in the congruent condition than the incongruent one; however, these results were reversed in other situations. The results suggested that the congruency of action-evaluation effect was restructured by the situation. Therefore, the action-evaluation effect might be based on situational priming.

The Positivity Bias Phenomenon in Face Perception Given Different Information on Ability.

The negativity bias has been shown in many fields, including in face processing. We assume that this bias stems from the potential threat inlayed in the stimuli (e.g., negative moral behaviors) in previous studies. In the present study, we conducted one behavioral and one event-related potentials (ERPs) experiments to test whether the positivity bias rather than negativity bias will arise when participants process information whose negative aspect involves no threat, i.e., the ability information. In both experiments, participants first completed a valence rating (negative-to-positive) of neutral facial expressions. Further, in the learning period, participants associated the neutral faces with high-ability, low-ability, or control sentences. Finally, participants rated these facial expressions again. Results of the behavioral experiment showed that compared with pre-learning, the expressions of the faces associated with high ability sentences were classified as more positive in the post-learning expression rating task, and the faces associated with low ability sentences were evaluated as more negative. Meanwhile, the change in the high-ability group was greater than that of the low-ability group. The ERP data showed that the faces associated with high-ability sentences elicited a larger early posterior negativity, an ERP component considered to reflect early sensory processing of the emotional stimuli, than the faces associated with control sentences. However, no such effect was found in faces associated with low-ability sentences. To conclude, high ability sentences exerted stronger influence on expression perception than did low ability ones. Thus, we found a positivity bias in this ability-related facial perceptual task. Our findings demonstrate an effect of valenced ability information on face perception, thereby adding to the evidence on the opinion that person-related knowledge can influence face processing. What's more, the positivity bias in non-threatening surroundings increases scope for studies on processing bias.