Exposure to Movie Reckless Driving in Early Adolescence Predicts Reckless, but Not Inattentive Driving.

OBJECTIVE: We examine the association between exposure to depictions of reckless driving in movies and unsafe driving, modeling inattentive and reckless driving as separate outcomes. METHODS: Data were obtained by telephone from 1,630 US adolescents aged 10 to 14 years at baseline who were drivers at a survey 6 years later. Exposure to movie reckless driving was measured based on movies seen from a randomly selected list of 50 movie titles that had been content coded for reckless driving among characters. Associations were tested with inattentive and reckless driving behaviors in the subsequent survey-controlling for baseline age, sex, socioeconomic status, parental education, school performance, extracurricular activities, daily television and video/computer game exposure, number of movies watched per week, self-regulation and sensation seeking. RESULTS: Exposure to movie reckless driving was common, with approximately 10% of movie characters having driven recklessly. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed a significant distinction between items tapping reckless and inattentive driving at the 6th wave. Age and exposure to movie reckless driving at baseline were directly associated with wave-6 reckless (but not inattentive) driving. Additionally, growth in sensation seeking mediated a prospective relation between the total number of movies watched per week at baseline and reckless driving, independent of exposure to movie reckless driving. Males and high sensation seekers reported lower seatbelt usage and more reckless driving, whereas lower self-regulation predicted inattentive driving. DISCUSSION: In this study, exposure to movie reckless driving during early adolescence predicted adolescents' reckless driving, suggesting a direct modeling effect. Other aspects of movies were also associated with reckless driving, with that association mediated through growth in sensation seeking. Predictors of reckless driving were different from predictors of inattentive driving, with lower self-regulation associated with the latter outcome. Making a clear distinction between interventions for reckless or inattentive driving seems crucial for accident prevention.

Social status determines how we monitor and evaluate our performance.

Since people with low status are more likely to experience social evaluative threat and are therefore more inclined to monitor for these threats and inhibit approach behaviour, we expected that low-status subjects would be more engaged in evaluating their own performance, compared with high-status subjects. We created a highly salient social hierarchy based on the performance of a simple time estimation task. Subjects could achieve high, middle or low status while performing this task simultaneously with other two players who were either higher or lower in status. Subjects received feedback on their own performance, as well as on the performance of the other two players simultaneously. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from all three participants. The results showed that medial frontal negativity (an event-related potential reflecting performance evaluation) was significantly enhanced for low-status subjects. Implications for status-related differences in goal-directed behaviour are discussed.

Failing where others have succeeded: Medial Frontal Negativity tracks failure in a social context.

Most of us can appreciate that it feels worse to fail when people around you are successful than when others are also failing. Indeed, comparison with other individuals is of central importance within social groups. Despite the importance of relative success or failure for human decision making and even well-being, the underlying neurobiological substrate of this social comparison process is not well understood. In the present study, ERPs were recorded while two participants received feedback on both their own, and the other participant's performance on each trial. The results showed that medial frontal negativity, an ERP component associated with deviations from the desired outcome, is particularly enhanced when an individual's own outcomes are worse than those of others. These results indicate that the way the brain evaluates the success of our actions is crucially dependent on the success or failure of others.

Sensitivity to punishment and reward omission: evidence from error-related ERP components.

In a recent experiment [Boksem, M.A.S., Tops, M., Wester, A.E., Meijman, T.F., Lorist, M.M., 2006. Error-related ERP components and individual differences in punishment and reward sensitivity. Brain Research 1101, 92-101], we showed that error-related ERP components were related to punishment and reward sensitivity. The present study was conducted to further evaluate the relationship between punishment/reward sensitivity and these ERP components. Therefore, we scored our subjects on the BIS/BAS measures of punishment and reward sensitivity. Then, subjects performed one of two versions of a Flanker task: in one, they were financially punished for committing errors; in the other, they were financially rewarded for correct performance. Analyses of ERN/Ne amplitudes indicated significant interactions between personality measures of punishment (BIS) and reward (BAS) and actual punishment and reward, while analyses of Pe amplitudes showed significant interactions between personality measures of reward sensitivity and actual reward. We suggest that ERN/Ne amplitude is related to concerns over mistakes and depends on the level of aversion experienced by individual subjects for making these mistakes. Subjects that are highly sensitive to punishment are strongly motivated or engaged in avoiding punishment, while subjects sensitive to rewards are motivated to obtain rewards and therefore show high task engagement when rewards may be earned. The error-related ERP components appear to track this level of engagement in task performance.