The Social Environment Matters for Telomere Length and Internalizing Problems During Adolescence.

Depression and anxiety symptoms are on the rise among adolescents. With increasing evidence that cellular aging may be associated with depressive and anxiety symptoms, there is an urgent need to identify the social environment context that may moderate this link. This study addresses this research gap by investigating the moderating role of the social environment on the relation between telomere length and emotional health among adolescents. Participants were 411 non-Hispanic (88.56%) Black (100%) adolescents (M = 14.23 years, SD = 1.85, female = 54%) in a major metropolitan city. Youth and parents reported on an array of social risk and protective factors, and youth provided DNA samples for telomere length measurement. Results demonstrated that the association of telomere length and anxiety symptoms was stronger among youth with higher perceived stress or lower school belongingness, and the association of telomere length with depressive symptoms was stronger under conditions of higher parent inter-partner psychological aggression. The results enhance our understanding of the complex associations between biological aging, the social environment, and mental health in adolescence.

Improving the reliability and validity of the IAT with a dynamic model driven by similarity.

The Implicit Association Test (IAT), like many behavioral measures, seeks to quantify meaningful individual differences in cognitive processes that are difficult to assess with approaches like self-reports. However, much like other behavioral measures, many IATs appear to show low test-retest reliability and typical scoring methods fail to quantify all of the decision-making processes that generate the overt task performance. Here, we develop a new modeling approach for IATs based on the geometric similarity representation (GSR) model. This model leverages both response times and accuracy on IATs to make inferences about representational similarity between the stimuli and categories. The model disentangles processes related to response caution, stimulus encoding, similarities between concepts and categories, and response processes unrelated to the choice itself. This approach to analyzing IAT data illustrates that the unreliability in IATs is almost entirely attributable to the methods used to analyze data from the task: GSR model parameters show test-retest reliability around .80-.90, on par with reliable self-report measures. Furthermore, we demonstrate how model parameters result in greater validity compared to the IAT D-score, Quad model, and simple diffusion model contrasts, predicting outcomes related to intergroup contact and motivation. Finally, we present a simple point-and-click software tool for fitting the model, which uses a pre-trained neural network to estimate best-fit parameters of the GSR model. This approach allows easy and instantaneous fitting of IAT data with minimal demands on coding or technical expertise on the part of the user, making the new model accessible and effective.

Explaining the description-experience gap in risky decision-making: learning and memory retention during experience as causal mechanisms.

When making decisions based on probabilistic outcomes, people guide their behavior using knowledge gathered through both indirect descriptions and direct experience. Paradoxically, how people obtain information significantly impacts apparent preferences. A ubiquitous example is the description-experience gap: individuals seemingly overweight low probability events when probabilities are described yet underweight them when probabilities must be experienced firsthand. A leading explanation for this fundamental gap in decision-making is that probabilities are weighted differently when learned through description relative to experience, yet a formal theoretical account of the mechanism responsible for such weighting differences remains elusive. We demonstrate how various learning and memory retention models incorporating neuroscientifically motivated learning mechanisms can explain why probability weighting and valuation parameters often are found to vary across description and experience. In a simulation study, we show how learning through experience can lead to systematically biased estimates of probability weighting when using a traditional cumulative prospect theory model. We then use hierarchical Bayesian modeling and Bayesian model comparison to show how various learning and memory retention models capture participants' behavior over and above changes in outcome valuation and probability weighting, accounting for description and experience-based decisions in a within-subject experiment. We conclude with a discussion of how substantive models of psychological processes can lead to insights that heuristic statistical models fail to capture.

A unified theory of discrete and continuous responding.

Understanding the cognitive processes underlying choice requires theories that can disentangle the representation of stimuli from the processes that map these representations onto observed responses. We develop a dynamic theory of how stimuli are mapped onto discrete (choice) and onto continuous response scales. It proposes that the mapping from a stimulus to an internal representation and then to an evidence accumulation process is accomplished using multiple reference points or "anchors." Evidence is accumulated until a threshold amount for a particular response is obtained, with the relative balance of support for each anchor at that time determining the response. We tested this multiple anchored accumulation theory (MAAT) using the results of two experiments requiring discrete or continuous responses to line length and color stimuli. We manipulated the number of options for discrete responses, the number of different stimuli, and the similarity among them, and compared the outcomes to continuous response conditions. We show that MAAT accounts for several key phenomena: more accurate, faster, and more skewed distributions of responses near the ends of a response scale; lower accuracy and slower responses as the number of discrete choice options increases; and longer response times and lower accuracy when alternative responses are more similar to the target response. Our empirical and modeling results suggest that discrete and continuous response tasks can share a common evidence representation, and that the decision process is sensitive to the perceived similarity among the response options. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Rational inference strategies and the genesis of polarization and extremism.

Polarization and extremism are often viewed as the product of psychological biases or social influences, yet they still occur in the absence of any bias or irrational thinking. We show that individual decision-makers implementing optimal dynamic decision strategies will become polarized, forming extreme views relative to the true information in their environment by virtue of how they sample new information. Extreme evidence enables decision makers to stop considering new information, whereas weak or moderate evidence is unlikely to trigger a decision and is thus under-sampled. We show that this information polarization effect arises empirically across choice domains including politically-charged, affect-rich and affect-poor, and simple perceptual decisions. However, this effect can be disincentivized by asking participants to make a judgment about the difference between two options (estimation) rather than deciding. We experimentally test this intervention by manipulating participants' inference goals (decision vs inference) in an information sampling task. We show that participants in the estimation condition collect more information, hold less extreme views, and are less polarized than those in the decision condition. Estimation goals therefore offer a theoretically-motivated intervention that could be used to alleviate polarization and extremism in situations where people traditionally intend to decide.

Reconciling similarity across models of continuous selections.

Recently developed models of decision-making have provided accounts of the cognitive processes underlying choice on tasks where responses can fall along a continuum, such as identifying the color or orientation of a stimulus. Even though nearly all of these models seek to extend diffusion decision processes to a continuum of response options, they vary in terms of complexity, tractability, and their ability to predict patterns of data such as multimodal distributions of responses. We suggest that these differences are almost entirely due to differences in how these models account for the similarity among response options. In this theoretical note, we reconcile these differences by characterizing the existing models under a common framework, where the assumptions about psychological representations of similarity, and their implications for behavioral data (e.g., multimodal responses), are made explicit. Furthermore, we implement a simulation-based approach to computing model likelihoods that allows for greater freedom in constructing and implementing continuous response models. The resulting geometric similarity representation (GSR) can supplement approaches like the circular/spherical diffusion models by allowing them to generate multimodal distributions of responses from a single drift, or simplify models like the spatially continuous diffusion model (SCDM) by condensing their representations of similarity and allowing them to generate simulations more efficiently. To illustrate its utility, we apply this approach to multimodal distributions responses, two-dimensional responses (such as locations on a computer screen), and continuous response options with nontrivial, nonlinear similarity relations between response options. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Temporal oscillations in preference strength provide evidence for an open system model of constructed preference.

The decision process is often conceptualized as a constructive process in which a decision maker accumulates information to form preferences about the choice options and ultimately make a response. Here we examine how these constructive processes unfold by tracking dynamic changes in preference strength. Across two experiments, we observed that mean preference strength systematically oscillated over time and found that eliciting a choice early in time strongly affected the pattern of preference oscillation later in time. Preferences following choices oscillated between being stronger than those without prior choice and being weaker than those without choice. To account for these phenomena, we develop an open system dynamic model which merges the dynamics of Markov random walk processes with those of quantum walk processes. This model incorporates two sources of uncertainty: epistemic uncertainty about what preference state a decision maker has at a particular point in time; and ontic uncertainty about what decision or judgment will be observed when a person has some preference state. Representing these two sources of uncertainty allows the model to account for the oscillations in preference as well as the effect of choice on preference formation.

Testing the factor structure underlying behavior using joint cognitive models: Impulsivity in delay discounting and Cambridge gambling tasks.

Neurocognitive tasks are frequently used to assess disordered decision making, and cognitive models of these tasks can quantify performance in terms related to decision makers' underlying cognitive processes. In many cases, multiple cognitive models purport to describe similar processes, but it is difficult to evaluate whether they measure the same latent traits or processes. In this article, we develop methods for modeling behavior across multiple tasks by connecting cognitive model parameters to common latent constructs. This approach can be used to assess whether 2 tasks measure the same dimensions of cognition, or actually improve the estimates of cognitive models when there are overlapping cognitive processes between 2 related tasks. The approach is then applied to connecting decision data on 2 behavioral tasks that evaluate clinically relevant deficits, the delay discounting task and Cambridge gambling task, to determine whether they both measure the same dimension of impulsivity. We find that the discounting rate parameters in the models of each task are not closely related, although substance users exhibit more impulsive behavior on both tasks. Instead, temporal discounting on the delay discounting task as quantified by the model is more closely related to externalizing psychopathology like aggression, while temporal discounting on the Cambridge gambling task is related more to response inhibition failures. The methods we develop thus provide a new way to connect behavior across tasks and grant new insights onto the different dimensions of impulsivity and their relation to substance use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A dynamic model of deciding not to choose.

We propose a dynamic theory of decisions not to choose which of 2 options is correct. Such "do not-know" judgments are of theoretical and practical importance in domains ranging from comparative psychology, psychophysics, episodic memory, and metacognition to applied areas including educational testing and eyewitness testimony. However, no previous theory has provided a detailed quantitative account of the time it takes to make both definitive and do not-know responses and their relative frequencies. We tested our theory, the multiple threshold race (MTR), in 1 recognition memory experiment where participants had to pick a previously studied target out of 2 similar faces and another where targets and lures were tested 1 at a time. In both experiments we manipulated similarity through face morphing. High similarity made decisions difficult, encouraging do not-know responses. We also tested the MTR's ability to account for other manipulations that aimed to affect the speed and probability of do not-know responses, including increasing penalties for making an error (with no penalty for a do not-know response) and emphasizing either response speed or accuracy. We found that there were marked individual differences in do not-know use, and that the MTR was able to account for the intricate pattern of effects associated with our manipulations, both on average and in terms of individual differences. We discuss how estimates of MTR's parameters illuminate the psychological mechanisms that govern the interplay between definitive and do not-know responding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A distributional and dynamic theory of pricing and preference.

Theories that describe how people assign prices and make choices are typically based on the idea that both of these responses are derived from a common static, deterministic function used to assign utilities to options. However, preference reversals-where prices assigned to gambles conflict with preference orders elicited through binary choices-indicate that the response processes underlying these different methods of evaluation are more intricate. We address this issue by formulating a new computational model that assumes an initial bias or anchor that depends on type of price task (buying, selling, or certainty equivalents) and a stochastic evaluation accumulation process that depends on gamble attributes. To test this new model, we investigated choices and prices for a wide range of gambles and price tasks, including pricing under time pressure. In line with model predictions, we found that price distributions possessed stark skew that depended on the type of price and the attributes of gambles being considered. Prices were also sensitive to time pressure, indicating a dynamic evaluation process underlying price generation. The model out-performed prospect theory in predicting prices and additionally predicted the response times associated with these prices, which no prior model has accomplished. Finally, we show that the model successfully predicts out-of-sample choices and that its parameters allow us to fit choice response times as well. This price accumulation model therefore provides a superior account of the distributional and dynamic properties of price, leveraging process-level mechanisms to provide a more complete account of the valuation processes common across multiple methods of eliciting preference. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Comparison of Markov versus quantum dynamical models of human decision making.

What kind of dynamic decision process do humans use to make decisions? In this article, two different types of processes are reviewed and compared: Markov and quantum. Markov processes are based on the idea that at any given point in time a decision maker has a definite and specific level of support for available choice alternatives, and the dynamic decision process is represented by a single trajectory that traces out a path across time. When a response is requested, a person's decision or judgment is generated from the current location along the trajectory. By contrast, quantum processes are founded on the idea that a person's state can be represented by a superposition over different degrees of support for available choice options, and that the dynamics of this state form a wave moving across levels of support over time. When a response is requested, a decision or judgment is constructed out of the superposition by "actualizing" a specific degree or range of degrees of support to create a definite state. The purpose of this article is to introduce these two contrasting theories, review empirical studies comparing the two theories, and identify conditions that determine when each theory is more accurate and useful than the other. This article is categorized under: Economics > Individual Decision-Making Psychology > Reasoning and Decision Making Psychology > Theory and Methods.

The Confidence Database.

Understanding how people rate their confidence is critical for the characterization of a wide range of perceptual, memory, motor and cognitive processes. To enable the continued exploration of these processes, we created a large database of confidence studies spanning a broad set of paradigms, participant populations and fields of study. The data from each study are structured in a common, easy-to-use format that can be easily imported and analysed using multiple software packages. Each dataset is accompanied by an explanation regarding the nature of the collected data. At the time of publication, the Confidence Database (which is available at https://osf.io/s46pr/) contained 145 datasets with data from more than 8,700 participants and almost 4 million trials. The database will remain open for new submissions indefinitely and is expected to continue to grow. Here we show the usefulness of this large collection of datasets in four different analyses that provide precise estimations of several foundational confidence-related effects.

Hierarchies improve individual assessment of temporal discounting behavior.

Delay discounting behavior has proven useful in assessing impulsivity across a wide range of populations. As such, accurate estimation of the shape of each individual's temporal discounting profile is paramount when drawing conclusions about how impulsivity relates to clinical and health outcomes such as gambling, addiction, and obesity. Here, we identify an estimation problem with current methods of assessing temporal discounting behavior, and propose a simple solution. First, through a simulation study we identify types of temporal discounting profiles that cannot reliably be estimated. Second, we show how imposing constraints through hierarchical modeling ameliorates these recovery problems. Finally, we apply our solution to a large data set from a temporal discounting task, and illustrate the importance of reliable estimation within patient populations. We conclude with a brief discussion on how hierarchical Bayesian methods can aid in model estimation, compensate for small samples, and improve predictions of externalizing psychopathology.

Markov versus quantum dynamic models of belief change during evidence monitoring.

Two different dynamic models for belief change during evidence monitoring were evaluated: Markov and quantum. They were empirically tested with an experiment in which participants monitored evidence for an initial period of time, made a probability rating, then monitored more evidence, before making a second rating. The models were qualitatively tested by manipulating the time intervals in a manner that provided a test for interference effects of the first rating on the second. The Markov model predicted no interference, whereas the quantum model predicted interference. More importantly, a quantitative comparison of the two models was also carried out using a generalization criterion method: the parameters were fit to data from one set of time intervals, and then these same parameters were used to predict data from another set of time intervals. The results indicated that some features of both Markov and quantum models are needed to accurately account for the results.

Modeling accuracy, response time, and bias in continuous orientation judgments.

Despite the prevalence of real-world and laboratory tasks where people select among many options, cognitive models have traditionally focused on choices among small sets of alternatives. This has resulted in theoretical and empirical gaps in understanding the decision processes that go into selections among many alternatives or responses that fall along a continuum. This paper addresses these issues by modeling decisions in a perceptual study where participants produce continuous orientation judgments. The experiments showed that manipulations of stimulus difficulty and time pressure have parallel effects to binary choice, with greater stimulus difficulty yielding slower and less accurate responses and time pressure resulting in faster responses at the expense of accuracy. These effects were well accounted for by the circular diffusion model developed by Smith (2016), with drift magnitude parameters shifting with difficulty and threshold parameters shifting with time pressure. However, a manipulation of bias using a predecision cue resulted in bimodal distributions of responses that cannot be explained by the model in its original formulation. To account for this result, I developed a theory of bias based on split attention and racing 2D diffusion processes. This model suggests that responses are determined by both cue-driven and stimulus-driven evidence accumulation processes, such that the winning process determines responses and response times (RTs). As a result, it predicts critical features of responses and response times in the conditions with predecision cues, including bimodal distributions of responses and the longer RTs observed when there was a discrepancy between cue and stimulus orientations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Neural implementation of operations used in quantum cognition.

Quantum probability theory has been successfully applied outside of physics to account for numerous findings from psychology regarding human judgement and decision making behavior. However, the researchers who have made these applications do not rely on the hypothesis that the brain is some type of quantum computer. This raises the question of how could the brain implement quantum algorithms other than quantum physical operations. This article outlines one way that a neural based system could perform the computations required by applications of quantum probability to human behavior.

Strength and weight: The determinants of choice and confidence.

Evidence for different hypotheses is often treated as a singular construct, but it can be dissociated into two parts: its strength, the proportion of pieces of information favoring one hypothesis; and its weight, the total number of pieces of information available. However, cognitive and neural models of evidence accumulation often make a proportional representation assumption, implying that people take these two factors into account equally when making their decisions and judgments. We examine this assumption by directly manipulating the number of samples and the proportion favoring either of two alternatives in dynamic decision making and judgment tasks. The results suggest that people tend to over-emphasize the strength of evidence relative to its weight in both an optional-stopping decision task and a probability judgment task. In a drift-diffusion model, this is reflected by drift rates that are determined foremost by strength with a smaller influence of weight. This result challenges the proportional representation assumption made by existing models of judgment and decision-making, and calls into question modeling evidence accumulation as a Bayesian belief updating process.

Interference effects of choice on confidence: Quantum characteristics of evidence accumulation.

Decision-making relies on a process of evidence accumulation which generates support for possible hypotheses. Models of this process derived from classical stochastic theories assume that information accumulates by moving across definite levels of evidence, carving out a single trajectory across these levels over time. In contrast, quantum decision models assume that evidence develops over time in a superposition state analogous to a wavelike pattern and that judgments and decisions are constructed by a measurement process by which a definite state of evidence is created from this indefinite state. This constructive process implies that interference effects should arise when multiple responses (measurements) are elicited over time. We report such an interference effect during a motion direction discrimination task. Decisions during the task interfered with subsequent confidence judgments, resulting in less extreme and more accurate judgments than when no decision was elicited. These results provide qualitative and quantitative support for a quantum random walk model of evidence accumulation over the popular Markov random walk model. We discuss the cognitive and neural implications of modeling evidence accumulation as a quantum dynamic system.

Patterns of sexual arousal in young, heterosexual men who experience condom-associated erection problems (CAEP).

INTRODUCTION: Condom-associated erection problems (CAEPs) are reported by a substantial number of young men and are associated with inconsistent and/or incomplete condom use. The underlying mechanisms of CAEP are not well understood, and research examining the possibility that men who report CAEP differ from other men in their sexual responsivity is lacking. AIM: This study used psychophysiological methods to examine whether men who report CAEP have a higher threshold for sexual arousal, a stronger need for tactile stimulation, and/or more easily lose their sexual arousal due to neutral distractors or performance-related demands. METHODS: A total of 142 young, heterosexual men (53% reporting CAEP) were presented with four 3-minute erotic film clips. Three film clips were combined with one of the following manipulations: (i) distraction; (ii) performance demand; or (iii) vibrotactile stimulation. One erotic film clip was presented with no further instructions or manipulations. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Average penile circumference changes during the first, second, and third minute (time) of the erotic film stimuli (condition) were submitted to a mixed-model analysis of variance with condition and time as within-subjects factors and group (CAEP/no-CAEP) as between-subjects factor. RESULTS: Significant main effects of condition and time and a significant interaction of group × time were found. No significant interactions involving condition were found. Men who reported CAEP had smaller erectile responses during the first minute, regardless of film condition, than men who reported no CAEP (F(1,141) = 8.64, P < 0.005). CONCLUSION: The findings suggest that men with and without CAEP differ in the ease with which they become sexually aroused. Men reporting CAEP needed more time and/or more intense stimulation to become aroused. To our knowledge, this study is the first to use psychophysiological methods to assess sexual responsivity in men who report CAEP.

The effect of condoms on penile vibrotactile sensitivity thresholds in young, heterosexual men.

INTRODUCTION: Investigating the ways in which barrier methods such as condoms may affect penile sensory thresholds has potential relevance to the development of interventions in men who experience negative effects of condoms on sexual response and sensation. A quantitative, psychophysiological investigation examining the degree to which sensations are altered by condoms has, to date, not been conducted. AIM: The objective of this study was to examine penile vibrotactile sensitivity thresholds in both flaccid and erect penises with and without a condom while comparing men who do and those who do not report condom-associated erection problems (CAEP). METHODS: Penile vibrotactile sensitivity thresholds were assessed among a total of 141 young, heterosexual men using biothesiometry. An incremental two-step staircase method was used and repeated three times for each of four conditions. Intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated for all vibratory assessments. Penile vibratory thresholds were compared using a mixed-model analysis of variance. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Penile vibrotactile sensitivity thresholds with and without a condom, erectile function measured by International Index of Erectile Function Questionnaire, and self-reported degree of erection. RESULTS: Significant main effects of condoms (yes/no) and erection (yes/no) were found. No main or interaction effects of CAEP were found. Condoms were associated with higher penile vibrotactile sensitivity thresholds (F[1,124] = 17.11, P < 0.001). Penile vibrotactile thresholds were higher with an erect penis than with a flaccid penis (F[1,124] = 4.21, P = 0.042). CONCLUSION: The current study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring penile vibratory thresholds with and without a condom in both erect and flaccid experimental conditions. As might be expected, condoms increased penile vibrotactile sensitivity thresholds. Interestingly, erections were associated with the highest thresholds. Thus, this study was the first to document that erect penises are less sensitive to vibrotactile stimulation than flaccid penises.