On the Origins of Adaptive Behavioral Complexity: Developmental Channeling of Structural Trade-offs

Effects of different speed-accuracy instructions on perception in psychology experiments: evidence from event-related potential and oscillation

Introduction

In cognitive behavioral experiments, we often asked participants to make judgments within a deadline. However, the most common instruction of "do the task quickly and accurately" does not highlight the importance of the balance between being fast and accurate.

Methods

Our research aimed to explore how instructions about speed or accuracy affect perceptual process, focus on event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related oscillations (EROs) of two brain responses for visual stimuli, known as P1 and N1. Additionally, we compared the conventional analysis approach with principal component analysis (PCA) based methods to analyze P1 and N1 ERP amplitude and ERO power.

Results

The results showed that individuals instructed to respond quickly had lower P1 amplitude and alpha ERO than those who prioritized accuracy, using the PCA-based approach. However, these two groups had no differences between groups in the N1 theta band using both methods. The traditional time-frequency analysis method could not detect any ERP or ERO distinctions between groups due to limitations in detecting specific components in time or frequency domains. That means PCA is effective in separating these components.

Discussion

Our findings indicate that the instructions given regarding speed and accuracy impact perceptual process of subjects during cognitive behavioral experiments. We suggest that future researchers should choose their instructions carefully, considering the purpose of study.

Reproductive value and the evolution of altruism

Altruism is favored by natural selection provided that it delivers sufficient benefits to relatives. An altruist's valuation of her relatives depends upon the extent to which they carry copies of her genes - relatedness - and also on the extent to which they are able to transmit their own genes to future generations - reproductive value. However, although relatedness has received a great deal of attention with regard to altruism, reproductive value has been surprisingly neglected. We review how reproductive value modulates patterns of altruism in relation to individual differences in age, sex, and general condition, and discuss how social partners may manipulate each other's reproductive value to incentivize altruism. This topic presents opportunities for tight interplay between theoretical and empirical research.

A Dual Role for Behavior in Evolution and Shaping Organismal Selective Environments

The hypothesis that evolved behaviors play a determining role in facilitating and impeding the evolution of other traits has been discussed for more than 100 years with little consensus beyond an agreement that the ideas are theoretically plausible in accord with the Modern Synthesis. Many recent reviews of the genomic, epigenetic, and developmental mechanisms underpinning major behavioral transitions show how facultative expression of novel behaviors can lead to the evolution of obligate behaviors and structures that enhance behavioral function. Phylogenetic and genomic studies indicate that behavioral traits are generally evolutionarily more labile than other traits and that they help shape selective environments on the latter traits. Adaptive decision-making to encounter resources and avoid stress sources requires specific sensory inputs, which behaviorally shape selective environments by determining those features of the external world that are biologically relevant. These recent findings support the hypothesis of a dual role for behavior in evolution and are consistent with current evolutionary theory.

The Relationship Between Gambling Event Frequency, Motor Response Inhibition, Arousal, and Dissociative Experience

Speed of play has been identified as a key structural characteristic in gambling behaviour, where games involving higher playing speeds enhance the experience of gambling. Of interest in the present study is the consistent finding that games with higher event frequencies are preferred by problem gamblers and are associated with more negative gambling outcomes, such as difficulty quitting the game and increased monetary loss. The present study investigated the impact of gambling speed of play on executive control functioning, focusing on how increased speeds of play impact motor response inhibition, and the potential mediating role arousal and dissociative experience play in this relationship. Fifty regular non-problem gamblers took part in a repeated-measures experiment where they gambled with real money on a simulated slot machine across five speed of play conditions. Response inhibition was measured using an embedded Go/No-Go task, where participants had to withhold motor responses, rather than operating the spin button on the slot machine when a specific colour cue was present. Results indicated that response inhibition performance was significantly worse during faster speeds of play, and that the role of arousal in this relationship was independent of any motor priming affect. The implications of these findings for gambling legislation and gambling harm-minimisation approaches are discussed.

Maternally derived hormones, neurosteroids and the development of behaviour

In a wide range of taxa, there is evidence that mothers adaptively shape the development of offspring behaviour by exposing them to steroids. These maternal effects have major implications for fitness because, by shaping early development, they can permanently alter how offspring interact with their environment. However, theory on parent-offspring conflict and recent physiological studies showing that embryos rapidly metabolize maternal steroids have placed doubt on the adaptive significance of these hormone-mediated maternal effects. Reconciling these disparate perspectives requires a mechanistic understanding of the pathways by which maternal steroids can influence neural development. Here, we highlight recent advances in developmental neurobiology and psychiatric pharmacology to show that maternal steroid metabolites can have direct neuro-modulatory effects potentially shaping the development of neural circuitry underlying ecologically relevant behavioural traits. The recognition that maternal steroids can act through a neurosteroid pathway has critical implications for our understanding of the ecology and evolution of steroid-based maternal effects. Overall, compared to the classic view, a neurosteroid mechanism may reduce the evolutionary lability of hormone-mediated maternal effects owing to increased pleiotropic constraints and frequently influence long-term behavioural phenotypes in offspring.

Nestling odour modulates behavioural response in male, but not in female zebra finches

Studies investigating parent offspring recognition in birds led to the conclusion that offspring recognition is absent at the early nestling stage. Especially male songbirds were often assumed to be unable to discriminate between own and foreign offspring. However, olfactory offspring recognition in birds has not been taken into account as yet, probably because particularly songbirds have for a long time been assumed anosmic. This study aimed to test whether offspring might be recognised via smell. We presented zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) parents either the odour of their own or that of foreign nestlings and investigated whether the odour presentation resulted in a change in the number of head saccades, i.e. the rapid horizontal turning of the head, with which birds scan their environment and which can be used as a proxy of arousal. Our experiment indicates that male zebra finches, in contrast to females, differentiate between their own and foreign offspring based on odour cues, as indicated by a significant differences in the change of head saccadic movements between males receiving the own chick odour and males receiving the odour of a foreign chick. Thus, it provides behavioural evidence for olfactory offspring recognition in male zebra finches and also the existence of appropriate phenotypic odour cues of the offspring. The question why females do not show any sign of behavioural response remains open, but it might be likely that females use other signatures for offspring recognition.

Multiple Environmental Stressors Induce an Adaptive Maternal Effect

AbstractEvolution of adaptation requires predictability and recurrence of functional contexts. Yet organisms live in multifaceted environments that are dynamic and ever changing, making it difficult to understand how complex adaptations evolve. This problem is particularly apparent in the evolution of adaptive maternal effects, which are often assumed to require reliable and discrete cues that predict conditions in the offspring environment. One resolution to this problem is if adaptive maternal effects evolve through preexisting, generalized maternal pathways that respond to many cues and also influence offspring development. Here, we assess whether an adaptive maternal effect in western bluebirds is influenced by maternal stress pathways across multiple challenging environments. Combining 18 years of hormone sampling across diverse environmental contexts with an experimental manipulation of the competitive environment, we show that multiple environmental factors influenced maternal corticosterone levels, which, in turn, influenced a maternal effect on aggression of sons in adulthood. Together, these results support the idea that multiple stressors can induce a known maternal effect in this system. More generally, they suggest that activation of general pathways, such as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, may simplify and facilitate the evolution of adaptive maternal effects by integrating variable environmental conditions into preexisting maternal physiological systems.

Finger-counting observation interferes with number processing

Aim of this study was to investigate the association between finger and number representation in a task in which students had to perform arithmetic calculations and decide whether the provided solution was correct or incorrect, while a pair of task-irrelevant hands gesturally expressed the same or a different number. In particular we aimed at investigating whether irrelevant finger-counting might interfere with arithmetic computing, thus showing the existence of a strict neural association between the two processes. 20 volunteers took part to the investigation and EEG/ERPs were recorded from 128 scalp sites. P300 amplitude was greater to correct than incorrect solutions. Accuracy was higher when there was no conflict between the two sets of information A numerical error-related negativity (nERN) was elicited by incorrect solutions, and also by correct solutions when the finger-counting was incongruent. Source analysis applied to the incongruent minus congruent difference showed that when finger-counting was incorrect nERN mostly derived from medial and superior prefrontal cortex activity (supporting action monitoring and suppression). Conversely, when finger-counting indicated the correct solution brain activation included occipital areas, somatosensory regions and visuomotor mirror areas, inferior and superior temporal cortex, reflecting attentional orienting toward the hands. In both cases, the left angular gyrus (BA39) was found active during conjoined digit/number processing, suggesting a strict neural association between finger and digit processing. The present findings help explaining why a lesion in the left parietal cortex may simultaneously lead to finger apraxia and acalculia (Gertsmann syndrome).

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: what is the debate about, and what might success for the extenders look like?

Debate over the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) ranges over three quite different domains of enquiry. Protagonists are committed to substantive positions regarding (1) empirical questions concerning (for example) the properties and prevalence of systems of epigenetic inheritance; (2) historical characterizations of the modern synthesis; and (3) conceptual/philosophical matters concerning (among other things) the nature of evolutionary processes, and the relationship between selection and adaptation. With these different aspects of the debate in view, it is possible to demonstrate the range of cross-cutting positions on offer when well-informed evolutionists consider their stance on the EES. This overview of the multiple dimensions of debate also enables clarification of two philosophical elements of the EES debate, regarding the status of niche-construction and the role of selection in explaining adaptation. Finally, it points the way to a possible resolution of the EES debate, via a pragmatic approach to evolutionary enquiry.