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Adámek P, Grygarová D, Jajcay L, Bakštein E, Fürstová P, Juríčková V, Jonáš J, Langová V, Neskoroďana I, Kesner L, Horáček J. The Gaze of Schizophrenia Patients Captured by Bottom-up Saliency. SCHIZOPHRENIA (HEIDELBERG, GERMANY) 2024; 10:21. [PMID: 38378724 PMCID: PMC10879495 DOI: 10.1038/s41537-024-00438-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2023] [Accepted: 01/19/2024] [Indexed: 02/22/2024]
Abstract
Schizophrenia (SCHZ) notably impacts various human perceptual modalities, including vision. Prior research has identified marked abnormalities in perceptual organization in SCHZ, predominantly attributed to deficits in bottom-up processing. Our study introduces a novel paradigm to differentiate the roles of top-down and bottom-up processes in visual perception in SCHZ. We analysed eye-tracking fixation ground truth maps from 28 SCHZ patients and 25 healthy controls (HC), comparing these with two mathematical models of visual saliency: one bottom-up, based on the physical attributes of images, and the other top-down, incorporating machine learning. While the bottom-up (GBVS) model revealed no significant overall differences between groups (beta = 0.01, p = 0.281, with a marginal increase in SCHZ patients), it did show enhanced performance by SCHZ patients with highly salient images. Conversely, the top-down (EML-Net) model indicated no general group difference (beta = -0.03, p = 0.206, lower in SCHZ patients) but highlighted significantly reduced performance in SCHZ patients for images depicting social interactions (beta = -0.06, p < 0.001). Over time, the disparity between the groups diminished for both models. The previously reported bottom-up bias in SCHZ patients was apparent only during the initial stages of visual exploration and corresponded with progressively shorter fixation durations in this group. Our research proposes an innovative approach to understanding early visual information processing in SCHZ patients, shedding light on the interplay between bottom-up perception and top-down cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Petr Adámek
- Center for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic.
- Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
| | - Dominika Grygarová
- Center for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
- Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - Lucia Jajcay
- Center for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
- Institute of Computer Science of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic
- Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - Eduard Bakštein
- Early Episodes of SMI Research Center, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
- Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - Petra Fürstová
- Early Episodes of SMI Research Center, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
| | - Veronika Juríčková
- Center for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
- First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - Juraj Jonáš
- Center for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
- Faculty of Humanities, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - Veronika Langová
- Center for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
- Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - Iryna Neskoroďana
- Center for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
| | - Ladislav Kesner
- Center for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
- Department of Art History, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
| | - Jiří Horáček
- Center for Advanced Studies of Brain and Consciousness, National Institute of Mental Health, Klecany, Czech Republic
- Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
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Tschacher W, Haken H. A Complexity Science Account of Humor. ENTROPY (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2023; 25:341. [PMID: 36832707 PMCID: PMC9955919 DOI: 10.3390/e25020341] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2023] [Revised: 02/02/2023] [Accepted: 02/06/2023] [Indexed: 06/18/2023]
Abstract
A common assumption of psychological theories of humor is that experienced funniness results from an incongruity between stimuli provided by a verbal joke or visual pun, followed by a sudden, surprising resolution of incongruity. In the perspective of complexity science, this characteristic incongruity-resolution sequence is modeled by a phase transition, where an initial attractor-like script, suggested by the initial joke information, is suddenly destructed, and in the course of resolution replaced by a less probable novel script. The transition from the initial to the enforced final script was modeled as a succession of two attractors with different minimum potentials, during which free energy becomes available to the joke recipient. Hypotheses derived from the model were tested in an empirical study where participants rated the funniness of visual puns. It was found, consistent with the model, that the extent of incongruity and the abruptness of resolution were associated with reported funniness, and with social factors, such as disparagement (Schadenfreude) added to humor responses. The model suggests explanations as to why bistable puns and phase transitions in conventional problem solving, albeit also based on phase transitions, are generally less funny. We proposed that findings from the model can be transferred to decision processes and mental change dynamics in psychotherapy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wolfgang Tschacher
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University Hospital of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Bern, 3060 Bern, Switzerland
| | - Hermann Haken
- Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Stuttgart, 70174 Stuttgart, Germany
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Papousek I, Lackner HK, Weber B, Perchtold CM, Fink A, Weiss EM. Poor control of interference from negative content hampers the effectiveness of humour as a source of positive emotional experiences. Sci Rep 2019; 9:8023. [PMID: 31142806 PMCID: PMC6541656 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-44550-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2018] [Accepted: 05/17/2019] [Indexed: 12/27/2022] Open
Abstract
The brain-based ability to direct attention away from interfering negative information may co-determine to which degree one may benefit from humour as a source of positive emotional experiences. This should be particularly relevant when it comes to humour that implicates a target the joke makes fun of, which inherently entails rivalry between positive and negative emotional representations. One hundred healthy individuals completed a pictorial negative affective priming task and a nonverbal humour processing task. In line with the notion that during the elaborative processing of malicious jokes, interference from negative emotional representations hampers the experience of amusement, participants took more time to judge their amusement evoked by malicious compared to benign jokes. Lesser ability to distract attention from interfering negative emotional representations was associated with slower judgements of amusement following the processing of malicious jokes, as well as with lower amusement ratings. The time it took participants to comprehend the punch-lines was not affected, neither was the immediate, short-lived pleasure after having comprehended the humour, measured by characteristic transient cardiac activation. The findings suggest that the effective use of humour as a source of positive emotional experiences requires the ability to overcome the dark side of typical humour.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ilona Papousek
- Section of Biological Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
| | - Helmut K Lackner
- Division of Physiology, Otto Loewi Research Center, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria
| | - Bernhard Weber
- Section of Biological Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
| | - Corinna M Perchtold
- Section of Biological Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
| | - Andreas Fink
- Section of Biological Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
| | - Elisabeth M Weiss
- Section of Biological Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
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Papousek I, Rominger C, Weiss EM, Perchtold CM, Fink A, Feyaerts K. Humor creation during efforts to find humorous cognitive reappraisals of threatening situations. CURRENT PSYCHOLOGY 2019; 42:16176-16190. [PMID: 37554948 PMCID: PMC10404570 DOI: 10.1007/s12144-019-00296-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
This interdisciplinary study examined the structure of humor creation in the specific context of efforts to positively reappraise stressful situations for effective coping. In a sample of n = 101 participants, a performance test was used to assess the quantity (fluency, number of generated ideas that qualified as humor) and quality (rated funniness) of humor creation in cognitive reappraisal. Linguistic mechanisms were identified and quantified using cognitive-linguistic methods of corpus analysis, and their employment was correlated with humor production performance on the level of the individual. Almost all individuals were able to come up with reappraisal ideas that qualified as humorous. Depressive symptoms, a negative mood state, and high perceptions of threat did not compromise the participants' capability to create humor. Individuals who were more serious-minded as a trait produced ideas that were rated as less funny, but their basic ability to create humor was unaffected. Metonymy (a contiguity-based principle of meaning extension) emerged as by far the most prominent semantic mechanism in the creation of humorous re-interpretations. Furthermore, its use was related to good humor creation performance in terms of quantity and quality, which is in line with its assumed importance in the extension of meaning in general and the creation of humor in particular. Further effective linguistic mechanisms and conceptual phenomena were identified. The empirical data may be valuable for the development of interventions involving the creation of humorous ideas for cognitive reappraisal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ilona Papousek
- Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
| | | | | | | | - Andreas Fink
- Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
| | - Kurt Feyaerts
- Department of Linguistics, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
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