The neural basis of ideological differences in race categorization

Analysis of Health Disparities in the Screening and Diagnosis of Hearing Loss: Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Hearing Screening Follow-Up Survey

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to (a) provide introductory literature regarding cultural constructs, health disparities, and social determinants of health (SDoH); (b) summarize the literature regarding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) Hearing Screening Follow-Up Survey (HSFS) data; (c) explore the CDC EHDI HSFS data regarding the contribution of maternal demographics to loss-to-follow-up/loss-to-documentation (LTF/D) between hearing screening and audiologic diagnosis for 2016, 2017, and 2018; and (d) examine these health disparities within the context of potential ethnoracial biases.

METHOD

This is a comprehensive narrative literature review of cultural constructs, hearing health disparities, and SDoH as they relate to the CDC EHDI HSFS data. We explore the maternal demographic data reported on the CDC EHDI website and report disparities for maternal age, education, ethnicity, and race for 2016, 2017, and 2018. We focus on LTF/D for screening and diagnosis within the context of racial and cultural bias.

RESULTS

A literature review demonstrates the increase in quality of the CDC EHDI HSFS data over the past 2 decades. LTF/D rates for hearing screening and audiologic diagnostic testing have improved from higher than 60% to current rates of less than 30%. Comparisons of diagnostic completion rates reported on the CDC website for the EHDI HSFS 2016, 2017, and 2018 data show trends for maternal age, education, and race, but not for ethnicity. Trends were defined as changes more than 10% for variables averaged over a 3-year period (2016-2018).

CONCLUSIONS

Although there have been significant improvements in LTF/D over the past 2 decades, there continue to be opportunities for further improvement. Beyond neonatal screening, delays continue to be reported in the diagnosis of young children with hearing loss. Notwithstanding the extraordinarily diverse families within the United States, the imperative is to minimize such delays so that all children with hearing loss can, at the very least, have auditory accessibility to spoken language by 3 months of age. Conscious awareness is essential before developing a potentially effective plan of action that might remediate the problem.

The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach

Although human existence is enveloped by ideologies, remarkably little is understood about the relationships between ideological attitudes and psychological traits. Even less is known about how cognitive dispositions-individual differences in how information is perceived and processed- sculpt individuals' ideological worldviews, proclivities for extremist beliefs and resistance (or receptivity) to evidence. Using an unprecedented number of cognitive tasks (n = 37) and personality surveys (n = 22), along with data-driven analyses including drift-diffusion and Bayesian modelling, we uncovered the specific psychological signatures of political, nationalistic, religious and dogmatic beliefs. Cognitive and personality assessments consistently outperformed demographic predictors in accounting for individual differences in ideological preferences by 4 to 15-fold. Furthermore, data-driven analyses revealed that individuals' ideological attitudes mirrored their cognitive decision-making strategies. Conservatism and nationalism were related to greater caution in perceptual decision-making tasks and to reduced strategic information processing, while dogmatism was associated with slower evidence accumulation and impulsive tendencies. Religiosity was implicated in heightened agreeableness and risk perception. Extreme pro-group attitudes, including violence endorsement against outgroups, were linked to poorer working memory, slower perceptual strategies, and tendencies towards impulsivity and sensation-seeking-reflecting overlaps with the psychological profiles of conservatism and dogmatism. Cognitive and personality signatures were also generated for ideologies such as authoritarianism, system justification, social dominance orientation, patriotism and receptivity to evidence or alternative viewpoints; elucidating their underpinnings and highlighting avenues for future research. Together these findings suggest that ideological worldviews may be reflective of low-level perceptual and cognitive functions. This article is part of the theme issue 'The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.

Computational and neurocognitive approaches to the political brain: key insights and future avenues for political neuroscience

Although the study of political behaviour has been traditionally restricted to the social sciences, new advances in political neuroscience and computational cognitive science highlight that the biological sciences can offer crucial insights into the roots of ideological thought and action. Echoing the dazzling diversity of human ideologies, this theme issue seeks to reflect the multiplicity of theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding the nature of the political brain. Cutting-edge research along three thematic strands is presented, including (i) computational approaches that zoom in on fine-grained mechanisms underlying political behaviour, (ii) neurocognitive perspectives that harness neuroimaging and psychophysiological techniques to study ideological processes, and (iii) behavioural studies and policy-minded analyses of such understandings across cultures and across ideological domains. Synthesizing these findings together, the issue elucidates core questions regarding the nature of uncertainty in political cognition, the mechanisms of social influence and the cognitive structure of ideological beliefs. This offers key directions for future biologically grounded research as well as a guiding map for citizens, psychologists and policymakers traversing the uneven landscape of modern polarization, misinformation, intolerance and dogmatism.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.

Political games of attack and defence

Political conflicts often revolve around changing versus defending a status quo. We propose to capture the dynamics between proponents and opponents of political change in terms of an asymmetric game of attack and defence with its equilibrium in mixed strategies. Formal analyses generate predictions about effort expended on revising and protecting the status quo, the form and function of false signalling and cheap talk, how power differences impact conflict intensity and the likelihood of status quo revision. Laboratory experiments on the neurocognitive and hormonal foundations of attack and defence reveal that out-of-equilibrium investments in attack emerge because of non-selfish preferences, limited capacity to compute costs and benefits and optimistic beliefs about the chances of winning from one's rival. We conclude with implications for the likelihood of political change and inertia, and discuss the role of ideology in political games of attack and defence.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.

Reframing social categorization as latent structure learning for understanding political behaviour

Affiliating with political parties, voting and building coalitions all contribute to the functioning of our political systems. One core component of this is social categorization-being able to recognize others as fellow in-group members or members of the out-group. Without this capacity, we would be unable to coordinate with in-group members or avoid out-group members. Past research in social psychology and cognitive neuroscience examining social categorization has suggested that one way to identify in-group members may be to directly compute the similarity between oneself and the target (dyadic similarity). This model, however, does not account for the fact that the group membership brought to bear is context-dependent. This review argues that a more comprehensive understanding of how we build representations of social categories (and the subsequent impact on our behaviours) must first expand our conceptualization of social categorization beyond simple dyadic similarity. Furthermore, a generalizable account of social categorization must also provide domain-general, quantitative predictions for us to test hypotheses about social categorization. Here, we introduce an alternative model-one in which we infer latent groups of people through latent structure learning. We examine experimental evidence for this account and discuss potential implications for understanding the political mind. This article is part of the theme issue 'The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.