Computational modelling of attentional bias towards threat in paediatric anxiety

Can we dissociate hypervigilance to social threats from altered perceptual decision-making processes in lonely individuals? An exploration with Drift Diffusion Modeling and event-related potentials

It has been hypothesized that lonely individuals demonstrate hypervigilance toward social threats. However, recent studies have raised doubts about the reliability of tasks commonly used to measure attentional biases toward threats. Two alternative approaches have been suggested to overcome the limitations of traditional analysis of attentional bias. First, the neurophysiological indicators of orienting to threats were shown to have superior psychometric characteristics compared to overt measures of behavioral performance. The second approach involves utilizing computational modeling to isolate latent components corresponding to specific cognitive mechanisms from observable data. To test the usefulness of these approaches in loneliness research, we analyzed behavioral and electroencephalographic (EEG) data from 26 lonely and 26 non-lonely participants who performed a dot-probe task using a computational modeling approach. We applied the Drift Diffusion Model (DDM) and extracted N2pc-an event-related potential that serves as an indicator of spatial attention. No evidence for social threat hypervigilance has been found in DDM parameters nor in N2pc characteristics in the current study. However, we did observe decreased drift rate and increased variability in drift rate between trials within the lonely group, indicating reduced efficiency in perceptual decision-making among lonely individuals. These effects were not detected using standard behavioral measures used in the dot-probe paradigm. Given that DDM indicators were sensitive to differences in perceptual discrimination between the two groups, even when no overt differences were found in standard behavioral measures, it may be postulated that computational approaches offer a more comprehensive understanding of cognitive processes.

Child characteristic correlates of food rejection in preschool children: A narrative review

Dietary habits formed in early childhood are key for establishing a healthy diet later in life. Picky eating and food neophobia - the two main forms of food rejection in young children - form an important barricade to establishing such healthy habits. Understanding these types of food rejection is thus essential for promoting healthy eating behaviour in both children and adults. To this end, the present narrative review aims to provide an overview of food rejection research in preschool-aged children, focusing on recent advances in the cognitive literature. Specifically, we evaluate the link between children's cognitive development, chemosensory perception and affective evaluation of food, food knowledge, decision-making strategies, anxiety and disgust sensitivity, and food rejection behaviour. Longitudinal and experimental studies are necessary to establish how the relationships between food rejection and cognitive processes develop over time and to determine their causal directions.

Neurocognitive Mechanisms Underlying Attention Bias Towards Pain: Evidence From a Drift-Diffusion Model and Event-Related Potentials

Although combining computational modeling with event-related potentials (ERPs) can precisely characterize neurocognitive processes involved in attention bias, it has yet to be applied in the context of pain. Here, a hierarchical drift-diffusion model (DDM) along with ERPs was used to characterize the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying attention bias towards pain. A spatial cueing paradigm was adopted, in which the locations of targets were either validly or invalidly predicted by spatial cues related to pain or nonpain signals. DDM-derived nondecision time was shorter for targets validly cued by pain signals than by nonpain signals, thus indicating speeded attention engagement towards pain; drift rate was slower for targets invalidly cued by pain signals than by nonpain signals, reflecting slower attention disengagement from pain. The facilitated engagement towards pain was partially mediated by the enhanced lateralization of cue-evoked N1 amplitudes, which relate to the bottom-up, stimulus-driven processes of detecting threatening signals. On the other hand, the retarded disengagement from pain was partially mediated by the enhanced target-evoked anterior N2 amplitudes, which relate to the top-down, goal-driven processes of conflict monitoring and behavior regulating. These results demonstrated that engagement and disengagement components of pain-related attention bias are governed by distinct neurocognitive mechanisms. However, it remains possible that the findings are not pain-specific, but rather, are related to threat or aversiveness in general. This deserves to be further examined by adding a control stimulus modality. PERSPECTIVE: This study characterized the neurocognitive processes involved in attention bias towards pain through combining a hierarchical DDM and ERPs. Our results revealed distinctive neurocognitive mechanisms underlying engagement and disengagement components of attention bias. Future studies are warranted to examine whether our findings are pain-specific or not.

Computational Modeling of Self-Referential Processing Reveals Domain General Associations with Adolescent Anxiety Symptoms

What an adolescent thinks about themselves, commonly termed self-referential processing, has significant implications for youth long-term psychological well-being. Self-referential processing plays an important role in anticipatory and reactive processing in social contexts and contributes to symptoms of social anxiety. Previous work examining self-referential processing largely focuses on child and adolescent depression, relying on endorsement and reaction time for positive and negative self-describing adjectives in a self-referential encoding task (SRET). Here, we employ computational methods to interrogate the latent processes underlying choice reaction times to evaluate the fit of several drift-diffusion models of youth SRET performance. A sample of 106 adolescent, aged 12-17 (53% male; M_age = 14.49, SD = 1.70) completed the SRET and self-report measures of anxiety and depression. Our results support the utility of modeling the SRET, where the rate of evidence accumulation (i.e., drift rate) during negative self-referential processing was related to social anxiety above-and-beyond mean task performance. Our regression analyses indicated that youth efficiency in processing of self-referential views was domain general to anxiety, highlighting the importance of assessing both social and physiological anxiety symptoms when predicting SRET performance. The computational modeling results revealed that self-referential views are not uniquely related to depression-related constructs but also facets of anxiety.

Financial incentives facilitate stronger neural computation of prosocial decisions in lower empathic adult females

Financial incentives are commonly used to motivate behaviors. However, there is also evidence that incentives can impede the behavior they are supposed to foster, for example, documented by a decrease in blood donations if a financial incentive is offered. Based on these findings, previous studies assumed that prosocial motivation is shaped by incentives. However, so far, there is no direct evidence showing an interaction between financial incentives and a specific prosocial motive. Combining drift-diffusion modeling and fMRI, we investigated the effect of financial incentives on empathy, i.e., one of the key motives driving prosocial decisions. In the empathy-alone condition, participants made prosocial decisions based on empathy. In the empathy-bonus condition, they were offered a financial bonus for prosocial decisions, in addition to empathy induction. On average, the bonus enhanced the information accumulation in empathy-based decisions. On the neural level, this enhancement was related to the anterior insula, the same region that also correlated with empathy ratings. Moreover, the effect of the financial incentive on anterior insula activation was stronger the lower a person scored on empathy. These findings show that financial incentives enhance prosocial motivation in the absence of empathy.

The human fear paradox: Affective origins of cooperative care

Already as infants humans are more fearful than our closest living primate relatives, the chimpanzees. Yet heightened fearfulness is mostly considered maladaptive, as it is thought to increase the risk of developing anxiety and depression. How can this human fear paradox be explained? The fearful ape hypothesis presented herein stipulates that, in the context of cooperative caregiving and provisioning unique to human great ape group life, heightened fearfulness was adaptive. This is because from early in ontogeny fearfulness expressed and perceived enhanced care-based responding and provisioning from, while concurrently increasing cooperation with, mothers and others. This explanation is based on a synthesis of existing research with human infants and children, demonstrating a link between fearfulness, greater sensitivity to and accuracy in detecting fear in others, and enhanced levels of cooperative behaviors. These insights critically advance current evolutionary theories of human cooperation by adding an early-developing affective component to the human cooperative makeup. Moreover, the current proposal has important cultural, societal, and health implications, as it challenges the predominant view in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies that commonly construe fearfulness as a maladaptive trait, potentially ignoring its evolutionary adaptive functions.