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Kosie JE, Lew-Williams C. Infant-directed communication: Examining the many dimensions of everyday caregiver-infant interactions. Dev Sci 2024; 27:e13515. [PMID: 38618899 PMCID: PMC11333185 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13515] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/24/2023] [Revised: 03/22/2024] [Accepted: 03/30/2024] [Indexed: 04/16/2024]
Abstract
Everyday caregiver-infant interactions are dynamic and multidimensional. However, existing research underestimates the dimensionality of infants' experiences, often focusing on one or two communicative signals (e.g., speech alone, or speech and gesture together). Here, we introduce "infant-directed communication" (IDC): the suite of communicative signals from caregivers to infants including speech, action, gesture, emotion, and touch. We recorded 10 min of at-home play between 44 caregivers and their 18- to 24-month-old infants from predominantly white, middle-class, English-speaking families in the United States. Interactions were coded for five dimensions of IDC as well as infants' gestures and vocalizations. Most caregivers used all five dimensions of IDC throughout the interaction, and these dimensions frequently overlapped. For example, over 60% of the speech that infants heard was accompanied by one or more non-verbal communicative cues. However, we saw marked variation across caregivers in their use of IDC, likely reflecting tailored communication to the behaviors and abilities of their infant. Moreover, caregivers systematically increased the dimensionality of IDC, using more overlapping cues in response to infant gestures and vocalizations, and more IDC with infants who had smaller vocabularies. Understanding how and when caregivers use all five signals-together and separately-in interactions with infants has the potential to redefine how developmental scientists conceive of infants' communicative environments, and enhance our understanding of the relations between caregiver input and early learning. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Infants' everyday interactions with caregivers are dynamic and multimodal, but existing research has underestimated the multidimensionality (i.e., the diversity of simultaneously occurring communicative cues) inherent in infant-directed communication. Over 60% of the speech that infants encounter during at-home, free play interactions overlap with one or more of a variety of non-speech communicative cues. The multidimensionality of caregivers' communicative cues increases in response to infants' gestures and vocalizations, providing new information about how infants' own behaviors shape their input. These findings emphasize the importance of understanding how caregivers use a diverse set of communicative behaviors-both separately and together-during everyday interactions with infants.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jessica E Kosie
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
- School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
| | - Casey Lew-Williams
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
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2
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Wu Y, Merrick M, Gweon H. Expecting the Unexpected: Infants Use Others' Surprise to Revise Their Own Expectations. Open Mind (Camb) 2024; 8:67-83. [PMID: 38435704 PMCID: PMC10898783 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2023] [Accepted: 12/19/2023] [Indexed: 03/05/2024] Open
Abstract
Human infants show systematic responses to events that violate their expectations. Can they also revise these expectations based on others' expressions of surprise? Here we ask whether infants (N = 156, mean = 15.2 months, range: 12.0-18.0 months) can use an experimenter's expression of surprise to revise their own expectations about statistically probable vs. improbable events. An experimenter sampled a ball from a box of red and white balls and briefly displayed either a surprised or an unsurprised expression at the outcome before revealing it to the infant. Following an unsurprised expression, the results were consistent with prior work; infants looked longer at a statistically improbable outcome than a probable outcome. Following a surprised expression, however, this standard pattern disappeared or was even reversed. These results suggest that even before infants can observe the unexpected events themselves, they can use others' surprise to expect the unexpected. Starting early in life, human learners can leverage social information that signals others' prediction error to update their own predictions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yang Wu
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Megan Merrick
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA
| | - Hyowon Gweon
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
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3
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Baugher BJ, Delahanty DL, Coifman KG. Recalled protective childhood experiences are associated with positive emotional expression in active-duty firefighters. J Trauma Stress 2024; 37:187-194. [PMID: 37955950 DOI: 10.1002/jts.22992] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/05/2023] [Revised: 10/10/2023] [Accepted: 10/10/2023] [Indexed: 11/14/2023]
Abstract
There is a wealth of research linking adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) with negative outcomes later in life, but less research has focused on the effects of protective childhood experiences (PCEs). PCEs have been shown broadly to promote resilience, but the precise nature of this association is not clear, particularly in studies of at-risk adults. The current investigation explored the association between recollection of early life experiences and in vivo emotional responses in at-risk adults. In 2018, 56 active-duty firefighters reported childhood experiences via a questionnaire. Using a semistructured interview, firefighters then responded to questions about recent emotionally evocative experiences (positive and negative) as a firefighter. Emotion was measured in vivo via sympathetic arousal and recorded facial expressions of emotion. Individuals who reported more PCEs expressed significantly more facial expressions of positive emotion across contexts, sr2 = .11-.14. Early childhood experiences were not significantly associated with negative facial expressions or changes in sympathetic reactivity, but ACEs were associated with tonic levels of arousal in a negative context, r = -.36. Given the adaptive role of positive emotions in adjustment to adverse events, the current investigation suggests a potential protective association between PCEs and the expression of emotion even within a high-risk context, which could help explain the resilience promoting role of PCEs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brittany J Baugher
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA
| | - Douglas L Delahanty
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA
| | - Karin G Coifman
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA
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4
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Smith-Flores AS, Herrera-Guevara IA, Powell LJ. Infants expect friends, but not rivals, to be happy for each other when they succeed. Dev Sci 2024; 27:e13423. [PMID: 37312424 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13423] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2022] [Revised: 05/27/2023] [Accepted: 05/31/2023] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
A friend telling you good news earns them a smile while witnessing a rival win an award may make you wrinkle your nose. Emotions arise not just from people's own circumstances, but also from the experiences of friends and rivals. Across three moderated, online looking time studies, we asked if human infants hold expectations about others' vicarious emotions and if they expect those emotions to be guided by social relationships. Ten- and 11-month-old infants (N = 154) expected an observer to be happy rather than sad when the observer watched a friend successfully jump over a wall; infants looked longer at the sad response compared to the happy response. In contrast, infants did not expect the observer to be happy when the friend failed, nor when a different, rival jumper succeeded; infants' looking times to the two emotion responses in these conditions were not reliably different. These results suggest that infants are able to integrate knowledge across social contexts to guide expectations about vicarious emotional responses. Here infants connected an understanding of agents' goals and their outcomes with knowledge of social relationships to infer an emotion response. Biased concern for friends but not adversaries is not just a descriptive feature of human relationships, but an expectation about the social world present from early in development. Further, the successful integration of these information types welcomes the possibility that infants can jointly reason about goals, emotions, and social relationships under an intuitive theory of psychology. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: 11-month-old infants use knowledge of relationships to make inferences about others' vicarious emotions. In Experiment 1 infants expected an observer to respond happily to a friend's success but not their failure. Experiments 2 and 3 varied the relationship between the observer and actor and found that infants' expectation of vicarious happiness is strongest for positive relationships and absent for negative relationships. The results may reflect an intuitive psychology in which infants expect friends to adopt concern for one another's goals and to thus experience one another's successes as rewarding.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexis S Smith-Flores
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, California, USA
| | - Isabel A Herrera-Guevara
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, California, USA
| | - Lindsey J Powell
- Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, California, USA
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5
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Doan T, Friedman O, Denison S. Calculated Feelings: How Children Use Probability to Infer Emotions. Open Mind (Camb) 2023; 7:879-893. [PMID: 37946853 PMCID: PMC10631798 DOI: 10.1162/opmi_a_00111] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2023] [Accepted: 09/18/2023] [Indexed: 11/12/2023] Open
Abstract
Developing the ability to accurately infer others' emotions is crucial for children's cognitive development. Here, we offer a new theoretical perspective on how children develop this ability. We first review recent work showing that with age, children increasingly use probability to infer emotions. We discuss how these findings do not fit with prominent accounts of how children understand emotions, namely the script account and the theory of mind account. We then outline a theory of how probability allows children to infer others' emotions. Specifically, we suggest that probability provides children with information about how much weight to put on alternative outcomes, allowing them to infer emotions by comparing outcomes to counterfactual alternatives.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tiffany Doan
- Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo
| | - Ori Friedman
- Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo
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6
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Houlihan SD, Kleiman-Weiner M, Hewitt LB, Tenenbaum JB, Saxe R. Emotion prediction as computation over a generative theory of mind. PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. SERIES A, MATHEMATICAL, PHYSICAL, AND ENGINEERING SCIENCES 2023; 381:20220047. [PMID: 37271174 DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2022.0047] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/01/2022] [Accepted: 03/16/2023] [Indexed: 06/06/2023]
Abstract
From sparse descriptions of events, observers can make systematic and nuanced predictions of what emotions the people involved will experience. We propose a formal model of emotion prediction in the context of a public high-stakes social dilemma. This model uses inverse planning to infer a person's beliefs and preferences, including social preferences for equity and for maintaining a good reputation. The model then combines these inferred mental contents with the event to compute 'appraisals': whether the situation conformed to the expectations and fulfilled the preferences. We learn functions mapping computed appraisals to emotion labels, allowing the model to match human observers' quantitative predictions of 20 emotions, including joy, relief, guilt and envy. Model comparison indicates that inferred monetary preferences are not sufficient to explain observers' emotion predictions; inferred social preferences are factored into predictions for nearly every emotion. Human observers and the model both use minimal individualizing information to adjust predictions of how different people will respond to the same event. Thus, our framework integrates inverse planning, event appraisals and emotion concepts in a single computational model to reverse-engineer people's intuitive theory of emotions. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Cognitive artificial intelligence'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sean Dae Houlihan
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Max Kleiman-Weiner
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Luke B Hewitt
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Joshua B Tenenbaum
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Rebecca Saxe
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
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7
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Camacho MC, Nielsen AN, Balser D, Furtado E, Steinberger DC, Fruchtman L, Culver JP, Sylvester CM, Barch DM. Large-scale encoding of emotion concepts becomes increasingly similar between individuals from childhood to adolescence. Nat Neurosci 2023; 26:1256-1266. [PMID: 37291338 DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01358-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/12/2022] [Accepted: 05/12/2023] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
Humans require a shared conceptualization of others' emotions for adaptive social functioning. A concept is a mental blueprint that gives our brains parameters for predicting what will happen next. Emotion concepts undergo refinement with development, but it is not known whether their neural representations change in parallel. Here, in a sample of 5-15-year-old children (n = 823), we show that the brain represents different emotion concepts distinctly throughout the cortex, cerebellum and caudate. Patterns of activation to each emotion changed little across development. Using a model-free approach, we show that activation patterns were more similar between older children than between younger children. Moreover, scenes that required inferring negative emotional states elicited higher default mode network activation similarity in older children than younger children. These results suggest that representations of emotion concepts are relatively stable by mid to late childhood and synchronize between individuals during adolescence.
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Affiliation(s)
- M Catalina Camacho
- Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.
| | - Ashley N Nielsen
- Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Dori Balser
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Emily Furtado
- Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - David C Steinberger
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Leah Fruchtman
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Joseph P Culver
- Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
- Department of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
- Department of Physics, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
- Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Chad M Sylvester
- Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Deanna M Barch
- Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
- Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
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8
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Xiao NG, Angeli V, Fang W, Manera V, Liu S, Castiello U, Ge L, Lee K, Simion F. The discrimination of expressions in facial movements by infants: A study with point-light displays. J Exp Child Psychol 2023; 232:105671. [PMID: 37003155 DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105671] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/17/2022] [Revised: 02/27/2023] [Accepted: 02/28/2023] [Indexed: 04/03/2023]
Abstract
Perceiving facial expressions is an essential ability for infants. Although previous studies indicated that infants could perceive emotion from expressive facial movements, the developmental change of this ability remains largely unknown. To exclusively examine infants' processing of facial movements, we used point-light displays (PLDs) to present emotionally expressive facial movements. Specifically, we used a habituation and visual paired comparison (VPC) paradigm to investigate whether 3-, 6-, and 9-month-olds could discriminate between happy and fear PLDs after being habituated with a happy PLD (happy-habituation condition) or a fear PLD (fear-habituation condition). The 3-month-olds discriminated between the happy and fear PLDs in both the happy- and fear-habituation conditions. The 6- and 9-month-olds showed discrimination only in the happy-habituation condition but not in the fear-habituation condition. These results indicated a developmental change in processing expressive facial movements. Younger infants tended to process low-level motion signals regardless of the depicted emotions, and older infants tended to process expressions, which emerged in familiar facial expressions (e.g., happy). Additional analyses of individual difference and eye movement patterns supported this conclusion. In Experiment 2, we concluded that the findings of Experiment 1 were not due to a spontaneous preference for fear PLDs. Using inverted PLDs, Experiment 3 further suggested that 3-month-olds have already perceived PLDs as face-like stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Naiqi G Xiao
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4L8, Canada.
| | - Valentina Angeli
- Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy
| | - Wei Fang
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4L8, Canada
| | - Valeria Manera
- Cognition Behaviour Technology (CoBTeK), EA 7276, Edmond and Lily Safra Center, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, 06000 Nice, France
| | - Shaoying Liu
- Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China
| | - Umberto Castiello
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy; Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy
| | - Liezhong Ge
- Center for Psychological Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
| | - Kang Lee
- Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2X2, Canada
| | - Francesca Simion
- Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy; Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy
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9
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Kao CH, Feng GW, Hur JK, Jarvis H, Rutledge RB. Computational models of subjective feelings in psychiatry. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2023; 145:105008. [PMID: 36549378 PMCID: PMC9990828 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.105008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2022] [Revised: 12/02/2022] [Accepted: 12/15/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022]
Abstract
Research in computational psychiatry is dominated by models of behavior. Subjective experience during behavioral tasks is not well understood, even though it should be relevant to understanding the symptoms of psychiatric disorders. Here, we bridge this gap and review recent progress in computational models for subjective feelings. For example, happiness reflects not how well people are doing, but whether they are doing better than expected. This dependence on recent reward prediction errors is intact in major depression, although depressive symptoms lower happiness during tasks. Uncertainty predicts subjective feelings of stress in volatile environments. Social prediction errors influence feelings of self-worth more in individuals with low self-esteem despite a reduced willingness to change beliefs due to social feedback. Measuring affective state during behavioral tasks provides a tool for understanding psychiatric symptoms that can be dissociable from behavior. When smartphone tasks are collected longitudinally, subjective feelings provide a potential means to bridge the gap between lab-based behavioral tasks and real-life behavior, emotion, and psychiatric symptoms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Chang-Hao Kao
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
| | - Gloria W Feng
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Jihyun K Hur
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Huw Jarvis
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia; School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
| | - Robb B Rutledge
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA; Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, University College London, London, UK.
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10
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Yang Y, Wang H. Fear of COVID-19 and Anxiety: Serial Mediation by Trust in the Government and Hope. Psychol Res Behav Manag 2023; 16:963-970. [PMID: 36998742 PMCID: PMC10044058 DOI: 10.2147/prbm.s399466] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2022] [Accepted: 03/14/2023] [Indexed: 04/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Purpose How to reduce the damage of COVID-19 pandemic to people's mental health is a current research hotspot. The present study examined the mediating role of trust in the government and hope in the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and anxiety. Participants and Methods In this cross-sectional study, a total of 1053 Chinese subjects (20.24±3.97 years old, 85.3% female) were investigated by using the Fear of COVID-19 Scale, Anxiety Scale, Trust in the Government Measure Scale and Herth Hope Scale, which was conducted by an online survey using snowball sampling technique. Hayes PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test the hypothesized mediating effects of trust in the government and hope in the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and anxiety. Results The fear of COVID-19 could positively predict anxiety level (β=0.36, p<0.001). Results of the mediation analyses demonstrated that trust in the government (β=-0.16, p<0.001) and hope (β=-0.28, p<0.001) mediated the relationship between fear of COVID-19 and anxiety level respectively. Moreover, fear of COVID-19 could also indirectly predict anxiety level through the chain-mediated role of the trust in the government and the hope (β=0.28, p<0.001). Conclusion Our findings shed light on a correlation between fear of COVID-19 and anxiety. This study emphasizes the value of trust in the government and hope in maintaining mental health when individuals face public stress events from both external and internal perspectives.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yong Yang
- School of Educational Science, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, Henan, People’s Republic of China
- Correspondence: Yong Yang, School of Educational Science, Xinyang Normal University, Room 517, Xinyang, Henan, 464000, People’s Republic of China, Email
| | - Huili Wang
- School of Educational Science, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang, Henan, People’s Republic of China
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11
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Ho MK, Saxe R, Cushman F. Planning with Theory of Mind. Trends Cogn Sci 2022; 26:959-971. [PMID: 36089494 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2022.08.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/27/2021] [Revised: 08/08/2022] [Accepted: 08/09/2022] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
Abstract
Understanding Theory of Mind should begin with an analysis of the problems it solves. The traditional answer is that Theory of Mind is used for predicting others' thoughts and actions. However, the same Theory of Mind is also used for planning to change others' thoughts and actions. Planning requires that Theory of Mind consists of abstract structured causal representations and supports efficient search and selection from innumerable possible actions. Theory of Mind contrasts with less cognitively demanding alternatives: statistical predictive models of other people's actions, or model-free reinforcement of actions by their effects on other people. Theory of Mind is likely used to plan novel interventions and predict their effects, for example, in pedagogy, emotion regulation, and impression management.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mark K Ho
- Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA; Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
| | - Rebecca Saxe
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Fiery Cushman
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
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12
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Smith-Flores AS, Feigenson L. “Yay! Yuck!” toddlers use others’ emotional responses to reason about hidden objects. J Exp Child Psychol 2022; 221:105464. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105464] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2021] [Revised: 04/08/2022] [Accepted: 04/28/2022] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
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13
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Plate RC, Schapiro AC, Waller R. Emotional Faces Facilitate Statistical Learning. AFFECTIVE SCIENCE 2022; 3:662-672. [PMID: 36385906 PMCID: PMC9537398 DOI: 10.1007/s42761-022-00130-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/14/2021] [Accepted: 06/07/2022] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Detecting regularities and extracting patterns is a vital skill to organize complex information in our environments. Statistical learning, a process where we detect regularities by attending to relationships between cues in our environment, contributes to knowledge acquisition across myriad domains. However, less is known about how emotional cues-specifically facial configurations of emotion-influence statistical learning. Here, we tested two pre-registered aims to advance knowledge about emotional signals and statistical learning: (1) we examined statistical learning in the context of emotional compared to non-emotional information, and (2) we assessed how emotional congruency (i.e., whether facial stimuli conveyed the same, or different emotions) influenced regularity extraction. We demonstrated statistical learning in the context of emotional signals. Further, we showed that statistical learning occurs more efficiently in the context of emotional faces. We also established that congruent cues benefited an online measure of statistical learning, but had varied effects when statistical learning was assessed via post-exposure recognition test. The results shed light on how affective signals influence well-studied cognitive skills and address a knowledge gap about how cue congruency impacts statistical learning, including how emotional cues might guide predictions in our social world. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00130-9.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rista C. Plate
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Levin Building, 425 S. University Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
| | - Anna C. Schapiro
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Levin Building, 425 S. University Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
| | - Rebecca Waller
- Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Levin Building, 425 S. University Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA
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14
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Ruba AL, Pollak SD, Saffran JR. Acquiring Complex Communicative Systems: Statistical Learning of Language and Emotion. Top Cogn Sci 2022; 14:432-450. [PMID: 35398974 PMCID: PMC9465951 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12612] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/02/2011] [Revised: 03/16/2022] [Accepted: 03/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
During the early postnatal years, most infants rapidly learn to understand two naturally evolved communication systems: language and emotion. While these two domains include different types of content knowledge, it is possible that similar learning processes subserve their acquisition. In this review, we compare the learnable statistical regularities in language and emotion input. We then consider how domain-general learning abilities may underly the acquisition of language and emotion, and how this process may be constrained in each domain. This comparative developmental approach can advance our understanding of how humans learn to communicate with others.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ashley L. Ruba
- Department of PsychologyUniversity of Wisconsin – Madison
| | - Seth D. Pollak
- Department of PsychologyUniversity of Wisconsin – Madison
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