A computational investigation of feedforward and feedback processing in metacontrast backward masking

Unveiling the Paradox of Selflessness: Exploring Perceptions of Hypocrisy and Priority Outgroup in Intergroup Moral Dilemmas

Purpose

This study examines the impact of prioritizing the out-group in intergroup moral dilemmas. The research aims to achieve three primary objectives: 1) investigating the relationship between out-group prioritization and perceptions of hypocrisy, 2) exploring the influence of perceived hypocrisy and negative emotions on moral judgments, and 3) uncovering the underlying reasons for perceiving outgroup prioritization as hypocritical.

Methods

Experiments 1, 2 and 3 involved presenting Chinese participants with out-group rescuers and in-group rescuers and asking them to rate the two on three dimensions: level of hypocrisy, level of morality, and negative emotions toward the rescuers. In Experiment 3, the degree of similarity between participants and rescuers was manipulated to control for the level at which participants projected their own intrinsic motivations (ie, self-interest) onto the rescuers.

Results

Experiments 1 and 2 jointly showed that participants perceived the out-group rescuer as more hypocritical and immoral compared to the in-group rescuer, and that participants had stronger negative emotions toward the out-group rescuer. Mediation analysis also demonstrated that the perception of hypocrisy and negative emotions largely mediated the relationship between the different rescuers and participants' evaluation of the rescuers' morality. In Experiment 3, participants gave higher hypocrisy ratings to high projection out-group rescuers compared to low projection out-group rescuers.

Conclusion

In intergroup dilemmas, choosing to sacrifice the in-group to rescue the outgroup is perceived as more hypocritical, immoral, and objectionable. Perceived hypocrisy arises from an incongruity between individuals' subjective judgments of the rescuers' self-interest motives and the altruistic choice made by the rescuers to rescue the out-group.

A Cross-Sectional Association Between Screen-Based Sedentary Behavior and Anxiety in Academic College Students: Mediating Role of Negative Emotions and Moderating Role of Emotion Regulation

Purpose

The study aims to explore the relationship and potential mechanisms between screen time and anxiety and have a clear understanding of the role of negative emotions and emotion regulation, thus providing guidance for Chinese college students to improve mental health.

Methods

We conducted a questionnaire survey by selecting 1721 academic college students from 6 colleges and universities in 5 provinces in China, and the data were analyzed through the Process program of SPSS for mediating effect and moderating effect.

Results

There is a significant positive relationship between screen time and anxiety, negative emotions play a mediating role between the two (indirect effect = 0.32, p < 0.001), mediating effect accounts for 59.88% of the total effect, and emotion regulation regulates the direct relationship between screen time and anxiety (interaction effect = 0.027, p < 0.001).

Conclusion

This study sheds light on the potential mechanisms by which screen time affects anxiety in academic college students, providing a fresh perspective on anxiety reduction. Screen time positively affects anxiety levels, where negative emotions have a mediating role and emotion regulation has a moderating role. In the future, we can control screen ++time, increase physical activities, reduce negative emotions, and improve the emotional regulation ability to relieve anxiety, so as to improve the mental health of academic college students, and expect to have a positive impact on future learning, life, and planning.

A look into feedback neural computation upon collision selectivity

Physiological studies have shown that a group of locust's lobula giant movement detectors (LGMDs) has a diversity of collision selectivity to approaching objects, relatively darker or brighter than their backgrounds in cluttered environments. Such diversity of collision selectivity can serve locusts to escape from attack by natural enemies, and migrate in swarm free of collision. For computational studies, endeavours have been made to realize the diverse selectivity which, however, is still one of the most challenging tasks especially in complex and dynamic real world scenarios. The existing models are mainly formulated as multi-layered neural networks with merely feed-forward information processing, and do not take into account the effect of re-entrant signals in feedback loop, which is an essential regulatory loop for motion perception, yet never been explored in looming perception. In this paper, we inaugurate feedback neural computation for constructing a new LGMD-based model, named F-LGMD to look into the efficacy upon implementing different collision selectivity. Accordingly, the proposed neural network model features both feed-forward processing and feedback loop. The feedback control propagates output signals of parallel ON/OFF channels back into their starting neurons, thus makes part of the feed-forward neural network, i.e. the ON/OFF channels and the feedback loop form an iterative cycle system. Moreover, the feedback control is instantaneous, which leads to the existence of a fixed point whereby the fixed point theorem is applied to rigorously derive valid range of feedback coefficients. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, we conduct systematic experiments covering synthetic and natural collision datasets, and also online robotic tests. The experimental results show that the F-LGMD, with a unified network, can fulfil the diverse collision selectivity revealed in physiology, which not only reduces considerably the handcrafted parameters compared to previous studies, but also offers a both efficient and robust scheme for collision perception through feedback neural computation.

Comparing the use of food and physical activity parenting practices: Parents of children with overweight and obesity versus parents of children with a healthy weight

Background

Paediatric overweight and obesity are caused by a complex imbalance between energy intake and expenditure. Parents may influence this imbalance through energy balance-related parenting practices. This study aims to compare the use of energy balance-related parenting practices between parents of children with overweight and obesity and children with a healthy weight.

Methods

This study compares energy balance-related parenting practices among a group of parents with children with overweight and obesity at the start of a lifestyle intervention (N = 107) and children with a healthy weight (N = 137). Specifically, it compares the feeding practices 'overt control' (open control over eating), 'encouragement', 'instrumental feeding', 'emotional feeding', and 'covert control' (hidden control over eating), as well as the physical activity parenting practice 'promoting physical activity'. Multiple regression analyses are used to calculate associations between child weight groups and parenting practices when corrected for children's characteristics.

Results

Parents of children with overweight and obesity reported significantly different scores on control over eating practices than parents of children with a healthy weight, namely a significantly higher score on covert control (B = 0.397, S.E. 0.123, p = 0.001) and a significantly lower score for overt control (B = -0.136, S.E. 0.068, p = 0.046).

Conclusion

Covert control is reported more, while overt control is reported less in parents of children with overweight and obesity compared to parents of children with a healthy weight, even after correction for the child's, family, and maternal characteristics. Future longitudinal research and intervention trials are recommended to determine whether and how the use of control over eating practices changes.

Lifestyle and preventive behaviors among adults during the early phase of the COVID-19 movement control order (MCO) in Malaysia

BACKGROUND

Enforcement of the movement control order (MCO) in Malaysia caused by COVID-19 impacted people's health, social, behaviors, and economic consequences. Thus, this study aims to identify adults' lifestyle and preventive behaviors during the MCO's early phase.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This study was conducted in April 2020 using a convenience sampling technique. A total of 9987 adults aged 18 years and above from all over Malaysia participated in the study. The questionnaire was distributed through online platforms, such as Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, and the official website. Descriptive statistics and Chi-square test were used to describe the categorical data and the independent T-test and one-way ANOVA tests were performed to compare continuous variables between two or more groups. The level of statistical significance was set at P < .05.

RESULTS

Selangor showed the highest participation (28.4%) and most of the respondents were females (68.2%), married (67.8%), and aged between 36 and 45 years old (34.1%). This study found that 10.3% were smokers, and 46.7% of the smokers intended to quit smoking. Most respondents took their three main meals daily (72.4%), but not even half completed daily food groups (45.1%). The frequent activities were internet surfing (18.8%) and house chores (18.2%). Almost 98% of the respondents agreed to implement preventive behaviors. This study also revealed that attitudes toward preventive behaviors significantly differed across genders, age groups, categories of marital status, and monthly income categories (P < .05). Furthermore, regarding readiness for behavior change after MCO end, only gender shows a significance difference (P < .05).

CONCLUSION

This study shed light on understanding public behavior during the early phase of the pandemic that may significantly impact public health in designing relevant regulations and policies to reduce the spread of COVID-19 infections and preparing strategies for future outbreaks or pandemics. As COVID-19 evolves, continuous efforts to promote positive behavioral changes in lifestyle and preventive behavior are needed to ensure the public practices a healthy lifestyle and complies with pandemic preventive measures.

Fundamental computational constraints on the time course of perception and action

A cognitive system faced with contingent events that cause rapid changes in sensory data may (i) incrementally incorporate new data into the ongoing perceptual and motor processing; or (ii) restart processing on each new event; or (iii) sample the data and hold onto the sample until its processing is complete, while disregarding any contingent changes. We offer a set of computational first-principles arguments for a hypothesis, according to which any system that contends with certain classes of perception and behavioral control tasks must include the sample-and-hold option (possibly alongside the other two, which may be useful in other tasks). This hypothesis has implications for understanding the dynamics of perception and action. In particular, a sample-and-hold channel necessarily processes sensory data on some kind of cycle (which does not imply precise periodicity). Further, being prepared to face the world at all times requires that the sampling that initiates each cycle be triggered by every significant action on part of the agent itself, such as saccades. We survey a range of evidence for the sample-and-hold functionality, touching upon diverse phenomena such as attentional blink and backward masking, the yoking of olfaction to respiration, thalamocortical interactions, and metastable brain dynamics in perception and consciousness.

Acting like a doctor: oral case presentation curriculum for medical students

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background Verbal communication is an important element to clinical practice and an integral part of undergraduate medical education. The oral case presentation (OCP) is often used in professional verbal communication and remains commonplace in the clinical setting. The OCP additionally has a complex role in undergraduate teaching. Methods We designed a OCP curriculum taking into account reasoning, rhetorical and linguistic mechanisms. Delivered through a content and drama workshop involving a trained theatre actor to 45 pre-clinical, undergraduate medical students at our U.K. institution. Students were assessed objectively at weekly intervals by trained faculty. A paired t-test was performed to determine if the curriculum was effective in increasing OCP scores. Students' confidence was assessed using Likert scales. Findings An overall mean score improvement (M=20.3, SD 14.6, N=45) was significantly greater than zero, t (44) =9.3, two tail p <0.05, providing evidence that the curriculum was effective. A 95% confidence interval around the mean difference in score was 15.9-24.7. Confidence scores for both non-verbal and verbal elements of the OCP improved. Conclusion This curriculum led to an improvement in OCP scores and increased our students 'confidence with this modality of communication. Consideration should be given to incorporating dedicated teaching of the OCP in undergraduate education.