Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： As an important cognitive bias, the framing effect shows that individuals' decision preferences are sensitive to the verbal description (i.e., frame) of options. The social framing effect could be distinguished from the non-social one according to whether the decision would influence others. The psychological mechanisms of the non-social framing effect (e.g., Gain/Loss framing effect) and that of the social one are essentially different. When making non-social decisions, frames affect people’s judgment of which option is more beneficial or less risky. When making social decisions, frames affect people’s preferences through the influence of other-regarding concerns and social norms.In the present study, a new paradigm was developed to induce the social framing effect. We asked participants to make a tradeoff between economic benefits and the feelings of others; when participants showed a stronger preference for income maximization, the probability for their partners to receive a painful electrical shock would increase proportionally. This decision was described as either a “harm” to, or simply “not helping” other persons in two frame conditions. 30 participants (age: 20.58 ± 1.91 years old) were enrolled in the experiment and 24 of them were included in the final analysis. The resting-state functional magnetic resonance (rs-fMRI) data was acquired using the Echo Planar Imaging (EPI) sequence from a 3-T Siemens scanner. This scanning acquired 180 volumes with TR = 2 s (lasting 6 min). Rs-fMRI data were processed and analyzed using the DPABI and RESTplus toolbox to calculate the amplitude of low-Frequency Fluctuation (ALFF) and Functional Connectivity (FC). On the behavioral level, we found that participants made more prosocial decisions in the Harm frame compared to the Help frame condition, resulting in a significant social framing effect. For the resting fMRI analysis, we first run a whole-brain correlation analysis between ALFF and the behavioral index and found the ALFF of the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) could significantly predict the behavioral index of the social framing effect. Considering the observed social framing effect would result from different levels of moral conflict between Harm and Help frames, we predicted that it would be closely related to the moral network. Therefore, we further localized 12 seeds from a new, meta-analysis of functional MRI studies for moral processing. Seed-based FC analysis showed that the functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and the caudate was significantly associated with the behavioral index of the social framing effect. Multivariate machine learning-based regression analysis further confirmed these results, suggesting the importance of rTPJ and moral network for the observed social framing effect.The present study is based on a novel experimental paradigm, using resting functional imaging techniques to explore the brain mechanism of the social framing effect. We found that the ALFF value of the right TPJ and the strength of the functional connectivity value between the medial prefrontal lobe and the caudate within a moral network can effectively predict the social framing effect. This study is the very first one to explore the extent to which individual social decision-making can be influenced by verbal description and its underlying neural mechanisms, which shed light on the further exploration of individual differences in social decision-making.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2023-03-15
Abstract：
Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are typically characterized by impaired social interactions that are thought to be related to deficits in empathy. While cognitive empathy deficit in ASD is widely recognized, it remains controversial whether individuals with ASD have a deficiency in emotional empathy. According to the shared representation theory, psychological and neuronal mechanisms involved in the personal experience of an emotional or somatosensory state are also engaged while empathizing with other individuals in those states. It suggests that the deficits of empathy seen in the ASD population could arise from the atypical experience of first-hand pain. Mild, subclinical forms of the characteristics associated with ASD are referred to as autistic traits. Individuals with high autistic traits exhibit sensory, emotional, and social behaviors similar to those with ASD. Given the relationship between pain empathy and first-hand pain as well as the similarity between autistic traits and ASD, the present study tested the hypothesis that autistic traits in the general population would influence pain empathic responses, which could be contributed by first-hand pain-related profiles.
In Experiment 1, we adopted an ecological pain empathy paradigm and compared behavioral and neural activity between individuals with high scores on the Autism-Spectrum Quotient Test (HAQ, with high autistic traits) and those with low scores (LAQ, with low autistic traits). During the pain empathy paradigm, the participants either perceived the painful electrical stimuli themselves or witnessed the delivery of painful electrical stimuli to their partners in certain and uncertain contexts. When perceiving pain themselves, behavioral and brain responses were comparable between HAQ and LAQ groups. When witnessing others in pain, participants in the HAQ group had greater amplitudes of the P2 component on the event-related potentials and reported higher ratings of unpleasantness than those in the LAQ group. The between-group differences in the behavioral and neural responses related to pain empathy were not moderated by certainty of the context (certain or uncertain). Mediation analysis further revealed that the between-group differences in the unpleasantness elicited by witnessing others’ pain could be contributed by the greater fear of pain while anticipating the upcoming painful stimuli.
In Experiment 2, the relationship among autistic traits, pain-related profiles, and trait empathy was assessed in randomly recruited participants. We found that autistic trait levels were negatively correlated with scores on the perspective-taking subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and positively correlated with the personal distress subscale. Importantly, pain-related fear and pain catastrophizing mediated the link between autistic traits and personal distress.
Data from Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that autistic traits heighten emotional empathy, which can be explained by the negative emotion and cognition toward pain. Given the similarities between individuals with high autistic traits and ASD, this finding may help to expand the biological mechanisms underlying ASD, such as explaining empathy deficits or other social difficulties seen in the ASD from the perspective of atypical pain-related profiles. Future studies should combine multiple modalities of painful stimulations and multidimensional pain assessments to comprehensively characterize pain-related profiles among individuals with high autistic traits or ASD, and establish linkage between pain-related profiles and empathy or social deficits. This understanding has the potential to provide targets for clinical interventions and treatments of ASD.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2023-01-27
Abstract：
Math, the basic tool for technology and engineering, is fundamental to professionals in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. Math anxiety is a negative emotional response that is characterized by avoidance and feelings of stress and anxiety in situations involving mathematical reasoning. Math anxiety in students has been suggested to dampening learning and mastering of mathematics.
Among various math skills, the ability to do conceptual knowledge of math has been confirmed to be significantly and negatively correlated with math anxiety. As an essential type of knowledge in mathematics, conceptual understanding is defined as an implicit or explicit understanding of the principles that govern a domain and of the relationships between units of knowledge in a domain. Neuroimaging studies have shown that the regions of the brain needed for processing mathematical conceptual knowledge might differ from those needed for other types of math such as calculation or basic numerical processing. Doing conceptual knowledge of math reportedly activated brain regions that are related to numerical processing, such as the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS), as well as brain regions associated with general conceptual knowledge processing, such as the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left middle temporal gyrus (MTG).
Although the correlation between conceptual math skill and math anxiety has been confirmed at the behavioral level, the neural mechanism remains unknown. Previous studies found that in people with high math anxiety, brain regions related to negative emotions were found to be more active during the numerical tasks, while regions related to emotion regulation and the processing of numbers and calculations were less active. In addition to hyper-activation of the emotional network, brain regions that govern mathematical tasks, showed reduced activation in people with high math anxiety.
To address the neural mechanism that allows math anxiety to impede the processing of conceptual math, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine how brain activity is related to the effects that math anxiety has on the performance of problems that test conceptual math knowledge. (1) we selected four regions of interest (ROIs) that were considered as important neural substrates for processing arithmetic principles in a previous fMRI study. We performed correlation analysis between the seed-based FC maps and the performance of math conceptual knowledge to construct neural pathways that process math conceptual knowledge. (2) we utilized mediation analysis to investigate the relationships between math anxiety, the performance of math conceptual knowledge, and the possible neural pathways. To avoid numerical formats that would likely induce confounding math anxiety, we used a verbalized arithmetic principles task.
After excluding trait anxiety and state anxiety abnormalities, as well as participants who exceed the criterion of head motion during scanning, 92 healthy adult university students (43 females), aged 18-23 years (M = 20.91, SD = 2.33) were left for the data analysis. After controlling for the extraneous factors such as language and intelligence, the partial correlation results showed a significant negative correlation between mathematical anxiety and performance on conceptual knowledge of mathematics (r = -0.26, p = 0.008), which replicated the findings of previous studies and confirmed that mathematical anxiety did inhibit individuals' learning and acquisition of conceptual knowledge of mathematics. The functional connectivity in the resting brain of individuals was correlated with different levels of mathematical anxiety in the functional connectivity between the horizontal segment of the right intraparietal sulcus and the right insula. Furthermore, this functional connectivity fully mediated the correlation between the level of mathematical anxiety and the performance of mathematical conceptual knowledge. These results suggest that the interaction between mathematical/computation-related brain regions (e.g. the horizontal segment of the intraparietal sulcus) and anxiety circuits (e.g. the insula) may be the neural basis for the negative effect of mathematical anxiety on the performance of mathematical conceptual knowledge.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2021-12-16
Abstract： Rumination refers to the repeated reflection of cause, course, and consequence of a negative event. Brain network studies based on functional magnetic resonance imaging indicate that the self-referential processing involved in rumination is associated with alterations in the default mode network, while negative emotion produced by rumination is related to changes in the salience network. The “persistence” property of rumination is associated with altered connections between attention-related networks. Future studies should further examine the causal relationship between rumination and its related brain networks and explore the structural basis of functional networks of rumination to deepen our knowledge about the brain basis of rumination. It is not only in great need to investigate the aging effect on rumination and its underlying brain networks, but also to develop neuromodulation techniques for intervention. "
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2021-09-07
Abstract： Facial expressions are an important medium for understanding the emotional feelings of others. However, individual factors such as gender, age, and personality traits can influence the perception of facial expressions. For instance, individuals with elevated level of trait anxiety, which is measure of frequency and intensity of occurrence of anxiety related symptoms, show attentional bias towards emotional stimuli, that is, higher attention to emotional information such as facial expressions. These studies mostly focused on attentional processing stage, and it remains unclear whether trait anxiety affects the pre-attentive processing stage of facial expression perception. Pre-attentive processing is an automatic evaluation of whether attention is needed for the stimulus, thereby filtering out irrelevant information to conserve cognitive resources and improve the efficiency of information processing. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the pre-attentive processing of facial expressions and the bias to emotional stimuli of trait anxious individuals to emotional stimuli during the pre-attentive processing stage. According to the scores of Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety inventory (STAI), 20 participants who scored in the top 27% were assigned to the high trait anxiety group (13 women; mean age=19.02 ± 0.63 years) and 20 participants who scored in the bottom 27% were assigned to the low trait anxiety group (11 women; mean age=19.63 ± 0.88 years). The stimuli used in the experiment were happy, sad and neutral face pictures selected from the Chinese Facial Affective Picture System (CAFPS; Gong et al., 2011) including 10 pictures (5 females and 5 males) of each kind of emotion. The deviant-standard-reverse oddball paradigm included 4 types of facial expression sequences: neutral standard stimuli/happy deviant stimuli, happy standard stimuli/neutral deviant stimuli; neutral standard stimuli/sad deviant stimuli, and sad standard stimuli/neutral deviant stimuli. The standard stimuli mean that this type of stimuli were appeared about 80% of the time in the sequence, and the deviant stimuli were about 20%. Participants were instructed to detect unpredictable changes in the size of fixation cross in the center of visual field and press a corresponding button as fast and as accurate as possible, and ignored facial expressions. The results revealed that, the amplitudes of N170 elicited by deviant faces were significantly larger than standard faces. Importantly, in the early EMMN, the mean amplitude elicited by sad facial expressions was significantly larger than happy facial expressions in low trait anxiety group, but there was no significant difference between happy and sad facial expressions in high trait anxiety group. Moreover, the early EMMN amplitude of happy faces was significantly larger in the high trait anxiety group than in the low trait anxiety group. These results suggest that the high trait anxiety group has similar amplification of EMMN amplitude for both happy and sad expressions. Our results show that there is a difference between high and low trait anxiety in the pre-attentive processing of facial expression. This suggests that personality traits are important factors influencing the pre-attentive processing of facial expressions, and high trait anxiety individuals may have difficulty in effectively distinguishing between happy and sad emotional faces during the pre-attentive processing stage and have similar processing patterns for them.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2021-07-27
Abstract： " "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology submitted time 2021-05-07
Abstract： One significant challenge that currently limits the development of educational neuroscience is the way to neurophysiologically characterize interpersonal interactions and dynamics of pedagogical activities. Our paper examined how “interpersonal neuroscience” (i.e., the measurement of two or more individuals’ brain activity and the analysis of their inter-dependency) might provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms of pedagogical interactions. To this end, we reviewed recent research focusing on the application of interpersonal neuroscientific approaches in the context of education. In particular, we discussed how the rapidly developing field of interpersonal neuroscience could contribute to the monitoring of pedagogical processes, prediction of pedagogical efficiency, and identification of influencing factors of teaching and learning. Finally, we discussed the methodological and translational challenges surrounding the application of interpersonal neuroscientific approaches in education, as well as prospects for future studies.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Physiological Psychology submitted time 2021-02-03
Abstract： Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage. Pain is of vital functional significance, as it signals threat and initiates behavioral adaptations to avoid harm so as to protect the body. Previous studies have shown abnormalities in pain sensitivity among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which have been associated with their clinical core symptoms, including restricted and repetitive behaviors as well as deficits in social behaviors. Evidence from case studies and surveys suggested the hyposensitivity to pain for individuals with ASD. Nevertheless, results from experimental studies that involve the application of noxious stimulations and psychophysical measurements were heterogeneous, e.g., some studies reported hypersensitivity to pain in ASD individuals, others reported their hyposensitivity or even normal sensitivity to pain. In this study, we utilized a meta-analysis approach to systematically review experimental studies that investigated pain sensitivity among individuals with ASD and published before August 10, 2020. The meta-analysis was performed according to the rigorous PRISMA Protocol. Studies were included in the analysis if they included both clearly diagnosed ASD individuals and healthy controls, reported data relevant to pain sensitivity, including pain threshold, pain tolerance, pain ratings, and pain-related physiological responses. Relevant studies were obtained from databases including China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Web of Science, PsycInfo, and PubMed by searching for keywords including pain, nociception, autis*, and Asperger. The meta-analysis was conducted in STATA12, and the effect size Hedge’s g with ±95% confidence intervals (CIs) was calculated using a random effect statistical model. Further, we assessed possible moderating effects from variables of pain modality, pain site, the age of involved participants, the sample size of the ASD group and sample locations. Sixteen experimental studies were included in the meta-analysis, with a total sample size N = 822. Pain threshold was not significantly different between ASD individuals and healthy controls (g = 0.34, 95%CI = [?0.14, 0.82]), and this estimate was moderated by variables of pain modality, the age of involved participants, and the sample size of the ASD group. Specifically, individuals with ASD exhibited lower pain thresholds than those of healthy controls selectively for pressure pain (g = 1.62, 95%CI = [0.46, 2.77]). For the outcome variable of pain evoked physiological response, individuals with ASD showed significantly greater physiological responses to medical procedures than those of healthy controls (g = 2.87, 95%CI = [1.07, 4.67]). Nevertheless, ASD and control groups had comparable pain ratings (g = ?0.26, 95%CI = [?0.64, 0.11]). These results suggest that the abnormalities of pain sensitivity among individuals with ASD were modality-dependent, with the abnormality selectively applicable to pressure pain or medical pain. Future studies should combine behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging measures to comprehensively investigate the pain sensitivity profiles of individuals with ASD. The potential link between pain sensitivity and clinical core symptoms among individuals with ASD should be characterized. Relevant results would potentially expand our understanding of ASD neurobiological mechanisms and provide the theoretical basis for pain assessment among individuals with ASD. " " "
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2021-01-12
Abstract： Increasing evidence shows that the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) plays an important role in emotion regulation, especially for social-relevant negative emotions. Negative interpersonal experiences and social events contribute largely to the occurrence of depression. Meanwhile, patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder are characterized by impaired social functions. Previous studies have revealed that depressed patients frequently show impaired emotional regulation for social pain. Recently, the work of our lab found that using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to activate the rVLPFC significantly reduced the subjects’ negative emotional feelings and improved their emotional regulation ability for down-regulating social pain. In order to improve the emotional regulation ability in depressed patients when they are in front of negative social events, this study examined the changed emotional regulation ability in depression following the activation of the rVLPFC using the TMS. A total of 127 patients who were diagnosed with major depressive disorder were recruited in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to experimental (n = 64) or control group (n = 63) while their age, gender, depressive level, social anxious level, rejection sensitivity and empathy ability were counterbalanced between the two groups. During the experiment, the participants were required to view pictures containing social exclusion events or reinterpret the situation using reappraisal strategy, followed by rating their negative emotional feeling on a 9-point scale. The experiment had two conditions, i.e., a passive viewing block and a cognitive reappraisal block. The results showed that the main effect of the task was significant: the negative emotional intensity reported by participants was lower during cognitive reappraisal when compared to that during passive viewing, indicating a successful manipulation of explicit emotional regulation. Meanwhile, the main effect of the group was significant: the negative emotional intensity reported by the experimental group was significantly reduced compared to that reported by the control group, suggesting the critical role of rVLPFC in emotional regulation. More importantly, the interaction between task and group was significant: while the two groups reported comparable distressful feelings during the passive view block, the experimental group reported decreased negative feelings compared to the control group during the cognitive reappraisal block. This result indicated that enhanced activation of the rVLPFC could effectively improve the ability of explicit down-regulating social pain using the cognitive reappraisal strategy in depressed patients. The current findings provide strong evidence for the causal relationship between the VLPFC and explicit emotional regulation using the cognitive reappraisal strategy. Also this study provides a potential neural target for clinical treatments of emotional regulation impairment in patients with social dysfunctions including individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder, social anxiety disorder, and autism spectrum disorder. Future studies are suggested to use other paradigms (e.g., Cyberball, Chat Rooms, Online Ostracism, and Island Getaway) to induce a “first-hand” social pain and exclude the potential influence of empathy. Furthermore, optimized multi-session TMS protocols are required to enhance and prolong the TMS effects observed in this study. Also, the TMS-based treatment effects in depression should be compared between the left and the right part of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortices, and across different emotional regulation strategies including cognitive reappraisal, distraction, distancing, etc. "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-09-18
Abstract： "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Other Disciplines of Psychology submitted time 2019-08-26
Abstract： Depression, a complex and heterogeneous mental disorder, leads to great global burdens of disease. Although diagnosis based on nosology is broadly used in several domains, it is still unable to direct the exploration of pathological mechanism of depression. In addition, several treatments developed by this diagnosis have poor outcomes due to its low prediction validity. Computational approaches to psychiatry remedy those limitations and help to improve understanding, prediction and treatment for depression by two complementary approaches: data-driven and theory-driven. Theory-driven approaches apply models to multiple levels of analysis from the prior knowledge or hypothesis of depression. Data-driven approaches, however, adopt machine-learning methods to analyze high-dimensional data to improve the diagnostic and predictive accuracies of depression, and eventually, promote the treatment effects. With the development and combination of these two approaches as well as the integration of resources, it is promising to cure depression and prevent it from occurrence.
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