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A cross-cultural examination of bi-directional mentalising in autistic and non-autistic adults.
BACKGROUND: So-called 'mismatch accounts' propose that, rather than arising from a socio-cognitive deficit present in autistic people, mentalising difficulties are the product of a mismatch in neurotype between interaction partners. Although this idea has grown in popularity over recent years, there is currently only limited empirical evidence to support mismatch theories. Moreover, the social model of disability such theories are grounded in demands a culturally situated view of social interaction, yet research on mentalising and/or autism is largely biased towards Western countries, with little knowledge on how successful mentalising is defined differently, and how tools to assess socio-cognitive ability compare, across cultures. METHODS: Using a widely employed mentalising task-the animations task-, the current study investigated and compared the bi-directional mentalising performance of British and Japanese autistic and non-autistic adults and assessed observer-agent kinematic similarity as a potential dimension along which mismatches may occur between neurotypes. Participants were asked to depict various mental state- and action-based interactions by moving two triangles across a touch-screen device before viewing and interpreting stimuli generated by other participants. RESULTS: In the UK sample, our results replicate a seminal prior study in showing poorer mentalising abilities in non-autistic adults for animations generated by the autistic group. Crucially, the same pattern did not emerge in the Japanese sample, where there were no mentalising differences between the two groups. LIMITATIONS: Limitations of the current study include that efforts to match all samples within and across cultures in terms of IQ, gender, and age were not successful in all comparisons, but control analyses suggest this did not affect our results. Furthermore, any performance differences were found for both the mental state- and action-based conditions, mirroring prior work and raising questions about the domain-specificity of the employed task. CONCLUSIONS: Our results add support for a paradigm shift in the autism literature, moving beyond deficit-based models and towards acknowledging the inherently relational nature of social interaction. We further discuss how our findings suggest limited cultural transferability of common socio-cognitive measures rather than superior mentalising abilities in Japanese autistic adults, underscoring the need for more cross-cultural research and the development of culturally sensitive scientific and diagnostic tools.
Cognitive Therapy for PTSD in Children and Adolescents
Children and adolescents exposed to traumatic events are at high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With the rare exception of young children, their PTSD presentations at the symptom level are similar to those of trauma-exposed adults, as are their patterns of psychiatric comorbidity, particularly for adolescents. Untreated, at least a significant proportion will carry on with symptoms at or above the diagnostic threshold or at sub-threshold levels that are still clinically impairing. The presence of untreated or poorly treated PTSD symptoms leaves the young person at significantly increased risk of developing other psychiatric disorders, a worsening of any pre-existing conditions, and with greater long-term impairments in education, family, and peer functioning. Fortunately, evidence-based treatments exist with the first-line recommendation being trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapies, with a growing body of evidence for the efficacy of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR). This chapter provides an update on the state of the literature with respect to the evidence base for trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and in particular, for an explicitly cognitive approach, originally developed for use with adults and successfully adapted for use with children and adolescents across the age range. The chapter describes the theoretical underpinning for this approach, guidance on reliving (a form of exposure to update the trauma memory) and the modification of trauma-related beliefs (two primary targets in treatment), parental involvement in treatment, dealing with comorbidity, and a case example.
What role does touch play in active entertainment? A narrative review of tactile feedback in gaming
This narrative literature review explores the role of tactile stimulation within interactive gaming and storytelling. Focusing on active entertainment experiences—where the audience/player has some control over what happens, unlike passive media such as film. The review traces tactile/haptic feedback from the 18th century electric-shock amusements to contemporary vibrotactile controllers and interactive cinema. The review also highlights touch's potential to enhance interactivity across active entertainments. Key themes include the role of touch in active versus passive forms of entertainment. In the context of active entertainment, audience participation influences the gameplay/plot, while in passive entertainment, the audience simply observes without being able to alter the outcome. The review also contrasts first- and third-person viewer perspectives and the viewpoint specificity of much tactile/haptic stimulation, particularly concerning these perspectives. Additionally, the review discusses the technical challenges associated with much of the wearable haptic technology that has been introduced to date, and consumer preferences and willingness to pay for haptic devices and enhanced haptic (broadly referring to any kind of tactile) experiences. The review concludes by emphasizing the multifaceted roles of haptic feedback in gameplay, narrative enhancement, and emotional engagement. It also suggests directions for future research to expand the potential of touch within multisensory entertainment.
Dissociating Frontal Lobe Lesion Induced Deficits in Rule Value Learning Using Reinforcement Learning Models and a WCST Analog
Distinct frontal regions make dissociable contributions to rule-guided decision-making, including the ability to learn and exploit associations between abstract rules and reward value, maintain those rules in memory, and evaluate choice outcomes. Value-based learning can be quantified using reinforcement learning (RL) models predicting optimal trial-wise choices and estimating learning rates, which can then be related to the intact functioning of specific brain areas by combining a modeling approach with lesion-behavioral data. We applied a three-parameter feedback-dependent RL model to behavioral data obtained from macaques with circumscribed lesions to the principal sulcus (PS), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), superior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (sdlPFC), and frontopolar cortex (FPC) performing a Wisconsin card sorting task (WCST) analog. Our modeling-based approach identified distinct lesion effects on component cognitive mechanisms contributing to WCST performance. OFC lesions decreased the rate of rule value updating following both positive and negative feedback. In contrast, we found no deficit in rule value updating following PS lesions, which instead made monkeys less likely to repeat correct choices when rule values were well established, suggesting a crucial role of the PS in the working memory maintenance of rule representations. Finally, ACC lesions produced a specific deficit in learning from negative feedback, as well as impaired the ability to repeat choices following highly surprising reward, supporting a proposed role for ACC in flexibly switching between a trial-and-error mode and a working memory mode in response to increased error likelihood.
Human decisions about when to act originate within a basal forebrain-nigral circuit.
Decisions about when to act are critical for survival in humans as in animals, but how a desire is translated into the decision that an action is worth taking at any particular point in time is incompletely understood. Here we show that a simple model developed to explain when animals decide it is worth taking an action also explains a significant portion of the variance in timing observed when humans take voluntary actions. The model focuses on the current environment's potential for reward, the timing of the individual's own recent actions, and the outcomes of those actions. We show, by using ultrahigh-field MRI scanning, that in addition to anterior cingulate cortex within medial frontal cortex, a group of subcortical structures including striatum, substantia nigra, basal forebrain (BF), pedunculopontine nucleus (PPN), and habenula (HB) encode trial-by-trial variation in action time. Further analysis of the activity patterns found in each area together with psychophysiological interaction analysis and structural equation modeling suggested a model in which BF integrates contextual information that will influence the decision about when to act and communicates this information, in parallel with PPN and HB influences, to nigrostriatal circuits. It is then in the nigrostriatal circuit that action initiation per se begins.
Mapping of validated apathy scales onto the apathy diagnostic criteria for neurocognitive disorders.
BACKGROUND: Diagnostic criteria for apathy in neurocognitive disorders (DCA-NCD) have recently been updated. OBJECTIVES: We investigated whether validated scales measuring apathy severity capture the three dimensions of the DCA-NCD (diminished initiative, diminished interest, diminished emotional expression). MEASUREMENTS: Degree of mapping ("not at all", "weakly", or "strongly") between items on two commonly used apathy scales, the Neuropsychiatric Inventory-Clinician (NPI-C) apathy and Apathy Evaluation Scale (AES), with the DCA-NCD overall and its 3 dimensions was evaluated by survey. DESIGN: Survey participants, either experts (n = 12, DCA-NCD authors) or scientific community members (n = 19), rated mapping for each item and mean scores were calculated. Interrater reliability between expert and scientific community members was assessed using Cohen's kappa. RESULTS: According to experts, 9 of 11 (81.8%) NPI-C apathy items and 6 of 18 (33.3%) AES items mapped strongly onto the DCA-NCD overall. For the scientific community group, 10 of 11 (90.9%) NPI-C apathy items and 7 of 18 (38.8%) AES items mapped strongly onto the DCA-NCD overall. The overall mean mapping scores were higher for the NPI-C apathy compared to the AES for both expert (t (11) = 3.13, p = .01) and scientific community (t (17) = 3.77, p = .002) groups. There was moderate agreement between the two groups on overall mapping for the NPI-C apathy (kappa= 0.74 (0.57, 1.00)) and AES (kappa= 0.63 (0.35, 1.00)). CONCLUSIONS: More NPI-C apathy than AES items mapped strongly and uniquely onto the DCA-NCD and its dimensions. The NPI-C apathy may better capture the DCA-NCD and its dimensions compared with the AES.
Social processing of naturalistic social interactions
Research suggests that static depictions of social interactions preferentially capture our attention compared to non-interactions. Research also suggests that motion captures attention. To date, therefore, it is unknown whether dynamic social interactions preferentially capture attention relative to non-interactions, over and above motion cues. The present study captured 81 participants’ eye-gaze when viewing 4-second video clips of social-interactions compared to motion-matched non-interactions. We hypothesised that participants would spend more time looking at the two agents in the videos relative to the background when viewing social interactions compared to non-interactions. Results confirmed our hypothesis and demonstrated that this effect was stronger for individuals with greater empathy and lower autistic traits. These results add to the growing body of research investigating the processing of social interactions in complex, naturalistic stimuli and demonstrate that social interactions do preferentially capture attention, even when motion cues are present.
RELIGION AND THE SUSCEPTIBILITY TO FALSE BELIEFS
Religion has played a particularly important role in human evolution. It is the one trait that categorically distinguishes us from other animals. Yet it is about belief in a world that does not exist - the spirit world. I shall argue that it arises through two very ancient psychological predispositions. A tendency for the magical to have priority when we cannot see an obvious explanation and a strong tendency to be attracted to charismatic leaders. The first is a derivative of our advanced mentalising capacities, which allow us to imagine worlds that do not exist. The second is seems to be associated with the fact that networks that evolve leaders work more efficiently. Both of these played a central role in our evolution as a species.
Target selection signals causally influence human perceptual decision making.
The ability to form decisions is a foundational cognitive function which is impaired across many psychiatric and neurological conditions. Understanding the neural processes underpinning clinical deficits may provide insights into the fundamental mechanisms of decision making. The N2c has been identified as an EEG signal indexing the efficiency of early target selection, which subsequently influences the timing of perceptual reports through modulating neural evidence accumulation rates. Evidence for the contribution of the N2c to human decision making however has thus far come from correlational research in neurologically healthy individuals. Here, we capitalised on the superior temporal resolution of EEG to show that unilateral brain lesions in male and female humans were associated with specific deficits in both the timing and strength of the N2c in the damaged hemisphere, with corresponding deficits in the timing of perceptual reports contralaterally. The extent to which the N2c influenced clinical deficits in perceptual reporting speed depended on neural rates of evidence accumulation. This work provides causal evidence that the N2c indexes an early, hemisphere-specific process supporting human decision making. This non-invasive EEG marker could be used to monitor novel approaches for remediating clinical deficits in perceptual decision making across a range of brain disorders.Significance Statement Understanding how particular brain processes contribute to decision-making is crucial for our treatment of psychiatric and neurological disorders. This study provides causal evidence linking deficits in speed of visual processing to specific well-delineated EEG signals representing early target selection and evidence accumulation, in individuals with brain lesions. By showing how these lesions disrupt perceptual decisions, this work identifies a potential biomarker for decision-making deficits. This EEG measure offers a promising, non-invasive tool to track and refine treatments aimed at restoring decision-making abilities in affected patients.
Contributed Talks I: The role of fixational drift in the Vernier task.
We develop a simple one-dimensional continuum model of the Vernier discrimination task to study the impact of Gaussian blur, fixational drift, receptor noise, and retinal adaptation on an ideal observer's Vernier performance. Two rectangular stimuli with a prescribed width and relative offset are subjected to a Gaussian blur. Fixational drift shifts the resulting signal with time. The perceived signal is the weighted average over the history of local stimulation encoded by an adaptation kernel. We model this kernel as a difference of two exponentials, introducing two timescales describing initial integration and eventual recovery of a receptor. Ultimately, Gaussian white noise is added to capture random receptor fluctuations. Based on the Bayesian estimation of location and relative offset of both stimuli, we can study Vernier performance through numerical simulation as well as through analytical approximation for different eye movements. Analyzing diffusive motion in particular, we extract the diffusion constant that optimizes stimulus localization for long observation times. This optimal diffusion constant is inversely proportional to an average of the two timescales describing adaptation and proportional to the square of the larger of stimulus size or blurring width, giving rise to two separate regimes. We generalize our analysis to optimize discrimination and extend the class of eye motions considered beyond purely diffusive drift, e.g. with the inclusion of persistence.
Age-invariant benefits of spatiotemporal predictions amidst distraction during dynamic visual search.
Visual search tasks are widely used to study attention amidst distraction, often revealing age-related differences. Research shows older adults typically exhibit poorer performance and greater sensitivity to distraction, reflecting declines in goal-driven attention. However, traditional search tasks are static and fail to capture the challenges and opportunities in natural environments, which include predictive structures within extended contexts. We designed a search variation where targets and distractors compete over time and embedded spatiotemporal regularities afford prediction-led guidance of attention. Critically, we manipulated the number of distractors to chart how benefits of expectations and deficits from distraction varied with age. Younger and older adults searched for multiple targets as they faded in and out of the display while varying the number of distracting elements between trials. Half the targets appeared at the same time and approximate locations and could be predicted. While we found evidence for decrement and elevated sensitivity to distraction with increasing age, benefits from predictions occurred in all groups. Interestingly, regardless of age, effects of predictions were only significant during periods of high distraction. This work extends our understanding of attention control through ageing to dynamic settings and indicates a dissociation between goal-directed and learning-driven attentional guidance.