The right face at the wrong place: How motor intentions can override outcome monitoring.

The concept of intentions is often taken for granted in the cognitive and neural sciences, and comparing outcomes with internal goals is seen as critical for our sense of agency. We created an experiment where participants decided which face they preferred, and we either created outcome errors by covertly switching the position of the chosen face or induced motor errors by deviating the mouse cursor, or we did both at the same time. In the final case, participants experienced a motor error, but the outcome ended up correct. The result showed that when they received the right face, but at the wrong place, participants rejected the outcome they actually wanted in a majority of the trials. Thus, contrary to common belief, higher-order outcomes do not always regulate our actions. Instead, motor "wrongness" might sometimes override goal "rightness" and lead us to reject the outcome we actually want.

Pupil dilation reflects the dynamic integration of audiovisual emotional speech.

Emotional speech perception is a multisensory process. When speaking with an individual we concurrently integrate the information from their voice and face to decode e.g., their feelings, moods, and emotions. However, the physiological reactions-such as the reflexive dilation of the pupil-associated to these processes remain mostly unknown. That is the aim of the current article, to investigate whether pupillary reactions can index the processes underlying the audiovisual integration of emotional signals. To investigate this question, we used an algorithm able to increase or decrease the smiles seen in a person's face or heard in their voice, while preserving the temporal synchrony between visual and auditory channels. Using this algorithm, we created congruent and incongruent audiovisual smiles, and investigated participants' gaze and pupillary reactions to manipulated stimuli. We found that pupil reactions can reflect emotional information mismatch in audiovisual speech. In our data, when participants were explicitly asked to extract emotional information from stimuli, the first fixation within emotionally mismatching areas (i.e., the mouth) triggered pupil dilation. These results reveal that pupil dilation can reflect the dynamic integration of audiovisual emotional speech and provide insights on how these reactions are triggered during stimulus perception.

Don't blame yourself: Conscious source monitoring modulates feedback control during speech production.

Sensory feedback plays an important role in speech motor control. One of the main sources of evidence for this is studies in which online auditory feedback is perturbed during ongoing speech. In motor control, it is therefore crucial to distinguish between sensory feedback and externally generated sensory events. This is called source monitoring. Previous altered feedback studies have taken non-conscious source monitoring for granted, as automatic responses to altered sensory feedback imply that the feedback changes are processed as self-caused. However, the role of conscious source monitoring is unclear. The current study investigated whether conscious source monitoring modulates responses to unexpected pitch changes in auditory feedback. During the first block, some participants spontaneously attributed the pitch shifts to themselves (self-blamers) while others attributed them to an external source (other-blamers). Before Block 2, all participants were informed that the pitch shifts were experimentally induced. The self-blamers then showed a reduction in response magnitude in Block 2 compared with Block 1, while the other-blamers did not. This suggests that conscious source monitoring modulates responses to altered auditory feedback, such that consciously ascribing feedback to oneself leads to larger compensation responses. These results can be accounted for within the dominant comparator framework, where conscious source monitoring could modulate the gain on sensory feedback. Alternatively, the results can be naturally explained from an inferential framework, where conscious knowledge may bias the priors in a Bayesian process to determine the most likely source of a sensory event.

Emulating future neurotechnology using magic.

Recent developments in neuroscience and artificial intelligence have allowed machines to decode mental processes with growing accuracy. Neuroethicists have speculated that perfecting these technologies may result in reactions ranging from an invasion of privacy to an increase in self-understanding. Yet, evaluating these predictions is difficult given that people are poor at forecasting their reactions. To address this, we developed a paradigm using elements of performance magic to emulate future neurotechnologies. We led 59 participants to believe that a (sham) neurotechnological machine could infer their preferences, detect their errors, and reveal their deep-seated attitudes. The machine gave participants randomly assigned positive or negative feedback about their brain's supposed attitudes towards charity. Around 80% of participants in both groups provided rationalisations for this feedback, which shifted their attitudes in the manipulated direction but did not influence donation behaviour. Our paradigm reveals how people may respond to prospective neurotechnologies, which may inform neuroethical frameworks.

Drifting pitch awareness after exposure to altered auditory feedback.

Various studies have claimed that the sense of agency is based on a comparison between an internal estimate of an action's outcome and sensory feedback. With respect to speech, this presumes that speakers have a stable prearticulatory representation of their own speech. However, recent research suggests that the sense of agency is flexible and thus in some contexts we may feel like we produced speech that was not actually produced by us. The current study tested whether the estimated pitch of one's articulation (termed pitch awareness) is affected by manipulated auditory feedback. In four experiments, 56 participants produced isolated vowels while being exposed to pitch-shifted auditory feedback. After every vocalization, participants indicated whether they thought the feedback was higher or lower than their actual production. After exposure to a block of high-pitched auditory feedback (+500 cents pitch shift), participants were more likely to label subsequent auditory feedback as "lower than my actual production," suggesting that prolonged exposure to high-pitched auditory feedback led to a drift in participants' pitch awareness. The opposite pattern was found after exposure to a constant -500 cents pitch shift. This suggests that pitch awareness is not solely based on a prearticulatory representation of intended speech or on a sensory prediction, but also on sensory feedback. We propose that this drift in pitch awareness could be indicative of a sense of agency over the pitch-shifted auditory feedback in the exposure block. If so, this suggests that the sense of agency over vocal output is flexible.

Vocal signals only impact speakers' own emotions when they are self-attributed.

Emotions are often accompanied by vocalizations whose acoustic features provide information about the physiological state of the speaker. Here, we ask if perceiving these affective signals in one's own voice has an impact on one's own emotional state, and if it is necessary to identify these signals as self-originated for the emotional effect to occur. Participants had to deliberate out loud about how they would feel in various familiar emotional scenarios, while we covertly manipulated their voices in order to make them sound happy or sad. Perceiving the artificial affective signals in their own voice altered participants' judgements about how they would feel in these situations. Crucially, this effect disappeared when participants detected the vocal manipulation, either explicitly or implicitly. The original valence of the scenarios also modulated the vocal feedback effect. These results highlight the role of the exteroception of self-attributed affective signals in the emergence of emotional feelings.

Speaking with an alien voice: Flexible sense of agency during vocal production.

Speakers monitor auditory feedback during speech production in order to correct for speech errors. The comparator model proposes that this process is supported by comparing sensory feedback to internal predictions of the sensory consequences of articulation. Additionally, this comparison process is proposed to support the sense of agency over vocal output. The current study tests this hypothesis by asking whether mismatching auditory feedback leads to a decrease in the sense of agency as measured by speakers' responses to pitch-shifted feedback. Participants vocalized while auditory feedback was unexpectedly and briefly pitch-shifted. In addition, in one block, the entire vocalization's pitch was baseline-shifted ("alien voice"), while it was not in the other block ("normal voice"). Participants compensated for the pitch shifts even in the alien voice condition, suggesting that agency was flexible. This is problematic for the classic comparator model, where a mismatching feedback would lead to a loss of agency. Alternative models are discussed in light of these findings, including an adapted comparator model and the inferential account, which suggests that agency is inferred from the joint contribution of several multisensory sources of evidence. Together, these findings suggest that internal representations of one's own voice are more flexible than often assumed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Impact of overweight and obesity on patient-reported health-related quality of life in systemic lupus erythematosus.

OBJECTIVES: Associations between BMI and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in SLE have been implied, but data are scarce. We determined the impact of overweight and obesity on HRQoL in a large SLE population. METHODS: We pooled cross-sectional baseline data from the BLISS-52 (NCT00424476) and BLISS-76 (NCT00410384) trials (N = 1684). HRQoL was evaluated using the 36-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy (FACIT)-Fatigue scale and the European Quality of Life 5-dimension questionnaire (EQ-5D). Comparisons between BMI groups were conducted using the Mann-Whitney U test and adjustments using linear regression. Clinical relevance was determined by minimal clinically important differences (MCIDs). RESULTS: In total, 43.2% of the patients had BMI above normal and 17.4% were obese. Overweight and obese patients reported worse SF-36 physical component summary (PCS), physical functioning, role physical, bodily pain and FACIT-Fatigue scores than normal weight patients. Divergences were greater than corresponding MCIDs and more prominent with increasing BMI. Despite no clinically important difference in SF-36 mental component summary scores across BMI categories, patients experienced progressively diminished vitality and social functioning with increasing BMI. In linear regression analysis, BMI above normal and obesity were associated with worse PCS (standardized coefficient ß = -0.10, P < 0.001 and ß = -0.17, P < 0.001, respectively), FACIT-Fatigue (ß = -0.11, P < 0.001 and ß = -0.16, P < 0.001) and EQ-5D (ß = -0.08, P = 0.001 and ß = -0.12, P < 0.001) scores, independently of demographic and disease-related factors. The impact of BMI on the PCS and FACIT-Fatigue was more pronounced than that of SLE activity. CONCLUSION: Patients with SLE and BMI above normal experienced clinically important HRQoL diminutions in physical aspects, fatigue and social functioning. A survey of potential causality underlying this association is warranted.

Ecological speciation in European whitefish is driven by a large-gaped predator.

Lake-dwelling fish that form species pairs/flocks characterized by body size divergence are important model systems for speciation research. Although several sources of divergent selection have been identified in these systems, their importance for driving the speciation process remains elusive. A major problem is that in retrospect, we cannot distinguish selection pressures that initiated divergence from those acting later in the process. To address this issue, we studied the initial stages of speciation in European whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus) using data from 358 populations of varying age (26-10,000 years). We find that whitefish speciation is driven by a large-growing predator, the northern pike (Esox lucius). Pike initiates divergence by causing a largely plastic differentiation into benthic giants and pelagic dwarfs: ecotypes that will subsequently develop partial reproductive isolation and heritable differences in gill raker number. Using an eco-evolutionary model, we demonstrate how pike's habitat specificity and large gape size are critical for imposing a between-habitat trade-off, causing prey to mature in a safer place or at a safer size. Thereby, we propose a novel mechanism for how predators may cause dwarf/giant speciation in lake-dwelling fish species.

Use of Antimalarial Agents is Associated with Favourable Physical Functioning in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

Impaired health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is a major problem in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Antimalarial agents (AMA) are the cornerstone of SLE therapy, but data on their impact on HRQoL are scarce. We investigated this impact using baseline data from the BLISS-52 (NCT00424476) and BLISS-76 (NCT00410384) trials (n = 1684). HRQoL was self-reported using the Medical Outcomes Study short-form 36 (SF-36), functional assessment of chronic illness therapy (FACIT)-Fatigue and 3-level EuroQoL 5-Dimension (EQ-5D) questionnaires. Patients on AMA (n = 1098/1684) performed better with regard to SF-36 physical component summary, physical functioning, role physical, bodily pain, FACIT-Fatigue, EQ-5D utility index and EQ-5D visual analogue scale scores. The difference in SF-36 physical functioning (mean ± standard deviation (SD): 61.1 ± 24.9 versus 55.0 ± 26.5; p < 0.001) exceeded the minimal clinically important difference (≥5.0). This association remained significant after adjustment for potential confounding factors in linear regression models (standardised coefficient, ß = 0.07; p = 0.002). Greater proportions of AMA users than non-users reported no problems in the mobility, self-care, usual activities and anxiety/depression EQ-5D dimensions. AMA use was particularly associated with favourable HRQoL in physical aspects among patients with active mucocutaneous and musculoskeletal disease, and mental aspects among patients with active renal SLE. These results provide support in motivating adherence to AMA therapy. Exploration of causality in the relationship between AMA use and favourable HRQoL in SLE has merit.

Letting rationalizations out of the box.

We are very happy that someone has finally tried to make sense of rationalization. But we are worried about the representational structure assumed by Cushman, particularly the "boxology" belief-desire model depicting the rational planner, and it seems to us he fails to accommodate many of the interpersonal aspects of representational exchange.

Depolarizing American voters: Democrats and Republicans are equally susceptible to false attitude feedback.

American politics is becoming increasingly polarized, which biases decision-making and reduces open-minded debate. In two experiments, we demonstrate that despite this polarization, a simple manipulation can make people express and endorse less polarized views about competing political candidates. In Study 1, we approached 136 participants at the first 2016 presidential debate and on the streets of New York City. Participants completed a survey evaluating Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on various personality traits; 72% gave responses favoring a single candidate. We then covertly manipulated their surveys so that the majority of their responses became moderate instead. Participants only noticed and corrected a few of these manipulations. When asked to explain their responses, 94% accepted the manipulated responses as their own and rationalized this neutral position accordingly, even though they reported more polarized views moments earlier. In Study 2, we replicated the experiment online with a more politically diverse sample of 498 participants. Both Clinton and Trump supporters showed nearly identical rates of acceptance and rationalization of their manipulated-to-neutral positions. These studies demonstrate how false feedback can powerfully shape the expression of political views. More generally, our findings reveal the potential for open-minded discussion even in a fundamentally divided political climate.

Preference reversals during risk elicitation.

Understanding human behavior from the perspective of normative and descriptive theories depends on human agents having stable and coherent decision-making preferences. Both utility theory (expected rational behavior; von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1947) and prospect theory, with its certainty equivalent (CE) method (expected irrational behavior; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992), assume stable behavioral patterns of risk preferences. In contrast, our research pursues the opposite proposal: Human preferences (rational or irrational) are not stable; variations in the decision context during risk elicitation determine people's preferences even when the utilities of choice options are available. Accordingly, we found evidence that decision makers reverse their risk preferences between CE tasks with logarithmically spaced certainty (unequal number of risk-averse and risk-seeking sure options) and linearly spaced certainty (equal number of risk-averse and risk-seeking sure options). The results revealed that the effect of probability range (low and high) on preferences, predicted by prospect theory, is an artifact of the logarithmically spaced sure options. When the sure options were linearly spaced, the probability range no longer influenced risk preferences, indicating a preference reversal between decision tasks. Our findings highlight a need to investigate how the predictions of descriptive decision-making theories are shaped by their risk elicitation methods. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Predictors of low disease activity and clinical remission following belimumab treatment in systemic lupus erythematosus.

OBJECTIVES: To identify predictors of low disease activity and clinical remission following belimumab treatment in SLE. METHODS: SLE patients who received belimumab 10 mg/kg (N = 563) in the BLISS-52 and BLISS-76 clinical trials were surveyed. The performance of baseline factors in predicting attainment of low disease activity (defined as Lupus Low Disease Activity State) or clinical remission [defined as clinical (c)SLEDAI-2K = 0] at week 52 from treatment initiation was evaluated using logistic regression. Organ damage was assessed using the SLICC/ACR Damage Index (SDI). RESULTS: We demonstrated a negative impact of established organ damage on attainment of Lupus Low Disease Activity State [SDI > 0; odds ratio (OR): 0.44; 95% CI 0.22, 0.90; P = 0.024] and the primary Lupus Low Disease Activity State condition, i.e. SLEDAI-2K ⩽ 4 with no renal activity, pleurisy, pericarditis or fever (SDI > 1; OR: 0.46; 95% CI 0.27, 0.77; P = 0.004); cognitive impairment/psychosis was found to mainly account for the latter association. Baseline SDI scores > 1 predicted failure to attain cSLEDAI-2K = 0 (OR: 0.53; 95% CI 0.30, 0.94; P = 0.030), with cutaneous damage mainly driving this association. Anti-dsDNA positivity increased (OR: 1.82; 95% CI 1.08, 3.06; P = 0.025) and cardiovascular damage reduced (OR: 0.13; 95% CI 0.02, 0.97; P = 0.047) the probability of attaining cSLEDAI-2K = 0 along with a daily prednisone equivalent intake restricted to ⩽7.5 mg. CONCLUSION: Belimumab might be expected to be more efficacious in inducing low disease activity and clinical remission in SLE patients with limited or no organ damage accrued prior to treatment initiation. Patients with positive anti-dsDNA titres might be more likely to achieve clinical remission along with limited or no CS use.

Does passive sound attenuation affect responses to pitch-shifted auditory feedback?

The role of auditory feedback in vocal production has mainly been investigated by altered auditory feedback (AAF) in real time. In response, speakers compensate by shifting their speech output in the opposite direction. Current theory suggests this is caused by a mismatch between expected and observed feedback. A methodological issue is the difficulty to fully isolate the speaker's hearing so that only AAF is presented to their ears. As a result, participants may be presented with two simultaneous signals. If this is true, an alternative explanation is that responses to AAF depend on the contrast between the manipulated and the non-manipulated feedback. This hypothesis was tested by varying the passive sound attenuation (PSA). Participants vocalized while auditory feedback was unexpectedly pitch shifted. The feedback was played through three pairs of headphones with varying amounts of PSA. The participants' responses were not affected by the different levels of PSA. This suggests that across all three headphones, PSA is either good enough to make the manipulated feedback dominant, or differences in PSA are too small to affect the contribution of non-manipulated feedback. Overall, the results suggest that it is important to realize that non-manipulated auditory feedback could affect responses to AAF.

False beliefs and confabulation can lead to lasting changes in political attitudes.

In times of increasing polarization and political acrimony, fueled by distrust of government and media disinformation, it is ever more important to understand the cognitive mechanisms behind political attitude change. In two experiments, we present evidence that false beliefs about one's own prior attitudes and confabulatory reasoning can lead to lasting changes in political attitudes. In Experiment 1 (N = 140), participants stated their opinions about salient political issues, and using the Choice Blindness Paradigm we covertly altered some of their responses to indicate an opposite position. In the first condition, we asked the participants to immediately verify the manipulated responses, and in the second, we also asked them to provide underlying arguments behind their attitudes. Only half of the manipulations were corrected by the participants. To measure lasting attitude change, we asked the participants to rate the same issues again later in the experiment, as well as one week after the first session. Participants in both conditions exhibited lasting shifts in attitudes, but the effect was considerably larger in the group that confabulated supporting arguments. We fully replicated these findings in Experiment 2 (N = 232). In addition, we found that participants' analytical skill correlated with their correction of the manipulation, whereas political involvement did not. This study contributes to the understanding of how confabulatory reasoning and self-perceptive processes can interact in lasting attitude change. It also highlights how political expressions can be both stable in the context of everyday life, yet flexible when argumentative processes are engaged. (PsycINFO Database Record

Vigilant conservatism in evaluating communicated information.

In the absence of other information, people put more weight on their own opinion than on the opinion of others: they are conservative. Several proximal mechanisms have been suggested to account for this finding. One of these mechanisms is that people cannot access reasons for other people's opinions, but they can access the reasons for their own opinions-whether they are the actual reasons that led them to hold the opinions (rational access to reasons), or post-hoc constructions (biased access to reasons). In four experiments, participants were asked to provide an opinion, and then faced with another participant's opinion and asked if they wanted to revise their initial opinion. Some questions were manipulated so that the advice participants were receiving was in fact their own opinion, while what they thought was their own opinion was in fact not. In all experiments, the participants were consistently biased towards what they thought was their own opinion, showing that conservativeness cannot be explained by rational access to reasons, which should have favored the advice. One experiment revealed that conservativeness was not decreased under time pressure, suggesting that biased access to reasons is an unlikely explanation for conservativeness. The experiments also suggest that repetition plays a role in advice taking, with repeated opinions being granted more weight than non-fluent opinions. Our results are not consistent with any of the established proximal explanations for conservatism. Instead, we suggest an ultimate explanation-vigilant conservatism-that sees conservatism as adaptive since receivers should be wary of senders' interests, as they rarely perfectly converge with theirs.

DAVID: An open-source platform for real-time transformation of infra-segmental emotional cues in running speech.

We present an open-source software platform that transforms emotional cues expressed by speech signals using audio effects like pitch shifting, inflection, vibrato, and filtering. The emotional transformations can be applied to any audio file, but can also run in real time, using live input from a microphone, with less than 20-ms latency. We anticipate that this tool will be useful for the study of emotions in psychology and neuroscience, because it enables a high level of control over the acoustical and emotional content of experimental stimuli in a variety of laboratory situations, including real-time social situations. We present here results of a series of validation experiments aiming to position the tool against several methodological requirements: that transformed emotions be recognized at above-chance levels, valid in several languages (French, English, Swedish, and Japanese) and with a naturalness comparable to natural speech.