Social influence in adolescence: Behavioral and neural responses to peer and expert opinion.

Social influence plays a crucial role during the teen years, with adolescents supposedly exhibiting heightened sensitivity to their peers. In this study, we examine how social influence from different sources, particularly those with varying normative and informational significance, affect adolescents' opinion change. Furthermore, we investigated the underlying neural dynamics to determine whether these two behaviorally similar influences share their neural mechanisms. Twenty-three participants (14-17 years old) gave their opinions about facial stimuli and received feedback from either a peer group or an expert group, while brain responses were recorded using concurrent magnetoencephalography. In a second rating session, we found that participants' opinions changed in line with conflicting feedback, but only when the feedback was lower than their initial evaluation. On the neural level, conflict with peers evoked stronger neural responses than conflict with experts in the 230-400 ms time window and the right frontotemporal magnetometer channels. Nevertheless, there was no greater conformity toward peers. Moreover, conflict compared to no conflict decreased neural oscillations in the beta frequency range (20-26 Hz) at the right frontal and parietal channels. Taken together, our findings do not support the general assumption that adolescent behavior is excessively vulnerable to peer norms, although we found heightened neural sensitivity to peer feedback.

Cardiorespiratory rhythms, brain oscillatory activity and cognition: review of evidence and proposal for significance.

The body is, in essence, an ensemble of interacting systems with biorhythms nested at multiple timescales. Traditionally, the focus in the study of body-brain interaction has been on clarifying the ways by which our brain orchestrates the functions of the body. During recent decades theories building on the opposite causal direction, namely how the different body systems influence the brain and mind, have been dramatically increasing. Despite influential theories, direct research evidence about the link between bodily rhythms, brain and cognition are scattered. Here, we review existing evidence on how the electrophysiological activity of the brain on one hand, and perception or cognition on the other hand depend on the phase of the physiological cycles of the body, specifically those of the heartbeat and respiration. We summarize the accumulated evidence from human and animal studies and their implication for the theoretical reasoning. Last, besides elaborating how the cycles of bodily rhythms influence brain signaling and perceptual cognitive functions, we present potential explanations and answers to why this link might exist.

Intensified Job Demands and Cognitive Stress Symptoms: The Moderator Role of Individual Characteristics.

Intensified job demands (IJDs) originate in the general accelerated pace of society and ever-changing working conditions, which subject workers to increasing workloads and deadlines, constant planning and decision-making about one's job and career, and the continual learning of new professional knowledge and skills. This study investigated how individual characteristics, namely negative and positive affectivity related to competence demands, and multitasking preference moderate the association between IJDs and cognitive stress symptoms among media workers (n = 833; 69% female, mean age 48 years). The results show that although IJDs were associated with higher cognitive stress symptoms at work, that is, difficulties in concentration, thinking clearly, decision-making, and memory, competence demands-related negative affectivity explained the most variance in cognitive stress symptoms. In addition, IJDs were more strongly associated with cognitive stress symptoms at work in individuals with high competence demand-related negative affectivity, and low multitasking preference (moderation effects). Altogether, the present findings suggest that HR practices or workplace interventions to ease employees' negative affectivity from increasing competence demands at work could usefully support employees' effective cognitive functioning when confronted with IJDs.

I don't need your attention: ostracism can narrow the cone of gaze.

Previous research has shown that ostracized participants seek inclusive cues, such as gaze directed at them, when trying to reaffiliate. However, instead of seeking reinclusion, ostracized individuals may sometimes withdraw from interactions if not offered an opportunity for reaffiliation. In the current study, after an ostracism manipulation with no reaffiliation opportunity, participants judged whether faces portraying direct gaze or slightly averted gaze (2°-8° to the left and to the right) were looking at them or not. Compared to an inclusion group and a non-social control group, ostracized participants accepted a smaller range of gaze directions as being directed at them, i.e., they had a narrower "cone of gaze". The width of the gaze cone was equally wide in the inclusion and control groups. We propose that, without an opportunity for reaffiliation, ostracized participants may start to view other people as particularly unapproachable, possibly indicative of a motivational tendency to disengage from interactions.

Behavioral Inhibition Underlies the Link Between Interoceptive Sensitivity and Anxiety-Related Temperamental Traits.

Interoceptive sensitivity (IS) is a biologically determined, constitutional trait of an individual. High IS has been often associated with proneness to anxiety. This association has been explained by elevated autonomic responsiveness in anxious individuals. However, in a heartbeat discrimination task (discrimination of heartbeats' simultaneity to an external stimulus) low cardiac responsiveness has accompanied enhanced performance. The relation between these factors seems task dependent, and cannot comprehensively explain the link between IS and anxiety. We explored for additional explanatory factors for this link. More specifically, we studied which anxiety-related temperamental traits most strongly predict IS in the discrimination task. Compatibly with earlier findings, IS was positively associated with individual trait anxiety and also other related traits such as negative affect, emotional intensity, and introversion. Interestingly, behavioral inhibition was the temperamental trait that most strongly predicted high IS, and, in fact, accounted for its significant associations with the other anxiety-related temperamental traits. Good performance on heartbeat discrimination task may reflect adaptive attentional control abilities in behaviorally inhibited individuals. These results can improve our understanding of how IS and other traits together determine the personality and wellbeing of a human individual.

Mentalizing eye contact with a face on a video: Gaze direction does not influence autonomic arousal.

Recent research has revealed enhanced autonomic and subjective responses to eye contact only when perceiving another live person. However, these enhanced responses to eye contact are abolished if the viewer believes that the other person is not able to look back at the viewer. We purported to investigate whether this "genuine" eye contact effect can be reproduced with pre-recorded videos of stimulus persons. Autonomic responses, gaze behavior, and subjective self-assessments were measured while participants viewed pre-recorded video persons with direct or averted gaze, imagined that the video person was real, and mentalized that the person could see them or not. Pre-recorded videos did not evoke similar physiological or subjective eye contact effect as previously observed with live persons, not even when the participants were mentalizing being seen by the person. Gaze tracking results showed, however, increased attention allocation to faces with direct gaze compared to averted gaze directions. The results suggest that elicitation of the physiological arousal in response to genuine eye contact seems to require spontaneous experience of seeing and of being seen by another individual.

Are you looking my way? Ostracism widens the cone of gaze.

Ostracized individuals demonstrate an increased need for belonging. To satisfy this need, they search for signals of inclusion, one of which may be another person's gaze directed at oneself. We tested if ostracized, compared to included, individuals judge a greater degree of averted gaze as still being direct. This range of gaze angles still viewed as direct has been dubbed "the cone of (direct) gaze". In the current research, ostracized and included participants viewed friendly-looking face stimuli with direct or slightly averted gaze (0°, 2°, 4°, 6°, and 8° to the left and to the right) and judged whether stimulus persons were looking at them or not. Ostracized individuals demonstrated a wider gaze cone than included individuals.

The effects of genuine eye contact on visuospatial and selective attention.

We investigated performance in a visuospatial discrimination task and selective attention task (Stroop task) while a live person's direct or averted gaze was presented as a task-irrelevant contextual stimulus. Based on previous research, we expected that response times to peripherally presented targets (Experiment 1) and to the Stroop stimuli (Experiment 2) would be longer in the context of direct versus averted gaze. Contrary to our expectations, the direct gaze context resulted in faster discrimination of visual targets and faster performance in the Stroop task compared with the averted gaze context. We propose that the observed results are explained by enhanced arousal elicited by genuine eye contact. (PsycINFO Database Record

Anger superiority effect for change detection and change blindness.

In visual search, an angry face in a crowd "pops out" unlike a happy or a neutral face. This "anger superiority effect" conflicts with views of visual perception holding that complex stimulus contents cannot be detected without focused top-down attention. Implicit visual processing of threatening changes was studied by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) using facial stimuli using the change blindness paradigm, in which conscious change detection is eliminated by presenting a blank screen before the changes. Already before their conscious detection, angry faces modulated relatively early emotion sensitive ERPs when appearing among happy and neutral faces, but happy faces only among neutral, not angry faces. Conscious change detection was more efficient for angry than happy faces regardless of background. These findings indicate that the brain can implicitly extract complex emotional information from facial stimuli, and the biological relevance of threatening contents can speed up their break up into visual consciousness.

Implicit binding of facial features during change blindness.

Change blindness refers to the inability to detect visual changes if introduced together with an eye-movement, blink, flash of light, or with distracting stimuli. Evidence of implicit detection of changed visual features during change blindness has been reported in a number of studies using both behavioral and neurophysiological measurements. However, it is not known whether implicit detection occurs only at the level of single features or whether complex organizations of features can be implicitly detected as well. We tested this in adult humans using intact and scrambled versions of schematic faces as stimuli in a change blindness paradigm while recording event-related potentials (ERPs). An enlargement of the face-sensitive N170 ERP component was observed at the right temporal electrode site to changes from scrambled to intact faces, even if the participants were not consciously able to report such changes (change blindness). Similarly, the disintegration of an intact face to scrambled features resulted in attenuated N170 responses during change blindness. Other ERP deflections were modulated by changes, but unlike the N170 component, they were indifferent to the direction of the change. The bidirectional modulation of the N170 component during change blindness suggests that implicit change detection can also occur at the level of complex features in the case of facial stimuli.

Explicit behavioral detection of visual changes develops without their implicit neurophysiological detectability.

Change blindness is a failure of reporting major changes across consecutive images if separated, e.g., by a brief blank interval. Successful change detection across interrupts requires focal attention to the changes. However, findings of implicit detection of visual changes during change blindness have raised the question of whether the implicit mode is necessary for development of the explicit mode. To this end, we recorded the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) of the event-related potentials (ERPs) of the brain, an index of implicit pre-attentive visual change detection, in adult humans performing an oddball-variant of change blindness flicker task. Images of 500 ms in duration were presented repeatedly in continuous sequences, alternating with a blank interval (either 100 ms or 500 ms in duration throughout a stimulus sequence). Occasionally (P = 0.2), a change (referring to color changes, omissions, or additions of objects or their parts in the image) was present. The participants attempted to explicitly (via voluntary button press) detect the occasional change. With both interval durations, it took 10-15 change presentations in average for the participants to eventually detect the changes explicitly in a sequence, the 500 ms interval only requiring a slightly longer exposure to the series than the 100 ms one. Nevertheless, prior to this point of explicit detectability, the implicit detection of the changes vMMN could only be observed with the 100 ms intervals. These findings of explicit change detection developing with and without implicit change detection may suggest that the two modes of change detection recruit independent neural mechanisms.

Event-related potentials reveal rapid registration of features of infrequent changes during change blindness.

BACKGROUND: Change blindness refers to a failure to detect changes between consecutively presented images separated by, for example, a brief blank screen. As an explanation of change blindness, it has been suggested that our representations of the environment are sparse outside focal attention and even that changed features may not be represented at all. In order to find electrophysiological evidence of neural representations of changed features during change blindness, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in adults in an oddball variant of the change blindness flicker paradigm. METHODS: ERPs were recorded when subjects performed a change detection task in which the modified images were infrequently interspersed (p = .2) among the frequently (p = .8) presented unmodified images. Responses to modified and unmodified images were compared in the time window of 60-100 ms after stimulus onset. RESULTS: ERPs to infrequent modified images were found to differ in amplitude from those to frequent unmodified images at the midline electrodes (Fz, Pz, Cz and Oz) at the latency of 60-100 ms even when subjects were unaware of changes (change blindness). CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that the brain registers changes very rapidly, and that changed features in images are neurally represented even without participants' ability to report them.