Planning-to-binge: Time allocation for future media consumption.

The prevalence of streaming media has led firms to embrace the phenomenon of "binge-watching" by offering entire multipart series simultaneously. Such "on-demand" availability allows consumers to choose how to allocate future viewing time, but such decisions have received little attention in the literature. Across several studies, we show that individuals can plan binging in advance by allocating time in ways that aggregate episode consumption. Thus, we expand our understanding of media consumption to a new timepoint, distinct from "in-the-moment" viewing. We demonstrate that planning-to-binge preferences are flexible and shaped by perceptions of the media of interest. In particular, they are greater for content whose episodes are perceived as more sequential and connected, as opposed to independent. Since our framework focuses on the media's structural continuity, it applies across hedonic and utilitarian time use, motivations, and content, including "binge-learning" plans for online education. Furthermore, increased plans-to-binge can be triggered by merely framing content as more sequential versus independent. Finally, consumers are willing to spend both money and time for the future opportunity to binge, and more so for sequential content. These findings suggest ways media companies may strategically emphasize content structure to influence consumer decisions and media viewing styles. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Face masks influence emotion judgments of facial expressions: a drift-diffusion model.

Face masks slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but it has been unknown how masks might reshape social interaction. One important possibility is that masks may influence how individuals communicate emotion through facial expressions. Here, we clarify to what extent-and how-masks influence facial emotion communication, through drift-diffusion modeling (DDM). Over two independent pre-registered studies, conducted three and 6 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, online participants judged expressions of 6 emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) with the lower or upper face "masked" or unmasked. Participants in Study 1 (N = 228) correctly identified expressions above chance with lower face masks. However, they were less likely-and slower-to correctly identify these expressions relative to without masks, and they accumulated evidence for emotion more slowly-via decreased drift rate in DDM. This pattern replicated and intensified 3 months later in Study 2 (N = 264). These findings highlight how effectively individuals still communicate with masks, but also explain why they can experience difficulties communicating when masked. By revealing evidence accumulation as the underlying mechanism, this work suggests that time-sensitive situations may risk miscommunication with masks. This research could inform critical interventions to promote continued mask wearing as needed.

Do adolescents always take more risks than adults? A within-subjects developmental study of context effects on decision making and processing.

Adolescents take more risks than adults in the real world, but laboratory experiments do not consistently demonstrate this pattern. In the current study, we examine the possibility that age differences in decision making vary as a function of the nature of the task (e.g., how information about risk is learned) and contextual features of choices (e.g., the relative favorability of choice outcomes), due to age differences in psychological constructs and physiological processes related to choice (e.g., weighting of rare probabilities, sensitivity to expected value, sampling, pupil dilation). Adolescents and adults made the same 24 choices between risky and safe options twice: once based on descriptions of each option, and once based on experience gained from sampling the options repeatedly. We systematically varied contextual features of options, facilitating a fine-grained analysis of age differences in response to these features. Eye-tracking and experience-sampling measures allowed tests of age differences in predecisional processes. Results in adolescent and adult participants were similar in several respects, including mean risk-taking rates and eye-gaze patterns. However, adolescents' and adults' choice behavior and process measures varied as a function of decision context. Surprisingly, age differences were most pronounced in description, with only marginal differences in experience. Results suggest that probability weighting, expected-value sensitivity, experience sampling and pupil dilation patterns may change with age. Overall, results are consistent with the notion that adolescents are more prone than adults to take risks when faced with unlikely but costly negative outcomes, and broadly point to complex interactions between multiple psychological constructs that develop across adolescence.

The Influences of Described and Experienced Information on Adolescent Risky Decision Making.

Adolescents are known to take more risks than adults, which can be harmful to their health and well-being. However, despite age differences in real-world risk taking, laboratory risk-taking paradigms often do not evince these developmental patterns. Recent findings in the literature suggest that this inconsistency may be due in part to differences between how adolescents process information about risk when it is described (e.g., in a description-based classroom intervention) versus when it is experienced (e.g., when a teenager experiences the outcome of a risky choice). The present review considers areas of research that can inform approaches to intervention by deepening our understanding of risk taking in described or experienced contexts. We examine the literature on the description-experience gap, which has generally been limited to studies of adult samples, but which highlights differential decision making when risk information is described versus experienced. Informed by this work, we then explore the developmental literature comparing adolescent to adult decision making, and consider whether inconsistencies in age-related findings might be explained by distinguishing between studies in which participants learn about decision outcomes through experience versus description. In light of evidence that studies using experience-based tasks more often show age differences in risk taking, we consider the implications of this pattern, and argue that experience-based tasks may be more ecologically valid measures of adolescent risky decision making, in part due to the heightened affective nature of these tasks. Finally, we propose a model to integrate our findings with theories of adolescent risk-taking, and discuss implications for risk-reduction messaging.

Reason's Enemy Is Not Emotion: Engagement of Cognitive Control Networks Explains Biases in Gain/Loss Framing.

In the classic gain/loss framing effect, describing a gamble as a potential gain or loss biases people to make risk-averse or risk-seeking decisions, respectively. The canonical explanation for this effect is that frames differentially modulate emotional processes, which in turn leads to irrational choice behavior. Here, we evaluate the source of framing biases by integrating functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 143 human participants performing a gain/loss framing task with meta-analytic data from >8000 neuroimaging studies. We found that activation during choices consistent with the framing effect were most correlated with activation associated with the resting or default brain, while activation during choices inconsistent with the framing effect was most correlated with the task-engaged brain. Our findings argue against the common interpretation of gain/loss framing as a competition between emotion and control. Instead, our study indicates that this effect results from differential cognitive engagement across decision frames.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The biases frequently exhibited by human decision makers have often been attributed to the presence of emotion. Using a large fMRI sample and analysis of whole-brain networks defined with the meta-analytic tool Neurosynth, we find that neural activity during frame-biased decisions was more significantly associated with default behaviors (and the absence of executive control) than with emotion. These findings point to a role for neuroscience in shaping long-standing psychological theories in decision science.

Dissociable frontostriatal white matter connectivity underlies reward and motor impulsivity.

Dysfunction of cognitive control often leads to impulsive decision-making in clinical and healthy populations. Some research suggests that a generalized cognitive control mechanism underlies the ability to modulate various types of impulsive behavior, while other evidence suggests different forms of impulsivity are dissociable, and rely on distinct neural circuitry. Past research consistently implicates several brain regions, such as the striatum and portions of the prefrontal cortex, in impulsive behavior. However the ventral and dorsal striatum are distinct in regards to function and connectivity. Nascent evidence points to the importance of frontostriatal white matter connectivity in impulsivity, yet it remains unclear whether particular tracts relate to different control behaviors. Here we used probabilistic tractography of diffusion imaging data to relate ventral and dorsal frontostriatal connectivity to reward and motor impulsivity measures. We found a double dissociation such that individual differences in white matter connectivity between the ventral striatum and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was associated with reward impulsivity, as measured by delay discounting, whereas connectivity between dorsal striatum and supplementary motor area was associated with motor impulsivity, but not vice versa. Our findings suggest that (a) structural connectivity can is associated with a large amount of behavioral variation; (b) different types of impulsivity are driven by dissociable frontostriatal neural circuitry.

Why bother with the brain? A role for decision neuroscience in understanding strategic variability.

Neuroscience, by its nature, seems to hold considerable promise for understanding the fundamental mechanisms of decision making. In recent years, several studies in the domain of "neuroeconomics" or "decision neuroscience" have provided important insights into brain function. Yet, the apparent success and value of each of these domains are frequently called into question by researchers in economics and behavioral decision making. Critics often charge that knowledge about the brain is unnecessary for understanding decision preferences. In this chapter, I contend that knowledge about underlying brain mechanisms helps in the development of biologically plausible models of behavior, which can then help elucidate the mechanisms underlying individual choice biases and strategic preferences. Using a novel risky choice paradigm, I will demonstrate that people vary in whether they adopt compensatory or noncompensatory rules in economic decision making. Importantly, neuroimaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging reveal that distinct neural mechanisms support variability in choices and variability in strategic preferences. Converging evidence from a study involving decisions between hypothetical stocks illustrates how knowledge about the underlying mechanisms can help inform neuroanatomical models of cognitive control. Last, I will demonstrate how knowledge about these underlying neural mechanisms can provide novel insights into the effects of decision states like sleep deprivation on decision preferences. Together, these findings suggest that neuroscience can play a critical role in creating robust and flexible models of real-world decision behavior.

Strategic control in decision-making under uncertainty.

Complex economic decisions - whether investing money for retirement or purchasing some new electronic gadget - often involve uncertainty about the likely consequences of our choices. Critical for resolving that uncertainty are strategic meta-decision processes, which allow people to simplify complex decision problems, evaluate outcomes against a variety of contexts, and flexibly match behavior to changes in the environment. In recent years, substantial research has implicated the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) in the flexible control of behavior. However, nearly all such evidence comes from paradigms involving executive function or response selection, not complex decision-making. Here, we review evidence that demonstrates that the dmPFC contributes to strategic control in complex decision-making. This region contains a functional topography such that the posterior dmPFC supports response-related control, whereas the anterior dmPFC supports strategic control. Activation in the anterior dmPFC signals changes in how a decision problem is represented, which in turn can shape computational processes elsewhere in the brain. Based on these findings, we argue for both generalized contributions of the dmPFC to cognitive control, and specific computational roles for its subregions depending upon the task demands and context. We also contend that these strategic considerations are likely to be critical for decision-making in other domains, including interpersonal interactions in social settings.

A parallel functional topography between medial and lateral prefrontal cortex: evidence and implications for cognitive control.

The dorsomedial and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (dmPFC and dlPFC) together support cognitive control, with dmPFC responsible for monitoring performance and dlPFC responsible for adjusting behavior. The dlPFC contains a topographic organization that reflects complexity of control demands, with more anterior regions guiding increasingly abstract processing. Recent evidence for a similar gradient within dmPFC suggests the possibility of parallel, hierarchical organization. Here, we measured connectivity between functional nodes of dmPFC and dlPFC using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging in humans. We found a posterior-to-anterior connectivity gradient; posterior dmPFC maximally connected to posterior dlPFC and anterior dmPFC maximally connected to anterior dlPFC. This parallel topographic pattern replicated across three independent datasets collected on different scanners, within individual participants, and through both point-to-point and voxelwise analyses. We posit a model of cognitive control characterized by hierarchical interactions--whose level depends on current environmental demands--between functional subdivisions of medial and lateral PFC.

Sleep deprivation biases the neural mechanisms underlying economic preferences.

A single night of sleep deprivation (SD) evoked a strategy shift during risky decision making such that healthy human volunteers moved from defending against losses to seeking increased gains. This change in economic preferences was correlated with the magnitude of an SD-driven increase in ventromedial prefrontal activation as well as by an SD-driven decrease in anterior insula activation during decision making. Analogous changes were observed during receipt of reward outcomes: elevated activation to gains in ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum, but attenuated anterior insula activation following losses. Finally, the observed shift in economic preferences was not correlated with change in psychomotor vigilance. These results suggest that a night of total sleep deprivation affects the neural mechanisms underlying economic preferences independent of its effects on vigilant attention.

Resolving response, decision, and strategic control: evidence for a functional topography in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.

The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) plays a central role in aspects of cognitive control and decision making. Here, we provide evidence for an anterior-to-posterior topography within the DMPFC using tasks that evoke three distinct forms of control demands--response, decision, and strategic--each of which could be mapped onto independent behavioral data. Specifically, we identify three spatially distinct regions within the DMPFC: a posterior region associated with control demands evoked by multiple incompatible responses, a middle region associated with control demands evoked by the relative desirability of decision options, and an anterior region that predicts control demands related to deviations from an individual's preferred decision-making strategy. These results provide new insight into the functional organization of DMPFC and suggest how recent controversies about its role in complex decision making and response mapping can be reconciled.

Separate neural mechanisms underlie choices and strategic preferences in risky decision making.

Adaptive decision making in real-world contexts often relies on strategic simplifications of decision problems. Yet, the neural mechanisms that shape these strategies and their implementation remain largely unknown. Using an economic decision-making task, we dissociate brain regions that predict specific choices from those predicting an individual's preferred strategy. Choices that maximized gains or minimized losses were predicted by functional magnetic resonance imaging activation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex or anterior insula, respectively. However, choices that followed a simplifying strategy (i.e., attending to overall probability of winning) were associated with activation in parietal and lateral prefrontal cortices. Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, through differential functional connectivity with parietal and insular cortex, predicted individual variability in strategic preferences. Finally, we demonstrate that robust decision strategies follow from neural sensitivity to rewards. We conclude that decision making reflects more than compensatory interaction of choice-related regions; in addition, specific brain systems potentiate choices depending on strategies, traits, and context.

Age and culture modulate object processing and object-scene binding in the ventral visual area.

Behavioral differences in the visual processing of objects and backgrounds as a function of cultural group are well documented. Recent neuroimaging evidence also points to cultural differences in neural activation patterns. Compared with East Asians, Westerners' visual processing is more object focused, and they activate neural structures that reflect this bias for objects. In a recent adaptation study, East Asian older adults showed an absence of an object-processing area but normal adaptation for background areas. In the present study, 75 young and old adults (half East Asian and half Western) were tested in an fMR-adaptation study to examine differences in object and background processing as well as object-background binding. We found equivalent background processing in the parahippocampal gyrus in all four groups, diminished binding processes in the hippocampus in elderly East Asians and Westerners, and diminished object processing in elderly versus young adults in the lateral occipital complex. Moreover, elderly East Asians showed significantly less adaptation response in the object areas than did elderly Westerners. These findings demonstrate the malleability of perceptual processes as a result of differences in cohort-specific experiences or in cultural exposure over time.

Sleep deprivation elevates expectation of gains and attenuates response to losses following risky decisions.

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Using a gambling task, we investigated how 24 hours of sleep deprivation modulates the neural response to the making of risky decisions with potentially loss-bearing outcomes. DESIGN: Two experiments involving sleep-deprived subjects were performed. In the first, neural responses to decision making and reward outcome were evaluated. A second control experiment evaluated responses to reward outcome only. PARTICIPANTS: Healthy right-handed adults participated in these experiments (26 [mean age 21.3 years] in Experiment 1 and 13 [mean age 21.7 years] in Experiment 2.) MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: Following sleep deprivation, choices involving higher relative risk elicited greater activation in the right nucleus accumbens, signifying an elevated expectation of the higher reward once the riskier choice was made. Concurrently, activation for losses in the insular and orbitofrontal cortices was reduced, denoting a diminished response to losses. This latter finding of reduced insular activation to losses was also true when volunteers were merely shown the results of the computer's decision, that is, without having to make their own choice. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that sleep deprivation poses a dual threat to competent decision making by modulating activation in nucleus accumbens and insula, brain regions associated with risky decision making and emotional processing.

Strategic differences in algebraic problem solving: neuroanatomical correlates.

In this study, we built on previous neuroimaging studies of mathematical cognition and examined whether the same cognitive processes are engaged by two strategies used in algebraic problem solving. We focused on symbolic algebra, which uses alphanumeric equations to represent problems, and the model method, which uses pictorial representation. Eighteen adults, matched on academic proficiency and competency in the two methods, transformed algebraic word problems into equations or models, and validated presented solutions. Both strategies were associated with activation of areas linked to working memory and quantitative processing. These included the left frontal gyri, and bilateral activation of the intraparietal sulci. Contrasting the two strategies, the symbolic method activated the posterior superior parietal lobules and the precuneus. These findings suggest that the two strategies are effected using similar processes but impose different attentional demands.

Cortical effects of anticipation and endogenous modulation of visceral pain assessed by functional brain MRI in irritable bowel syndrome patients and healthy controls.

Visceral pain processing is abnormal in a majority of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients. Aberrant endogenous nociceptive modulation and anticipation are possible underlying mechanisms investigated in the current study. Twelve IBS patients and 12 matched healthy controls underwent brain fMRI scanning during the following randomised stimuli: sham and painful rectal distensions by barostat without and with simultaneous activation of endogenous descending nociceptive inhibition using ice water immersion of the foot for heterotopic stimulation. Heterotopic stimulation decreased rectal pain scores from 3.7+/-0.2 to 3.1+/-0.3 (mean+/-SE, scale 0-5) in controls (p<0.01), but not significantly in IBS. Controls differed from IBS patients in showing significantly greater activation bilaterally in the anterior insula, SII and putamen during rectal stimulation alone compared to rectal plus heterotopic stimulation. Greater activation during rectal plus heterotopic versus rectal stimulation was seen bilaterally in SI and the right superior temporal gyrus in controls and in the right inferior lobule and bilaterally in the superior temporal gyrus in IBS. Rectal pain scores were similarly low during sham stimulation in both groups, but brain activation patterns differed. In conclusion, IBS patients showed dysfunctional endogenous inhibition of pain and concomitant aberrant activation of brain areas involved in pain processing and integration. Anticipation of rectal pain was associated with different brain activation patterns in IBS involving multiple interoceptive, homeostatic, associative and emotional areas, even though pain scores were similar during sham distension. The aberrant activation of endogenous pain inhibition appears to involve circuitry relating to anticipation as well as pain processing itself.

The neural basis of interindividual variability in inhibitory efficiency after sleep deprivation.

Sleep deprivation results in the loss of our ability to suppress a prepotent response. The extent of decline in this executive function varies across individuals. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the neural correlates of sleep deprivation-induced differences in inhibitory efficiency. Participants performed a go/no-go task after normal sleep and after 24 h of total sleep deprivation. Regardless of the extent of change in inhibitory efficiency, sleep deprivation lowered go/no-go sustained, task-related activation of the ventral and anterior prefrontal (PFC) regions bilaterally. However, individuals better able to maintain inhibitory efficiency after sleep deprivation could be distinguished by lower stop-related, phasic activation of the right ventral PFC during rested wakefulness. These persons also showed a larger rise in such activation both here and in the right insula after sleep deprivation relative to those whose inhibitory efficiency declined.

Age-related changes in object processing and contextual binding revealed using fMR adaptation.

Using fMR adaptation, we studied the effects of aging on the neural processing of passively viewed naturalistic pictures composed of a prominent object against a background scene. Spatially distinct neural regions showing specific patterns of adaptation to objects, background scenes, and contextual integration (binding) were identified in young adults. Older adults did not show adaptation responses corresponding to binding in the medial-temporal areas. They also showed an adaptation deficit for objects whereby their lateral occipital complex (LOC) did not adapt to repeated objects in the context of a changing background. The LOC could be activated, however, when objects were presented without a background. Moreover, the adaptation deficit for objects viewed against backgrounds was reversed when elderly subjects were asked to attend to objects while viewing these complex pictures. These findings suggest that the elderly have difficulty with simultaneous processing of objects and backgrounds that, in turn, could contribute to deficient contextual binding.

Dissociating response conflict from numerical magnitude processing in the brain: an event-related fMRI study.

Functional neuroimaging studies of numerical cognition have repeatedly associated activation of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) with number processing. During number comparison, the IPS has been found to be modulated by the numerical distance. This has lead to the contention that the IPS houses the internal representation of numerical magnitude. However, this theory has been challenged by the argument that IPS activation may reflect domain-general response selection. In the present study, we used the numerical size congruity paradigm to further elucidate the role played by the IPS in number comparison. In an event-related, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, participants judged which of two number words was numerically larger. In addition to the numerical distance, physical stimulus size was varied such that physical size and numerical magnitude were either (a) congruent (e.g., numerically smaller number printed in smaller font) or (b) incongruent (e.g., numerically larger number printed in smaller font). This allowed for the study of both the main effects and the interaction of numerical distance and stimulus congruency. A main effect of numerical distance was found in bilateral regions of the IPS. However, these parietal areas were not significantly modulated by congruency or the interaction of distance and congruency. Instead, the main effect of congruency and an interaction of distance and congruency were observed in anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortices. These findings suggest some degree of independence between the processing of numerical distance and size congruity, lending support for the hypothesis that distance effects in IPS reflect the underlying representation of numerical magnitude.