Examination-related anticipatory levels of dehydroepiandrosterone and cortisol predict positive affect, examination marks and support-seeking in college students.

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and cortisol release appear to have contrasting effects on stress perception during stressful tasks. This study aimed to investigate anticipatory examination stress in college students by considering DHEA, cortisol, psycho-emotional aspects and examination performance. Seventy-six students (66 females, 10 males; age range 18-25 years) provided saliva samples and completed questionnaires in two sessions 48 hours apart. During the second session, the students performed the examination. The questionnaires used were the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, the Positive and Negative Affect Scale, and the Brief-Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced Inventory. DHEA, cortisol, anxiety and negative affect showed an anticipatory rise before the examination (all ps < 0.001). This rise of DHEA and cortisol was associated with lower positive affect (p = 0.001 and p = 0.043, respectively). However, only the DHEA anticipatory levels were linked to poorer examination marks (p = 0.020). Higher levels of the DHEA/cortisol ratio in anticipation of the examination were related to lower scores on the support-seeking strategy (p = 0.022). There was no association between DHEA and cortisol levels and anxiety, negative affect, active and avoidant coping strategies, or academic record. These results suggest that how DHEA and cortisol respond in anticipation of examination stress significantly impacts students' emotional well-being during examination periods and how they cope with stress. They also suggest that levels of DHEA in anticipation of an academic stressor have detrimental effects on stress management.

Anticipation of sexually arousing visual event leads to overestimation of elapsed time.

Subjective estimates of duration are affected by emotional expectations about the future. For example, temporal intervals preceding a threatening event such as an electric shock are estimated as longer than intervals preceding a non-threatening event. However, it has not been unequivocally shown that such temporal overestimation occurs also when anticipating a similarly arousing but appealing event. In this study, we examined how anticipation of visual erotic material influenced perceived duration. Participants did a temporal bisection task, where they estimated durations of visual cues relative to previously learned short and long standard durations. The color of the to-be-timed visual cue signalled either a chance of seeing a preferred erotic picture at the end of the interval or certainty of seeing a neutral grey bar instead. The results showed that anticipating an appealing event increased the likelihood of estimating the cue duration as long as compared to the anticipation of a grey bar. Further analyses showed that this temporal overestimation effect was stronger for those who rated the anticipated erotic pictures as more sexually arousing. The results thus indicate that anticipation of appealing events has a similar dilating effect on perceived duration as does the anticipation of aversive events.

Motion extrapolation in sport expertise: Representational momentum and representational gravity in volleyball athletes.

When people indicate the vanishing location of a moving target that suddenly disappears, systematic errors forward (in the direction of motion) and downward (in the direction of gravity) emerge. These spatial displacements were coined, respectively, Representational Momentum and Representational Gravity, and are believed to reflect internalized ecologically relevant physical invariants useful for the anticipation of future states of an event. Previous research has shown that sports athletes exhibit increased Representational Momentum, indicating enhanced motion extrapolation and anticipation, albeit it is still not clear up to what degree this effect is specific for the expertise context or if it generalizes to other dynamic events. Furthermore, the influence of expertise on Representational Gravity, particularly in contexts where anticipation of vertically moving objects is crucial, remains understudied. This study aimed to address these gaps by focusing on Volleyball as a context of expertise due to the prevalence of fast vertically moving balls. Volleyball athletes and non-athletes indicated the perceived offset location of a smoothly moving target, which moved at a constant speed or was subjected to acceleration/deceleration, embedded either in a Volleyball or neutral context. Outcomes revealed that for the Volleyball context, athletes, but not non-athletes, revealed a significant trend to misperceive targets moving along the left diagonal to be further displaced forward beyond what would be expected due to Representational Momentum alone. This finding is discussed in relation to the natural statistics of Volleyball games, where crossed ball trajectories, particularly by the outside hitter, are more prevalent, fast, and offensive, requiring better anticipation to be efficiently dealt with.

Short-Term Memory Capacity Predicts Willingness to Expend Cognitive Effort for Reward.

We must often decide whether the effort required for a task is worth the reward. Past rodent work suggests that willingness to deploy cognitive effort can be driven by individual differences in perceived reward value, depression, or chronic stress. However, many factors driving cognitive effort deployment-such as short-term memory ability-cannot easily be captured in rodents. Furthermore, we do not fully understand how individual differences in short-term memory ability, depression, chronic stress, and reward anticipation impact cognitive effort deployment for reward. Here, we examined whether these factors predict cognitive effort deployment for higher reward in an online visual short-term memory task. Undergraduate participants were grouped into high and low effort groups (n HighEffort = 348, n LowEffort = 81; n Female = 332, n Male = 92, M Age = 20.37, Range Age = 16-42) based on decisions in this task. After completing a monetary incentive task to measure reward anticipation, participants completed short-term memory task trials where they could choose to encode either fewer (low effort/reward) or more (high effort/reward) squares before reporting whether or not the color of a target square matched the square previously in that location. We found that only greater short-term memory ability predicted whether participants chose a much higher proportion of high versus low effort trials. Drift diffusion modeling showed that high effort group participants were more biased than low effort group participants toward selecting high effort trials. Our findings highlight the role of individual differences in cognitive effort ability in explaining cognitive effort deployment choices.

The Nature of Mental Imagery and Its Relationship With Amotivational Psychopathology in People With Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders.

Many people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) experience profound amotivation, which is strongly related to anticipatory anhedonia. Yet, the neuropsychological fundamentals of anticipatory anhedonia and amotivation are barely understood, resulting in a lack of effective treatments for these patients. Aberrancies in positive mental imagery may interfere with the anticipation of pleasure and could thus explain anticipatory anhedonia and amotivation. However, the nature of mental imagery and its relationship with amotivational psychopathology in SSD is largely unknown. In this preregistered study, we therefore examined mental imagery characteristics and their relation to anticipatory anhedonia, amotivation, and daily life activity in SSD. TheN = 86 participants included individuals with SSD (n = 43) and demographically matched healthy controls (n = 43). Mental imagery, anticipatory pleasure, amotivation, and activity engagement were assessed with structured interviews and self-report questionnaires. Ecological momentary assessment was used to measure state anticipatory pleasure and activity engagement in daily life (n = 81). Compared to the control group, the SSD group showed comparable quantity, but less vividness of mental imagery. Reduced vividness of mental imagery in SSD was significantly associated with higher anticipatory anhedonia, amotivation, and low activity engagement in cross-sectional and prospective analyses. Reduced mental imagery vividness may cause a lack of internal incentive to seek pleasurable experiences and could explain amotivation. Interventions aiming to improve mental imagery vividness and related anticipatory pleasure responses in SSD may be effective in targeting amotivation.

Anticipatory and consummatory neural correlates of monetary and music rewarding stimuli.

Most of the literature on the neural bases of human reward and punishment processing has used monetary gains and losses, but less is known about the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the anticipation and consumption of other types of rewarding stimuli. In the present study, EEG was recorded from 19 participants who completed a modified version of the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task. During the task, cues providing information about potential future outcomes were presented to the participants. Then, they had to respond rapidly to a target stimulus to win money or listening to pleasant music, or to avoid losing money or listening to unpleasant music. Results revealed similar responses for monetary and music cues, with increased activity for cues indicating potential gains compared to losses. However, differences emerged in the outcome phase between money and music. Monetary outcomes showed an interaction between the type of the cue and the outcome in the Feedback Related Negativity and Fb-P3 ERPs and increased theta activity increased for negative feedbacks. In contrast, music outcomes showed significant interactions in the Fb-P3 and theta activities. These findings suggest similar neurophysiological mechanisms in processing cues for potential positive or negative outcomes in these two types of stimuli.

Aberrant social reward dynamics in individuals with melancholic major depressive disorder: An ERP study.

BACKGROUND: Compared to monetary rewards, depressive symptoms are specifically associated with abnormal social reward processing. In addition, individuals with melancholic depression may exhibit more significant reward-related impairments. However, there is still limited understanding of the specific alterations in social reward processing in individuals with melancholic depression. METHODS: Forty patients with melancholic major depressive disorder (MDD), forty patients with non-melancholic MDD, and fifty healthy controls participated in the social incentive delay (SID) tasks with event-related potential (ERP) recording. We measured one anticipatory ERP(cue-N2) and two consummatory ERPs (FRN, fb-P3). Furthermore, we examined correlation between FRN and consummatory anhedonia. RESULTS: Melancholic MDD patients showed less anticipation of social rewards (cue-N2). Concurrently, melancholic individuals demonstrated diminished reception of social rewards, as evidenced by reduced amplitudes of FRN. Notably, the group x condition interaction effect on FRN was significant (F (2, 127) = 4.15, p = 0.018, η2ρ = 0.061). Melancholic MDD patients had similar neural responses to both gain and neutral feedback (blunted reward positivity), whereas non-melancholic MDD patients (t (39) = 3.09, p = 0.004) and healthy participants (t (49) = 5.25, p < 0.001) had smaller FRN amplitudes when receiving gain feedback relative to neutral feedback. In addition, there was a significant correlation between FRN and consummatory anhedonia in MDD patients. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicated that individuals with melancholic MDD exhibit attenuated neural responses to both anticipated and consumed social rewards. This suggests that aberrant processing of social rewards could serve as a potential biomarker for melancholic MDD.

Expectation of pain and relief: A dynamical model of the neural basis for pain-trauma co-morbidity.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is highly co-morbid with chronic pain conditions. When present, PTSD significantly worsens chronic pain outcomes. Likewise, pain contributes to a more severe PTSD as evidenced by greater disability, more frequent use of harmful opioid analgesics and increased pain severity. The biomechanism behind this comorbidity is incompletely understood, however recent work strongly supports the widely-accepted role of expectation, in the entanglement of chronic pain and trauma symptoms. This work has shown that those with trauma have a maladaptive brain response while expecting stress and pain, whereas those with chronic pain may have a notable impairment in brain response while expecting pain relief. This dynamical expectation model of the interaction between neural systems underlying expectation of pain onset (traumatic stress) and pain offset (chronic pain) is biologically viable and may provide a biomechanistic insight into pain-trauma comorbidity. These predictive mechanisms work through interoceptive pathways in the brain critically the insula cortex. Here we highlight how the neural expectation-related mechanisms augment the existing models of pain and trauma to better understand the dynamics of pain and trauma comorbidity. These ideas will point to targeted complementary clinical approaches, based on mechanistically separable neural biophenotypes for the entanglement of chronic pain and trauma symptoms.

A dissociation between the effects of expectations and attention in selective visual processing.

It is often claimed that probabilistic expectations affect visual perception directly, without mediation by selective attention. However, these claims have been disputed, as effects of expectation and attention are notoriously hard to dissociate experimentally. In this study, we used a new approach to separate expectations from attention. In four experiments (N = 60), participants searched for a target in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream and had to identify a digit or a letter defined by a low-level cue (colour or shape). Expectations about the target's alphanumeric category were probabilistically manipulated. Since category membership is a high-level feature and since the target was embedded among many distractors that shared its category, targets from the expected category should not attract attention more than targets from the unexpected category. In the first experiment, these targets were more likely to be identified relative to targets from the unexpected category. Importantly, in the following experiments, we also included behavioural and electrophysiological indices of attentional guidance and engagement. This allowed us to examine whether expectations also modulated these or earlier attentional processes. Results showed that category-based expectations had no modulatory effects on attention, and only affected processing at later encoding-related stages. Alternative interpretation of expectation effects in terms of repetition priming or response bias were also ruled out. These observations provide new evidence for direct attention-independent expectation effects on perception. We suggest that expectations can adjust the threshold required for encoding expectations-congruent information, thereby affecting the speed with which target objects are encoded in working memory.

Developmental differences in striatal recruitment by reward prospects as a function of attentional demand.

Adolescent risk-taking has been attributed to earlier-developing motivational neurocircuitry that is poorly controlled by immature executive-control neurocircuitry. Functional magnetic resonance imaging findings of increased ventral striatum (VS) recruitment by reward prospects in adolescents compared to adults support this theory. Other studies found blunted VS recruitment by reward-predictive cues in adolescents compared to adults. Task features may explain this discrepancy but have never been systematically explored. Adolescents and adults performed a novel reward task that holds constant the expected value of all rewards but varies whether rewards are dependent on vigilance-intensive responding versus making a lucky choice during a relaxed response window. We examined group by sub-task contrast differences in activation of VS and more motoric regions of striatum in response to anticipatory cues. Reward anticipation in both task conditions activated portions of striatum in both groups. In voxel-wise comparison, adults showed greater anticipatory recruitment of VS in trials involving choice during a relaxed time window, not in the more vigilance-demanding trials as hypothesized. In accord with our hypotheses, however, adults showed greater activation in dorsal striatum and putamen volumes of interest during reward anticipation under vigilance-demanding conditions. Following trial outcome notifications, adolescents showed greater activation of the VS during reward notification but lower activation during loss notification. These data extend findings of cross-sectional age-group differences in incentive-anticipatory recruitment of striatum, by demonstrating in adults relatively greater recruitment of motor effector regions of striatum by attentional and motor demands.

Exploring the use of visual predictions in social scenarios while under anticipatory threat.

One of the less recognized effects of anxiety lies in perception alterations caused by how one weighs both sensory evidence and contextual cues. Here, we investigated how anxiety affects our ability to use social cues to anticipate the others' actions. We adapted a paradigm to assess expectations in social scenarios, whereby participants were asked to identify the presence of agents therein, while supported by contextual cues from another agent. Participants (N = 66) underwent this task under safe and threat-of-shock conditions. We extracted both criterion and sensitivity measures as well as gaze data. Our analysis showed that whilst the type of action had the expected effect, threat-of-shock had no effect over criterion and sensitivity. Although showing similar dwell times, gaze exploration of the contextual cue was associated with shorter fixation durations whilst participants were under threat. Our findings suggest that anxiety does not appear to influence the use of expectations in social scenarios.

Age-related changes in reticulospinal contributions to anticipatory postural adjustments between back extensors and abdominal muscles.

Anticipatory postural adjustments (APAs) give feedforward postural control of the trunk, but they are delayed with ageing, affecting balance and mobility in older individuals. The reticulospinal tract contributes to postural control of the trunk; however, the extent to which age-related changes affect the reticulospinal contributions to APAs of the trunk remains unknown in humans. Here, we tested the hypothesis that a startling acoustic sound, which activates the reticulospinal tract, improves delayed APAs in older individuals. Twenty-two old (75 ± 6 years) and 20 healthy young adults (21 ± 4 years) performed a self-initiated fast bilateral shoulder flexion or shoulder extension task in response to visual, visual and auditory (80 dB), or visual and startling (115 dB) cues. Electromyography (EMG) was recorded from bilateral anterior deltoid (AD) and erector spinae (ES) during shoulder flexion and from bilateral posterior deltoid (PD) and rectus abdominis (RA) during shoulder extension. EMG onset of all muscles shortened during the startling cue in both age groups, suggesting a non-specific modulation of the reticulospinal tract on prime movers (AD or PD) and non-prime movers (ES or RA). Interestingly, APAs of the ES were accelerated in older participants to a similar degree as in younger participants during the startling cue. Conversely, APAs of the RA were not influenced by the startling cue in older participants. Our results suggest differential effects of ageing on functional contributions of the reticulospinal tract to APAs between back extensors and abdominal muscles.

Analysis of the characteristics of anticipatory postural adjustments in older adults using smartphones: Association between cognitive and balance functions.

OBJECTIVES: Using smartphones, we aimed to clarify the characteristics of anticipatory postural adjustments (APA) in older adults and examine the relationship between cognitive and balance functions. METHODS: The study participants were 10 young and 13 older adults. An accelerometer built into a smartphone was attached to the lower back (L5) of the participant, and acceleration in the mediolateral direction was measured using a one-leg stance (OLS). As APA features, we analyzed the time to the peak value in the stance direction (peak latency [PL]) and the amount of displacement to the peak value in the stance direction (peak magnitude [PM]). Additionally, the measured PL was divided by PM for each group to obtain the APA ratio (APAr). We investigated the relationship between the APAr and Mini-BESTest subitems. RESULTS: Older adults showed delayed PL and decreased PM levels (p < 0.01). While in the Mini-BESTest sub-items, deductions were most common in the order of dual-task and single-leg standing, and most participants with low APAr scores were degraded in APA of sub-items. The correlation was observed between APAr and both TUG and dual-task cost (DTC) (r= -0.56, r= -0.67). According to the receiver operating characteristic curve, the APAr value was 1.71 in the older age group. CONCLUSIONS: Older adults showed delayed PL and decreased PM, and APAr was associated with cognitive and locomotor functions. By evaluating the APAr at the initiation of movement, it may be possible to distinguish the APA of the older adluts from the possible to the impossible of OLS movement.

State anticipation and task serialization attenuate embodied decision biases when deciding while moving.

We examined whether and how embodied decision biases-related to motor costs (MC) as well as cognitive crosstalk (CC) due to the body state-are influenced by extended deliberation time. Participants performed a tracking task while concurrently making reward-based decisions, with rewards being presented with varying preview time. In Experiment 1 (N = 58), we observed a reduced CC bias with extended preview time. Partially, this was due to participants slightly adapting tracking to serialize it in relation to decision making. However, the influence of MC was only marginal and not subject to anticipatory state adjustments. In Experiment 2 (N = 67), we examined whether participants integrated the immediate state at reward presentation or anticipated state when a decision could be implemented when adapting their tracking and decision behavior. Results were most compatible with the anticipated state being integrated. We conclude that humans anticipate the body state when a decision must be implemented and consider the corresponding motor and cognitive demands when adapting their decision behavior. However, anticipatory state adaptations targeting the influence of MC with extended preview time were absent, suggesting that anticipatory adaptations are starkly limited in low-practice tasks compared to more overlearned behavior like walking. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Coping strategies and brain activity in table tennis players faced with discrepancies between predicted and actual outcomes.

Prior studies have shown that experts possess an excellent ability for action anticipation. However, it is not clear how experts process the discrepancies between predicted outcomes and actual outcomes. Based on Bayesian theory, Experiment 1 in the current study explored this question by categorizing unexpected outcomes into gradually increasing discrepancies and comparing the performance of experts and novices on a congruence discrimination task. Our behavioral analysis revealed that experts outperformed novices significantly in detecting these discrepancies. The following electroencephalogram study in Experiment 2 was conducted focused exclusively on experts to examine the role of theta wave oscillations within the mid-frontal cortex in processing varying levels of discrepancy. The results showed that reaction time and theta oscillations gradually increased as the magnitude of discrepancy increased. These findings indicate that compared to the novices, experts have a better ability to perceptual the discrepancy. Also, the magnitude of discrepancies induced an increase in mid-frontal theta in experts, providing greater flexibility in their response strategies.

Bumpy ride ahead: Anticipated effort as emotional evidence?

Conscious reportable (un)pleasantness feelings were shown to be successfully described by a process in which evidence favoring pleasant and unpleasant feelings accumulates until one response wins the race. This approach is challenged by (a) insufficient specification of "evidence," and (b) incomplete verification that participants report their truly experienced (un)pleasant feelings and not what they expect to feel. In each trial in this preregistered experiment, the (un)pleasant feeling reports regarding emotion evoking pictures was embedded in a period when participants expected a low-effort task (feature visual search) or a high-effort task (feature-conjunction search). Fitting the Linear Ballistic Accumulator model to the feeling report data shows that anticipated effort was associated with a higher rate of unpleasant evidence accumulation, but only when the emotion evoking pictures were normatively unpleasant and not when they were normatively pleasant. These results suggest that anticipated effort may be one source of "evidence," but only given a certain interpretation of the findings, and that genuinely felt emotions contribute to the emotion reports, assuming that participants intended to react to the pictures, as instructed, and not to the anticipated effort.

Multiple object tracking in the presence of a goal: Attentional anticipation and suppression.

In previous studies, we found that tracking multiple objects involves anticipatory attention, especially in the linear direction, even when a target bounced against a wall. We also showed that active involvement, in which the wall was replaced by a controllable paddle, resulted in increased allocation of attention to the bounce direction. In the current experiments, we wanted to further investigate the potential influence of the valence of the heading of an object. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were instructed to catch targets with a movable goal. In Experiment 3, participants were instructed to manipulate the permeability of a static wall in order to let targets either approach goals (i.e., green goals) or avoid goals (i.e., red goals). The results of Experiment 1 showed that probe detection ahead of a target that moved in the direction of the goal was higher as compared to probe detection in the direction of a no-goal area. Experiment 2 provided further evidence that the attentional highlighting found in the first experiment depends on the movement direction toward the goal. In Experiment 3, we found that not so much the positive (or neutral) valence (here, the green and no-goal areas) led to increased allocation of attention but rather a negative valence (here the red goals) led to a decreased allocation of attention.

Neural oscillations guiding action during effects imagery.

Goal-directed acting requires the integration of sensory information but can also be performed without direct sensory input. Examples of this can be found in sports and can be conceptualized by feedforward processes. There is, however, still a lack of understanding of the temporal neural dynamics and neuroanatomical structures involved in such processes. In the current study, we used EEG beamforming methods and examined 37 healthy participants in two well-controlled experiments varying the necessity of anticipatory processes during goal-directed action. We found that alpha and beta activity in the medial and posterior cingulate cortex enabled feedforward predictions about the position of an object based on the latest sensorimotor state. On this basis, theta band activity seems more related to sensorimotor representations, while beta band activity would be more involved in setting up the structure of the neural representations themselves. Alpha band activity in sensory cortices reflects an intensified gating of the anticipated perceptual consequences of the to-be-executed action. Together, the findings indicate that goal-directed acting through the anticipation of the predicted state of an effector is based on accompanying processes in multiple frequency bands in midcingulate and sensory brain regions.

Anticipated imitation of multiple agents.

It is well-established that people tend to mimic one another's actions, a crucial aspect of social interactions. Anticipating imitation has been shown to boost motor activation and reaction times for congruent actions. However, prior research predominantly focused on dyads, leaving gaps in our knowledge regarding group dynamics. This study addresses this gap, conducting three experiments using extensive online data. Participants engaged in anticipated imitation tasks with one versus three virtual agents. The results across all three experiments (n = 77; n = 239; n = 457) consistently support the existence of an anticipated imitation effect, with faster reaction times for congruent actions. Furthermore, the research unveils a social facilitation effect, with participants reacting more swiftly when anticipating three agents compared to one. However, we did not find the expected increase of the congruency effect with multiple agents; rather, the data indicates that anticipating multiple agents instead decreases this effect. These findings are discussed within the framework of ideomotor theory, offering insights into how they relate to recent research on the automatic imitation of multiple agents.

Social power modulates individuals' neural responses to monetary and social rewards.

Although previous research has shown that social power modulates individuals' sensitivity to rewards, it is currently unclear whether social power increases or decreases individuals' sensitivity to rewards. This study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the effects of social power on individuals' neural responses to monetary and social rewards. Specifically, participants underwent an episodic priming task to manipulate social power (high-power vs. low-power) and then completed monetary and social delayed incentive tasks while their behavioral responses and electroencephalograms (EEG) were recorded. According to ERP analysis, during the anticipatory stage, low-power individuals exhibited a greater cue-P3 amplitude than high-power individuals in both monetary and social tasks. In the consummatory stage, though no impact of social power on the reward positivity (RewP) was found, low-power individuals showed a higher feedback-P3 (FB-P3) amplitude than high-power individuals, regardless of task types (the MID and SID tasks). In conclusion, these results provide evidence that social power might decrease one's sensitivity to monetary and social rewards in both the anticipatory and consummatory stages.