Social Distancing and Social Biosensing: Intersubjectivity from Afar.

The shelter-in-place orders across the U.S. in response to the COVID-19 pandemic forced many relationships once sustained by in-person interaction into remote states through computer-mediated communication (CMC). Work, school, holidays, social engagements, and everyday conversations formerly experienced through rich and contextual in-person interactions instead have taken place on messaging, voice, and video chatting platforms that diminish or altogether lack many social cues and other qualities critical to social interaction. The difficulties feeling connected to one another observed during this period have stressed the need for novel forms of communication that enable deeper interactions. Social biosensing, the interpersonal sharing of physiological information, has shown promise facilitating social connection at a distance. In the present research we document the experiences of nine pairs of friends (N = 18) who navigated living through a shelter-in-place order, reporting on their experiences sharing their electrodermal activity (EDA) in response to short videos. Participants described the artificial and unnatural nature of communicating using typical forms of CMC and a range of interpretations of EDA as both emotional response and as representative of personal characteristics. We implemented a phased approach to study the temporal nature of forming an understanding of unfamiliar yet intimate data like EDA. Our results indicate typologies of meaning-making processes: "stablers", "broadeners", and "puzzlers". We also interpreted our findings through the lens of intersubjectivity, analyzing how analogical apperception and dialogical interaction both play a role in participants' meaning-making about their own and their partner's biosensory information. We conclude with implications from this work pertinent to intersubjectivity theorists, social biosensing researchers, and CMC system designers and developers.

One-Step, Three-Factor Passthought Authentication With Custom-Fit, In-Ear EEG.

In-ear EEG offers a promising path toward usable, discreet brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) for both healthy individuals and persons with disabilities. To test the promise of this modality, we produced a brain-based authentication system using custom-fit EEG earpieces. In a sample of N = 7 participants, we demonstrated that our system has high accuracy, higher than prior work using non-custom earpieces. We demonstrated that both inherence and knowledge factors contribute to authentication accuracy, and performed a simulated attack to show our system's robustness against impersonation. From an authentication standpoint, our system provides three factors of authentication in a single step. From a usability standpoint, our system does not require a cumbersome, head-worn device.

Neural mechanisms of sensitivity to peer information in young adult cannabis users.

Though social influence is a critical factor in the initiation and maintenance of marijuana use, the neural correlates of influence in those who use marijuana are unknown. In this study, marijuana-using young adults (MJ; n = 20) and controls (CON; n = 23) performed a decision-making task in which they made a perceptual choice after viewing the choices of unknown peers via photographs, while they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. The MJ and CON groups did not show differences in the overall number of choices that agreed with versus opposed group influence, but only the MJ group showed reaction time slowing when deciding against group choices. Longer reaction times were associated with greater activation of frontal regions. The MJ goup, compared to CON, showed significantly greater activation in the caudate when presented with peer information. Across groups, caudate activation was associated with self-reported susceptibility to influence. These findings indicate that young adults who use MJ may exhibit increased effort when confronted with opposing peer influence, as well as exhibit greater responsivity of the caudate to social information. These results not only better define the neural basis of social decisions, but also suggest that marijuana use is associated with exaggerated neural activity during decision making that involves social information.

Altered Neural Processing to Social Exclusion in Young Adult Marijuana Users.

Previous studies have reported that peer groups are one of the most important predictors of adolescent and young adult marijuana use, and yet the neural correlates of social processing in marijuana users have not yet been studied. In the current study, marijuana-using young adults (n = 20) and non-using controls (n = 22) participated in a neuroimaging social exclusion task called Cyberball, a computerized ball-tossing game in which the participant is excluded from the game after a pre-determined number of ball tosses. Controls, but not marijuana users, demonstrated significant activation in the insula, a region associated with negative emotion, when being excluded from the game. Both groups demonstrated activation of the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC), a region associated with affective monitoring, during peer exclusion. Only the marijuana group showed a correlation between vACC activation and scores on a self-report measure of peer conformity. This study indicates that marijuana users show atypical neural processing of social exclusion, which may be either caused by, or the result of, regular marijuana use.

Passthoughts authentication with low cost EarEEG.

Personal and wearable computing are moving toward smaller and more seamless devices. We explore how this trend could be mirrored in an authentication scheme based on electroencephalography (EEG) signals collected from the ear. We evaluate this model using a low cost, single-channel, consumer grade device for data collection. Using data from 12 study participants who performed a set of 5 mental tasks, we achieve a 44% reduction in half total error rate (HTER) compared with a random classifier, corresponding to a 72% authentication accuracy in within-participants analyses and a 60% reduction and 80% accuracy in between-participant analyses. Given our results and those of previous research, we conclude that earEEG shows potential as a uniquely convenient authentication method as it is integrable into devices like earbud headphones already commonly worn in the ear, and the mental gestures generating the signal are invisible to would-be eavesdroppers.

Effect of social influence on effort-allocation for monetary rewards.

Though decades of research have shown that people are highly influenced by peers, few studies have directly assessed how the value of social conformity is weighed against other types of costs and benefits. Using an effort-based decision-making paradigm with a novel social influence manipulation, we measured how social influence affected individuals' decisions to allocate effort for monetary rewards during trials with either high or low probability of receiving a reward. We found that information about the effort-allocation of peers modulated participant choices, specifically during conditions of low probability of obtaining a reward. This suggests that peer influence affects effort-based choices to obtain rewards especially under conditions of risk. This study provides evidence that people value social conformity in addition to other costs and benefits when allocating effort, and suggests that neuroeconomic studies that assess trade-offs between effort and reward should consider social environment as a factor that can influence decision-making.

Young adult cannabis users report greater propensity for risk-taking only in non-monetary domains.

BACKGROUND: Though substance use is often associated with elevated risk-taking in real-world scenarios, many risk-taking tasks in experimental psychology using financial gambles fail to find significant differences between individuals with substance use disorders and healthy controls. We assessed whether participants using marijuana would show a greater propensity for risk-taking in distinct domains including, but not limited to, financial risk-taking. METHODS: In the current study, we assessed risk-taking in young adult (age 18-25) regular marijuana users and in non-using control participants using a domain-specific risk-taking self-report scale (DOSPERT) encompassing five domains of risk-taking (social, financial, recreational, health/safety, and ethical). We also measured behavioral risk-taking using a laboratory monetary risk-taking task. RESULTS: Marijuana users and controls reported significant differences on the social, health/safety, and ethical risk-taking scales, but no differences in the propensity to take recreational or financial risks. Complementing the self-report finding, there were no differences between marijuana users and controls in their performance on the laboratory risk-taking task. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that financial risk-taking may be less sensitive than other domains of risk-taking in assessing differences in risky behavior between those who use marijuana and those who do not. In order to more consistently determine whether increased risk-taking is a factor in substance use, it may be necessary to use both monetary risk-taking tasks and complementary assessments of non-monetary-based risk-taking measures.

Impulsive social influence increases impulsive choices on a temporal discounting task in young adults.

Adolescents and young adults who affiliate with friends who engage in impulsive behavior are more likely to engage in impulsive behaviors themselves, and those who associate with prosocial (i.e. more prudent, future oriented) peers are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior. However, it is difficult to disentangle the contribution of peer influence vs. peer selection (i.e., whether individuals choose friends with similar traits) when interpreting social behaviors. In this study, we combined a novel social manipulation with a well-validated delay discounting task assessing impulsive behavior to create a social influence delay discounting task, in which participants were exposed to both impulsive (smaller, sooner or SS payment) and non-impulsive (larger, later or LL payment) choices from their peers. Young adults in this sample, n = 51, aged 18-25 had a higher rate of SS choices after exposure to impulsive peer influence than after exposure to non-impulsive peer influence. Interestingly, in highly susceptible individuals, the rate of non-impulsive choices did not increase after exposure to non-impulsive influence. There was a positive correlation between self-reported suggestibility and degree of peer influence on SS choices. These results suggest that, in young adults, SS choices appear to be influenced by the choices of same-aged peers, especially for individuals who are highly susceptible to influence.