Information processing style and institutional trust as factors of COVID vaccine hesitancy.

This study investigates the factors contributing to COVID vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy has commonly been attributed to susceptibility to misinformation and linked to particular socio-demographic factors and personality traits. We present a new perspective, emphasizing the interplay between individual cognitive styles and perceptions of public health institutions. In January 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 318 participants underwent a comprehensive assessment, including self-report measures of personality and clinical characteristics, as well as a behavioral task that assessed information processing styles. During 2021, attitudes towards vaccines, scientists, and the CDC were measured at three time points (February-October). Panel data analysis and structural equation modeling revealed nuanced relationships between these measures and information processing styles over time. Trust in public health institutions, authoritarian submission, and lower information processing capabilities together contribute to vaccine acceptance. Information processing capacities influenced vaccination decisions independently from the trust level, but their impact was partially mediated by authoritarian tendencies. These findings underscore the multifactorial nature of vaccine hesitancy, which emerges as a product of interactions between individual cognitive styles and perceptions of public health institutions. This novel perspective provides valuable insights into the underlying mechanisms that drive this complex phenomenon.

Externally orienting cues improve cognitive control in OCD.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: An executive overload model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) posits that broad difficulties with executive functioning in OCD result from an overload on the executive system by obsessive thoughts. It implies that, if individuals with OCD "snap out" of their obsessive thoughts, their performance on neurocognitive tasks will improve. METHODS: We test this prediction using the revised Attention Network Test, ANT-R, and distinct subsamples of data from unmedicated OCD and healthy controls (HC). ANT-R includes Simon and Flanker tasks; in both, incongruent trials take longer to resolve ('conflict costs'). On some trials, a warning cue helps participants to respond faster ('alerting benefits'). In OCD (N = 34) and HC (N = 46), matched on age, IQ, and sex, we tested (1) the effect of OCD on alerting benefits, and (2) the effect of OCD on warning cue related reductions in conflict costs. In a distinct subsample of OCD (N = 32) and HC (N = 51), we assessed whether alerting benefits and cue-related reductions in conflict costs are associated differently with different OCD symptoms. RESULTS: A warning cue can help individuals with OCD more than HC to improve performance on Simon and Flanker tasks. This effect is positively associated with severity of contamination symptoms. LIMITATIONS: This study did not directly assess how distracted participants are by obsessive thoughts. It relied on the ANT-R subtraction measures. Symptom severity was assessed using self-report measures. CONCLUSIONS: Difficulties in resolving conflict during decision-making in OCD can be modulated by a warning cue presented immediately before an attentional task.

Enhancing measures of ESE to incorporate aspects of place: Personal reputation and place-based social legitimacy.

We argue that existing measures of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) are underspecified in the context of tight-knit communities, where personal reputation plays a major role. We propose a new place-based ESE dimension that measures assessment by individuals of their ability to elicit respect from their community. This integral ESE component points to the very meaning of entrepreneurship in highly relational contexts. Although our enhanced ESE measure incorporates some influences of place, other aspects, such as geographical context, continue to moderate the relationship between ESE and entrepreneurial aptitude. We conclude with a discussion of the relevance and utility of this enhanced measure.

OCD Influences Evidence Accumulation During Decision Making in Males but Not Females During Perceptual and Value-Driven Choice.

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often have difficulty making decisions. Valuation and value-based judgements are particularly difficult. The mechanisms underlying these impairments are still poorly understood. Previous work has suggested that individuals with OCD require more information prior to making a choice during perceptual discrimination tasks. Little previous work has examined value-guided choice in OCD. Here we examined perceptual and value-based decision making in adults with OCD, using a novel task in which the two types of decision are tested in parallel using the same individually calibrated sets of visual stimuli (Perceptual and Value-based decision-making task, PVDM). Twenty-seven unmedicated participants with OCD (16 female) and thirty-one healthy controls (15 female) were tested. Data were analyzed using hierarchical drift-diffusion modeling (HDDM). Decision formation was altered in OCD, but differentially between genders: males with OCD, but not females, accumulated more information (i.e., were more cautious) and were less effective in evidence accumulation than age- and IQ-matched healthy males. Furthermore, males with OCD, but not females, were less likely than controls to adjust the process of evidence accumulation across decision contexts. These unexpectedly gender-dimorphic effects suggest that more attention should be paid to gender differences in studies of OCD, and of pathophysiology more broadly.

Animal models of OCD-relevant processes: an RDoC perspective.

Animal models have been invaluable tools in deciphering pathophysiology in many branches of medicine. Their application in the study of complex neuropsychiatric conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), however, raises vexing interpretative challenges. The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach of identifying dimensions of function and dysfunction that cut across syndromic diagnoses provides one potential path forward. We review some of the domains in the current RDoC matrix that may inform our understanding of patients with obsessions and compulsions, and how work in animal model systems is helping us to understand them. We focus on three specific RDoC constructs that may be particularly informative for our understanding of OCD: potential threat, habit, and cognitive control. In each case we review selected recent studies in animal models and their potential contribution to our understanding of OCD, and suggest directions for future research, informed by the animal studies. Such mechanistic work in animal models, in parallel with clinical studies refining our understanding of the relationship between these dimensional constructs and the symptomatology of particular groups of patients, may over time help us to generate a more comprehensive understanding of the pathogenesis and complexity of obsessions and compulsions.

Contrasting contributions of anhedonia to obsessive-compulsive, hoarding, and post-traumatic stress disorders.

Anhedonia is a transdiagnostic construct that can occur independent of other symptoms of depression; its role in neuropsychiatric disorders that are not primarily affective, such as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), hoarding disorder (HD), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has received limited attention. This paper addresses this gap. First, the data revealed a positive contribution of anhedonia, beyond the effects of general depression, to symptom severity in OCD but not in HD or PTSD. Second, anhedonia was operationalized as a reduced sensitivity to rewards, which allowed employing the value based decision making framework to investigate effects of anhedonia on reward-related behavioral outcomes, such as increased risk aversion and increased difficulty of making value-based choices. Both self-report and behavior-based measures were used to characterize individual risk aversion: risk perception and risk-taking propensities (measured using the Domain Specific Risk Taking scale) and risk attitudes evaluated using a gambling task. Data revealed the positive theoretically predicted correlation between anhedonia and risk perception in OCD; effects on self-reported risk taking and behavior-based risk aversion were non-significant. The same relations were weaker in HD and absent in PTSD. Response time during a gambling task, an index of difficulty of making value-based choices, significantly correlated with anhedonia in individuals with OCD and individuals with HD, even after controlling for general depression, but not in individuals with PTSD. The results suggest a unique contribution of one aspect of anhedonia in obsessive-compulsive disorder and confirm the importance of investigating the role of anhedonia transdiagnostically beyond affective and psychotic disorders.

Unbending mind: Individuals with hoarding disorder do not modify decision strategy in response to feedback under risk.

Cognitive-behavioral models of hoarding disorder emphasize impairments in information processing and decision making in the genesis of hoarding symptomology. We propose and test the novel hypothesis that individuals with hoarding are maladaptively biased towards a deliberative decision style. While deliberative strategies are often considered normative, they are not always adaptable to the limitations imposed by many real-world decision contexts. We examined decision-making patterns in 19 individuals with hoarding and 19 healthy controls, using a behavioral task that quantifies selection of decision strategies in a novel environment with known probabilities (risk) in response to feedback. Consistent with prior literature, we found that healthy individuals tend to explore different decision strategies in the beginning of the experiment, but later, in response to feedback, they shift towards a compound strategy that balances expected values and risks. In contrast, individuals with hoarding follow a simple, deliberative, risk-neutral, value-based strategy from the beginning to the end of the task, irrespective of the feedback. This seemingly rational approach was not ecologically rational: individuals with hoarding and healthy individuals earned about the same amount of money, but it took individuals with hoarding a lot longer to do it: additional cognitive costs did not lead to additional benefits.

Value-based decision making under uncertainty in hoarding and obsessive- compulsive disorders.

Difficulties in decision making are a core impairment in a range of disease states. For instance, both obsessive- compulsive disorder (OCD) and hoarding disorder (HD) are associated with indecisiveness, inefficient planning, and enhanced uncertainty intolerance, even in contexts unrelated to their core symptomology. We examined decision-making patterns in 19 individuals with OCD, 19 individuals with HD, 19 individuals with comorbid OCD and HD, and 57 individuals from the general population, using a well-validated choice task grounded in behavioral economic theory. Our results suggest that difficulties in decision making in individuals with OCD (with or without comorbid HD) are linked to reduced fidelity of value-based decision making (i.e. increase in inconsistent choices). In contrast, we find that performance of individuals with HD on our laboratory task is largely intact. Overall, these results support our hypothesis that decision-making impairments in OCD and HD, which can appear quite similar clinically, have importantly different underpinnings. Systematic investigation of different aspects of decision making, under varying conditions, may shed new light on commonalities between and distinctions among clinical syndromes.

Neural Correlates of Decision-Making Under Ambiguity and Conflict.

HIGHLIGHTS We use a simple gambles design in an fMRI study to compare two conditions: ambiguity and conflict.Participants were more conflict averse than ambiguity averse.Ambiguity aversion did not correlate with conflict aversion.Activation in the medial prefrontal cortex correlated with ambiguity level and ambiguity aversion.Activation in the ventral striatum correlated with conflict level and conflict aversion. Studies of decision making under uncertainty generally focus on imprecise information about outcome probabilities ("ambiguity"). It is not clear, however, whether conflicting information about outcome probabilities affects decision making in the same manner as ambiguity does. Here we combine functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a simple gamble design to study this question. In this design the levels of ambiguity and conflict are parametrically varied, and ambiguity and conflict gambles are matched on expected value. Behaviorally, participants avoided conflict more than ambiguity, and attitudes toward ambiguity and conflict did not correlate across participants. Neurally, regional brain activation was differentially modulated by ambiguity level and aversion to ambiguity and by conflict level and aversion to conflict. Activation in the medial prefrontal cortex was correlated with the level of ambiguity and with ambiguity aversion, whereas activation in the ventral striatum was correlated with the level of conflict and with conflict aversion. These novel results indicate that decision makers process imprecise and conflicting information differently, a finding that has important implications for basic and clinical research.

Decision-making under uncertainty in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) produces profound morbidity. Difficulties with decision-making and intolerance of uncertainty are prominent clinical features in many patients. The nature and etiology of these deficits are poorly understood. We used a well-validated choice task, grounded in behavioral economic theory, to investigate differences in valuation and value-based choice during decision making under uncertainty in 20 unmedicated participants with OCD and 20 matched healthy controls. Participants' choices were used to assess individual decision-making characteristics. OCD participants did not differ from healthy controls in how they valued uncertain options when outcome probabilities were known (risk) but were more likely than healthy controls to avoid uncertain options when these probabilities were imprecisely specified (ambiguity). Compared to healthy controls, individuals with OCD were less consistent in their choices and less able to identify options that should be clearly preferable. These abnormalities correlated with symptom severity. These results suggest that value-based choices during decision-making are abnormal in OCD. Individuals with OCD show elevated intolerance of uncertainty, but only when outcome probabilities are themselves uncertain. Future research focused on the neural valuation network, which is implicated in value-based computations, may provide new neurocognitive insights into the pathophysiology of OCD. Deficits in decision-making processes may represent a target for therapeutic intervention.

Beyond risk and ambiguity: deciding under ignorance.

In this study, we examined the neural basis of decision making under different types of uncertainty that involve missing information: ambiguity (vague probabilities) and sample space ignorance (SSI; unknown outcomes). fMRI revealed that these two different types of uncertainty recruit distinct neural substrates: Ambiguity recruits the left insula, whereas SSI recruits the anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral inferior parietal cortex, and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. The finding of unique activations for different types of uncertainty may not necessarily be predicted within the reductive approach of modern theories of decision making under uncertainty, because these theories purport that humans reduce more complicated uncertain environments to subjectively formed less complicated ones (i.e., SSI to ambiguity). The predictions of the reductive view held only for ambiguity-averse individuals and not for ambiguity-tolerant individuals. Consequently, theories of decision making under uncertainty should include individual tolerance for missing information and how these individual differences modulate the neural systems engaged during decision making. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.