Two ways to be satisfied.

Anna North points to an article by Helzer and Jayawickreme that examines two different control strategies for obtaining short and long term life satisfaction, “primary control” — the ability to directly affect one's circumstances — and “secondary control” — the ability to affect how one responds to those circumstances.

How does a sense of control relate to well-being? We consider two distinguishable control strategies, primary and secondary control, and their relationships with two facets of subjective well-being, daily positive/negative affective experience and global life satisfaction. Using undergraduate and online samples, the results suggest that these different control strategies are associated uniquely with distinct facets of well-being. After controlling for shared variance among constructs, primary control (the tendency to achieve mastery over circumstances via goal striving) was associated more consistently with daily affective experience than was secondary control, and secondary control (the tendency to achieve mastery over circumstances via sense-making) was associated more strongly with life satisfaction than primary control, but only within the student sample and community members not in a committed relationship. The results highlight the importance of both control strategies to everyday health and provide insights into the mechanisms underlying the relationship between control and well-being.

It is not clear why relationship status makes a difference. Helzer suggests that having a partner may help people deal with adversity the same way secondary control does, so secondary control may have less of an effect

John Oliver on "Scientific Studies show...."

I have to pass on this great bit from John Oliver, on the vacuity of most scientific reporting.

Diversity makes you brighter.

Providing some data relevant to debates over affirmative action, Levine et al. show that ethnic diversity can increase intelligent behaviors. Misfits between market prices and the true value of assets (market bubbles) are more likely in ethnically homogeneous than in diverse markets.

Markets are central to modern society, so their failures can be devastating. Here, we examine a prominent failure: price bubbles. Bubbles emerge when traders err collectively in pricing, causing misfit between market prices and the true values of assets. The causes of such collective errors remain elusive. We propose that bubbles are affected by ethnic homogeneity in the market and can be thwarted by diversity. In homogenous markets, traders place undue confidence in the decisions of others. Less likely to scrutinize others’ decisions, traders are more likely to accept prices that deviate from true values. To test this, we constructed experimental markets in Southeast Asia and North America, where participants traded stocks to earn money. We randomly assigned participants to ethnically homogeneous or diverse markets. We find a marked difference: Across markets and locations, market prices fit true values 58% better in diverse markets. The effect is similar across sites, despite sizeable differences in culture and ethnic composition. Specifically, in homogenous markets, overpricing is higher as traders are more likely to accept speculative prices. Their pricing errors are more correlated than in diverse markets. In addition, when bubbles burst, homogenous markets crash more severely. The findings suggest that price bubbles arise not only from individual errors or financial conditions, but also from the social context of decision making. The evidence may inform public discussion on ethnic diversity: it may be beneficial not only for providing variety in perspectives and skills, but also because diversity facilitates friction that enhances deliberation and upends conformity.

What art unveils

I pass on some initial and final clips from an essay by Alva Noë that is worth reading in its entirely.

Is there a way of thinking about art that will get us closer to an understanding of its essential nature, and our own?...the trend is to try to answer these questions in the key of neuroscience. I recommend a different approach, but not because I don’t think it is crucial to explore the links between art and our biological nature. The problem is that neuroscience has yet to frame an adequate conception of our nature. You look in vain in the writings of neuroscientists for satisfying accounts of experience or consciousness. For this reason, I believe, we can’t use neuroscience to explain art and its place in our lives. Indeed, if I am right, the order of explanation may go in the other direction: Art can help us frame a better picture of our human nature.

...Design, the work of technology, stops, and art begins, when we are unable to take the background of our familiar technologies and activities for granted, and when we can no longer take for granted what is, in fact, a precondition of the very natural-seeming intelligibility of such things as doorknobs and pictures, words and sounds. When you and are I talking, I don’t pay attention to the noises you are making; your language is a transparency through which I encounter you. Design, at least when it is optimal, is transparent in just this way; it disappears from view and gets absorbed in application. You study the digital image of the shirt on the website, you don’t contemplate its image.

Art, in contrast, makes things strange. You do contemplate the image, when you examine Leonardo’s depiction of the lady with the ermine. You are likely, for example, to notice her jarringly oversized and masculine hand and to wonder why Leonardo draws our attention to that feature of this otherwise beautiful young person. Art disrupts plain looking and it does so on purpose. By doing so it discloses just what plain looking conceals.

Art unveils us ourselves. Art is a making activity because we are by nature and culture organized by making activities. A work of art is a strange tool. It is an alien implement that affords us the opportunity to bring into view everything that was hidden in the background.

If I am right, art isn’t a phenomenon to be explained. Not by neuroscience, and not by philosophy. Art is itself a research practice, a way of investigating the world and ourselves. Art displays us to ourselves, and in a way makes us anew, by disrupting our habitual activities of doing and making.

Our brain activity at rest predicts our performance on tasks.

The Science Mazaine precis of Travor et al.:

We all differ in how we perceive, think, and act. What drives individual differences in evoked brain activity? Tavor et al. applied computational models to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from the Human Connectome Project. Brain activity in the “resting” state when subjects were not performing any explicit task predicted differences in fMRI activation across a range of cognitive paradigms. This suggests that individual differences in many cognitive tasks are a stable trait marker. Resting-state functional connectivity thus already contains the repertoire that is then expressed during task-based fMRI.

And the article abstract:

When asked to perform the same task, different individuals exhibit markedly different patterns of brain activity. This variability is often attributed to volatile factors, such as task strategy or compliance. We propose that individual differences in brain responses are, to a large degree, inherent to the brain and can be predicted from task-independent measurements collected at rest. Using a large set of task conditions, spanning several behavioral domains, we train a simple model that relates task-independent measurements to task activity and evaluate the model by predicting task activation maps for unseen subjects using magnetic resonance imaging. Our model can accurately predict individual differences in brain activity and highlights a coupling between brain connectivity and function that can be captured at the level of individual subjects.

The key to political persuasion

I pass on clips from this interesting piece, that has been languishing in my queue of potential posts for some time, in which Willer and Feinberg give a more accessible account of their work reported in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

In business, everyone knows that if you want to persuade people to make a deal with you, you have to focus on what they value, not what you do. If you’re trying to sell your car, you emphasize the features of the sale that appeal to the buyer (the reliability and reasonable price of the vehicle), not the ones that appeal to you (the influx of cash).

This rule of salesmanship also applies in political debate — i.e., you should frame your position in terms of the moral values of the person you’re trying to convince. But when it comes to politics, this turns out to be hard to do. We found that people struggled to set aside their reasons for taking a political position and failed to consider how someone with different values might come to support that same position.

In one study, we presented liberals and conservatives with one of two messages in support of same-sex marriage. One message emphasized the need for equal rights for same-sex couples. This is the sort of fairness-based message that liberals typically advance for same-sex marriage. It is framed in terms of a value — equality — that research has shown resonates more strongly among liberals than conservatives. The other message was designed to appeal to values of patriotism and group loyalty, which have been shown to resonate more with conservatives. (It argued that “same-sex couples are proud and patriotic Americans” who “contribute to the American economy and society.”)

Liberals showed the same support for same-sex marriage regardless of which message they encountered. But conservatives supported same-sex marriage significantly more if they read the patriotism message rather than the fairness one.

In a parallel experiment, we targeted liberals for persuasion. We presented a group of liberals and conservatives with one of two messages in support of increased military spending. One message argued that we should “take pride in our military,” which “unifies us both at home and abroad.” The other argued that military spending is necessary because, through the military, the poor and disadvantaged “can achieve equal standing,” by ensuring they have “a reliable salary and a future apart from the challenges of poverty and inequality.”

For conservatives, it didn’t matter which message they read; their support for military spending was the same. However, liberals expressed significantly greater support for increasing military spending if they read the fairness message rather than the patriotism one.

If you’re thinking that these reframed arguments don’t sound like ones that conservatives and liberals would naturally be inclined to make, you’re right. In an additional study, we asked liberals to write a persuasive argument in favor of same-sex marriage aimed at convincing conservatives — and we offered a cash prize to the participant who wrote the most persuasive message. Despite the financial incentive, just 9 percent of liberals made arguments that appealed to more conservative notions of morality, while 69 percent made arguments based on more liberal values.

Conservatives were not much better. When asked to write an argument in favor of making English the official language of the United States that would be persuasive to liberals (with the same cash incentive), just 8 percent of conservatives appealed to liberal values, while 59 percent drew upon conservative values.

Why do we find moral reframing so challenging? There are a number of reasons. You might find it off-putting to endorse values that you don’t hold yourself. You might not see a link between your political positions and your audience’s values. And you might not even know that your audience endorses different values from your own. But whatever the source of the gulf, it can be bridged with effort and consideration.

Maybe reframing political arguments in terms of your audience’s morality should be viewed less as an exercise in targeted, strategic persuasion, and more as an exercise in real, substantive perspective taking. To do it, you have to get into the heads of the people you’d like to persuade, think about what they care about and make arguments that embrace their principles. If you can do that, it will show that you view those with whom you disagree not as enemies, but as people whose values are worth your consideration.

Even if the arguments that you wind up making aren’t those that you would find most appealing, you will have dignified the morality of your political rivals with your attention, which, if you think about it, is the least that we owe our fellow citizens.

Our perception of our body shape is very malleable - making your finger feel shorter.

Here is a neat trick. It works! (I tried it). Ekroll et al. show that illusory visual completion of an object's invisible backside can make you finger feel shorter. Here is their summary and the central graphic from the article.

Highlights

•The experience of the hidden backsides of things acts as a real percept 

•These percepts have causal powers, although they do not correspond to real objects 

•They can evoke a bizarre illusion in which the observer’s own finger feels shrunken 

•The perceptual representation of body shape is highly malleable

Summary

In a well-known magic trick known as multiplying balls, conjurers fool their audience with the use of a semi-spherical shell, which the audience perceives as a complete ball. Here, we report that this illusion persists even when observers touch the inside of the shell with their own finger. Even more intriguingly, this also produces an illusion of bodily self-awareness in which the finger feels shorter, as if to make space for the purely illusory volume of the visually completed ball. This observation provides strong evidence for the controversial and counterintuitive idea that our experience of the hidden backsides of objects is shaped by genuine perceptual representations rather than mere cognitive guesswork or imagery.

Figure

A Well-Known Magic Trick and the Shrunken Finger Illusion

(A and B) The multiplying balls routine. The magician first holds what seems to be a single ball between his fingers (A). After a quick flick of the wrist, a second ball seems to materialize (B). In reality, the lower “ball” is a hollow semi-spherical shell, from which the real ball is pulled out.

(C and D) Schematic illustration of the shrunken finger illusion. When a semi-spherical shell is balanced on the observer’s finger as shown in (C) and viewed from above, the observer often reports perceiving the shell as a complete ball (D), while his or her finger is felt to be unusually short, as if to make space for the illusory volume of the complete ball. Note that this drawing is an exaggerated caricature of the perceptual experience. In particular, the real effect may be smaller than depicted here. In the experiments, only the middle finger was extended, while the other fingers were closed to a fist (see Figure below).

What happens if we all live to 100?

I want to mention an interesting article by Easterbrook that has been languishing in my queue of potential posts for more than a year. It notes numerous studies on aging and life extension, and the question of how long the eerily linear rise in life expectancy since 1840 (from the 40's to the 80's) can continue. Two clips:

No specific development or discovery has caused the rise: improvements in nutrition, public health, sanitation, and medical knowledge all have helped, but the operative impetus has been the “stream of continuing progress.”

One view is that increases will continue at least until life expectancy at birth surpasses 100. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago disagrees, saying:

...the rise in life expectancy will “hit a wall soon, if it hasn’t already....Most of the 20th-century gains in longevity came from reduced infant mortality, and those were one time gains.” Infant mortality in the United States trails some other nations’, but has dropped so much—down to one in 170—that little room for improvement remains. “There’s tremendous statistical impact on life expectancy when the young are saved,” Olshansky says. “A reduction in infant mortality saves the entire span of a person’s life. Avoiding mortality in a young person—say, by vaccine—saves most of the person’s life. Changes in medicine or lifestyle that extend the lives of the old don’t add much to the numbers.” Olshansky calculates that if cancer were eliminated, American life expectancy would rise by only three years, because a host of other chronic fatal diseases are waiting to take its place. He thinks the 21st century will see the average life span extend “another 10 years or so,” with a bonus of more health span. Then the increase will slow noticeably, or stop.

Easterbrook's discussion of the social, economic, and political aspects of our graying future is well worth reading. The number of Americans 65 or older could reach 108 million by 2050, like adding three more Floridas inhabited entirely by seniors.

The nonpartisan think tank Third Way has calculated that at the beginning of the Kennedy presidency, the federal government spent $2.50 on public investments—infrastructure, education, and research—for every $1 it spent on entitlements. By 2022, Third Way predicts, the government will spend $5 on entitlements for every $1 on public investments. Infrastructure, education, and research lead to economic growth; entitlement subsidies merely allow the nation to tread water.

Semantic maps in our brains - and some interactive graphics

Huth et al. have performed functional MRI on subjects listening to hours of narrative stories to find semantic domains that seem to be consistent across individuals. This interactive 3D viewer (a preliminary version with limited data that takes a while to download and requires a fairly fast computer) shows a color coding of areas with different semantic selectivities (body part, person, place, time, outdoor, visual, tactile, violence, etc.) Here is their Nature abstract:

The meaning of language is represented in regions of the cerebral cortex collectively known as the ‘semantic system’. However, little of the semantic system has been mapped comprehensively, and the semantic selectivity of most regions is unknown. Here we systematically map semantic selectivity across the cortex using voxel-wise modelling of functional MRI (fMRI) data collected while subjects listened to hours of narrative stories. We show that the semantic system is organized into intricate patterns that seem to be consistent across individuals. We then use a novel generative model to create a detailed semantic atlas. Our results suggest that most areas within the semantic system represent information about specific semantic domains, or groups of related concepts, and our atlas shows which domains are represented in each area. This study demonstrates that data-driven methods—commonplace in studies of human neuroanatomy and functional connectivity—provide a powerful and efficient means for mapping functional representations in the brain.

Video games for Neuro-Cognitive Optimization

Continuing the MindBlog thread on brain games (cf. here), I pass on the introduction to a brief review by Mishra, Anguera, and Gazzaley on designing the next generation of closed-loop video games (CLVGs) that offer the prospect of enhancing cognition:

Humans of all ages engage deeply in game play. Game-based interactive environments provide a rich source of enjoyment, but also generate powerful experiences that promote learning and behavioral change (Pellegrini, 2009). In the modern era, software-based video games have become ubiquitous. The degree of interactivity and immersion in these video games can now be further enhanced like never before with the advent of consumer-accessible technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, wearable physiological devices, and motion capture, all of which can be readily integrated using accessible game engines. This technological revolution presents a huge opportunity for neuroscientists to design targeted, novel game-based tools that drive positive neuroplasticity, accelerate learning, and strengthen cognitive function, and thereby promote mental wellbeing in both healthy and impaired brains.

In fact, there is now a burgeoning brain-training industry that already claims to have achieved this goal. However, many commercial claims are unsubstantiated and dismissed by the scientific community (Max Planck Institute for Human Development/Stanford Center on Longevity, 2014, Underwood, 2016). It seems prudent for us to slow down and approach this opportunity with scientific rigor and conservative optimism. Enhancing brain function should not be viewed as a clever, profitable start-up idea that can be conquered with a large marketing budget. If the field continues to be led by overinflated claims, we will jeopardize the careful and iterative process of evidence-based innovations in brain training and thereby risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

To strike the right balance, the path to commercialization needs to be accomplished via cutting-edge, neuroscientifically informed video game development tightly coupled with refinement and validation of the software in well-controlled empirical studies. Additionally, to separate the grain from the chaff, these studies and the claims based on them need verification and approval by independent regulatory agencies and the broader scientific community. High-level video game development and rigorous scientific validation need to become the twin pillar foundations of the next generation of closed-loop video games (CLVGs). Here, we define CLVGs as interactive video games that incorporate rapid, real-time, performance-driven, adaptive game challenges and performance feedback. The time is ideal for intensified effort in this important endeavor; CLVGs that are methodically developed and validated have the potential to benefit a broad array of disciplines in need of effective tools to enhance brain function, including education, medicine, and wellness.

Embodied Prediction - perception and mind turned upside down

Andy Clark does a fascinating discussion and analysis of predictive processing, which turns the traditional picture of perception on its head. The embodied mind model, which seems to me completely compelling, shows the stark inadequacy of most brain centered models of mind and cognition. I pass on the end of his introduction and the closing paragraph of the essay. (This essay is just one of many on a fascinating website , Open Mind, that has posted 39 essays (edited by Thomas Metzinger and Jennifer Windt) by contributors who are both junior and senior members of the academic philosophy of mind field.

Predictive processing plausibly represents the last and most radical step in a retreat from the passive, input-dominated view of the flow of neural processing. According to this emerging class of models, naturally intelligent systems (humans and other animals) do not passively await sensory stimulation. Instead, they are constantly active, trying to predict the streams of sensory stimulation before they arrive. Before an “input” arrives on the scene, these pro-active cognitive systems are already busy predicting its most probable shape and implications. Systems like this are already (and almost constantly) poised to act, and all they need to process are any sensed deviations from the predicted state. It is these calculated deviations from predicted states (known as prediction errors) that thus bear much of the information-processing burden, informing us of what is salient and newsworthy within the dense sensory barrage. The extensive use of top-down probabilistic prediction here provides an effective means of avoiding the kinds of “representational bottleneck” feared by early opponents of representation-heavy—but feed-forward dominated—forms of processing. Instead, the downward flow of prediction now does most of the computational “heavy-lifting”, allowing moment-by-moment processing to focus only on the newsworthy departures signified by salient prediction errors. Such economy and preparedness is biologically attractive, and neatly sidesteps the many processing bottlenecks associated with more passive models of the flow of information.

Action itself...then needs to be reconceived. Action is not so much a response to an input as a neat and efficient way of selecting the next “input”, and thereby driving a rolling cycle. These hyperactive systems are constantly predicting their own upcoming states, and actively moving so as to bring some of them into being. We thus act so as to bring forth the evolving streams of sensory information that keep us viable (keeping us fed, warm, and watered) and that serve our increasingly recondite ends. PP thus implements a comprehensive reversal of the traditional (bottom-up, forward-flowing) schema. The largest contributor to ongoing neural response, if PP is correct, is the ceaseless anticipatory buzz of downwards-flowing neural prediction that drives both perception and action. Incoming sensory information is just one further factor perturbing those restless pro-active seas. Within those seas, percepts and actions emerge via a recurrent cascade of sub-personal predictions forged from unconscious expectations spanning multiple spatial and temporal scales.

Conceptually, this implies a striking reversal, in that the driving sensory signal is really just providing corrective feedback on the emerging top-down predictions. As ever-active prediction engines, these kinds of minds are not, fundamentally, in the business of solving puzzles given to them as inputs. Rather, they are in the business of keeping us one step ahead of the game, poised to act and actively eliciting the sensory flows that keep us viable and fulfilled. If this is on track, then just about every aspect of the passive forward-flowing model is false. We are not passive cognitive couch potatoes so much as proactive predictavores, forever trying to stay one step ahead of the incoming waves of sensory stimulation.

Conclusion: Towards a mature science of the embodied mind

By self-organizing around prediction error, and by learning a generative rather than a merely discriminative (i.e., pattern-classifying) model, these approaches realize many of the goals of previous work in artificial neural networks, robotics, dynamical systems theory, and classical cognitive science. They self-organize around prediction error signals, perform unsupervised learning using a multi-level architecture, and acquire a satisfying grip—courtesy of the problem decompositions enabled by their hierarchical form—upon structural relations within a domain. They do this, moreover, in ways that are firmly grounded in the patterns of sensorimotor experience that structure learning, using continuous, non-linguaform, inner encodings (probability density functions and probabilistic inference). Precision-based restructuring of patterns of effective connectivity then allow us to nest simplicity within complexity, and to make as much (or as little) use of body and world as task and context dictate. This is encouraging. It might even be that models in this broad ballpark offer us a first glimpse of the shape of a fundamental and unified science of the embodied mind.

The privileged fifth.

I tweeted this well researched OpEd piece by Thomas Edsall the first time I read it, and after my third reading, want to urge you to read it.  I pass on two  summary graphics that are part of the description of how the privileged top fifth of the U.S. population is becoming a self-perpetuating class that is steadily separating itself by geography, education, and income.

Sleep deprivation, brain structure, and learning

Saletin et al. find that individual differences in the anatomy of the human hippocampus explain many of the differences in learning impairment after sleep loss. These structural differences also predict the subsequent EEG slow-wave activity during recovery sleep and the restoration of learning after sleep.

Significance statement

Sleep deprivation does not impact all people equally. Some individuals show cognitive resilience to the effects of sleep loss, whereas others express striking vulnerability, the reasons for which remain largely unknown. Here, we demonstrate that structural features of the human brain, specifically those within the hippocampus, accurately predict which individuals are susceptible (or conversely, resilient) to memory impairments caused by sleep deprivation. Moreover, this same structural feature determines the success of memory restoration following subsequent recovery sleep. Therefore, structural properties of the human brain represent a novel biomarker predicting individual vulnerability to (and recovery from) the effects of sleep loss, one with occupational relevance in professions where insufficient sleep is pervasive yet memory function is paramount.

Abstract

Sleep deprivation impairs the formation of new memories. However, marked interindividual variability exists in the degree to which sleep loss compromises learning, the mechanistic reasons for which are unclear. Furthermore, which physiological sleep processes restore learning ability following sleep deprivation are similarly unknown. Here, we demonstrate that the structural morphology of human hippocampal subfields represents one factor determining vulnerability (and conversely, resilience) to the impact of sleep deprivation on memory formation. Moreover, this same measure of brain morphology was further associated with the quality of nonrapid eye movement slow wave oscillations during recovery sleep, and by way of such activity, determined the success of memory restoration. Such findings provide a novel human biomarker of cognitive susceptibility to, and recovery from, sleep deprivation. Moreover, this metric may be of special predictive utility for professions in which memory function is paramount yet insufficient sleep is pervasive (e.g., aviation, military, and medicine).

For further reading on insomnia, this article notes several other studies, one noting several right brain regions of lowered connectivity in people with primary insomnia.

Grandiose narcissism and the U.S. presidency

Many of us are scratching our heads about what a Trump presidency might be like, particularly in regard to his outstanding personality trait: grandiose narcissism. Watts et al. have looked at the historical record to note how this trait has correlated with both positive and negative leadership behaviors in U.S. presidents up until Obama. Their abstract:

Recent research and theorizing suggest that narcissism may predict both positive and negative leadership behaviors. We tested this hypothesis with data on the 42 U.S. presidents up to and including George W. Bush, using (a) expert-derived narcissism estimates, (b) independent historical surveys of presidential performance, and (c) largely or entirely objective indicators of presidential performance. Grandiose, but not vulnerable, narcissism was associated with superior overall greatness in an aggregate poll; it was also positively associated with public persuasiveness, crisis management, agenda setting, and allied behaviors, and with several objective indicators of performance, such as winning the popular vote and initiating legislation. Nevertheless, grandiose narcissism was also associated with several negative outcomes, including congressional impeachment resolutions and unethical behaviors. We found that presidents exhibit elevated levels of grandiose narcissism compared with the general population, and that presidents’ grandiose narcissism has been rising over time. Our findings suggest that grandiose narcissism may be a double-edged sword in the leadership domain.

The two highest scorers on grandiose narcissism were Lyndon B. Johnson and Theodore Roosevelt. Richard M. Nixon scored high on "vulnerable narcissism," a trait associated with being self-absorbed and thin-skinned. From the authors' popular account of their work:

Studies in the Journal of Personality in 2013 and in Personality and Individual Differences in 2009 have shown that narcissistic individuals tend to impress others during brief interactions and to perform well in public, two attributes that lend themselves to political success. They are also willing to take risks, which can be a valuable asset in a leader.

In contrast, the psychologist W. Keith Campbell and others have found that narcissists tend to be overconfident when making decisions, to overestimate their abilities and to portray their ideas as innovative when they are not. Compared with their non-narcissistic counterparts, they are more likely to accumulate resources for themselves at others’ expense.

The psychologists Brad Bushman and Roy F. Baumeister have found that narcissists, but not people with garden-variety high self-esteem, are prone to retaliating harshly against people who have criticized them. If, for example, you present narcissists with negative feedback about essays they’ve written, they’re likely to exact revenge against their presumed essay evaluators by blasting them with loud noises (as one amusing study found).

Still other work by the psychologist Mitja Back and colleagues suggests that narcissists are generally well liked in the short term, often creating positive first impressions. Other research indicates, though, that after a while they are usually more disliked than other individuals. Their charisma tends to wear off.

Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?

I want to pass on some clips from Silk's recent review of Frans de Waal's recent book whose title is the title of this post:

Natural selection, he argues, shapes cognitive abilities in the same way as it shapes traits such as wing length. As animals' challenges and habitats differ, so do their cognitive abilities. This idea, which he calls evolutionary cognition, has gained traction in psychology and biology in the past few decades.

For de Waal, evolutionary cognition has two key consequences. First, it is inconsistent with the concept of a 'great chain of being' in which organisms can be ordered from primitive to advanced, simple to complex, stupid to smart. Name a 'unique' human trait, and biologists will find another organism with a similar one. Humans make and use tools; so do wild New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides). Humans develop cultures; so do humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), which socially transmit foraging techniques. We can mentally 'time travel', remembering past events and planning for the future; so can western scrub jays (Aphelocoma californica), which can recall what they had for breakfast on one day, anticipate whether they will be given breakfast the next and selectively cache food when breakfast won't be delivered.

Furthermore, humans do not necessarily outdo other animals in all cognitive domains. Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) store seeds in hundreds of locations each day, and can remember what they stored and where, as well as whether items in each location have been eaten, or stolen. Natural selection has favoured those prodigious feats of memory because they spell the difference between surviving winter and starving before spring. Human memory doesn't need to be as good: primates evolved in the tropics. “In the utilitarian view of biology,” de Waal argues, “animals have the brains they need — nothing more, nothing less.”

The second consequence of de Waal's view is that there is continuity across taxa. One source of continuity is based on evolutionary history: natural selection modifies traits to create new ones, producing commonalities among species with a common history. He points out that tool use is found not just in humans and chimpanzees, but also in other apes and monkeys, implying that relevant cognitive building blocks are shared across all primates. Continuity is also generated by convergent evolution, which produces similar traits in distantly related organisms such as New Caledonian crows and capuchin monkeys. De Waal opines that continuity “ought to be the default position for at least all mammals, and perhaps also birds and other vertebrates”.

...researchers are eager to understand what is distinctly human; some are driven by curiosity about how humans came to dominate the planet..Our success presumably has something to do with the emergence of a unique suite of cognitive traits...De Waal recognizes only one such trait: our rich and flexible system of symbolic communication, and our ability to exchange information about past and future. His commitment to the principle of continuity forces him to discount the importance of language for human cognition because of evidence of thinking by non-linguistic creatures. And he ignores compelling findings from linguists and developmental psychologists such as Elizabeth Spelke on the formative role of language in cognition.

A more satisfying book would leave readers with a clearer understanding of why, a few million years after our lineage diverged from the lineage of chimpanzees, we are the ones reading this book, and not them.

Essential role of default mode network in higher cognitive processing.

The respective roles of attentional and default mode networks in our brains has been the subject of numerous MindBlog posts (enter 'default mode' in the search box in the left column). A summary article by Bola and Borchardt notes an important recent contribution by Vatansever et al., whose abstract is shown below, followed by a graphic from the summary article.  Their work changes the previous view that the default mode disengages during goal-directed tasks.

ABSTRACT

The default mode network (DMN) has been traditionally assumed to hinder behavioral performance in externally focused, goal-directed paradigms and to provide no active contribution to human cognition. However, recent evidence suggests greater DMN activity in an array of tasks, especially those that involve self-referential and memory-based processing. Although data that robustly demonstrate a comprehensive functional role for DMN remains relatively scarce, the global workspace framework, which implicates the DMN in global information integration for conscious processing, can potentially provide an explanation for the broad range of higher-order paradigms that report DMN involvement. We used graph theoretical measures to assess the contribution of the DMN to global functional connectivity dynamics in 22 healthy volunteers during an fMRI-based n-back working-memory paradigm with parametric increases in difficulty. Our predominant finding is that brain modularity decreases with greater task demands, thus adapting a more global workspace configuration, in direct relation to increases in reaction times to correct responses. Flexible default mode regions dynamically switch community memberships and display significant changes in their nodal participation coefficient and strength, which may reflect the observed whole-brain changes in functional connectivity architecture. These findings have important implications for our understanding of healthy brain function, as they suggest a central role for the DMN in higher cognitive processing.

SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT

The default mode network (DMN) has been shown to increase its activity during the absence of external stimulation, and hence was historically assumed to disengage during goal-directed tasks. Recent evidence, however, implicates the DMN in self-referential and memory-based processing. We provide robust evidence for this network's active contribution to working memory by revealing dynamic reconfiguration in its interactions with other networks and offer an explanation within the global workspace theoretical framework. These promising findings may help redefine our understanding of the exact DMN role in human cognition.

Graphic from Review

Schematic representation of the main findings of Vatansever et al. Community representation and colors are in the style of Figures 1 and 3 in the article by Vatansever et al. (2015), and the DMN is represented by Community 4. In the low-demanding 0-back condition, the network was highly modular (high Q index) and was divided into four distinct modules. With the increasing cognitive load, the modularity of the network decreased, and three communities merged into one. Thus, while local segregation was prevalent in the low-demanding task, increasing cognitive effort was associated with more pronounced global integration.

How to attract others.

Well, Duh...... Interesting, but talk about showing the obvious!.. from Vacharkulksemsuka et al.:

Across two field studies of romantic attraction, we demonstrate that postural expansiveness makes humans more romantically appealing. In a field study (n = 144 speed-dates), we coded nonverbal behaviors associated with liking, love, and dominance. Postural expansiveness—expanding the body in physical space—was most predictive of attraction, with each one-unit increase in coded behavior from the video recordings nearly doubling a person’s odds of getting a “yes” response from one’s speed-dating partner. In a subsequent field experiment (n = 3,000), we tested the causality of postural expansion (vs. contraction) on attraction using a popular Global Positioning System-based online-dating application. Mate-seekers rapidly flipped through photographs of potential sexual/date partners, selecting those they desired to meet for a date. Mate-seekers were significantly more likely to select partners displaying an expansive (vs. contractive) nonverbal posture. Mediation analyses demonstrate one plausible mechanism through which expansiveness is appealing: Expansiveness makes the dating candidate appear more dominant. In a dating world in which success sometimes is determined by a split-second decision rendered after a brief interaction or exposure to a static photograph, single persons have very little time to make a good impression. Our research suggests that a nonverbal dominance display increases a person’s chances of being selected as a potential mate.

Impulsivity, sensation seeking, and substance use correlate with reduced brain cortical thickness.

From Holmes et al.:

Individuals vary widely in their tendency to seek stimulation and act impulsively, early developing traits with genetic origins. Failures to regulate these behaviors increase risk for maladaptive outcomes including substance abuse. Here, we explored the neuroanatomical correlates of sensation seeking and impulsivity in healthy young adults. Our analyses revealed links between sensation seeking and reduced cortical thickness that were preferentially localized to regions implicated in cognitive control, including anterior cingulate and middle frontal gyrus (n = 1015). These associations generalized to self-reported motor impulsivity, replicated in an independent group (n = 219), and correlated with heightened alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine use. Critically, the relations between sensation seeking and brain structure were evident in participants without a history of alcohol or tobacco use, suggesting that observed associations with anatomy are not solely a consequence of substance use. These results demonstrate that individual differences in the tendency to seek stimulation, act on impulse, and engage in substance use are correlated with the anatomical structure of cognitive control circuitry. Our findings suggest that, in healthy populations, covariation across these complex multidimensional behaviors may in part originate from a common underlying biology.

Metaphorical conflict shapes social perception when spatial and ideological collide.

Kleiman et al. do some intriguing experiments. I give you their abstract first, which doesn't actually say how they did the experiments, and then give you some further description from their text. The abstract:

In the present article, we introduce the concept of metaphorical conflict—a conflict between the concrete and abstract aspects of a metaphor. We used the association between the concrete (spatial) and abstract (ideological) components of the political left-right metaphor to demonstrate that metaphorical conflict has marked implications for cognitive processing and social perception. Specifically, we showed that creating conflict between a spatial location and a metaphorically linked concept reduces perceived differences between the attitudes of partisans who are generally viewed as possessing fundamentally different worldviews (Democrats and Republicans). We further demonstrated that metaphorical conflict reduces perceived attitude differences by creating a mind-set in which categories are represented as possessing broader boundaries than when concepts are metaphorically compatible. These results suggest that metaphorical conflict shapes social perception by making members of distinct groups appear more similar than they are generally thought to be. These findings have important implications for research on conflict, embodied cognition, and social perception.

In the first experiment they asked subjects to categorize a series of pictures of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. One group categorized the Romney pictures using their right hand (the P key)and Obama pictures with their left hand using the Q key - compatible with the right wing, left wing political metaphor. A second group was asked to identify Obama with their right hand and Romney with their left - in this case the physical action and the candidate's ideology were metaphorically incompatible. The interesting result was that:

...participants in the incompatible condition perceived the difference between the candidates’ ideologies as smaller than did participants in the compatible condition...Additionally, participants in the incompatible condition perceived the difference between the candidates’ stances on specific political issues as smaller than did participants in the compatible condition

A second experiment asked participants to estimate the ideology of the typical Democrat and Republican using a scale of 1 to 9 that was either compatible or incompatible with the metaphorical association linking spatial locations to political ideologies.

Participants assigned to the incompatible condition (n = 194) provided their response on a horizontally displayed scale with the values in the opposite sequence, that is, from 1 (extremely conservative) to 9 (extremely liberal). Note that this scale reversed the traditional spatial assignment and placed liberal views on the right and conservative views on the left, which metaphorically puts the physical location and ideology in conflict... consistent with predictions, participants who rated their perceptions on the incompatible scale perceived the typical Republican’s and typical Democrat’s attitudes as more similar than did participants who rated their perceptions on the compatible scale.

Two further control experiments were done.

Political polarization and prejudice.

Yesterday's post dealt with softening prejudicial attitudes towards transgender people. This is relevant to prejudice rising from the right versus left political polarization that continues to increase in this county. From a recent NYTimes OpEd piece by Arthur Brooks:

Thirty-eight percent of Democrats have a “very unfavorable” view of Republicans, and 43 percent of Republicans hold that view of Democrats. About half of “consistently liberal” Americans say most of their friends share their views, and about a third say it’s important to live in a place where that is so. For those who are “consistently conservative,” these preferences are even more pronounced.

...the average American is becoming more ideologically predictable. A Pew Research Center study from 2014 shows that the share of Americans with “consistently conservative” or “consistently liberal” views has more than doubled in the last two decades to 21 percent from 10 percent...In 1994, nearly 40 percent of Republicans were more liberal than the median Democrat, and 30 percent of Democrats were more conservative than the median Republican. Today, those numbers have plummeted to 8 percent and 6 percent.

This polarization has led to political discrimination that studies have shown to be stronger than racial discrimination

...Bigotry’s cousin is contempt...Watch and listen to politically polarized commentary today, and you will see that it is more contemptuous than angry, overflowing with sneering, mockery and disgust.

So what’s the antidote? I asked the Dalai Lama, one of the world’s experts on bringing people together. He made two points. First, the solution starts not with institutions, but with individuals. We look too much to political parties or Congress to make progress, but not nearly enough at our own behavior...You can’t single-handedly change the country, but you can change yourself. By declaring your independence from the bitterness washing over our nation, you can strike a small blow for greater national unity.

Second, each of us must aspire to what the Dalai Lama calls “warmheartedness” toward those with whom we disagree. This might sound squishy, but it is actually tough and practical advice. As he has stated, “I defeat my enemies when I make them my friends.” He is not advocating surrender to the views of those with whom we disagree. Liberals should be liberals and conservatives should be conservatives. But our duty is to be respectful, fair and friendly to all, even those with whom we have great differences.

Yesterday's post on changing prejudice suggests a further technique for reconciliation: active or analogic perspective taking. This is essentially imagining a situation in which you felt contempt from others, and also putting yourself in the shoes of others, imagining their concerns, etc.