Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-04-11
Abstract： Olfaction is phylogenetically one of the oldest organism adaptations, playing an important role in human survival and development, potentially influencing interpersonal perceptions, moral judgments, prosocial behavior decisions, and consumption preferences, in addition to guiding individuals to avoid potential risks, renders it a topic of substantial research interest. Various hypotheses have been advocated, including the evolutionary, pharmacological, emotion-induced, embodied metaphor, and social construction hypotheses. These hypotheses attempt to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the influence of olfaction on social judgment and decision-making from five perspectives: phylogenetics, body interaction, emotion-induced, cognitive, and interpersonal interaction. Extensive research lacks consideration of individual differences in olfactory perception, variability in olfactory manipulation, and integration of olfactory clues with other sensory modalities. These issues can be addressed in a targeted manner in the future, and research related to olfaction can be further explained in fields of cross-modal, localized, and cross-cultural, as well as social life applications, such as consumer psychology.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Taste is one of the indispensable feelings for human survival, and has substantially extended beyond the direct feeling of “tongue tip.” Taste affects individual perceptions and judgment of interpersonal relationship and ethics, and changes individual decision-making on risk-taking and consumption. Emotional intermediary, embodied metaphor, evolutionary, and social construction hypotheses are different perspectives used to explain the influence of taste on judgment and decision-making. The existing research has some limitations, such as individual differences in taste perception, difficulty in ensuring the validity of taste measurement, lack of unified research paradigm in taste experiment. Hence, future research should continue to verify the taste metaphor and apply it to the fields of sensory marketing and psychological therapy. The current study intensively analyzes taste from the aspects of physiology, psychology, and society, and discuses all facets of the mechanism and effects of taste on judgment and decision-making.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： What is meant by “body” here? There are many understandings about what the human body is, which promote a variety of research programs in cognitive science in general and cognitive psychology in particular. The classical information-processing model of cognitive psychology treated the body as a biophysical substance that is different from the mind as a mental substance. Therefore, as a science of mind, the body has always been ignored and relegated to the position of a “physiological basis” of the mind. The classical cognitive psychology is founded on the idea that brain is something like a digital computer in which the physical structure of the brain is like a hardware, and the cognition is a software. In other words, the cognition was assumed as a computation of a computer. Usually, computation is understood as the rule-governed manipulation of representations, therefore, it requires the assumption that the mind contains some cognitive representations of aspects of the objective world that is independent of our perceptual and cognitive capacities. The cognitive representations are abstract symbols and they are amodal and exist independent of structures and functions of the body. As if the body is only a “carrier” or “container” of the mind. In contrast, embodiment theories of cognitive psychology had tried to distance itself from the classical cognitive psychology, highlighting the pervasiveness of in cognition of bodily factors. Right now, there are many approaches and programs sailing under the banner of “embodied cognition.” A “moderate” or “weak” approaches to embodied cognitive psychology do not separate the body from the mind. They take the body as more in mind, and want to elevate the importance of the body in explaining cognitive processes. From the point of view of the moderates, cognition is in essence a kinds of bodily experience, and the nature of our bodies shapes our very possibilities for our thinking and feeling. For the moderates, cognition is still involved in mental representation and computable processing which are staples of classical cognitive psychology. However, the cognitive representations are not disembodied symbols, but are body-formatted or body-related codes. The “radical” or “strong” approaches to embodied cognitive psychology claim that cognitive systems do not rely on internal representations and computations. Human cognition should be explained without the ascription of representational mental states. Our cognition is essentially grounded in the brain as it is integrated with our body. The nature of our cognitive processes is determined by the specific action possibilities afforded by our body. Our cognitive system is for action, and about solving problems for the organism, not for forming cognitive representations. Cognition is essentially a embodied action.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： There are different theoretical views in the embodied cognition camp, and there is sometimes even conflict among them. Enactive cognition is a new version of recently developed embodied cognition approaches. It claims that the explanation of human cognitive processes across the board should not make any appeal to internal representational or computational states. According to the traditional computation-representation theory of mind, cognitive processes are mechanistically realized in computational processes of building, storing and manipulating detached and abstract internal representations. This cognitivist paradigm has dominated mainstream cognitive psychology for decades. The key assumptions that characterize this representation- centered theory of mind are including that cognition might be understood as computation over mental representations, and that models of cognition should take into account only the inner states of a cognitive individual. But recently this framework has been challenged and criticized. Out of this challenge and criticism emerged the beginnings to an enactive cognition paradigm. The enactive approach to cognitive science proposed a new set of theoretical assumptions for understanding what cognition is and how it works that aims to break the tight conceptual connection between cognition and representation. It takes as its starting point that cognition must not be understood as a capacity for getting an internal representation of a corresponding external reality, which in turn would provide a foundation for supporting thinking, learning, and problem solving. Instead, cognitive processes are deeply entangled in action. Cognition is thus best understood as “enactive”; that is, as a form of practice itself. From the point view of enactive cognition, cognition comes from bodily action and serves bodily action, that is, cognition is embodied action. The key postulate of enactive Cognition is action-related and action-oriented, with the capacity to generate environmental structure by action. Cognition is thus best understood as “enactive”; that is, as embedded action it comes from bodily action and serves bodily action. At the same time, advocates of enactivism state that despite the emphasis on the function of the organism’s action of the mind, the model cannot be equated with behaviorism; action, in contrast to behavior, is purposeful and has a cognitive component. Key aspects of enactive cognition are: (1) perception consists in perceptually guided action and (2) cognitive structures emerge from the recurrent sensorimotor patterns that allow action to be perceptually guided. There are three enactive theories in cognitive science. Autopoietic enactivism emphasizes the deep continuity between life and mind; sensorimotor enactivism focuses on analyzing perceptual consciousness in terms of sensorimotor contingency, and radical enactivism focuses on rejecting representationalism in favour of explanatory strategies that emphasize patterns of embodied interaction. These perspectives on enactive cognition are more informed by phenomenology and pragmatism than were earlier versions of embodied cognition. Therefore, we can say that phenomenology and pragmatism constitute the theoretical origin of enactive cognition. The enactive cognition view is not only theoretically viable, but also supported by substantial experimental evidence demonstrating that cognitive processes can be reinterpreted using this new conceptual framework. The theoretical premises of enactive cognition open up new prospects for improving theoretical research and the practical application of cognitive science in the future.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Impulsivity is a typical characteristic of drug addiction. In addition to the problems of inhibition and executive control, the driving force from multiple dimensions is also an important reason for impulsive drug use. The psychological drive stems from a variety of sources, including reward effect, S-R related cue response through conditioning. Low levels of inhibition are insufficient to resist the effects of the drive. This leads to an unbalanced state, which results in habitual behavior tendency. Impulsivity has both a behavioral and neural basis. Although impulsivity may be a precursor of drug use, long-term use may also damage brain structures and functions related to the inhibition of impulsive behavior. There is an open question about whether these structures and functions recover after withdrawal. In this research we used multiple imaging methods to study the extent of recovery in heroin addicts who had been abstinent for several years on average. Thirty-five abstinent heroin addicts (26 males; average period of abstinence = 43.55 months) and 26 healthy controls (26 males) were recruited using advertisements in the community. The heroin group and the healthy control group were compared on multiple measures of brain structure and function related to inhibition using the imaging methods of voxel-based morphometry (VBM), amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) and regional homogeneity (ReHo). Based on the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), right inferior frontal gyrus (15, 60, -6) was selected as the region of interest in which to study functional connectivity (FC). Heroin addicts showed damage in inhibition-related brain structures and functions an average of 44 months after withdrawal, and the extent of damage was correlated with lifetime dose. (1) Compared to the healthy control group, the heroin group had significantly (a) lower gray matter volume (p = 0.03) and lower whole-brain volume (p = 0.05); (b) lower gray matter in the right superior frontal gyrus (pAlphaSim < 0.01); (c) higher regional homogeneity in right posterior central gyrus and lower regional homogeneity in right middle frontal gyrus of the orbitofrontal cortex (pAlphaSim < 0.01); (d) lower amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation in right inferior frontal gyrus of the orbitofrontal cortex and left hippocampus (pAlphaSim < 0.01); (e) higher functional connectivity between right inferior frontal gyrus of the orbitofrontal cortex and the right caudate, and lower functional connectivity between the right inferior frontal gyrus and right middle temporal gyrus as well left precentral gyrus (pAlphaSim < 0.01). (2) Within the heroin group, higher lifetime dose of heroin was significantly associated with lower gray matter volume in the right middle temporal gyrus and left middle cingulate (pAlphaSim < 0.01). The results showed that compared to healthy controls, heroin addicts had significant damage in brain structure and functions related to impulsivity even after an average period of 44 months of abstinence. In addition, the extent of damage was correlated with the lifetime dose of heroin. These results suggest that heroin addicts could continue to show impulsive behavior even after several years of abstinence, perhaps explaining the high rate of relapse in this population. Future research could test this conclusion by examining correlations between brain damage in areas related to inhibition and behavioral measures of impulsivity after a period of abstinence. The current evidence underscores the need to take impulsivity into account in relapse prevention programs for heroin addicts.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Under relevant cues, people who are addicted tend to use drugs with little attention, purpose or cognitive effort, conforming to an automated “habitual” response behavior. When the substance is not available, this habitual response behavior will be transformed into psychological craving. A common goal of addiction treatment is to reduce cue-induced reactivity that has automatic and unconscious features. Based on previous research, this study used a self-report questionnaire, two behavioral experiments, and measures of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to explore the characteristics and neural mechanisms of cue-induced reactivity in heroin addicts under drug-related cues. On this basis, a training program using Virtual Reality (VR) technology and an Approach-Avoidance task (AAT) was designed to weaken the association between drug-related cues and automatic drug use behavior. In Study 1, the participants (N= 38) were men who were addicted to heroin (n=19) and a matched sample of healthy controls (n = 19). The Visual Analog Craving Scale (VAS) was used to investigate cue-induced reactivity by self-report. We then assessed ERPs to explore the nature and neural mechanism of cue-induced reactivity. We hypothesized that compared to the healthy controls, the participants who were addicted to heroin would show more cue-induced reactivity in the form of automatic response outside of awareness. Corroborating our hypotheses in Study 1, we proceeded to Study 2. N= 60 men who were addicted to heroin were equally divided into a treatment group (n= 30) and a no-treatment group (n= 30). The treatment was VR-AAT training for 10 sessions over the course of two months, with the goal of reducing or eliminating cue-induced reactivity. Before and after the treatment, VR-AAT and the Craving Automatized Scale-Substances (CAS-S) questionnaire were used to test the difference between the two groups. The results showed that 1) In between-group comparisons, VAS scores were higher in the addicts than in the control group. And in Study 2, the within-group analyses showed that self-reports of drug use behavior being “unconscious” and “involuntary” were significantly correlated with the duration of addiction. 2) In within-group analyses, N1 amplitude was smaller, latency was shorter, and reaction time was longer in response to drug-related cues versus neutral cues. Other between-group analyses of the ERP data, addicts demonstrated smaller N1 amplitude and longer reaction time in response to drug-related cues compared to the healthy controls, and these differences were concentrated in the central regions of the brain (i.e., the parietal lobe). 3) After the VR-AAT training, the physiological index (based on temperature, diastolic pressure and systolic pressure) decreased significantly, and the coefficient of approach bias of AAT [(Avoid behavior RTs drug-related- Approach behavior RTs drug-related) - (Avoid behavior RTs neutral- Approach behavior RTs neutral)] was significantly smaller than before training. The results were the same at a two-month follow-up. Our findings revealed that cue-induced reactivity showed characteristics of being automatic and unconscious, with greater N1 reactivity in sensorimotor and related brain areas. The VR-AAT training was effective in reducing cue-induced reactions among men addicted to heroin, suggesting that this method has potential applied value in treating heroin addiction and in designing relapse prevention programs. This research contributes to the addiction literature in two ways. First, AAT training has been used in the treatment of alcohol addiction, but not for other forms of addiction. This is the first research to use AAT training to treat heroin addiction. Second, the treatment in the current study is the first one to combine AAT with virtual reality technology. The VR-AAT method might also be a feasible approach for other substance abuse treatments, although more experimental evidence would be needed to support this. One limitation of this study was that the basis of automatic drug use behavior and automatic refusing drug use behavior cannot be distinguished. This issue can be investigated in future research.
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology submitted time 2022-04-13
Abstract：
Under relevant cues, people who are addicted tend to use drugs with little attention, purpose or cognitive effort, conforming to an automated "habitual" response behavior. When the substance is not available, this habitual response behavior will be transformed into psychological craving.
A common goal of addiction treatment is to reduce cue-induced reactivity that has automatic and unconscious features. Based on previous research, this study used a self-report questionnaire, two behavioral experiments, and measures of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to explore the characteristics and neural mechanisms of cue-induced reactivity in heroin addicts under drug-related cues. On this basis, a training program using Virtual Reality (VR) technology and an Approach-Avoidance task (AAT) was designed to weaken the association between drug-related cues and automatic drug use behavior.
In Study 1, the participants (N = 38) were men who were addicted to heroin (n =19) and a matched sample of healthy controls (n = 19). The Visual Analog Craving Scale (VAS) was used to investigate cue-induced reactivity by self-report. We then assessed ERPs to explore the nature and neural mechanism of cue-induced reactivity. We hypothesized that compared to the healthy controls, the participants who were addicted to heroin would show more cue-induced reactivity in the form of automatic response outside of awareness.
Corroborating our hypotheses in Study 1, we proceeded to Study 2. N = 60 men who were addicted to heroin were equally divided into a treatment group (n = 30) and a no-treatment group (n = 30). The treatment was VR-AAT training for 10 sessions over the course of two months, with the goal of reducing or eliminating cue-induced reactivity. Before and after the treatment, VR-AAT and the Craving Automatized Scale-Substances (CAS-S) questionnaire were used to test the difference between the two groups.
The results showed that 1) In between-group comparisons, VAS scores were higher in the addicts than in the control group. And in Study 2, the within-group analyses showed that self-reports of drug use behavior being "unconscious" and "involuntary" were significantly correlated with the duration of addiction. 2) In within-group analyses, N1 amplitude was smaller, latency was shorter, and reaction time was longer in response to drug-related cues versus neutral cues. Other between-group analyses of the ERP data, addicts demonstrated smaller N1 amplitude and longer reaction time in response to drug-related cues compared to the healthy controls, and these differences were concentrated in the central regions of the brain (i.e., the parietal lobe). 3) After the VR-AAT training, the physiological index (based on temperature, diastolic pressure and systolic pressure) decreased significantly, and the coefficient of approach bias of AAT [(Avoid behavior RTs drug-related -Approach behavior RTs drug-related) - (Avoid behavior RTs neutral - Approach behavior RTs neutral)] was significantly smaller than before training. The results were the same at a two-month follow-up.
Our findings revealed that cue-induced reactivity showed characteristics of being automatic and unconscious, with greater N1 reactivity in sensorimotor and related brain areas. The VR-AAT training was effective in reducing cue-induced reactions among men addicted to heroin, suggesting that this method has potential applied value in treating heroin addiction and in designing relapse prevention programs. This research contributes to the addiction literature in two ways. First, AAT training has been used in the treatment of alcohol addiction, but not for other forms of addiction. This is the first research to use AAT training to treat heroin addiction. Second, the treatment in the current study is the first one to combine AAT with virtual reality technology. The VR-AAT method might also be a feasible approach for other substance abuse treatments, although more experimental evidence would be needed to support this. One limitation of this study was that the basis of automatic drug use behavior and automatic refusing drug use behavior cannot be distinguished. This issue can be investigated in future research.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Applied Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Clinical and Counseling Psychology submitted time 2021-03-26
Abstract： "
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2020-05-14
Abstract： Taste is one of the indispensable feelings for human survival, and has substantially extended beyond the direct feeling of “tongue tip.” Taste affects individual perceptions and judgment of interpersonal relationship and ethics, and changes individual decision-making on risk-taking and consumption. Emotional intermediary, embodied metaphor, evolutionary, and social construction hypotheses are different perspectives used to explain the influence of taste on judgment and decision-making. The existing research has some limitations, such as individual differences in taste perception, difficulty in ensuring the validity of taste measurement, lack of unified research paradigm in taste experiment. Hence, future research should continue to verify the taste metaphor and apply it to the fields of sensory marketing and psychological therapy. The current study intensively analyzes taste from the aspects of physiology, psychology, and society, and discuses all facets of the mechanism and effects of taste on judgment and decision-making.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> History of Psychology submitted time 2019-08-26
Abstract： The effect of hunger on individual cognition and social behavior was reviewed based on the psychological perspective. Hunger has been related to impaired general cognitive function, biased cognition and decision-making. Other literature has evidenced that hunger can alter social attitude, reduce moral judgment standard and induce aggressive behavior. Three hypotheses discussed in previous literature were summarized: ego-depletion hypothesis, cognitive activation hypothesis and coordination mechanism hypothesis, all of which attempt to explain the psychological mechanism driving the effects of hunger. Upon evaluating the literature, it can be pointed out that existing researches have problems such as different subjective feelings of hunger, inaccurate measurement methods. Thus, a suggestion for future research is to focus on how to improve the validity of hunger measurement and explore the internal mechanism of hunger effect on the multiple physiological, psychological and social layers.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2018-04-18 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Previous studies mainly considered gender roles from the perspective of bio-determinism or social constructivism. The two sides stand at the ends of “nature” and “culture,” respectively. The former focuses on physiology, and the latter highlights the role of parenting, social conditions, and social relationships and disregards the link between nature and culture. The results of previous research have revealed limitations in the cognition of individuals regarding the formation and acquisition of gender classification and gender roles. Embodied cognition emphasizes the dependence of cognition on the body, which is embedded in the environment, and the influences of the body and environment are considered. The present study explored the gender role from the perspective of embodied cognition to compensate for the deficiencies of previous studies. Three experiments were conducted with E-prime. In Experiment 1, the effect of soft and hard tactile experiences on gender classification in the Chinese culture was investigated through a behavioral experiment method. In the beginning of the experiment, subjects were asked for a full long-term contact with a specific ball (soft or hard). Afterward, the participants were asked to determine the gender of ambiguous face images with their right hands while squeezing a specific ball with their left hands. We found that the subjects who squeezed the soft ball were likely to judge the ambiguous faces as female, and the subjects who squeezed the hard ball were likely to judge the ambiguous faces as male. By assessing these automatic associations of gender roles with hard or soft tactile experience, we designed an Implicit Association Test in Experiment 2 to explore the implicit effect of the “soft woman and hard man” bias. Our results revealed significant implicit deviations in the concept of gender roles in the Chinese culture. A significant difference was observed between compatible tasks in which feminine role expressions were associated with “soft” while masculine role expressions were associated with “hard” and incompatible tasks in which feminine role expressions were associated with “hard” while masculine role expressions were associated with “soft.” In Experiment 3, we explored the influence of the conceptual processing of gender role expressions on soft and hard perceptions of objects through concept priming and perceptual judgment tasks. The participants were asked to memorize the male role expressions or female characterization expressions and evaluate the degree of hardness and softness from 1 (soft) to 10 (hard). The expressions were then recalled. The results showed that compared with the subjects in the group of masculine role expressions, those in the group of feminine role expressions judged a sofa as softer. We conclude that gender classification and gender impression representation can be characterized by soft and hard metaphors. The concept of “soft woman and hard man” in the gender role is unconscious. Our conceptualization and categorization of gender roles depend on the metaphorical expansion of the basic concepts of “soft” and “hard.” In addition, the processing of the concepts of gender characterization among the study subjects activated the modal information of the proprioception (soft and hard) channel in the brain memory and caused the simulation of the physical state. It then affected the perception of the degree of softness and hardness of the sofa, thereby proving the existence of an embodied effect in cognitive judgment.
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