Knowledge that Transforms

When perceiving rich sensory information, some people may integrate its various aspects, whereas other people may selectively focus on its most salient aspects. We propose that neural gain modulates the trade-off between breadth and selectivity, such that high gain focuses perception on those aspects of the information that have the strongest, most immediate influence, whereas low gain allows broader integration of different aspects. We illustrate our hypothesis using a neural-network model of ambiguous-letter perception. We then report an experiment demonstrating that, as predicted by the model, pupil-diameter indices of higher gain are associated with letter perception that is more selectively focused on the letter's shape or, if primed, its semantic content. Finally, we report a recognition-memory experiment showing that the relationship between gain and selective processing also applies when the influence of different stimulus features is voluntarily modulated by task demands.

A strong predisposition to engage in sexual intercourse likely evolved in humans because sex is crucial to reproduction. Given that meeting interpersonal preferences tends to promote positive relationship evaluations, sex within a relationship should be positively associated with relationship satisfaction. Nevertheless, prior research has been inconclusive in demonstrating such a link, with longitudinal and experimental studies showing no association between sexual frequency and relationship satisfaction. Crucially, though, all prior research has utilized explicit reports of satisfaction, which reflect deliberative processes that may override the more automatic implications of phylogenetically older evolved preferences. Accordingly, capturing the implications of sexual frequency for relationship evaluations may require implicit measurements that bypass deliberative reasoning. Consistent with this idea, one cross-sectional and one 3-year study of newlywed couples revealed a positive association between sexual frequency and automatic partner evaluations but not explicit satisfaction. These findings highlight the importance of automatic measurements to understanding interpersonal relationships.

Early-life adversity is a potent risk factor for mental-health disorders in exposed individuals, and effects of adversity are exhibited across generations. Such adversities are also associated with poor gastrointestinal outcomes. In addition, emerging evidence suggests that microbiota-gut-brain interactions may mediate the effects of early-life stress on psychological dysfunction. In the present study, we administered an early-life stressor (i.e., maternal separation) to infant male rats, and we investigated the effects of this stressor on conditioned aversive reactions in the rats' subsequent infant male offspring. We demonstrated, for the first time, longer-lasting aversive associations and greater relapse after extinction in the offspring (F1 generation) of rats exposed to maternal separation (F0 generation), compared with the offspring of rats not exposed to maternal separation. These generational effects were reversed by probiotic supplementation, which was effective as both an active treatment when administered to infant F1 rats and as a prophylactic when administered to F0 fathers before conception (i.e., in fathers' infancy). These findings have high clinical relevance in the identification of early-emerging putative risk phenotypes across generations and of potential therapies to ameliorate such generational effects.

Social reticence is expressed as shy, anxiously avoidant behavior in early childhood. With development, overt signs of social reticence may diminish but could still manifest themselves in neural responses to peers. We obtained measures of social reticence across 2 to 7 years of age. At age 11, preadolescents previously characterized as high (n = 30) or low (n = 23) in social reticence completed a novel functional-MRI-based peer-interaction task that quantifies neural responses to the anticipation and receipt of distinct forms of social evaluation. High (but not low) social reticence in early childhood predicted greater activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and left and right insula, brain regions implicated in processing salience and distress, when participants anticipated unpredictable compared with predictable feedback. High social reticence was also associated with negative functional connectivity between insula and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region commonly implicated in affect regulation. Finally, among participants with high social reticence, negative evaluation was associated with increased amygdala activity, but only during feedback from unpredictable peers.

Sometimes it is easy to do the right thing. But often, people act morally only after overcoming competing immoral desires. How does learning about someone's inner moral conflict influence children's and adults' moral judgments about that person? Across four studies, we discovered a striking developmental difference: When the outcome is held constant, 3- to 8-year-old children judge someone who does the right thing without experiencing immoral desires to be morally superior to someone who does the right thing through overcoming conflicting desires-but adults have the opposite intuition. This developmental difference also occurs for judgments of immoral actors: Three- to 5-year-olds again prefer the person who is not conflicted, whereas older children and adults judge that someone who struggles with the decision is morally superior. Our findings suggest that children may begin with the view that inner moral conflict is inherently negative, but, with development, come to value the exercise of willpower and self-control.

Vision in the fovea, the center of the visual field, is much more accurate and detailed than vision in the periphery. This is not in line with the rich phenomenology of peripheral vision. Here, we investigated a visual illusion that shows that detailed peripheral visual experience is partially based on a reconstruction of reality. Participants fixated on the center of a visual display in which central stimuli differed from peripheral stimuli. Over time, participants perceived that the peripheral stimuli changed to match the central stimuli, so that the display seemed uniform. We showed that a wide range of visual features, including shape, orientation, motion, luminance, pattern, and identity, are susceptible to this uniformity illusion. We argue that the uniformity illusion is the result of a reconstruction of sparse visual information (from the periphery) based on more readily available detailed visual information (from the fovea), which gives rise to a rich, but illusory, experience of peripheral vision.

The long-held popular notion of intuition has garnered much attention both academically and popularly. Although most people agree that there is such a phenomenon as intuition, involving emotionally charged, rapid, unconscious processes, little compelling evidence supports this notion. Here, we introduce a technique in which subliminal emotional information is presented to subjects while they make fully conscious sensory decisions. Our behavioral and physiological data, along with evidence-accumulator models, show that nonconscious emotional information can boost accuracy and confidence in a concurrent emotion-free decision task, while also speeding up response times. Moreover, these effects were contingent on the specific predictive arrangement of the nonconscious emotional valence and motion direction in the decisional stimulus. A model that simultaneously accumulates evidence from both physiological skin conductance and conscious decisional information provides an accurate description of the data. These findings support the notion that nonconscious emotions can bias concurrent nonemotional behavior-a process of intuition.

Positive affect (e.g., attentiveness) and negative affect (e.g., upset) fluctuate over time. We examined genetic influences on interindividual differences in the day-to-day variability of affect (i.e., ups and downs) and in average affect over the duration of a month. Once a day, 17-year-old twins in the United Kingdom ( N = 447) rated their positive and negative affect online. The mean and standard deviation of each individual's daily ratings across the month were used as the measures of that individual's average affect and variability of affect. Analyses revealed that the average of negative affect was significantly heritable (.53), but the average of positive affect was not; instead, the latter showed significant shared environmental influences (.42). Fluctuations across the month were significantly heritable for both negative affect (.54) and positive affect (.34). The findings support the two-factor theory of affect, which posits that positive affect is more situational and negative affect is more dispositional.

Past research has suggested a fundamental principle of price precision: The more precise an opening price, the more it anchors counteroffers. The present research challenges this principle by demonstrating a too-much-precision effect. Five experiments (involving 1,320 experts and amateurs in real-estate, jewelry, car, and human-resources negotiations) showed that increasing the precision of an opening offer had positive linear effects for amateurs but inverted-U-shaped effects for experts. Anchor precision backfired because experts saw too much precision as reflecting a lack of competence. This negative effect held unless first movers gave rationales that boosted experts' perception of their competence. Statistical mediation and experimental moderation established the critical role of competence attributions. This research disentangles competing theoretical accounts (attribution of competence vs. scale granularity) and qualifies two putative truisms: that anchors affect experts and amateurs equally, and that more precise prices are linearly more potent anchors. The results refine current theoretical understanding of anchoring and have significant implications for everyday life.

Adolescents make more reckless decisions when with peers than when alone, which poses a challenge for organizations that place adolescents in situations in which risky and myopic decision making is problematic. We asked whether the effect of peers on adolescents' decision making is mitigated by the presence of a slightly older adult. We examined whether target subjects' risk taking was greater when they were in groups of 4 late-adolescent males (ages 18-22) than when they were in groups that mixed 3 late-adolescent males with 1 slightly older adult (age 25-30); risk taking in both of these conditions was compared with that of adolescents tested alone. We found that adolescents took more risks and expressed stronger preference for immediate rewards when they were grouped with 3 same-age peers than when they were alone. When 1 adolescent was replaced by someone slightly older, however, adolescents' decision making and reward processing resembled that seen when adolescents were tested alone. Adding a young adult to a work team of adolescents may improve group decision making.