People tend to discount rewards or losses that occur in the future. Such delay discounting has been linked to many behavioral and health problems, since people choose smaller short-term gains over greater long-term gains. We investigated whether the effect of delays on the subjective value of rewards is expressed in how people move when they make choices. Over 600 patrons of the RISK LAB exhibition hosted by the Science Gallery DublinTM played a short computer game in which they used a computer mouse to choose between amounts of money at various delays. Typical discounting effects were observed and decision dynamics indicated that choosing smaller short-term rewards became easier (i.e., shorter response times, tighter trajectories, less vacillation) as the delays until later rewards increased. Based on a sequence of choices, subjective values of delayed outcomes were estimated and decision dynamics during initial choices predicted these values. Decision dynamics are affected by subjective values of available options and thus provide a means to estimate such values.
Relational frame theory (RFT) Much of the meaning we glean from our world stems from the relations we observe and describe between events. We might be "late" for work, haveDenis O'Hora is now at the
Twenty-six monolingual and 46 bilingual college students were assigned to 2 groups on the basis of thei r performance on a complex relational task, an empirical model of instructional control (O'Hora, Barnes-Holmes, Roche, & Smeets, 2004). The subjects were then exposed to the vocabulary, arithmetic, and digit-symbol encoding subtests of the WAIS-ili. Subjects (N = 31) who successfully completed the relational task performed significantly better on the vocabulary and arithmetic subtests than those subjects (N = 44) who failed to do so. No significant differences in relational task performances of these 2 groups were obtained on the digit-symbol encoding subtest. In post-hoc statistical analyses, a low but significant correlation was obtained between the vocabulary and arithmetic scores and the percentage of correct responses emitted in 1 particular training phase of the relational task. Monolingual and bilingual subjects' performances were not significantly different in either the relational task or the WAIS subtests. These findings support the position that derived relational performances may provide a behavioral approach to human language abilities.Derived relational responding, and stimulus equivalence in particular, has been the focus of hundreds of laboratory studies (see Hayes, Sidman, 1994, for reviews). One reason for this interest was the suggestion by Sidman and Tailby (1982) that such relational responding could provide a behavioral model of semantic or symbolic relations. In particular, according to Sidman (1994):
The current study examined the effects of cardiorespiratory fitness, identified with a continuous graded cycle ergometry, and aerobic exercise on cognitive functioning and entropy of the electroencephalogram (EEG) in 30 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 14 years. Higher and lower fit participants performed an executive function task after a bout of acute exercise and after rest while watching a film. EEG entropy, using the sample entropy measure, was repeatedly measured during the 1500 ms post-stimulus interval to evaluate changes in entropy over time. Analysis of the behavioral data for lower and higher fit groups revealed an interaction between fitness levels and acute physical exercise. Notably, lower fit, but not higher fit, participants had higher error rates (ER) for No Go relative to Go trials in the rest condition, whereas in the acute exercise condition there were no differences in ER between groups; higher fit participants also had significantly faster reaction times in the exercise condition in comparison with the rest condition. Analysis of EEG data revealed that higher fit participants demonstrated lower entropy post-stimulus than lower fit participants in the left frontal hemisphere, possibly indicating increased efficiency of early stage stimulus processing and more efficient allocation of cognitive resources to the task demands. The results suggest that EEG entropy is sensitive to stimulus processing demands and varies as a function of physical fitness levels, but not acute exercise. Physical fitness, in turn, may enhance cognition in adolescence by facilitating higher functionality of the attentional system in the context of lower levels of frontal EEG entropy.
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