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--- - |2 Abstract Our environment is constantly overloaded with information, although we cannot consciously process all the stimulation reaching our senses. Current theoretical models are focused on the cognitive and neural processes underlying conscious perception. However, cognitive processes do not occur in an isolated brain but in a complex interaction between the environment, the brain, and the organism. The brain‐body interaction has largely been neglected in the study of conscious perception. The aim of the present study was to explore if heart rate and skin conductance (SC) are modulated by the interaction between phasic alertness and conscious perception. We presented near‐threshold visual stimuli that could be preceded by an alerting tone on 50% of the trials. Behaviorally, phasic alerting improved perceptual sensitivity for detecting a near‐threshold stimulus (along with changes in response criterion). Following the alerting tone, a cardiac deceleration‐acceleration pattern was observed, which was more pronounced when the near‐threshold stimulus was consciously perceived in comparison with unconsciously perceived stimuli. SC results further showed some degree of subliminal processing of unseen stimuli. These results reveal that cardiac activity could be a marker of attention and consciousness interactions, emphasizing the need for taking into account brain‐body interactions for current theoretical models of consciousness. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Prior to and during movement, oscillatory alpha activity gates cognitive resources toward motor areas of the cortex by inhibiting neuronal excitability in nonmotor areas. The present study examined the effect of manipulating target variability on this alpha gating phenomenon. Using a baseline‐test‐retention design, we measured EEG alpha power, performance accuracy, and task difficulty in 32 recreational golfers as they putted golf balls (20 per target) to one central target (baseline, retention) and four targets of different directions and extents (manipulation). For participants in the random group (n = 16), target location varied with each repetition in a random fashion, whereas for participants in the blocked group (n = 16), it was kept constant within blocks. Regional analyses revealed a focal pattern of lower central alpha and higher occipital and temporal alpha. This topography was specific to preparation for movement and was associated with performance: smallest performance errors were preceded by decreased central combined with increased occipital alpha. The random group performed worse than the blocked group and found the task more difficult. Importantly, left temporal alpha prior to movement onset was lower for the random group than the blocked group. No group differences were found at baseline or retention. Our study proved that alpha gating can be altered by manipulating intertrial variability and thereby demonstrated the utility of the alpha gating model. Our findings underscore the importance of inhibiting occipital and left temporal areas when performing movements and provide further evidence that alpha gating reflects neural efficiency during motor tasks. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract To date, several fMRI studies reveal activation in motor planning areas during musical auditory imagery. We addressed whether such activations may give rise to peripheral motor activity, termed subvocalization or covert singing, using surface electromyography. Sensors placed on extrinsic laryngeal muscles, facial muscles, and a control site on the bicep measured muscle activity during auditory imagery that preceded singing, as well as during the completion of a visual imagery task. Greater activation was found in laryngeal and lip muscles for auditory than for visual imagery tasks, whereas no differences across tasks were found for other sensors. Furthermore, less accurate singers exhibited greater laryngeal activity during auditory imagery than did more accurate singers. This suggests that subvocalization may be used as a strategy to facilitate auditory imagery, which appears to be degraded in inaccurate singers. Taken together, these results suggest that subvocalization may play a role in anticipatory auditory imagery, and possibly as a way of supplementing motor associations with auditory imagery. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Metrics of heart period variability are widely used in the behavioral and biomedical sciences, although somewhat confusingly labeled as heart rate variability (HRV). Despite their wide use, HRV metrics are usually analyzed and interpreted without reference to prevailing levels of cardiac chronotropic state (i.e., mean heart rate or mean heart period). This isolated treatment of HRV metrics is nontrivial. All HRV metrics routinely used in the literature exhibit a known and positive relationship with the mean duration of the interval between two beats (heart period): as the heart period increases, so does its variability. This raises the question of whether HRV metrics should be “corrected” for the mean heart period (or its inverse, the heart rate). Here, we outline biological, quantitative, and interpretive issues engendered by this question. We provide arguments that HRV is neither uniformly nor simply a surrogate for heart period. We also identify knowledge gaps that remain to be satisfactorily addressed with respect to assumptions underlying existing HRV correction approaches. In doing so, we aim to stimulate further progress toward the rigorous use and disciplined interpretation of HRV. We close with provisional guidance on HRV reporting that acknowledges the complex interplay between the mean and variability of the heart period. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 In “Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?” de Waal (2016) summarizes field studies and experiments that demonstrate a huge number of examples of complex behavior in many animal species. His avowed aim is to challenge the views of both lay people and scientists about the limits of intelligence of other species and to demonstrate much closer similarity in the achievements of other species to those of humans, thus undermining claims of human uniqueness. His general explanatory scheme is to infer human‐like cognitive processes in other species to explain complex behavior, at least when this is supported by other evolutionary considerations. This review suggests how behavior analysis might explain some of the phenomena outlined by de Waal, indicates where its explanatory system may need to expand and develop to encompass a wider range of behavior, and points to similarities as well as differences between the explanatory scheme used by de Waal and that of behavior analysis. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - - Psychophysiology, Volume 55, Issue 11, November 2018.

--- - |2 Free and open‐source software for applying models of operant demand called the Demand Curve Analyzer (DCA) was developed and systematically evaluated for use in research. The software was constructed to streamline the use of recommended screening measures, prepare suitable scaling parameters, fit one of several models of operant demand, and provide publication‐quality figures. The DCA allows users to easily import price and consumption data into spreadsheet‐based controls and to perform statistical modeling with the aid of a graphical user interface. The results from computer simulations and reanalyses of published study data indicated that the DCA provides results consistent with commercially available software that has been traditionally used to apply these analyses (i.e., GraphPadTM Prism). Further, the DCA provides additional functionality that other statistical packages do not include. Practical issues and future directions related to the determination of scaling parameter k, screening for nonsystematic data, and the incorporation of more advanced behavioral economic methods are also discussed. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract The risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) increases with the number of traumatic event types experienced (trauma load) in interaction with other psychobiological risk factors. The NOTCH (neurogenic locus notch homolog proteins) signaling pathway, consisting of four different trans‐membrane receptor proteins (NOTCH1–4), constitutes an evolutionarily well‐conserved intercellular communication pathway (involved, e.g., in cell–cell interaction, inflammatory signaling, and learning processes). Its association with fear memory consolidation makes it an interesting candidate for PTSD research. We tested for significant associations of common genetic variants of NOTCH1–4 (investigated by microarray) and genomic methylation of saliva‐derived DNA with lifetime PTSD risk in independent cohorts from Northern Uganda (N1 = 924) and Rwanda (N2 = 371), and investigated whether NOTCH‐related gene sets were enriched for associations with lifetime PTSD risk. We found associations of lifetime PTSD risk with single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs2074621 (NOTCH3) (puncorrected = 0.04) in both cohorts, and with methylation of CpG site cg17519949 (NOTCH3) (puncorrected = 0.05) in Rwandans. Yet, none of the (epi‐)genetic associations survived multiple testing correction. Gene set enrichment analyses revealed enrichment for associations of two NOTCH pathways with lifetime PTSD risk in Ugandans: NOTCH binding (pcorrected = 0.003) and NOTCH receptor processing (pcorrected = 0.01). The environmental factor trauma load was significant in all analyses (all p < 0.001). Our integrated methodological approach suggests NOTCH as a possible mediator of PTSD risk after trauma. The results require replication, and the precise underlying pathophysiological mechanisms should be illuminated in future studies. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 A multivariate analysis is concerned with more than one dependent variable simultaneously. Models that generate event records have a privileged status in a multivariate analysis. From a model that generates event records, we may compute predictions for any dependent variable associated with those event records. However, because of the generality that is afforded to us by these kinds of models, we must carefully consider the selection of dependent variables. Thus, we present a conditional compromise heuristic for the selection of dependent variables from a large group of variables. The heuristic is applied to McDowell's Evolutionary Theory of Behavior Dynamics (ETBD) for fitting to a concurrent variable‐interval schedule in‐transition dataset. From the parameters obtained from fitting ETBD, we generated predictions for a wide range of dependent variables. Overall, we found that our ETBD implementation accounted well for various flavors of the log response ratio, but had difficulty accounting for the overall response rates and cumulative reinforcer effects. Based on these results, we argue that the predictions of our ETBD implementation could be improved by decreasing the base response probabilities, either by increasing the response latencies or by decreasing the sizes of the operant classes. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Resurgence refers to the recurrence of a previously reinforced response following the worsening of reinforcement conditions (e.g., extinction) for an alternative response. Because of the implications for treatment relapse, researchers have become particularly interested in mitigating resurgence of human behavior. Some studies have employed reversal designs and varied parameters across replications (e.g., ABCADC) to compare effects of second‐phase variables. Although resurgence is generally repeatable within and between subjects, the extent to which similar levels of resurgence occur across replications is less clear. To assess the repeatability of resurgence, we conducted a secondary analysis of 62 human‐operant data sets using ABCABC reversal designs from two laboratories in the United States. We found significant reductions in the magnitude of resurgence during the second exposure to extinction relative to the first exposure when all other phase variables were held constant. These results suggest that researchers should exercise caution when using within‐subject, across‐phase replications to compare resurgence between variable manipulations with human participants. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract An individual's sense of personal responsibility is crucial for adaptive functioning in ever‐changing social situations. This study investigated how the sense of personal responsibility affected the neural dynamics of anticipating one's own pain and another person's pain, using EEG. Participants played a cooperation game in which either the participant (self‐context) or the confederate (other‐context) received a mild electric shock whenever one of them erred. At the anticipatory stage of pain, feedback‐related negativity (FRN) and P300 were sensitive to the degree of responsibility in both contexts. The FRN was more negative when the participant had full responsibility (only the participant had erred) than when the participant shared responsibility with the confederate (both had erred) or had no responsibility (only the confederate had erred), and shared responsibility elicited more negative FRN than no responsibility. Having no responsibility produced larger P300 amplitudes than having shared or full responsibility, whereas there was no significant difference in P300 amplitude between the shared responsibility and the full responsibility conditions. When the shock was delivered to the participants, the P2 was smaller when there was no responsibility than when there was shared or full responsibility. When participants observed the painful facial expressions of the confederates, the P300 was not sensitive to responsibility level. Our results suggest that responsibility level modulates FRN and P300 in anticipation of pain experienced by both self and others, reflecting the attentional and affective experiences in both pain‐ and empathy‐related processes. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Resurgence is defined as the recurrence of a previously reinforced and then extinguished target response when reducing or eliminating a more recently reinforced alternative response. In experiments with children and pigeons, we evaluated patterns of resurgence across and within sessions through decreases in reinforcer availability by challenging alternative responding with extinction and progressive‐ratio schedules. In Phase 1, we reinforced only target responding. In Phase 2, we extinguished target responding while reinforcing an alternative response. Finally, Phase 3 assessed resurgence by (a) extinguishing alternative responding versus (b) introducing a progressive‐ratio schedule of reinforcement for alternative responding. In both children and pigeons, resurgence of target responding occurred in both conditions but generally was greater when assessed during extinction than with progressive ratios. Importantly, within‐session patterns of resurgence did not differ between testing with progressive ratios and extinction. Resurgence with progressive ratios tended to be greater with longer durations between reinforcers but we observed similar findings with only simulated reinforcers during extinction testing. Therefore, the present investigation reveals that the events contributing to instances of resurgence remain to be understood, and presents an approach from which to examine variables influencing within‐session patterns of resurgence. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 In the context of evolutionary theory, behavior is the interaction between the organism and its environment. Two implications follow: (a) behavior takes time; and (b) behavior is defined by its function. That behavior takes time implies that behavioral units are temporally extended patterns or activities. An activity functions as an integrated whole composed of parts that are themselves smaller‐scale activities. That behavior is defined by its function implies that behavior functions to change the environment in ways that promote reproductive success. Phylogenetically important events (PIEs) are enhanced or mitigated by activities they induce as a result of natural selection. Induction explains all the phenomena that have traditionally been explained by reinforcement. This multiscale view replaces discrete responses and contiguity with multiscale activities and covariance. A PIE induces operant activity as a result of covariance in the form of a feedback relation between the activity and the PIE. A signal (conditional inducer) induces PIE‐induced activities as a result of covariance between the PIE and the signal. In an ontological perspective, behavior is a process, and an activity is a process individual. For example, ontological considerations clarify the status of delay and probability discounting. A true natural science of behavior is possible. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Studies with rats and pigeons showed that reinforcement of response variability improved learning of difficult response sequences. The results suggested that concurrent reinforcement of variability might be a helpful tool when educators or therapists attempt to teach individuals with learning difficulties. However, similar experiments with humans failed to confirm the results. In fact, in the human case, concurrent reinforcement of variability interfered with learning. The present experiment studied the same phenomenon with human participants in the context of a computer‐based game. Our results were consistent with the nonhuman animal findings. When students in our experiment were concurrently reinforced for sequence variability, they were more likely than control participants to learn a difficult response sequence. We conclude that reinforcement of variability can facilitate learning—in humans as well as animals —and discuss possible reasons for the difference between our results and the previous human findings. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Recently, we showed that presenting salient names (i.e., a participant's first name) on the fringe of awareness (in rapid serial visual presentation, RSVP) breaks through into awareness, resulting in the generation of a P3, which (if concealed information is presented) could be used to differentiate between deceivers and nondeceivers. The aim of the present study was to explore whether face stimuli can be used in an ERP‐based RSVP paradigm to infer recognition of broadly familiar faces. To do this, we explored whether famous faces differentially break into awareness when presented in RSVP and, importantly, whether ERPs can be used to detect these breakthrough events on an individual basis. Our findings provide evidence that famous faces are differentially perceived and processed by participants' brains as compared to novel (or unfamiliar) faces. EEG data revealed large differences in brain responses between these conditions. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract The influence of acute psychological stress on cardiovascular disease is an emerging public health concern. Identification of brain mechanisms underlying this may aid in the discovery of possible treatments. Acute psychological stress may induce arteriolar vasoconstriction and reduce blood flow to vital organs. We hypothesized that functional changes in brain regions involved with memory and autonomic/emotional regulation are implicated in the vasoconstrictive stress response, including the medial prefrontal cortex (anterior cingulate), insula, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Subjects with a history of coronary artery disease (N = 59) underwent measurement of microvascular vasomotor tone with the EndoPAT device and O–15 positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of the brain during exposure to mental stress and control conditions. The peripheral arterial tonometry (PAT) ratio was calculated as the mean peripheral vasomotor tone during stress divided by the mean tone during rest. Whole brain contrasts were performed between groups above and below the median PAT ratio, and significant contrasts were defined with cutoff p < 0.005. Stress‐induced peripheral vasoconstriction (below median PAT ratio) was associated with increased stress activation in insula and parietal cortex, and decreased activation in the medial prefrontal cortex with stress tasks compared to control tasks. These findings demonstrate that stress‐induced vasoreactivity is associated with changes in brain responses to stress in areas involved in emotion and autonomic regulation. These findings have important implications on possible treatments for mental stress‐induced vascular toxicity. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 In tests of the derivation of complex relations such as transitivity, extant cues might fail to evoke effective responding, necessitating the construction of supplemental stimuli prior to their solution. The significance of this process was investigated by within‐subject manipulation of an instructional variable designed to produce different levels of construction of supplemental stimulation concerning relationships among stimulus elements of concatenated conditional discriminations. In two experimental sessions, serial training of three 5‐member stimulus classes occurred, either with the instruction to simply name the component stimuli or to both name them and generate a tale serially linking the stimuli named; such constructed stimuli might be spontaneously reconstructed by precurrent acts in subsequent tests of “emergent” relations. Participants whose supplemental stimulus construction at the first session was limited to name‐giving derived significantly more relations when, in training at session two, they generated tales linking stimulus elements; this same near‐errorless derivation was obtained at the first session whenever relational stimuli beyond bidirectional naming were constructed. In some cases the uninstructed construction of supplementary relational stimuli occurred at the first session, to equivalent effect; such construction might constitute a typically unobserved component of the derivation of relations among stimulus elements entailed in multiple conditional discriminations. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Prior research suggests that a traitlike tendency to experience impulsivity during states of high emotion is robustly associated with many forms of psychopathology. Several studies tie emotion‐related impulsivity to response inhibition deficits, but these studies have not focused on the role of emotion or arousal within subjects. The present study tested whether arousal, measured by pupil dilation, amplifies deficits in response inhibition for those high in emotion‐related impulsivity. Participants (N = 85) completed a measure of emotion‐related impulsivity, underwent a positive mood induction procedure that reduced heterogeneity in mood states, and completed a response inhibition task. Pupil dilation was used to index arousal during the response inhibition task. Generalized linear mixed effect modeling yielded the hypothesized interaction between arousal (pupil dilation) and emotion‐related impulsivity in predicting response inhibition performance at the trial level. Emotion‐related impulsivity relates to more difficulties with response inhibition during moments of high arousal. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract In human fear conditioning studies, different physiological readouts can be used to track conditioned responding during fear learning. Commonly employed readouts such as skin conductance responses (SCR) or startle responses have in recent years been complemented by pupillary readouts, but to date it is unknown how pupillary readouts relate to other measures of the conditioned response. To examine differences and communalities among pupil responses, SCR, and startle responses, we simultaneously recorded pupil diameter, skin conductance, and startle electromyography in 47 healthy subjects during fear acquisition, extinction, and a recall test on 2 consecutive days. The different measures correlated only weakly, displaying most prominent differences in their response patterns during fear acquisition. Whereas SCR and startle responses habituated, pupillary measures did not. Instead, they increased in response to fear conditioned stimuli and most closely followed ratings of unconditioned stimulus (US) expectancy. Moreover, we observed that startle‐induced pupil responses showed stimulus discrimination during fear acquisition, suggesting a fear potentiation of the auditory pupil reflex. We conclude that different physiological outcome measures of the conditioned response inform about different cognitive‐affective processes during fear learning, with pupil responses being least affected by physiological habituation and most closely following US expectancy. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Whereas the amplitude of the startle reflex varies with stimulus valence in the normal population, a lack of this affective modulation has been reported in patients with major depressive disorder. The present study sought to clarify blunted startle modulation as a feature of depression by comparing 16 patients diagnosed with major depression prior to and after 2 weeks of SSRI treatment, and 16 healthy controls. The affect‐modulated startle reflex paradigm and the Self‐Assessment Manikin were used to probe affective reactivity. In addition, a preliminary analysis of change in affective reactivity pattern was performed with depressed patients who could be assessed in the eighth week of treatment (n = 13). The control group showed a linear trend in response across valence categories, which was stable over sessions. Blunted affective reactivity was observed only in the patients and persisted after 2 weeks of treatment. Nevertheless, a linear trend could be detected in the eighth week of treatment. These findings confirm that the affective reactivity is blunted in depression and provide initial evidence for the lack of change in the early phase of SSRI antidepressant treatment. Nevertheless, in a small group, the emergence of a linear trend in response was evident later with treatment. Large‐scale studies are required to assess the relation between the treatment response and the change in affective modulation of the startle reflex, as a potential biomarker. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract This study examined whether the P1, N1, and P3 ERP components would be sensitive to sequence learning effects on the serial reaction time task. On this task, participants implicitly learn a visuospatial sequence. Participants in this study were 35 healthy adults. Reaction time (RT) data revealed that, at the group level, participants learned the sequence. Specifically, RT became faster following repeated exposure to the visuospatial sequence and then slowed down in a control condition. Analyses of ERP data revealed no evidence for sequence learning effects for the N1 or P3 component. However, sequence learning effects were observed for the P1 component. Mean P1 amplitude mirrored the RT data. The analyses showed that P1 amplitude significantly decreased as participants were exposed to the sequence but then significantly increased in the control condition. This suggests that visuospatial sequence learning can modulate visual attention levels. Specifically, it seems that, as sequence knowledge is acquired, fewer demands are placed on visual attention resources. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Electrophysiological studies have demonstrated that the maintenance of items in visual working memory (VWM) is indexed by the contralateral delay activity (CDA), which increases in amplitude as the number of objects to remember increases, plateauing at VWM capacity. Previous work has primarily utilized simple visual items, such as colored squares or picture stimuli. Despite the frequent use of verbal stimuli in seminal investigations of visual attention and memory, it is unknown whether temporary storage of letters and words also elicit a typical load‐sensitive CDA. Given their close associations with language and phonological codes, it is possible that participants store these stimuli phonologically, and not visually. Participants completed a standard visual change‐detection task while their ERPs were recorded. Experiment 1 compared the CDA elicited by colored squares compared to uppercase consonants, and Experiment 2 compared the CDA elicited by words compared to colored bars. Behavioral accuracy of change detection decreased with increasing set size for colored squares, letters, and words. We found that a capacity‐limited CDA was present for colored squares, letters, and word arrays, suggesting that the visual codes for letters and words were maintained in VWM, despite the potential for transfer to verbal working memory. These results suggest that, despite their verbal associations, letters and words elicit the electrophysiological marker of VWM encoding and storage. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract The mismatch negativity (MMN) has been widely studied with oddball tasks to index processing of unexpected auditory change. The MMN is computed as the difference of deviant minus standard and is used to capture the pattern violation by the deviant. However, this oddball MMN is confounded because the deviant differs physically from the standard and is presented less often. To improve measurement, the same tone as the deviant is presented in a separate condition. This control tone is equiprobable with other tones and is used to compute a corrected MMN (deviant minus control). Typically, the tones are in random order except that consecutive tones are not identical (no‐repetition rule). In contrast, a recent study on frequency MMN presented tones in a regular up‐and‐down sequence (cascade rule). If the cascade rule is detected more easily than the no‐repetition rule, there should be a lower risk of a confounding MMN within the cascade condition. However, in previous research, the cascade and no‐repetition conditions differed not only in the regularity of the tone sequence but also in number of tones, frequency range, and proportion of tones. We controlled for these differences to isolate effects of regularity in the tone sequence. Results of our preregistered analyses provided moderate evidence (BF01>6) that the corrected MMN did not differ between cascade and no‐repetition conditions. These findings imply that no‐repetition and cascade rules are processed similarly and that the no‐repetition condition provides an adequate control in frequency MMN. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Unlike other basic emotions, anger is relatively difficult to produce in the lab, with the most reliable methods involving elaborate and time‐consuming manipulations. These factors preclude the possibility of using them for studying short‐lived changes in neural activity associated with the subjective experience of anger. In this paper, we present a novel task that allows for the trial‐by‐trial manipulation of anger and the examination of associated ERPs. Participants completed an incentive delay task, in which accurate responses were rewarded with monetary gains (or breaking even, in a neutral condition), and inaccurate responses were punished with monetary losses. After participants received accuracy feedback, they received information that indicated the amount of money they won or lost on that trial. On a majority of trials, this amount was consistent with the feedback stimuli, while on a minority of trials this amount was inconsistent. Results indicated that participants reported the most anger after trials where goal pursuit was frustrated by monetary losses despite accurate responses. P3b amplitudes were greater for inconsistent outcomes than consistent outcomes, regardless of whether these resulted in unexpected gains or frustrating losses. On frustrating trials, P3b amplitudes were positively correlated with self‐reported anger. The same correlation was not observed for trials with stimuli that signaled surprise gains. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Renewal is the reoccurrence of previously extinguished behavior following a change in the context in which extinction was conducted. Despite an extensive body of research examining renewal, little is known about the role of social stimuli in renewal. The present experiments provided a novel examination of renewal of operant behavior by changing social stimuli across phases in an ABA renewal preparation. In both experiments, social stimuli were arranged by placing another rat in a second compartment of a divided operant chamber. In Experiment 1, the presence of another rat defined the extinction context, whereas an empty second compartment defined the baseline and testing contexts. We reversed these contextual manipulations in Experiment 2 such that the presence of another rat defined the baseline and testing contexts and the second compartment was empty during extinction. Renewal of lever pressing occurred when the other rat was removed from the chamber in Experiment 1 and when the other rat was returned to the chamber in Experiment 2. Thus, social stimuli may function as contextual stimuli, and changes in social contexts may produce renewal of previously extinguished behavior. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - - Psychophysiology, Volume 55, Issue 10, October 2018.

--- - |2 The capacity of 3D cameras to measure many different aspects of behavior (e.g., velocity, pattern, and posture) could contribute to the understanding of behavior. The present article describes a system for the real‐time tracking of operant behavior, which is applicable to other domains of behavioral science as well. Methods for real‐time 3D tracking of animal behavior are described, along with sample C++ programs. A demonstration using one zebrafish as a subject indicated that the present system successfully tracked the 3D motion of the fish. Moreover, the acquisition of a target response (i.e., approach to a corner of the aquarium) was demonstrated with the arrangement of a reinforcement contingency at the corner in the absence of a traditional, salient operandum. The system offers the capacity to characterize more completely ongoing behavior in learning tasks across a range of species than simply performance of discrete operant responses. The system also is capable of tracking multiple individuals simultaneously so it is possible both to study social interactions and arrange contingencies for engaging in social behavior. Other possible applications of 3D cameras are discussed. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract This study investigated the influence of action‐associated predictive processes on visual ERPs. In two experiments, we sought evidence for sensory attenuation (SA) indexed by ERP amplitude reductions for self‐induced stimuli when compared to passive viewing of the same images. We assessed if SA is (a) present for both ecological and abstract stimuli (pictures depicting hands or checkerboards), (b) modulated by the degree of stimulus predictability (certain or uncertain action‐effect contingencies), and (c) sensitive to laterality of hand movements (dominant or subdominant hand actions). We found reduced occipital responses in the early 77–90 ms time interval (C1 component), irrespective of stimulus type, predictability, or the laterality of hand movements. However, the subsequent P1 component was increased (rather than reduced) for all action‐associated stimuli. In addition, this P1 effect was influenced by the degree of stimulus predictability for ecological stimuli only. Finally, the posterior N1 component was not modulated by self‐initiated actions. Overall, our findings indicate that movement‐related predictive processes attenuate early visual responses. Moreover, we propose that amplitude modulations in the P1 time range reflect the interaction between expectation‐based SA and attention‐associated amplitude enhancements. These results can have implications for assessing the influence of action‐associated predictions on visual processing in psychiatric disorders characterized by aberrant sensory predictions and alterations in hemispheric asymmetry, such as schizophrenia. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 A series of procedures were conducted in an attempt to assess various forms of validity related to the use of pigeons in research on delay discounting. In separate experimental arrangements, pigeons pressed a treadle, pecked a lit key, pecked a darkened key, or pecked a lit key with a hold as the required response. First, the obtained results were consistent with what would be necessary if the construct of delay discounting were being measured, which provides evidence of face validity. Second, criterion validity was assessed by comparing individual differences in rates of discounting across procedures. Third, to assess internal validity, each pigeon repeated the Treadle, Key Peck, and Dark Key procedures. Again, at both the aggregate and individual levels, the obtained indifference points did not differ systematically between replications. Finally, to assess external validity, discounting was observed regardless of the procedure, where the patterns of data at the aggregate level, and generally at the individual level, were orderly and well described by a hyperbolic function. In addition, rates of discounting were similar when pigeons pecked a lit key, a dark key, or a key with a hold; and each of those rates of discounting tended to be steeper than when treadle pressing. Generally speaking, pigeons that discounted relatively steeply on one procedure also tended to discount relatively steeply on the other procedures. The procedures evidence some of the necessary elements involved with the use of pigeons in research on delay discounting. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 We examined the effects of outcome framing on delay discounting. In Experiment 1, participants completed four delay‐discounting tasks. In one monetary task, money was framed in units of dollars ($50), and in the other, money was framed in units of handfuls of quarters (equal to $50). In one food task, food was framed in clear units of food (e.g., 100 M&Ms), and in the other, food was framed in units of servings (e.g., 10 servings of M&Ms). When money was framed in units of dollars, participants discounted less by delay compared to discounting of handfuls of quarters. When food was framed as clear units, participants also discounted less compared to how they discounted servings. In Experiment 2, participants completed two delay‐discounting tasks for dollars and quarters (e.g., $50 or 200 quarters) to determine if the results of Experiment 1 were due to the differences in handling costs. In one delay‐discounting task, money was framed in units of dollars. In the other delay‐discounting task, money was framed in units of quarters. There was no difference in how participants discounted delayed money framed as dollars or quarters. Clear unit framing may result in less discounting by delay than fuzzy unit framing. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 An evolutionary theory of adaptive behavior dynamics was tested by studying the behavior of artificial organisms (AOs) animated by the theory, working on concurrent ratio schedules with unequal and equal ratios in the components. The evolutionary theory implements Darwinian rules of selection, reproduction, and mutation in the form of a genetic algorithm that causes a population of potential behaviors to evolve under the selection pressure of consequences from the environment. On concurrent ratio schedules with unequal ratios in the components, the AOs tended to respond exclusively on the component with the smaller ratio, provided that ratio was not too large and the difference between the ratios was not too small. On concurrent ratio schedules with equal ratios in the components, the AOs tended to respond exclusively on one component, provided the equal ratios were not too large. In addition, the AOs' preference on the latter schedules adjusted rapidly when the equal ratios were changed between conditions, but their steady‐state preference was a continuous function of the value of the equal ratios. Most of these outcomes are consistent with the results of experiments with live organisms, and consequently support the evolutionary theory. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract In forensic contexts, lying is often motivated by the will to avoid negative consequences (e.g., an arrest). Previous research investigating the effect of motivation on deception has, however, nearly exclusively focused on the effect of positive motivation (e.g., via financial rewards). In the current study, we aimed to replicate previous studies on the behavioral and autonomic correlates of deception and to investigate the influence of negative motivation on those correlates. Participants committed a mock theft and underwent a questioning procedure in which they had to truthfully and deceptively answer questions about the committed mock crime and a control crime. Half of the participants completed the procedure without any specific motivation, whereas the other half of the participants was told that lies detected by a computer algorithm would result in an unpleasant electric stimulation. Results revealed longer reaction times, larger skin conductance responses, and a relative heart rate slowing for lying compared to truth telling. The latter two effects were larger in the motivation compared to the control condition. Results are in line with the motivation impairment hypothesis and effects of positive motivation on the autonomic correlates of information concealment. The observation that a higher motivation increased rather than decreased deception effects is promising for forensic contexts. The possible explanation that these effects could be related to fear conditioning should stimulate future research on the stability of differences between lying and truth telling in people who experienced no or only seldom punishment for deception in their learning history. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 The present experiment investigated the effects of preliminary training with pictorial stimuli on the subsequent formation of three 5‐member equivalence classes (A➔B➔C➔D➔E) in 84 university students assigned to seven groups of 12. In the Abstract (ABS) group, all stimuli were abstract shapes. In the Picture (PIC) group, the C stimuli were pictures, and the remaining stimuli were the same abstract shapes as in the ABS group. For the remaining five groups, all stimuli were the same abstract shapes as in the ABS group. However, across groups, preliminary training involved either the establishment of conditional relations with simultaneous (SMTS) or delayed (DMTS) matching‐to‐sample with 0 s, 3 s, 6 s, or 9 s between the abstract C stimuli and the meaningful pictures. For the ABS and the PIC groups, 16.7% and 83.3% of participants formed classes, respectively. Preliminary training with SMTS and DMTS with 0 s, 3 s, and 6 s produced a linear increase in the likelihood of equivalence class formation, 41.7%, 50%, and 75%, respectively. Increasing the duration of delay further from 6 s to 9 s produced a substantial decline, 50%. This experiment extends knowledge about how including meaningful pictures enhances equivalence class formation. - Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 110, Issue 2, Page 275-291, September 2018.

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--- - |2 Abstract Dyspnea (breathlessness) is a threatening and aversive bodily sensation and a major symptom of various diseases. It has been suggested to impair several aspects of functioning in affected patients, but experimental proof for this assumption is widely absent. Error processing is an important domain of functioning and has intensively been studied using electrophysiological measures. Specifically, the error‐related negativity (ERN) has been suggested to reflect early performance monitoring and error detection, while the error positivity (Pe) has been linked to subsequent error awareness. So far, little is known about the effects of anticipated or perceived dyspnea on error processing. Therefore, in 49 healthy participants, we studied the effects of experimentally induced dyspnea and threat of dyspnea on the ERN/Pe and behavioral task performance. Participants performed the arrowhead version of the flanker task during three experimental conditions: an unloaded baseline condition, a dyspnea condition, and a threat of dyspnea condition. Dyspnea was induced by breathing through inspiratory resistive loads, while high‐density EEG was continuously measured. No differences in task performance (reaction times, error rates) and ERN mean amplitudes were found between conditions. However, mean amplitudes for the Pe differed between conditions with smaller Pe amplitudes during threat of dyspnea compared to baseline and dyspnea conditions, with the latter two conditions showing no difference. These results may suggest that threat of dyspnea, but not dyspnea itself, reduces error awareness, while both seem to have no impact on early error processing and related behavioral performance. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract A high‐density EEG study was carried out to investigate cortical activity in response to forward and backward visual motion at two different driving speeds, simulated through optic flow. Participants were prelocomotor infants at the age of 4–5 months and infants with at least 3 weeks of crawling experience at the age of 8–11 months, and adults. Adults displayed shorter N2 latencies in response to forward as opposed to backward visual motion and differentiated significantly between low and high speeds, with shorter latencies for low speeds. Only infants at 8–11 months displayed similar latency differences between motion directions, and exclusively in response to low speed. The developmental differences in latency between infant groups are interpreted in terms of a combination of increased experience with self‐produced locomotion and neurobiological development. Analyses of temporal spectral evolution (TSE, time‐dependent amplitude changes) were also performed to investigate nonphase‐locked changes at lower frequencies in underlying neuronal networks. TSE showed event‐related desynchronization activity in response to visual motion for infants compared to adults. The poorer responses in infants are probably related to immaturity of the dorsal visual stream specialized in the processing of visual motion and could explain the observed problems in infants with differentiating high speeds of up to 50 km/h. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Psychologists often use peripheral physiological measures to infer a psychological variable. It is desirable to make this inverse inference in the most precise way, ideally standardized across research laboratories. In recent years, psychophysiological modeling has emerged as a method that rests on statistical techniques to invert mathematically formulated forward models (psychophysiological models, PsPMs). These PsPMs are based on psychophysiological knowledge and optimized with respect to the precision of the inference. Building on established experimental manipulations, known to create different values of a psychological variable, they can be benchmarked in terms of their sensitivity (e.g., effect size) to recover these values—we have termed this predictive validity. In this review, we introduce the problem of inverse inference and psychophysiological modeling as a solution. We present background and application for all peripheral measures for which PsPMs have been developed: skin conductance, heart period, respiratory measures, pupil size, and startle eyeblink. Many of these PsPMs are task invariant, implemented in open‐source software, and can be used off the shelf for a wide range of experiments. Psychophysiological modeling thus appears as a potentially powerful method to infer psychological variables. - Psychophysiology, Volume 55, Issue 11, November 2018.

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--- - |2 Abstract Arithmetic problems share many surface‐level features with typical sentences. They assert information about the world, and readers can evaluate this information for sensibility by consulting their memories as the statement unfolds. When people encounter the solution to the problem 3 × 4, the brain elicits a robust ERP effect as a function of answer expectancy (12 being the expected completion; 15 being unexpected). Initially, this was labeled an N400 effect, implying that semantic memory had been accessed. Subsequent work suggested instead that the effect was driven by a target P300 to the correct solutions. The current study manipulates operand format to differentially promote access to language‐based semantic representations of arithmetic. Operands were presented either as spoken number words or as sequential Arabic numerals. The critical solution was always an Arabic numeral. In Experiment 1, the correctness of solutions preceded by spoken operands modulated N400 amplitude, whereas solutions preceded by Arabic numerals elicited a P300 for correct problems. In Experiment 2, using only spoken operands, the delay between the second operand and the Arabic numeral solution was manipulated to determine if additional processing time would result in a P300. With a longer delay, an earlier N400 and no distinct P300 were observed. In brief, highly familiar digit operands promoted target detection, whereas spoken numbers promoted semantic level processing—even when solution format itself was held constant. This provides evidence that the brain can process arithmetic fact information at different levels of representational meaningfulness as a function of symbolic format. - Psychophysiology, Volume 55, Issue 11, November 2018.

--- - |2 Abstract Exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity to acute psychological stress is associated with an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease. The amygdala and hippocampus have been implicated in centrally mediating stressor‐evoked cardiovascular reactivity. However, little is known about the associations of amygdala and hippocampus morphology with stressor‐evoked cardiovascular reactivity. Forty (Mage = 19.05, SD = 0.22 years) healthy young women completed two separate testing sessions. Session 1 assessed multiple parameters of cardiovascular physiology at rest and during a validated psychological stress task (Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test), using electrocardiography, Doppler echocardiography, and blood pressure monitoring. In Session 2, 1 year later, structural MRI was conducted. Brain structural volumes were computed using automated segmentation methods. Regression analyses, following Benjamini‐Hochberg correction, showed that greater heart rate and cardiac output reactivity were associated with reduced amygdala and hippocampus gray matter volume. Systolic blood pressure reactivity was associated with reduced hippocampus volume. In contrast, no associations between diastolic blood pressure, mean arterial blood pressure, stroke volume, or total peripheral resistance reactivity with amygdala or hippocampus volumes were apparent. Comparison analyses examining insula volume found no significant associations. Some indicators of greater stressor‐evoked cardiovascular reactivity associate with reduced amygdala and hippocampus gray matter volume, but the mechanisms of this association warrant further study. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Frontal EEG theta/beta ratio (TBR; negatively associated with attentional control, or AC) was previously reported to moderate threat‐level dependent attentional bias in a pictorial dot‐probe task, interacting with trait anxiety. Unexpectedly, this was independent from processing stage (using cue‐target delays of 200 and 500 ms) and also not observed for self‐reported trait AC. We therefore aimed to replicate these effects of TBR and trait anxiety and to test if effects of early versus late processing stages are evident for shorter cue‐target delays. This study also revisited the hypothesis that TBR and self‐reported trait AC show similar effects. Fifty‐three participants provided measurements of frontal TBR, self‐reported trait AC, trait anxiety, and dot‐probe task bias for mild and high threat pictures using the same dot‐probe task, but this time with 80‐ and 200‐ms cue‐target delays. Results indicated that higher TBR predicted more attention to mild than high threat, but this was independent from trait anxiety or delay. Lower self‐reported trait AC predicted more attention to mild than high threat, only after 200 ms (also independent of trait anxiety). We conclude that the moderating effect of TBR on threat‐level dependent dot‐probe task bias was replicated, but not the role of trait anxiety, and this study partially confirms that effects of trait AC are more dominant in later processing. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Cross‐modal conflict arises when information from different sensory modalities are incompatible with each other. Such conflict may influence the processing of stimuli in the task‐relevant modality and call for cognitive control to resolve this conflict. Here, we investigate how reward modulates cross‐modal conflict control during object categorization. Participants categorized pictures as representing animate or inanimate objects while ignoring auditory stimuli. We manipulated the audiovisual congruency and performance‐dependent reward (reward vs. no‐reward). Behavioral results showed a significant cross‐modal interference effect only in the no‐reward condition, not in the reward condition. Neurally, we found that the frontocentral N2and theta band oscillations were larger in the incongruent condition than in the congruent condition, but only when there was no reward for performance. The converging behavioral and electrophysiological evidence demonstrates that reward enhances cognitive control in a cross‐modal context and reduces cross‐modal conflict. - Psychophysiology, Volume 55, Issue 11, November 2018.

--- - |2 Abstract Despite the longstanding discussion around the link between psychopathy and fearlessness, few studies have explicitly tested this association, and results have been mixed. This may be due, in part, to the lack of specificity in fear assessment. Further, the relation between psychopathy and fear may be better understood using the two‐factor model because, in theory, fear has opposing associations with interpersonal‐affective (Factor 1) and impulsive‐antisocial (Factor 2) traits. The present study aimed to test if the two factors of psychopathy are deferentially related to fear reactivity. To examine this, we collected sympathetic (SNS; skin conductance) and parasympathetic (PNS; respiratory sinus arrhythmia) nervous system reactivity to an interactive virtual reality horror video in a nonclinical sample (N = 103). Also, we included measures of emotional reactivity to fear and self‐report of situational fear. Results indicated that coinhibition (i.e., low PNS and SNS) of the two physiological systems predicted Factor 1, suggesting that individuals high on Factor 1 showed little change in both branches of the autonomic nervous system in response to fear. In contrast, Factor 2 was predicted by high PNS reactivity, suggesting a vulnerability to emotion dysregulation. On emotional reactivity, Factor 1 was related to feeling happier after the fear condition, whereas Factor 2 was related to feeling less in control. Factor 1 was inversely associated with situational fear, specifically, lower scores of social phobias, fear of aggression, and physical injury. In summary, the results provide evidence that psychopathy is related to fearlessness; however, this is unique to the personality features of psychopathy. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Temporal expectations aid performance by allowing the optimization of attentional readiness at moment of highest target probability. Reward enhances cognitive performance through its action on preparatory and reactive attentional processes. To elucidate how motivation interacts with mechanisms of implicit temporal attention, we studied healthy young adult participants (N = 73) performing a sustained attention task with simultaneous pupillometric recording, under different reward conditions (baseline: 0 c; reward: 10 c/fast response). Target timing was temporally unpredictable (variable foreperiod: 2–10 s, uniformly distributed), in which case implicitly formed timing expectations. Trials were binned according to current foreperiod (FPn; short: 2–6 s; long: 6–10 s) and preceding foreperiod (FPn–1; short: 2–6 s; long: 6–10 s). Overall, performance data showed the expected temporal attention effects, with slower responses after shorter FPns, particularly when they followed longer FPn–1s. Moreover, these temporal effects were significantly reduced in the reward condition. While performance improved in all trial types, the largest benefit appeared in trials that were normally most disadvantaged by invalid temporal expectation. Furthermore, reward motivation was accompanied by an increase in sustained (prestimulus) and transient (poststimulus response) pupil diameter. The latter effect was particularly evident following short FPns. The current findings suggest that reward motivation can improve overall attentional performance and reduce implicit temporal bias, both through preparatory and reactive attentional mechanisms. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract In item‐method directed forgetting, worse memory performance occurs for to‐be‐forgotten (TBF) than for to‐be‐remembered (TBR) items. However, recently TBF items have been found to be recognized more accurately than uninformative (UI) items not associated with any specific task. Here, we compare ERPs elicited by cues signaling the remember or the forget instruction with those elicited by uninformative cues. Participants were presented with a series of complex pictures, each followed by a symbolic TBR, TBF, or UI cue. On a yes–no recognition test, accuracy was higher for TBR than for both TBF and UI items. However, TBF items were recognized more accurately than UI items. ERPs elicited by the TBR cue were larger than ERPs elicited by both TBF and UI cues at the frontal P2, the late frontal negativity, and the late parietal positivity complex. This is consistent with more attention capture, selective rehearsal, and long‐term memory encoding of TBR. In contrast, both TBF and UI cues induced a larger frontal N2 than TBR cues. Critically, TBF elicited a larger late right‐frontal positivity than both UI and TBR cues and a larger late parietal positivity than UI cues. Moreover, the late right‐frontal positivity was correlated with better recognition performance. It may therefore reflect processing orientation rather than inhibition per se. Results suggest that, when compared to UI cues, both TBR and TBF cues are processed actively. Distinct processing is seen at right frontal and centroparietal positive ERPs that may mediate better subsequent recognition of TBF than of UI items. - Psychophysiology, Volume 55, Issue 10, October 2018.

--- - |2 Abstract The steady‐state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), a neural signature of attentional resource allocation, is enhanced for affective compared to neutral visual scenes. Recently, it has been demonstrated that modulation of early visual cortex associated with viewing of unpleasant scenes presented in a rapid succession relies on emotional content extraction from each individual image shown in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) at 6 Hz (~167 ms per image). Against expectations, the SSVEP was reduced when viewing visual streams of unpleasant compared to neutral scenes. Here, we investigated to what extent that finding was limited to the 6 Hz rate and whether it generalizes to pleasant pictures. We recorded SSVEPs elicited by RSVP of neutral and emotional scenes presented at 3, 4, 6.67, and 8.57 Hz rates. We demonstrated that SSVEP amplitudes were enhanced for unpleasant compared to neutral images with a presentation rate of 3, 4, and 8.57 Hz. By contrast, SSVEP decreased for both pleasant and unpleasant relative to neutral RSVP streams shown at 6.67 Hz. Our findings suggest that a linear superposition of ERPs evoked by each individual image in an RSVP may lead to SSVEP amplitude patterns that increase or decrease the power at the driving frequency, which in turn might produce the observed differential emotional amplitude modulations. The results provide new methodological considerations for investigating temporal dynamics of early visual cortex modulation during sustained perception of affective scenes with SSVEP using RSVP paradigms. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Processing feedback from the environment is an essential function during development to adapt behavior in advantageous ways. One measure of feedback processing, the feedback negativity (FN), is an ERP observed following the presentation of feedback. Findings detailing developmental changes in the FN have been mixed, possibly due to limitations in traditional ERP measurement methods. Recent work shows that both theta and delta frequency activity contribute to the FN; utilizing time‐frequency methods to measure change in power and phase in these frequency bands may provide more accurate representation of feedback processing development in childhood and adolescence. We employ time‐frequency power and intertrial phase synchrony measures, in addition to conventional time‐domain ERP methods, to examine the development of feedback processing in the theta (4–7 Hz) and delta (.1–3 Hz) bands throughout adolescence. A sample of 54 female participants (8–17 years old) completed a gambling task while EEG was recorded. As expected, time‐domain ERP amplitudes showed no association with age. In contrast, significant effects were observed for the time‐frequency measures, with theta power decreasing with age and delta power increasing with age. For intertrial phase synchrony, delta synchrony increased with age, while age‐related changes in theta synchrony differed for gains and losses. Collectively, these findings highlight the importance of considering time‐frequency dynamics when exploring how the processing of feedback develops through late childhood and adolescence. In particular, the role of delta band activity and theta synchrony appear central to understanding age‐related changes in the neural response to feedback. - Psychophysiology, Volume 55, Issue 10, October 2018.

--- - |2 Abstract Cognitive affective neuroscience tasks that are straightforward to administer, measure key constructs of interest, and can be used in different lab settings and with multiple psychophysiological methods can lead to a more complete understanding of experimental effects. The no‐threat, predictable threat, unpredictable threat (NPU‐threat) task assesses constructs of interest to both clinical and basic affective science literatures, is relatively brief to administer, and has been used across labs with a number of different measurements (e.g., startle eyeblink, fMRI, corrugator response, subjective ratings). ERPs provide another means of assessing neurobiological reactivity during the NPU‐threat task, but to date such measures have been underutilized. That is, no study has yet evaluated cue‐elicited ERPs in the NPU‐threat task. Here, cue‐elicited ERPs were assessed in 78 participants who completed a version of the NPU‐threat task previously shown to reliably moderate startle eyeblink amplitudes. Results showed larger P2 amplitudes for unpredictable versus predictable trials, increased P3s and late positive potentials for threatening versus no‐threat trials, as well as larger stimulus preceding negativities for threatening versus no‐threat trials (driven primarily by predictable threat cues). In line with prior work, we observed enhanced startle eyeblink for threatening versus no‐threat trials and for unpredictable compared to predictable threat interstimulus intervals. In addition, the probe‐elicited P3 was suppressed for predictable and unpredictable compared to no‐threat trials. Therefore, cue‐elicited ERPs, which can be recorded alongside other measures in the NPU‐threat task (e.g., startle), may provide useful indices of temporally distinct stages of predictable and unpredictable threat processing. - Psychophysiology, Volume 55, Issue 10, October 2018.

--- - |2 Abstract Within the first 30–45 min after awakening, there is a characteristic rise in cortisol that is referred to as cortisol awakening response (CAR). Over the past decades, the CAR has become an important biomarker, mainly because of its reported association with health and disease. Previous research showed that the CAR can already be reliably assessed in infants and children. Yet, earlier findings on the influence of age have been inconsistent, and limited attention has been devoted to prepubertal children. Here, we aimed to contrast the magnitude and stability of the CAR in prepubertal children and adults. To this end, 24 healthy adults between 35 and 50 years of age and 24 healthy children between 6 and 9 years of age collected four salivary cortisol samples within 45 min after awakening on 4 separate days, 2 weekdays, and 2 weekend days. Our results showed that there was a marked CAR on weekdays and weekend days in both adults and children. In children, however, the CAR was overall significantly attenuated relative to adults. Moreover, while the cortisol increases after awakening were, both on weekdays and weekend days, highly correlated in adults, there were no such associations in children. Together, these data suggest that the CAR is less pronounced and less stable in prepubertal children compared to adults. Such age differences need to be taken into account when using the CAR as a biomarker in clinical settings. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.

--- - |2 Abstract Violent conflicts are severe traumatic stressors with detrimental effects on physical and mental health, with children and adolescents being particularly at risk. For the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, characteristic patterns of dysregulation in trauma‐exposed individuals have been shown. This study set out to investigate self‐reported mental well‐being in Palestinian adolescents growing up during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) as a psychoendocrine marker for long‐term HPA axis aberrations along with the potential protective factor sense of coherence (SoC; i.e., the global mindset to interpret the world and emerging stressors as comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful) were examined. Between 2014 and 2016, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, HCC, and SoC were examined in 233 adolescents aged 11 to 16 from the West Bank. More than half of the participants reported trauma exposure, with 40% fulfilling the criteria of a preliminary PTSD diagnosis and a high prevalence of anxiety and depression. HCC was significantly elevated in the PTSD subgroup compared to the subgroup not exposed to any traumatic events (p = 0.046), with trauma‐exposed individuals in between. HCC was further associated with typical sequelae of traumatic stress. Notably, SoC was inversely related to self‐reported psychopathology, as well as to HCC in the trauma group. The results illustrate the situation of adolescents exposed to chronic traumatic stress and extend the literature on aberrant HPA axis functioning under such conditions. They also point out a central role of SoC, which may imply new strategies to aid individuals exposed to ongoing conflicts. - Psychophysiology, EarlyView.