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["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nGoal‐directed behavior allows humans to flexibly adjust their actions according to expected outcomes. In the present study (N = 40), we combined behavioral analysis with psychophysiological measures to examine how goal‐directed control unfolds over time. Using a reinforcement‐learning task, we elicited two patterns of responding and examined neural activity preceding two types of responses: The initiation of a response burst and the subsequent responses within that burst. Variability in the readiness potential (RP), a neural marker of action preparation that has been associated with graded goal‐directed engagement, decreased more strongly prior to within‐burst responses than prior to burst initiation. This pattern suggests greater engagement of goal‐directed processes once responding is underway. RP variability was also reduced in behavioral contexts characterized by a higher proportion of within‐burst responses. Across conditions, individuals who produced more within‐burst responses showed stronger neural signatures associated with goal‐directed control. Together, these findings suggest that goal‐directed modulation varies over time within behavioral sequences and that psychophysiological measures can index corresponding variation in action‐outcome sensitivity.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nExtant research has insufficiently examined how biological adaptations to chronic stress are associated with comorbid depression–anxiety among adolescents from low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs). From a network perspective, comorbidity is conceptualized as symptom communities linked by bridge symptoms. Using this framework, we investigated whether allostatic load (AL), a composite indicator of cumulative physiological stress, was associated with differences in depression–anxiety symptom networks among Chinese adolescents with low family socioeconomic status (SES). A total of 485 adolescents with low family SES (54.0% girls; mean age = 12.06 years, SD = 1.67) completed AL assessments at baseline and self‐report measures of depression and anxiety at two time points over 1 year. Participants were stratified into high‐ and low‐AL groups based on biological parameters. Symptom networks were estimated using graphical Gaussian models and cross‐lagged panel networks. While composite symptom scores showed minimal differences between the high‐AL and low‐AL groups, notable differences emerged in network structure. In both groups, depression symptoms exerted strong temporal influence within the comorbidity network. However, anxiety symptoms showed stronger prospective associations with depression symptoms in the high‐AL group than in the low‐AL group. Somatic symptoms, particularly gastrointestinal symptoms, exhibited greater prominence as bridge nodes in the high‐AL network. These findings suggest that higher allostatic load is associated with altered patterns of symptom interrelation between depression and anxiety, particularly involving somatic bridge symptoms. Network analysis provides a fine‐grained, descriptive characterization of how physiological stress burden relates to comorbid symptom dynamics without implying causal mechanisms.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nDecreased cognitive control, encompassing processes like response inhibition and error processing, has been identified as a potential neurocognitive risk factor for psychopathology. Although electroencephalography (EEG) shows promise as a cost‐effective and high temporal resolution method for linking brain function to behavior, large‐scale EEG research to realize this potential remains limited. In this study, a population‐based sample of 2994 adolescents and emerging adults (Mage = 18.4 years, range 16–21 years) was utilized to first assess reliability of EEG markers of cognitive control (ERN/Pe, No‐Go N2/P3) measured during a Go/No‐Go task. This involved computing split‐half reliability, Cronbach's Alpha (CA) and Pearson's correlations for an increasing number of error/No‐Go trials. Given the low‐density setup, our analyses focused on the electrode locations FCz and Cz. Moderate reliability (split‐half reliability and CA ≥ 0.6) was obtained with a minimum of 9/10 errors for ERN, 7 errors for Pe, and 15 No‐Go trials for No‐Go N2/P3. Second, linear regression models were used to estimate univariate and multivariate associations between child and family characteristics and EEG parameters (ERN/Pe, No‐Go N2/P3 and midfrontal theta power). We report robust associations between higher Full Scale IQ estimate and larger Pe, No‐Go P3 and midfrontal theta power. Maternal education and household income showed a similar association, but seemed partly explained by Full Scale IQ estimate. Smaller No‐Go P3 was observed in participants with a migration background. Finally, larger ERN and No‐Go N2 were observed in female as compared to male participants. These findings highlight the importance of considering these variables in the design and analysis of future EEG studies in adolescent and emerging adult populations. In conclusion, this study highlights the feasibility of incorporating EEG into large‐scale population‐based research, even with relatively short task duration. Importantly, researchers should balance higher reliability against retaining more participants and minimizing potential bias.\n"]

["Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 126, Issue 1, July 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nTo assess the degree of temporal control in the midsession reversal task, pigeons learned a simultaneous discrimination with two stimuli, S1 and S2. Choices of S1 were reinforced on the first 40 trials and choices of S2 on the last 40. Variable intertrial intervals (ITIs) separated the trials. The pigeons learned to reverse preference from S1 to S2 near trial 40. To see if pigeons had learned a temporal discrimination, we either doubled or halved the mean of the ITIs during test sessions. If choices were based on temporal cues, preference should reverse at the same time in the session but on half as many trials into the session when the mean ITI doubled and twice as many trials later when the mean ITI halved. Variable ITIs should reduce generalization decrement and thereby reveal temporal control more clearly. The reversal trial changed in the directions predicted by timing, but the magnitude of the change was smaller than predicted. Most individual choice patterns were consistent with temporal control, but a few were consistent with control by trial number or by the events of the previous trial. Variable ITIs seem to reduce the weight of temporal cues relative to the weight of nontemporal cues.\n"]

["Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 126, Issue 1, July 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nBehavioral economic accounts posit that distorted valuation processes underlie cannabis decisions; however, less is known about the moment‐to‐moment dynamics through which value influences observable choice behavior. This study explored whether value‐based decision‐making and behavioral economic constructs distinguish people with and without cannabis use history. Sixty participants were recruited, half with a history of cannabis use (cannabis group) and half without (control group). Participants completed a value‐based decision‐making task (choosing between previously rated cannabis‐related and cannabis‐unrelated images). A drift‐diffusion model was fitted to behavioral data (choice and response time patterns) to estimate reinforcer‐specific parameters, including evidence accumulation rates and response thresholds. Compared with controls, participants with history of cannabis use had higher cannabis evidence accumulation rates (p = .023). Exploratory analyses revealed higher self‐report cannabis demand across most indices (all except Pmax; ps ≤ .042). However, groups did not differ in cannabis‐unrelated evidence accumulation rates or response thresholds for either decision type (ps ≥ .186). Notably, controls showed higher cannabis‐unrelated than cannabis evidence accumulation rates (p = .001). People with a history of cannabis use ascribe a higher value to cannabis than those without such history, who in turn value cannabis less than alternative reinforcers—a pattern consistent with behavioral economic accounts of addiction.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nHypervigilance usually refers to the enhancement of external attention in an effort to scan and detect potential threats in the environment. Yet, whether this affective state could also influence internal attention or the ability to switch between external and internal attention (i.e., attentional balance) remains unclear. Recent studies have shown that attentional balance is characterized by internal dominance, raising the intriguing possibility that hypervigilance might alter attentional balance rather than merely boosting external attention. To test this hypothesis, we recorded behavioral, EEG, and eye‐tracking data from 46 participants performing the Switching Attention Task (SAT) under hypervigilance versus two other control conditions. The SAT has previously been validated to explore attentional balance. Hypervigilance was induced during the SAT through a task‐unrelated aversive sound played unpredictably, and its induction was confirmed by skin conductance, subjective ratings, and eye fixation data. At the behavioral level, using a drift diffusion model, we found that hypervigilance impaired attentional balance during the SAT, by decreasing the shielding of internal attention. Interestingly, we found that this impairment was captured by an amplitude modulation of the P2 event‐related potential. A joint modeling approach further confirmed this specific brain‐behavior association. Together, these findings suggest that hypervigilance modulates attentional balance through a selective modulation of internal attention.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nSelective internal attention allows working memory (WM) contents to be prioritized according to task demands, a process typically investigated with the retro‐cue paradigm. In this paradigm, a cue presented during WM maintenance indicates which item will be tested, enabling memory‐based prioritization of task‐relevant and typically enhancing memory performance. Recent findings suggest, however, that saccade preparation toward the location of a WM item can also produce prioritization linked to oculomotor selection. In the present study, we compared behavioral performance and neural oscillatory dynamics associated with action‐oriented prioritization induced by saccade preparation and memory‐based prioritization elicited by spatial and color retro‐cues. Behaviorally, saccade‐based prioritization produced only a modest benefit relative to incongruent items, whereas both types of retro‐cues yielded substantially larger improvements. At the neural level, alpha‐band lateralization showed a similar spatial‐attention pattern across all prioritization conditions, supporting a shared covert attentional mechanism. In contrast, bilateral posterior alpha power was reduced following retro‐cues compared to saccadic preparation, consistent with a release of WM load when non‐cued items are deprioritized. Overall, our results suggest that these forms of prioritization may rely on overlapping spatial‐attention processes, but differ in strategic control and their consequences for load management. Importantly, retro‐cue‐based prioritization produces a stronger behavioral enhancement than prioritization associated with saccade preparation.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nEmotional meaning is often conveyed through language, and certain word categories, such as taboo words, can elicit strong affective responses that may require regulation. While taboo words are socially and psychologically salient, their neural processing remains to be fully explored. In this study, we investigated whether EEG signals can be used to predict neutral, negative, and taboo words, and whether this prediction is preserved under conditions of emotion regulation. Forty native Italian speakers viewed 240 words across these categories while EEG was recorded. Participants completed two conditions: a Look condition (passive observation) and an Accept condition (emotion regulation via acceptance). Using support vector machine (SVM) classifiers applied to event‐related potentials (ERPs), we found that word categories could be reliably decoded from the late positive potential (LPP) in central‐parietal‐occipital and anterior right regions between 450 and 850 ms. Notably, classification remained above chance but largely reduced even during the Accept condition, suggesting that word‐related affective information persists at the neural level despite the regulation effort. These findings advance our understanding of emotional language processing and highlight the utility of machine learning for decoding subtle neural representations.\n"]

["Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 125, Issue 3, May 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nThe present study evaluated the efficacy of a classwide appetitive Pavlovian conditioning protocol implemented in two inclusive kindergarten classrooms. Each classroom enrolled similar distributions of typically developing children and children who were either eligible for special education services or diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Two Pavlovian conditioning trials (CS+ ➔ US) and two unpaired trials (CS‐ ➔ no US) per day were superimposed on normal classroom activities at random times. Conditioned responses (i.e., positive emotional responding and attention directed to the CS) were recorded during the CS+ and CS‐ events. In both classrooms—one in which the teacher verbally specified the Pavlovian contingency and one in which they did not—the CS+ evoked significantly more of both conditioned responses in typically developing children. Children with developmental disabilities showed significantly more CS+‐evoked attention, but the effect size was smaller than among typically developing children. The CS+ did not evoke significantly more positive emotional responding in the children with developmental disabilities unless the teacher verbally specified the CS+ ➔ US contingency. Such procedural refinements may be important if a therapeutic appetitive CS is to influence adaptive operant behavior via, for example, conditioned reinforcement or Pavlovian‐to‐instrumental transfer in children with developmental disabilities.\n"]

["Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 125, Issue 3, May 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nResearchers have found significant utility in approaching choice from a behavioral economics lens. Recently, this framework has begun to be extended to describe and predict clinical‐ethical choices. Researchers have found that common behavioral economics effects occur with clinical‐ethical choice at the group level (e.g., framing effects, effort discounting, delay discounting, and probability discounting) and the individual level (e.g., probability discounting with specific outcomes). However, past research examining clinical‐ethical outcomes through the behavioral economics lens has used experimental preparations that differ from those commonly used in discounting research with other commodities. Thus, the current exploratory study sought to use adjusting‐amount procedures commonly employed in discounting work to examine the sign effect in ethical probability discounting; the commodity effect between monetary and ethical outcomes; and correlations among rates of monetary discounting, ethical discounting, and ethical theory preference as measured via an exploratory, ethical multiple‐stimulus‐without‐replacement procedure. We observed monetary outcomes discounted more steeply than ethical outcomes, ethical violations discounted more steeply than ethical compliance, no significant correlations among discounting tasks, and no significant correlations between ethical theory preference and ethical discounting. The present work further demonstrates the presence of behavioral economics effects with ethical decision making. However, choice with ethical outcomes may not easily be predicted by choice with other commodities, measures in behavioral economics, or ethical theory preference. Despite these findings, many limitations remained, primarily centered on whether procedures common to behavioral economic analyses with other commodities are adequate for use when studying clinical‐ethical decision making. Moving forward, alternative preparations to study ethical decision making may be needed.\n"]

["Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 125, Issue 3, May 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nThe behavioral theory of timing (BeT), developed by Killeen and Fetterman in 1988, accounts for the performance of animals on many timing tasks using sequences of adjunctive behaviors rather than internal clocks and related cognitive mechanisms as its explanatory principle. The idea that timing was mediated by behavior or, perhaps more correctly, sensations arising from behavior, was in fact proposed in the 19th century by Munsterberg. The article describes some of Munsterberg's work and research that followed it, notably Curtis's extensive study from 1916 of “strains and relaxations” experienced by her participants while they performed a variety of time judgement tasks. An unresolved question both for BeT and the earlier work is deciding whether the behaviors observed, which are found to occur reliably, are necessary for timing tasks to be carried out or are epiphenomenal to other underlying timing mechanisms.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nNeural oscillations are fundamental for encoding, filtering, and integrating sensory information, representing a core computational principle underlying perceptual experience. In particular, fluctuations in alpha (~7–13 Hz) and theta (~4–7 Hz) activity are associated with changes in cortical excitability and rhythmic modulations of perception. These oscillations are not static features but are highly plastic and can be shaped through neural entrainment, whereby brain rhythms synchronize with external rhythmic sensory stimulation. While short‐duration (~0.5–5 s) stimulation induces transient (~500 ms), localized entrainment effects, it remains unclear whether prolonged entrainment can produce persistent and spatially widespread modulations in ongoing neural activity. Here, we recorded resting‐state EEG before and after 1 min of visual rhythmic stimulation at individualized alpha (individual alpha frequency, IAF; IAF −2 Hz; IAF +2 Hz) and theta (4.5 Hz) frequencies. We assessed frequency‐specific and topographic effects by comparing alpha (7–13 Hz) and theta (3–6 Hz) power, frequency, and phase coherence before and after stimulation. Our results show that prolonged visual entrainment induces sustained increases in alpha power and phase coherence, persisting throughout the 1‐min post‐stimulation period without changes in frequency. Stimulation at IAF induced stronger modulations of intrinsic alpha oscillations than other frequencies, extending bilaterally from posterior to central and anterior regions. In contrast, theta stimulation increased phase consistency but did not induce persistent changes in theta power, suggesting no sustained modulation of endogenous theta activity. Together, these findings provide evidence that prolonged visual entrainment can induce long‐lasting and spatially distributed modulations of resting‐state alpha oscillations, particularly when stimulation is tuned to the brain's intrinsic resonant frequency. This highlights the frequency‐specific nature of neural responsiveness and the potential of rhythmic sensory stimulation to induce long‐lasting changes in large‐scale brain oscillatory networks.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nNatural scenes are typically well‐categorized in meaning and efficiently recognized, even under perceptually degraded conditions. The present study investigated whether the perceptual quality of a retrieval cue influences the long‐term reconsolidation of visual memory. Participants were initially exposed to a series of images varying in emotional content. After a short delay, they completed an intermediate recognition memory test in which previously seen (“old”) and novel (“new”) images were presented in either a blurred or intact format. One week later, participants performed a final recognition task involving only intact old images—some of which had been tested previously (as blurred or intact), and others not tested at all. Recognition performance was generally enhanced for old pictures that had been previously tested, relative to non‐tested pictures, with a greater benefit observed for images tested in intact form. Although emotional images were overall better remembered than neutral images, the benefit of testing with intact cues was more pronounced for neutral than for emotional pictures. Event‐related potentials during the final task revealed a larger late positive component (LPC) for correctly recognized old versus new images, regardless of prior testing or emotional content. These findings suggest that recognition memory for natural scenes—while already robust—can be further strengthened through a single re‐presentation within an active retrieval context. Critically, the perceptual quality of the retrieval cue plays a key role, likely by promoting continued visual processing. Implications are discussed in relation to desirable difficulty and global/local processing theories in scene perception and memory.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nDespite concerns regarding its validity, the two‐alternative forced‐choice heartbeat detection task (2AFC‐HDT) is a frequently used measure of cardiac interoceptive accuracy. In this task, participants must decide whether a series of tones occur synchronously with their heartbeats. One series of tones is predefined by the researcher as synchronous with heartbeats, and one series is predefined as asynchronous. The 2AFC‐HDT may result in individuals judged to be not interoceptive when they are, either if participants perceive their heartbeats as occurring synchronously with tones predefined as asynchronous rather than synchronous with their heartbeats, or if they do not perceive either set of tones as synchronous. Currently, there is little data on the proportion of participants this may affect. We addressed this using data from the Phase Adjustment Task (PAT) – a measure of cardiac interoceptive accuracy that determines if, and when in the cardiac cycle, a participant can perceive their heartbeat. The timing of heartbeat perception in 43 interoceptive participants was compared to the timing of synchronous and asynchronous tones used in the 2AFC‐HDT, assuming temporal precision of 50, 100, and 150 ms. Results suggest that between 53.5%–97.7% of delay‐based interoceptive individuals perceive heartbeats at a delay that does not correspond to the typical asynchronous or synchronous delays used to present tones on the 2AFC‐HDT. These issues suggest that the 2AFC‐HDT (or other measures that make assumptions about perceived timing of heartbeats) should not be used to measure cardiac interoceptive accuracy, or cardiac interoceptive insight (also known as awareness or metacognition).\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nHow does the brain learn to predict rewards? According to temporal difference (TD) learning theory, reward prediction errors (RPEs) should shift from the time of outcome delivery to earlier predictive cues as stimulus‐action‐outcome associations are learned. The reward positivity, an electrophysiological signal believed to index sensitivity of the anterior midcingulate cortex to positive RPEs, should progressively transfer from feedback to predictive cues during learning. However, this core prediction of the reward positivity has remained largely untested. We recorded the EEG from 73 healthy adults performing a probabilistic selection task (PST) with extended training trials. The reward positivity amplitude was measured at both feedback and cue presentation during early and late training phases (first and second halves, respectively). To examine individual differences in RPE‐related learning processes, we split participants into rapid and slow learner groups and fit Q‐learning models to estimate separate learning rates for positive and negative feedback. Results showed clear evidence of temporal backpropagation: early in learning, the reward positivity appeared when feedback was delivered, but late in learning it disappeared from feedback and instead emerged when predictive cues appeared. Rapid learners showed more pronounced shifts in reward positivity from feedback to cue, consistent with their higher learning rates. These findings provide the first clear evidence that reward positivity demonstrates the temporal backpropagation predicted by TD learning theory. The results validate reward positivity as a neural marker of positive RPEs and highlight the importance of examining both cue‐related and feedback‐related brain responses to fully characterize reinforcement learning processes. Our findings have important implications for understanding individual differences in reinforcement learning and for interpreting the reward positivity in clinical populations and across the lifespan.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nSocial anxiety is marked by persistent fear responses to social cues, often maintained in the absence of repeated aversive social experiences. One potential mechanism underlying this persistence is the recurrent generation of negative social imagery, which may function as an internal source of threat. The present study investigated whether fear toward neutral social stimuli can be acquired through imagined fear‐relevant social scenarios alone, and whether this process is heightened in individuals with elevated social anxiety. Using an imagery‐based differential conditioning paradigm, neutral facial expressions were paired with fear‐relevant social imagery, neutral imagery, or no imagery in individuals with high and low social anxiety. During acquisition, faces associated with fear imagery elicited more negative valence and higher arousal ratings than control stimuli, with these effects amplified in the high social anxiety group. Critically, only individuals with high social anxiety showed reliable differential autonomic responses, including increased skin conductance and heart rate acceleration, to the fear‐conditioned stimulus. During extinction, subjective fear and residual autonomic arousal persisted more strongly in the high social anxiety group, indicating impaired safety learning. Together, these findings provide psychophysiological evidence that internally generated threat representations can serve as effective unconditioned stimuli in fear learning, offering a mechanistic account of how negative social imagery contributes to the maintenance of social anxiety and highlighting the potential relevance of interventions targeting maladaptive social imagery.\n"]

["Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 125, Issue 3, May 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nSince its introduction by Jacobs and Bickel (1999), the hypothetical purchase task (HPT) has emerged as a frequently used methodology in behavioral economics research, particularly in studies of substance use and public health decision making. The HPT represents an approach that seeks to quantify the reinforcing value of drugs and other commodities through parametric, scalable methodology measured via self‐reported consumption across escalating prices. Despite its increasing use in research settings, no comprehensive evaluation of its scientific influence has yet been undertaken. To address this gap, we conducted a two‐part review of the HPT's empirical legacy. In Study 1, we conducted a bibliometric analysis of all peer‐reviewed documents citing Jacobs and Bickel (1999) through mid‐2025. In Study 2, we conducted a systematic review of empirical HPT studies employing operant demand analyses to assess drug consumption. We conclude with a discussion on the legacy of Jacobs and Bickel (1999), an evaluation of the present state of the field of operant behavioral economic science in addiction, and a call for critical areas of inquiry in the use of HPTs to measure drug abuse potential.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nGroup‐level averaging of psychophysiological data often obscures meaningful individual differences, masking response patterns that may explain variability in behavior and central nervous system activity. Identifying such patterns is particularly relevant in heart rate (HR) responses to threat, where subtle variations may reflect distinct coping mechanisms such as orienting or defense. Machine learning techniques that learn latent representations, particularly variational autoencoders (VAEs), offer powerful tools for revealing such hidden structures. This methodological report introduces a simple VAE‐based approach for characterizing HR responses to threat pictures in 165 participants. To validate the method, simulations first demonstrated that the model accurately separated simulated HR waveforms. The VAE was then applied to empirical HR responses, mapping them into a three‐dimensional latent space for subsequent cluster analysis, which was compared to clustering based directly on raw HR waveforms. The VAE revealed three distinct response profiles: (1) strong decelerators (cardiac orienting response), (2) weak decelerators with late acceleration, and (3) immediate accelerators without a decelerative phase. In contrast, clustering raw HR waveforms identified only two groups. Clusters derived from the latent space were more coherent and exhibited greater within‐group consistency. Finally, applying the pre‐trained autoencoder to a small fear‐conditioning dataset enabled characterization of distinct HR response patterns despite limited sample size. These findings show that even a basic autoencoder enhances the categorization of psychophysiological response patterns, offering a framework for linking individual autonomic variability to broader models of affective and defensive behavior.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis study investigated the neural mechanisms underlying feedback‐based learning of novel‐object‐novel‐word associations, focusing on how feedback‐locked event‐related potentials acquired during learning relate to subsequent memory performance and acquired association strength. Specifically, we examined whether amplitudes of the feedback‐related negativity (FRN) and N170 components after immediate or delayed feedback predicted not only free recall and recognition performance, but also N400 priming effects exerted by the novel objects on the novel words as a neural correlate of the strength of the associations acquired through feedback‐based learning. Sixty‐six healthy young adults learned novel associations receiving either immediate or delayed deterministic feedback, followed by free recall tests and a newly introduced primed recognition task to measure N400 priming effects. Results showed that FRN amplitudes during learning were associated with recognition performance and predicted frontal N400 priming effects, suggesting a link to procedural, automatically retrieved memories. In contrast, N170 amplitudes were related not only to recognition, but also free recall and to general facilitation of semantic retrieval and integration processes, reflected in reduced N400 amplitudes, indicating a role in declarative memory and familiarity‐driven processing facilitation. Overall, feedback‐based learning elicited robust N400 priming effects, reflecting successful associative integration. However, no consistent effects of feedback timing or valence were observed, likely due to learning strategies adopted based on the deterministic nature of feedback and the anticipation of the memory tasks after learning. These findings highlight distinct contributions of feedback‐related ERP components to different forms of memory representations, linking general mechanisms of feedback‐based learning to the resulting representations.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nExtant literature suggests that developmental improvements in processing speed reflect changes in a common global processing factor. In theory, then, the influence of age on processing speed should be shared across premotor processes (e.g., response selection) and motor processes (e.g., response execution). However, some researchers have observed differences in the effect of age on speed across different processes depending on stage of development, and research on neurodevelopment has long demonstrated variation in the developmental trajectory of cortical regions associated with different functions. The current study explored whether age‐related differences in processing speed during adolescence varied between premotor and motor domains, testing whether these domain‐specific differences accounted for age‐related variance in choice reaction time (RT). Adolescent participants (N = 204, 68.6% female) varying in age from 14 to 19 years (Mage = 16, SDage = 1.73) completed a flanker task while EEG was recorded. We quantified the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) to fractionate RTs into premotor (stimulus‐locked LRP [S‐LRP]) and motor (response‐locked LRP [R‐LRP]) intervals. Both S‐LRP and R‐LRP latencies correlated with RT, but only S‐LRP latency decreased with age. Mediation analysis confirmed a significant indirect effect of age on RT through S‐LRP latency but not R‐LRP latency, suggesting that faster processing speed among older adolescents stems from faster premotor—but not motor—processing. We demonstrate the utility of using LRP latencies to investigate domain‐specific processing speed, highlighting directions for future work to link structural development research to functional measurements.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis study examined whether multiple group membership (MGM) predicted future cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) in women and whether this relationship was moderated by the number of social group memberships they perceived to be the basis for their discrimination. Using a longitudinal design, data were drawn from Waves 2 and 3 of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study. The sample included 179 women for diastolic and systolic blood pressure (DBP, SBP) reactivity and 200 women for heart rate (HR) reactivity (ages 47–94, M = 63.66, SD = 8.90). Greater MGM at Time 1 was associated with lower HR responses to stress at Time 2, indicating reduced cardiovascular responding during the stress tasks. Moderation analyses revealed that among women who attributed discrimination to one group, higher MGM predicted higher HR reactivity suggesting a more engaged stress response. In contrast, among women who did not attribute discrimination to any group, higher MGM was significantly associated with lower HR reactivity. No significant effects were found for SBP and DBP reactivity. Together, these findings suggest that MGM does not uniformly confer stress‐buffering benefits and may, in some contexts, reflect cumulative social burden rather than protection. The results highlight the importance of considering the social meaning and context of group memberships, particularly experiences of discrimination, when evaluating their implications for women's stress‐related health.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nNeurofeedback is a promising technique for brain rehabilitation and cognitive enhancement; however, it suffers from an inefficacy problem, as more than a third of participants do not learn to regulate their own brain activity. Lack of task engagement, probably related to an inadequate difficulty level, has been proposed among the possible factors that can affect the learning process. Here, we explored the possibility of monitoring cognitive engagement using physiological signals through eye tracking and electrodermal activity. We recorded these signals while participants completed different tasks designed to stimulate cognitive load and attentional focus. From the assumption that high performance in any task requires an optimal level of engagement, we finally trained a linear model to predict participants' performance during different cognitive tasks by using their physiological signals. Results showed that pupil diameter strongly discriminates internal focus of attention from mind‐wandering states, and that pupil diameter and skin conductance response are sensitive to differentiate between task and rest conditions. In addition, both features are sensitive to habituation and cognitive load effects. The model was able to predict performance when trained on a specific task, as well as when combining different tasks together. Our results provide new insights regarding the physiological bases of cognitive engagement and propose a model with the potential to monitor it, while predicting performance. The capacity of our model to be generalized across different tasks encourage further research to test its potential in other domains, for example, in the context of individualized neurofeedback protocols.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nFast‐paced breathing (FPB) has emerged as a technique to purposefully increase physiological activation to facilitate motor‐cognitive performance. Empirical evidence of prominent physiological processes associated with FPB, cardiac changes however, remain scarce. To address this gap, the present study sought to systematically quantify the changes in heart rate variability and cardiac contractility during FPB at 35 and 55 cycles/min (CPM), compared to spontaneous and paced breathing (6 and 15 CPM), while accounting for breathing discomfort. Healthy, physically active participants (N = 38) performed each breathing exercise for 2.5 min, with electrocardiography and impedance cardiography signals recorded throughout. Heart rate variability was indexed through RMSSD, and the pre‐ejection period (PEP) served as an index of cardiac contractility. Results showed that FPB at 35 and 55 CPM led to reduced heart rate variability, whereas only the latter condition elicited a significant increase in cardiac contractility, suggesting a more pronounced stimulation. Breathing discomfort level increased as the breathing frequency deviated from the spontaneous range, reaching a moderate level at 55 CPM. These findings elucidate the frequency dependence in reciprocal and independent cardiac patterns, informing conceptual models of paced breathing.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nInteroceptive attention refers to selectively attending to internal bodily signals to guide perception and behavior. Cardiac interoception, in particular, has been proposed to play a key role in self‐regulation and emotional awareness, yet the neural dynamics underlying attention to cardiac signals remain incompletely understood. Here, we investigated whether heartbeat‐locked beta‐band (16–28 Hz) activity serves as an oscillatory marker of interoceptive attention. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we recorded neural activity from 51 healthy participants during heartbeat and auditory discrimination tasks. Time–frequency analyses revealed significant suppression of beta‐band power 310–530 ms after the R‐peak, localized to somatosensory cortex, premotor cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and midline cingulate regions. This heartbeat‐locked beta suppression was observed not only during task conditions but also at rest, suggesting an ongoing cortical response to cardiac signals. Critically, the magnitude of suppression was significantly enhanced during interoceptive attention. Moreover, greater beta suppression in somatosensory and anterior cingulate cortices was associated with higher interoceptive accuracy across individuals. Control analyses indicated that the effect was time‐locked to cardiac events and was not observed in surrogate epochs, making it unlikely to reflect nonspecific timing effects or heart rate variability. Heartbeat‐locked beta suppression was enhanced during interoceptive attention and was larger in participants with higher interoceptive accuracy. The results identify beta‐band suppression as a candidate oscillatory marker of interoceptive attention and provide a foundation for future studies of interoceptive processing in healthy and clinical populations.\n"]

["Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 125, Issue 3, May 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nAlcohol use disorder, unemployment, and homelessness are interrelated problems that are concentrated among people living in poverty. A recent clinical trial evaluating an employment‐based contingency management intervention called abstinence‐contingent wage supplements (ACWS) found that ACWS promoted alcohol abstinence, increased employment, and reduced poverty among unemployed adults experiencing homelessness and alcohol use disorder. This secondary analysis evaluated employment and poverty outcomes during the intervention for the 62 participants randomized into the ACWS group using paystubs and self‐reported measures collected during the intervention. Paystub measures correlated positively with self‐reported outcomes. Most ACWS participants (n = 41; 66%) obtained employment during the intervention. During the intervention, employed participants became employed in 6.0 weeks, worked at a job or training program for 15 weeks, worked 33.7 hr per week while employed or in training, and earned $1,054.31 per pay period, on average. Most employed participants earned enough income to qualify as living out of poverty for at least one pay period (80%). While employed, participants lived above the poverty level for most pay periods (79%) during the intervention. Understanding the effects of the ACWS intervention on employment and poverty may prove useful in providing targeted support to people at increased risk of poverty‐related health problems.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nExperiencing childhood adversity is related to later adverse cardiovascular health outcomes. The mechanism by which this occurs may be explained by dysregulation of the autonomic stress response. The aim of this study was to examine whether adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) predicted cardiovascular stress reactivity to and recovery from an acute psychological stressor. In a single laboratory visit, one‐hundred and fifty‐nine undergraduate students completed a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Task while having their blood pressure and heart rate monitored over the course of a 10‐min baseline, 6‐min stress test, and 15‐min recovery period. Participants also completed the Adverse Childhood Experiences Scale. Using regression analyses, participants who reported experiencing a greater number of ACEs demonstrated significantly lower systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) reactivity to the acute stress task. Additionally, a greater number of ACEs was significantly associated with poorer DBP recovery following stress exposure. The current study indicates that ACEs are associated with blunted cardiovascular reactivity to, as well as poorer cardiovascular recovery from acute psychological stress. These findings indicate a psychophysiological mechanism facilitating the association between ACEs and adverse cardiovascular health outcomes.\n"]

["Psychophysiology, Volume 63, Issue 5, May 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nSmooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) performance has previously been shown to have good reliability. While quantifying the relative amounts of reliable trait and state influences on SPEM is relevant to different lines of research including individual differences, clinical and experimental research, this has not yet been done. Here, we apply latent state–trait (LST) theory to SPEM for the first time to examine reliability and to explicitly decompose trait and situational variance. SPEM tasks with sinusoidal and triangular movement patterns were performed by N = 163 healthy participants at three measurement occasions. LST and latent growth curve (LGC) modeling was used to calculate model‐based reliability and to distinguish reliable trait variance (consistency) and variance due to influences of the situation and of the person × situation interaction (occasion specificity). We found mostly excellent reliabilities (0.86–0.98), except for the intra‐individual standard deviation of root mean square error (RMSE) in both SPEM tasks where reliability was good (0.70–0.74). Consistencies and occasion specificities indicated that a higher proportion of variance was due to trait influences (62% on average) than due to situational influences (26% on average). There were mostly no changes on trait level over time. We conclude that SPEM performance is highly reliable and mainly reflects relatively stable trait components, but is also characterized by substantial state influences. Overall, these findings further support the use of SPEM in individual differences studies. However, potential state influences should be considered more explicitly in future studies examining SPEM.\n"]

["Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 125, Issue 3, May 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nAcute and chronic consumption of sugar‐rich foods alters the probability of binge eating and reinforcement processes related to self‐regulation of food intake. While delay discounting—preference for smaller, more immediate outcomes over larger, delayed ones—is linked to binge eating, the role of diet is less studied. We examined the extent to which acute food presentation (i.e., food cues) affected food delay discounting in binge‐eating prone (BEP) rats exposed to chronic, but restricted, high‐sugar diets. Female BEP and binge‐eating‐resistant rats were randomly assigned to a chronic Oreo‐plus‐chow diet, where 22.5% of calories came from sugar, or a chow‐only diet. Delay discounting for sucrose was assessed twice: first under baseline and then followed by an acute cookie‐cue condition where rats consumed a morsel of Oreo cookie immediately before the second session. Cookie cues induced higher delay discounting relative to baseline for all rats. A significant Binge Proneness × Diet interaction was observed. Binge‐eating‐prone rats with the chow‐only diet exhibited higher delay discounting than BEP rats given the Oreo‐plus‐chow diet. These findings indicate that cookie cues increase delay discounting but also suggest that limited and consistent access to sugar may serve as a protective factor that decreases delay discounting in binge‐prone organisms.\n"]

["Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, Volume 125, Issue 3, May 2026. ", "\nAbstract\nPrior research has found that pigeons prefer to have a choice between two or more alternatives than to have no choice. The implication of this finding is that the preference for choice may be an evolved (or learned) predisposition. The purpose of the present experiment was to test the hypothesis that the preference for choice may be an artifact of bias, a preference for a terminal‐link spatial location. In the present experiment, we followed the procedure used by Ono (2000) in which all terminal‐link choices were followed by a reinforcer 50% of the time and in which the preference to choose would not be differentially reinforced. Three of the pigeons showed a significant initial‐link preference to choose, seven pigeons were relatively indifferent between choice and no choice, and one pigeon preferred the initial‐link no‐choice option. Of the three pigeons that showed a significant initial‐link preference to choose, two showed a strong preference for one of the terminal‐link spatial locations. Further research on the preference to choose should determine whether the preference to choose is motivated by access to a particular terminal‐link location rather than the more cognitive concept of freedom to choose.\n"]

--- - |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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.