The late positive potential (LPP) has been well documented in predicting the effect of emotion regulation in previous developmental literature. However, few studies have examined age-related changes ...in emotion regulation from adolescence to adulthood using this biomarker. To test this, Reactivity and Regulation-Image Task was used to test 18 young adolescents and 22 adults to examine the modulation of LPP during emotion regulation. Results revealed that (a) on the behavioral level, adults reported higher intensity of emotional experience than adolescents when they were asked to use up-regulation. Down-regulation showed no age effect for self-reported rating; (b) adolescents showed higher amplitudes of LPP than adults when using different regulatory strategies in all windows; (c) In late time window, regulation effect was larger when using up-regulation strategy than down-regulation strategy for adolescents, while the difference between the two strategies was negligible for adults. (d) In early time window, reactivity effect was larger in negative conditions than in positive conditions for adolescents, while the difference between the two conditions was again negligible for adults. Differences in the amplitudes and time courses of LPP during emotion regulation between adolescents and adults suggested that age-related changes in emotion regulation may occur during adolescence.
The present study examines whether collaborative situations make individuals more dishonest in face-to-face settings. It also considers how this dishonesty unfolds over time. To address these ...questions, we employed a sequential dyadic die-rolling task in which two participants in a pair sitting face-to-face received a payoff only if both reported the same outcome when each one rolled their die. In each trial, one participant (role A) rolled a die first and reported the outcome. Then, the second participant (role B) was informed of A’s reported number, rolled a die as well, and reported the outcome. If their reported outcomes were identical, both of them received a reward. We also included an individual condition in which an individual subject rolled a die twice and received a reward if he/she reported the same die-roll outcome. We found that B lied significantly more than participants in the individual condition, whereas A lied as much as participants in the individual condition. Furthermore, when collaborating, more and more participants (both A and B) became dishonest as the game progressed, whereas there was no such trend among participants in the individual condition. These findings provide evidence indicating that collaborative settings increase dishonesty and that this effect becomes more evident as the collaboration progress.
The feedback concealed information test (fCIT) is a new variant of the CIT that added feedback about participants’ concealing performances in the classical CIT. The advantage of the fCIT is that the ...resulting feedback related event-related potentials (ERPs) can be used to detect concealed information. However, the detection efficiency of feedback-based ERPs varies across studies. The present experiment examined whether the extent participants believed the feedback influenced their detection efficiency. Specifically, participants did a mock crime and were then tested in a fCIT. Following the fCIT, participants were asked to report how much they believed the feedback was accurate. Results showed that there were no significant correlations between the amplitude of the feedback related negativity (FRN), feedback P300, and participants’ self-report at the group level. However, individual analyses showed that the detection efficiency of both the FRN and feedback P300 were influenced by participants’ belief about the presented feedback. The detection efficiency of the FRN and the feedback P300 was higher among participants who believed the feedback. These findings suggest that the fCIT is dependent to some extent on the participants’ level of belief in the feedback.
The present study focused on neural correlates underlying second-order deception. In first-order deception, the recipient of deception is unaware of the deceiver's deceptive intention. However, ...during second-order deception, the recipient is fully aware of the deceiver's deceptive intention and thus the deceiver needs to use both lies and truths to deceive the recipient. Using the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) methodology and a naturalistic interactive game, we found that second-order deception elicited significantly greater oxy-Hb changes in the prefrontal cortex (the right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), BA6) than the non-deceptive control condition. This finding suggests that second-order deception, like first-order deception, engages specifically the cortical regions associated with the planning of complex actions and goal processing. We also found that lying to deceive produced greater neural activities in the right middle frontal gyrus than truth-telling to deceive. This suggests that although both actions serve deceptive purposes, making a false statement contradicting the true state of affairs still requires more executive control and thus greater neural responses in the cortical regions associated with this function. In addition, we found that the successful deception produced greater neural activities in a broad area of the prefrontal frontal cortex than failure to deceive, indicating the involvement of the cortical reward system during second-order deception. Further, failure of truth-telling to deceive produced greater neural responses in the right SFG than failure of lying to deceive. The present findings taken together suggest that second-order deception engages both the cortical executive and reward systems.
•We examined neural correlates of second-order deception using fNIRS methodology.•It activates prefrontal cortex involved in planning and goal processing.•Lying to deceive engenders more prefrontal activities than telling-truth to deceive.•Second-order deception also involves of the cortical reward system.
This study used longitudinal cross-lagged modeling to examine the contribution of theory of mind (ToM), executive function (EF) to children's lying development and of children's lying to ToM and EF ...development. Ninety-seven Chinese children (initial
= 46 months, 47 boys) were tested three times approximately 4 months apart. Results showed that the diverse desire understanding and knowledge access understanding components of ToM, as well as the inhibitory control component of EF predicted the development of children's lying, while the diverse belief understanding and false belief understanding components of ToM, and the working memory component of EF did not predict development of children's lying. Meanwhile, children's lying predicted development of children's belief-emotion understanding components of ToM, but not any other ToM components, or EF components. These findings provide longitudinal evidence for the relation between ToM, EF, and children's lying during the preschool years.
While previous studies have shown that East-West cultural differences exist in processing different emotional stimuli, potential subcultural differences within a large cultural group are not well ...understood. In this study, we examined subcultural differences in the event-related potential (ERP) modulations in the brain, during processing social positive and non-social positive stimuli among 21 Han Chinese and 21 Uygur Chinese. Results showed that the magnitudes of P2, N2, and late positive potential (LPP) were larger in Uygur Chinese than in Han Chinese. For social positive stimuli, the P2 and LPP 300–600 were larger in Uygur Chinese than in Han Chinese. However, there was no significant difference in non-social positive stimuli. These results indicated that social positive emotions were more prioritized in emotional processing among Uygur Chinese than Han Chinese. These findings contribute to the growing literature on subcultural differences in processing different types of positive stimuli.
Previous studies have found that "disgust-sensitive" individuals have negative attitudes toward gay and lesbian people, but the underlying mechanisms for such attitudes remain unclear. Based on moral ...foundations theory, the current paper assumes that the relationship between disgust sensitivity and attitudes toward homosexuality are mediated by moral foundations. In order to test this assumption, the current authors examined the questionnaire answers from a total of 452 Chinese undergraduates who participated in this study. The results showed that disgust sensitivity was positively correlated with negative attitudes toward homosexuality, and positively correlated with moral concerns in five domains (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity). Authority and sanctity were both associated with attitudes toward homosexuality, while only sanctity mediated the relationship between disgust sensitivity and attitudes toward homosexuality. Overall, the results suggest that considering moral foundations (especially sanctity) may lend more insight to the associations between disgust sensitivity and negative attitudes toward gay and lesbian people.
Children’s lying is a major concern for parents and teachers alike, not only because lying is an antisocial behavior but also because children’s lying correlates with other behavior problems, such as ...aggression and delinquency. Despite considerable correlational evidence demonstrating the relation between children’s lying and behavior problems, experimental evidence is scarce. This study uses a novel task to experimentally examine the relation between lying for personal reward and behavior problem symptoms among 9- to 11-year-old typically developed children (
N
= 275, 139 boys). Results revealed a positive correlation between children’s lying for personal reward and their behavior problem symptoms, and this correlation increases with age. Overall, this study provides experimental evidence suggesting children’s lying for personal reward is associated with behavior problems.
We have abundant evidence that people exhibit biases in weighting probability information. The current study aims to examine whether self-distancing would reduce these biases. Participants in this ...study were instructed to use either a self-distancing or a self-immersing strategy to regulate their reasoning when they indicated their valuations of different lotteries. The results show that, compared to the baseline group, participants in the self-distancing group exhibited less distortion in the probability-weighting function, while those in the self-immersing group exhibited more distortion. These results offer evidence for the power of self-distancing in reducing probability-weighting biases.
Neuroimaging technologies have improved our understanding of deception and also exhibit their potential in revealing the origins of its neural mechanism. In this study, a quantitative power analysis ...method that uses the Welch power spectrum estimation of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) signals was proposed to examine the brain activation difference between the spontaneous deceptive behavior and controlled behavior. The power value produced by the model was applied to quantify the activity energy of brain regions, which can serve as a neuromarker for deception detection. Interestingly, the power analysis results generated from the Welch spectrum estimation method demonstrated that the spontaneous deceptive behavior elicited significantly higher power than that from the controlled behavior in the prefrontal cortex. Meanwhile, the power findings also showed significant difference between the spontaneous deceptive behavior and controlled behavior, indicating that the reward system was only involved in the deception. The proposed power analysis method for processing fNIRS data provides us an additional insight to understand the cognitive mechanism of deception.