Cognitive science has a persistent interest in understanding the self, yet researchers often use the term in different ways and for different explanatory purposes. Drawing on conceptual analyses conducted within the German Research Foundation (DFG) Priority Program The Active Self, this article presents a case study of how concepts of the self are operationalized in interdisciplinary empirical research. Project members were invited to describe the concepts of self guiding their research, and these descriptions were synthesized into a set of recurring conceptual categories. This analysis identified four recurring uses of the concept of self: as a naïve theory, as a placeholder for agent-related implicit knowledge, as phenomenal experience, and as a carrier of psychological function. We argue that these uses should not be understood as competing empirical theories of the same entity. Rather, they differ in the explanatory role assigned to the self, namely as explanandum, explanans, operational placeholder, or phenomenological target. Analysis of these roles reveals conceptual tensions that arise when they are conflated, including reification, category mistakes, and pseudo-mechanistic explanation. We suggest that greater clarity regarding the explanatory function of self concepts can facilitate interdisciplinary communication and theoretical integration. More generally, this case study illustrates how conceptual heterogeneity within collaborative research programs can impede integration when underlying assumptions remain implicit.
Pain empathy develops from childhood into adulthood, but the cognitive and neural processes that support this development remain incompletely understood. The present study analyzed behavioral and electroencephalography (EEG) data from 120 participants (children, adolescents, and adults) who completed an Attention-to-Pain-Cue (A-P) task and an Attention-to-Non-Pain-Cue (A-N) task with painful and non-painful limb images. A hierarchical drift-diffusion model (HDDM) was used to characterize latent decision processes, and EEG time-frequency analyses were used to examine alpha- and beta-band event-related desynchronization (ERD). Across alternative DDM specifications, children showed lower drift rates, wider decision boundaries when averaged across image types, and longer non-decision times than older participants, which could be interpreted as differences in domain-general decision dynamics within pain-related task contexts. The EEG results showed age-related differences in alpha- and beta-band ERD, with reduced neural differentiation between painful and non-painful stimuli in children when pain cues were task-irrelevant. Together, these findings suggest that pain-related processing across development is shaped by both general maturation of decision processes and the increasing ability to maintain neural sensitivity to pain cues under changing attentional demands.
This study aimed to determine the differences in relaxation effects of bird sound on humans based on their preference. We used the song of Turdus pallidus and call of Corvus macrorhynchos as the “more-preferred” and “less-preferred” bird sounds, respectively, and recruited thirty-two male and female university students. Participants wore a physiological measurement device, sat on a chair, and took a three-minute break. They then followed these steps: (1) closed their eyes and rested for one min; (2) heard either the more-preferred or less-preferred bird sound for one min; and (3) opened their eyes and evaluated their feelings about the bird sound using questionnaires and a semantic differential (SD) method. After another three-minute break, the same process was repeated with a different sound. Heart rate and heart rate variability were continuously measured during the experiment. The more-preferred bird sound was accompanied by significant decreases in heart rate and LF/HF, and the decrease in LF/HF was greater than that observed for the less-preferred bird sound. Participants also reported higher ratings of comfort, relaxation, friendliness, fullness, interest, and preference. For the association between the participants’ feelings and their physiological responses, a repeated measures correlation analysis showed that a stronger feeling of friendliness tended to be accompanied by a larger decrease in heart rate, although this association did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. These findings suggest that the more-preferred bird sound elicited greater psychological relaxation and changes consistent with physiological relaxation in some physiological indices.
Reaction-time variability may carry information about how accurately a person performs beyond the task in which it is measured. We examined this possibility by relating correct-Go reaction-time (RT) variability in a Go/No-go task to accuracy in an independent task-switching paradigm. One hundred sixty-one undergraduates completed both tasks. Twelve RT-variability indices were summarized by a first principal component (PC1), with equal-weight and single-index scores examined as alternatives. PC1 explained 84.6
Eye contact attracts attention and facilitates subsequent social interaction. However, previous studies have reported mixed findings regarding its influence on gaze cueing, leaving the replicability and robustness of this effect unclear. These inconsistencies may partly reflect methodological differences across studies: some have compared direct gaze with vertically averted gaze, whereas others have used closed eyes as the control condition. To address these shortcomings, we conducted two preregistered gaze cueing tasks in which prior gaze information was systematically manipulated across three conditions: direct gaze, closed eyes, and upward gaze. Across both experiments and the combined analysis, a gaze cueing effect was observed, and direct gaze produced shorter overall response times than the other two conditions. However, the magnitude of the gaze cueing effect did not differ across conditions. Together with the inconsistent findings of previous studies, our results suggest that the enhancing effect of eye contact on gaze cueing is weaker and less robust than previously assumed. Eye contact may facilitate general response readiness but does not modulate attentional orienting in response to another person’s gaze. Eye contact is often believed to help people follow another person’s gaze. However, across two experiments, we found that eye contact did not strengthen gaze cueing of attention, although it did make people respond more quickly overall. These findings suggest that eye contact may promote general readiness to respond rather than specifically enhancing attention to another person’s gaze.
