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A large body of evidence suggests that processing of affective information is typically disrupted in anxiety. It has also been hypothesized that anxious individuals are less able to evaluate contextual cues and to respond in an adaptive way to stress. In the present study, 25 participants (16 females; 9 males) scoring high (scores of 45 or above) and 26 participants (13 females; 13 males) scoring low (scores of 35 and below) on a standardized measure of trait anxiety performed an emotion search task to investigate attentional biases when the task provides an explicit emotional context. An emotional context was set in each block by asking participants to look as quickly as possible at a face expressing a specific emotion, while eye movements were being recorded. On each trial, two faces appeared, one of them expressing the target emotion and the other one expressing a distractor emotion. High trait-anxious participants showed slower response times (time to look at the instructed emotion), regardless of the affective context, compared to the control group. Additionally, we found slower responses to happy faces (positive context) in the anxious group in the presence of neutral and fearful distractors. Cognitive control may therefore be disrupted in anxiety, as anxious people take longer to process (search for) happy faces, presumably because attentional resources are drawn by neutral and fearful distractors. Those differences were not observed in a simple reaction times task, which suggests that attentional biases, and not differential processing of low-level facial features, are responsible for those differences.

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I will in this article use Fircks as a point of departure for trying to understand the complexities involved in the use of the concept of mindfulness. As will be seen, mindfulness can be traced to a decoupling from a religious background and subsequent appropriation within several Western contexts. This will then be used for a discussion of how to deal with the historicity of the phenomena studied within cultural psychology. Here two reminders will be suggested, namely understanding phenomena through a context-sensibility and at the same time being aware of any disciplinary parochialism.

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Pyramidal neurons have a pivotal role in the cognitive capabilities of neocortex. Though they have been predominantly modeled as integrate-and-fire point processors, many of them have another point of input integration in their apical dendrites that is central to mechanisms endowing them with the sensitivity to context that underlies basic cognitive capabilities. Here we review evidence implicating impairments of those mechanisms in three major neurodevelopmental disabilities, fragile X, Down syndrome, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Multiple dysfunctions of the mechanisms by which pyramidal cells are sensitive to context are found to be implicated in all three syndromes. Further deciphering of these cellular mechanisms would lead to the understanding of and therapies for learning disabilities beyond any that are currently available.

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Background: Previous research has highlighted the importance of regularizing daily routines for maintaining mental health. Little is known about whether and how regularity of daily routines is associated with reduced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms.Objective: We aimed to examine the associations between regularity of daily routines and PTSD symptoms in two studies (N = 796).Method: In Study 1, prospective data were analysed with the latent change score model to investigate the association between sustainment of regular daily routines and change in PTSD symptoms over time amid massive civil unrest in Hong Kong in 2019. Study 2 used vignette as a quasi-experimental method to assess the ability of maintaining regular daily routines in face of a major stressor, and tested its associations with PTSD symptoms.Results: In Study 1, increased regularity of diverse daily routines was inversely associated with increased PTSD symptoms amid the civil unrest in Hong Kong (ß = -.427 to -.224, 95% confidence intervals [-.543 to -.359, -.310 to -.090], p values < .01). In Study 2, a greater ability to maintain regular daily routines during stress was associated with lower levels of PTSD symptoms (ß = -.285 to -.096, 95% confidence intervals [-.379 to -.189, -.190 to -.003], p values < .05).Conclusions: Our findings suggest the benefit of considering diverse everyday activities in evaluating PTSD symptoms in both clinical and subclinical populations. Interventions with the direct focus on the role of daily living could promote psychological resilience during and after potentially traumatic events.

Increased regularity of routines (hygiene, healthy eating, sleep, duties at home, exercising, leisure and social activities, work/study involvement) was related to less increase in PTSD symptoms amid widespread civil unrest.The ability to maintain regular routines during stress was inversely associated with PTSD symptoms.Research and interventions with the direct focus on the role of daily living could promote psychological resilience during and after potentially traumatic events.

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Interpersonal coordination of body movement-or similarity in patterning and timing of body movement between interaction partners-is well documented in face-to-face (FTF) conversation. Here, we investigated the degree to which interpersonal coordination is impacted by the amount of visual information available and the type of interaction conversation partners are having. To do so within a naturalistic context, we took advantage of the increased familiarity with videoconferencing (VC) platforms and with limited visual information in FTF conversation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Pairs of participants communicated in one of three ways: FTF in a laboratory setting while socially distanced and wearing face masks; VC in a laboratory setting with a view of one another's full movements; or VC in a remote setting with a view of one another's face and shoulders. Each pair held three conversations: affiliative, argumentative, and cooperative task-based. We quantified interpersonal coordination as the relationship between the two participants' overall body movement using nonlinear time series analyses. Coordination changed as a function of the contextual constraints, and these constraints interacted with coordination patterns to affect subjective conversation outcomes. Importantly, we found patterns of results that were distinct from previous research; we hypothesize that these differences may be due to changes in the broader social context from COVID-19. Taken together, our results are consistent with a dynamical systems view of social phenomena, with interpersonal coordination emerging from the interaction between components, constraints, and history of the system.

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We apply a machine learning technique to characterize habit formation in two large panel data sets with objective measures of 1) gym attendance (over 12 million observations) and 2) hospital handwashing (over 40 million observations). Our Predicting Context Sensitivity (PCS) approach identifies context variables that best predict behavior for each individual. This approach also creates a time series of overall predictability for each individual. These time series predictability values are used to trace a habit formation curve for each individual, operationalizing the time of habit formation as the asymptotic limit of when behavior becomes highly predictable. Contrary to the popular belief in a "magic number" of days to develop a habit, we find that it typically takes months to form the habit of going to the gym but weeks to develop the habit of handwashing in the hospital. Furthermore, we find that gymgoers who are more predictable are less responsive to an intervention designed to promote more gym attendance, consistent with past experiments showing that habit formation generates insensitivity to reward devaluation.

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In recent years, increasingly more German-born preschool children of refugee parents have been referred to the 'specialized consultation service for refugee minors' of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University Hospital Münster. This 'change' in the use of the above-mentioned consultation service could be understood as a 'natural' consequence of the family life cycle of forced migrants who some years ago came to Germany as adolescents or young adults and started here a family. The treatment of 'preschoolers with a refugee background', as we may call this group of patients, confronts mental health practitioners with particular challenges. In this contribution, we specify some of these challenges and argue that, due to the deep intertwinement of different aspects of these patients' condition, a 'situated approach' is required when treating this population.When planning therapeutic interventions for preschoolers with refugee background, their families should be conceived as unified systems which in their social and transcultural embeddedness exhibit trans-individual vulnerabilities and resources. By discussing a case study, we illustrate how an extremely challenging child psychiatric treatment could succeed only on the condition that we focused on the interconnectedness of various factors determining not merely the patient's symptomatic behavior but, furthermore, the behavior of the family, i. e., on the condition of focusing on the situated nature of the problematic.

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The ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) of rodents play a substantial role in the communication and interaction between individuals; exhibit a high degree of complexity; and are influenced by a multitude of developmental, environmental, and phylogenetic factors. The functions of USVs are mainly studied in laboratory mice or rats. However, the behavioral relevance of USVs in wild rodents is poorly studied. In this work, we systematically investigated the vocal repertoire of the wild mouse Mus caroli and wild rat Rattus losea in multiple social or non-social contexts, e.g., pup-isolation, juvenile-play, paired opposite-sex encounter, female-female interaction, social-exploring, or foot-shock treatment. Unlike the laboratory mice, M. caroli, whose USVs were recorded during pup-isolation and courtship behaviors, did not produce any vocal sounds during juvenile-play and female-female interactions. R. losea, similar to laboratory rats, emitted USVs in all test situations. We found higher peak frequencies of USVs in both these two wild rodent species than in laboratory animals. Moreover, the parameters and structures of USVs varied significantly across different social or non-social contexts even within each species, confirming the context-sensitivity and complexity of vocal signals in rodents. We also noted a striking difference in call types between these two species: no downward type occurred in M. caroli, but no upward type occurred in R. losea, thereby highlighting the interspecific difference of vocal signals among rodents. Thus, the present study presents behavioral foundations of the vocalization context in wild mice and wild rats, and contributes to revealing the behavioral significance of widely used USVs in rodents.

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Individuals with increased risk of being in contact with COVID-19 cases at work have been reported to suffer from higher fear of infection and associated mental health problems. The present study examines whether this risk is further increased by higher anxiety sensitivity (AS, i.e., fear of bodily symptoms such as breathlessness, which also are core symptoms of COVID-19) that is also known to be associated with an increased risk of psychopathology. In spring 2020, 783 German health care and social workers participated in a cross-sectional online-survey, in which anxiety sensitivity, depression, anxiety, health anxiety, fear of a COVID-19 infection as well as panic symptoms were assessed. Of these participants, 28.7% affirmed contact with COVID-19 cases, which was associated with greater fear of the virus. Individuals with high AS reported more severe anxiety, health anxiety, depressive symptoms, as well as incident and recurrent panic symptoms. Moreover, the risk association of exposure to COVID-19 cases at work with health anxiety, general anxiety, and panic symptoms was further increased by higher levels of AS. These findings suggest that especially employees with contact to COVID-19 cases who also are high in AS might profit from targeted interventions to prevent excessive fear and associated mental health problems.

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OBJECTIVES: Emotion regulation flexibility has been conceptualized as a multi-componential construct involving context sensitivity, repertoire and feedback responsiveness. Psychosis research has yet to incorporate these new developments in the study of emotion regulation. Thus, we sought to advance even further the knowledge on emotion regulation in psychosis by adopting the emotion regulation flexibility approach as proposed by Bonanno and Burton (Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2013, 8, 591). METHOD: In total, 401 participants completed 4 scales assessing the multi-components of emotion regulation flexibility and psychosis-proneness. RESULTS: Our results indicated that Context Sensitivity (i.e., Cue Absence) and Feedback Responsiveness (i.e., Evaluation) were associated with psychosis-proneness. Cue absence was specifically associated with the positive dimension, while both Cue Absence and Enhancement ability were associated with the negative dimension. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, our results suggest that emotional context insensitivity is the most relevant component of regulatory flexibility in the case of psychosis-proneness. Thus, the disruption in this first step of flexible emotion regulation might be already present in those prone to psychosis. Difficulties in decoding appropriately the contextual cues might further disrupt the other steps of emotion regulation contributing to the psychotic (-like) experiences. This study needs replication in clinical and non-clinical samples.

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The context-sensitivity of cognition has been demonstrated across a wide range of cognitive functions such as perception, memory, judgement and decision making. A related term, 'contextuality', has appeared from the field of quantum cognition, with mounting empirical evidence demonstrating that cognitive phenomena are sometimes contextual. Contextuality is a subtle notion that influences how we must view the properties of the cognitive phenomenon being studied. This article addresses the questions: What does it mean for a cognitive phenomenon to be contextual? What are the implications of contextuality for probabilistic models of cognition? How does contextuality differ from context-sensitivity? Starting from George Boole's "conditions of possible experience", we argue that a probabilistic model of a cognitive phenomenon is necessarily subject to an assumption of realism. By this we mean that the phenomenon being studied is assumed to have cognitive properties with a definite value independent of observation. In contrast, quantum cognition holds that a cognitive property maybe indeterminate, i.e., its properties do not have well established values prior to observation. We argue that indeterminacy is sufficient for incompatibility between cognitive properties. In turn, incompatibility is necessary for their contextuality. The significance of this argument for cognitive psychology is the following:if a cognitive phenomenon is found to be contextual, then there is reason to believe it may be indeterminate. We illustrate by means of two crowdsourced experiments how context-sensitivity and contextuality of cognitive properties in the form of facial trait judgements can be characterized from empirical data. Finally, we conceptually and formally contrast contextuality with context-sensitivity. We propose that both involve a form of context dependence, with causality being the differentiating factor: the context dependence in context-sensitivity has a causal basis, whereas the context dependence in contextuality is acausal. The resulting implications for probabilistic models of cognition are discussed.

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Standard arguments in philosophy of science infer from the complexity of biological and neural systems to the presence of emergence and failure of mechanistic/reductionist explanation for those systems. I argue against this kind of argument, specifically focusing on the notion of context-sensitivity. Context-sensitivity is standardly taken to be incompatible with reductionistic explanation, because it shows that larger-scale factors influence the functioning of lower-level parts. I argue that this argument can be overcome if there are mechanisms underlying those context-specific reorganizations. I argue that such mechanisms are frequently discovered in neuroscience.

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Previous research suggests that labels shape the categorization of emotional stimuli such as facial configurations, yet the strongest evidence of labels' influence on category learning comes from work on object categories. In particular, Lupyan et al. (Psychol Sci 18(12):1077-1083, 2007) found that novel categories of aliens were learned faster by participants provided with nonsense labels during feedback. We summarize a series of five studies in which we examined whether this word-enhancement effect on learning would extend to novel categories of emotion. These studies were conceptual replications of the paradigm used by Lupyan et al. (Psychol Sci 18(12):1077-1083, 2007) designed so that participants would associate novel expressive behaviors with situated experiences. We hypothesized that participants would learn to categorize exemplars of novel emotion categories over the duration of the task, and that categorization would be facilitated for participants who were presented with category labels during learning. We simultaneously analyzed data from all five studies in an integrative data analysis, allowing us to test the effects of learning over time and label condition with increased statistical power. Across all five studies, we found that, while participant performance did improve over time, in no case was it facilitated by including emotion labels at feedback. These results join others in suggesting that the effect of labels on emotion categorization may be more context-dependent than previously supposed-varying by the type of category learning task as well as the specific categories being learned and their relationship to previously acquired knowledge-such that there may be multiple pathways for emotion category learning. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00084-4.

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Partial information decomposition allows the joint mutual information between an output and a set of inputs to be divided into components that are synergistic or shared or unique to each input. We consider five different decompositions and compare their results using data from layer 5b pyramidal cells in two different studies. The first study was on the amplification of somatic action potential output by apical dendritic input and its regulation by dendritic inhibition. We find that two of the decompositions produce much larger estimates of synergy and shared information than the others, as well as large levels of unique misinformation. When within-neuron differences in the components are examined, the five methods produce more similar results for all but the shared information component, for which two methods produce a different statistical conclusion from the others. There are some differences in the expression of unique information asymmetry among the methods. It is significantly larger, on average, under dendritic inhibition. Three of the methods support a previous conclusion that apical amplification is reduced by dendritic inhibition. The second study used a detailed compartmental model to produce action potentials for many combinations of the numbers of basal and apical synaptic inputs. Decompositions of the entire data set produce similar differences to those in the first study. Two analyses of decompositions are conducted on subsets of the data. In the first, the decompositions reveal a bifurcation in unique information asymmetry. For three of the methods, this suggests that apical drive switches to basal drive as the strength of the basal input increases, while the other two show changing mixtures of information and misinformation. Decompositions produced using the second set of subsets show that all five decompositions provide support for properties of cooperative context-sensitivity-to varying extents.

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This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching the original reports together with 55% of tests in different spans of years and 40% of tests in novel geographies. Some original findings were associated with multiple new tests. Reproducibility was the best predictor of generalizability-for the findings that proved directly reproducible, 84% emerged in other available time periods and 57% emerged in other geographies. Overall, only limited empirical evidence emerged for context sensitivity. In a forecasting survey, independent scientists were able to anticipate which effects would find support in tests in new samples.

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This study tested the novel hypothesis that CBT-treated IBS patients who learn to self-manage painful GI symptoms by targeting rigid cognitive style show improvement in cognitive flexibility, GI symptoms (e.g., abdominal pain), and quality of life. Participants included 130 Rome-III diagnosed IBS patients (M age = 40.3, F = 83%) with moderate-to-severe symptoms randomly assigned to either cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT; N = 86) or a nonspecific education/support (EDU) comparator (N = 44). Participants completed an assessment battery at baseline and post-treatment 2 weeks after 10-week acute treatment phase. Measures included cognitive flexibility, psychological flexibility, emotion regulation strategies, IBS symptom severity, quality of life (QOL), and distress. CBT but not EDU patients showed significant GI sympton improvement from baseline to post-treatment in cognitive flexibility. For CBT patients, changes in cognitive flexibility were significantly associated with changes in IBS symptom severity, abdominal pain, and IBS QOL. Neither condition showed significant changes in psychological flexibility (Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II) or use of emotion regulation strategies (Emotion Regulation Questionnaire). The ability to self-manage painful IBS symptoms refractory to conventional medical and dietary treatments is related to the ability to respond flexibly across shifting contexts using cognitive change procedures featured in CBT for IBS.

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Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) represent a promising treatment option for tendon disorders and joint diseases, primarily osteoarthritis. Since MSC are highly context-sensitive to their microenvironment, their therapeutic efficacy is influenced by their tissue-specific pathologically altered targets. These include not only cellular components, such as resident cells and invading immunocompetent cells, but also components of the tissue-characteristic extracellular matrix. Although numerous in vitro models have already shown potential MSC-related mechanisms of action in tendon and joint diseases, only a limited number reflect the disease-specific microenvironment and allow conclusions about well-directed MSC-based therapies for injured tendon and joint-associated tissues. In both injured tissue types, inflammatory processes play a pivotal pathophysiological role. In this context, MSC-mediated macrophage modulation seems to be an important mode of action across these tissues. Additional target cells of MSC applied in tendon and joint disorders include tenocytes, synoviocytes as well as other invading and resident immune cells. It remains of critical importance whether the context-sensitive interplay between MSC and tissue- and disease-specific targets results in an overall promotion or inhibition of the desired therapeutic effects. This review presents the authors' viewpoint on disease-related targets of MSC therapeutically applied in tendon and joint diseases, focusing on the equine patient as valid animal model.

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How should we account for the contextual variability of knowledge claims? Many philosophers favour an invariantist account on which such contextual variability is due entirely to pragmatic factors, leaving no interesting context-sensitivity in the semantic meaning of 'know that.' I reject this invariantist division of labor by arguing that pragmatic invariantists have no principled account of embedded occurrences of 'S knows/doesn't know that p': Occurrences embedded within larger linguistic constructions such as conditional sentences, attitude verbs, expressions of probability, comparatives, and many others, I argue, give rise to a threefold problem of embedded implicatures.

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This study aimed at investigating depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms among healthcare workers and examine the role of expressive flexibility and context sensitivity as key components of resilience in understanding reported symptoms. We hypothesized a significant and different contribution of resilience components in explaining depression, anxiety, and stress. A total sample of 218 Italian healthcare workers participated in this study through an online survey during the lockdown, consequently to the COVID-19. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21) was used to measure depression, anxiety, and stress; the Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression (FREE) scale was used to measure the ability to enhance and suppress emotional expression; the Context Sensitivity Index (CSI) was used to measure the ability to accurately perceive contextual cues and determine cue absence. Demographic and work-related data were also collected. DASS-21 cut-off scores were used to verify the mental status among the respondents. Correlational analyses examined relationships between DASS-21, FREE, and CSI, followed by three regression analyses with depression, anxiety, and stress as dependent variables, controlling for age, gender, and work experience. Enhancement and suppression abilities, cue presence, and cue absence served as independent variables. The results showed a prevalence of moderate to extremely severe symptoms of 8% for depression, 9.8% for anxiety, and 8.9% for stress. Results of correlational analysis highlighted that enhance ability was inversely associated with depression and stress. Suppression ability was inversely associated with depression, anxiety, and stress. The ability to perceive contextual cues was inversely associated with depression and anxiety. The regression analysis showed that the ability to enhance emotional expression was statistically significant to explain depression among healthcare workers. In predicting anxiety, age, and the ability to accurately perceive contextual cues and determine cue absence made substantial contributions as predictors. In the last regression model, age, work experience, and the ability to suppress emotional expression were significant predictors of stress. This study's findings can help understand the specific contributions of enhancement and suppression abilities and sensitivity to stressor context cues in predicting depression, anxiety, and stress among healthcare workers. Psychological interventions to prevent burnout should consider these relationships.

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Human perception differs profoundly between individuals from different cultures. In the present study, we investigated the development of context-sensitive attention (the relative focus on context elements of a visual scene) in a large sample (N = 297) of 5- to 15-year-olds and young adults from rural and urban Brazil, namely from agricultural villages in the Amazon region and the city of São Paulo. We applied several visual tasks which assess context-sensitive attention, including an optical illusion, a picture description, a picture recognition and a facial emotion judgment task. The results revealed that children and adults from the urban sample had a higher level of context-sensitive attention, when compared to children and adults from the rural sample. In particular, participants from São Paulo were more easily deceived by the context elements in an optical illusion task and remembered more context elements in a recognition task than participants from rural Amazon villages. In these two tasks, context-sensitivity increased with age. However, we did not find a cultural difference in the picture description and the facial emotion judgment task. These findings support the idea that visual information processing is highly dependent on the culture-specific learning environments from very early in development. Specifically, they are more consistent with accounts that emphasize the role of the visual environment, than with the social orientation account. However, they also highlight that further research is needed to disentangle the diverse factors that may influence the early development of visual attention, which underlie culture-specific developmental pathways.