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The effect of optimistic expectancies on attention bias: Neural and behavioral correlates

Optimism bias and positive attention bias are important features of healthy information processing. Recent findings suggest dynamic bidirectional optimism-attention interactions, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain to be identified. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) st...

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Autores principales: Singh, Laura, Schüpbach, Laurent, Moser, Dominik A., Wiest, Roland, Hermans, Erno J., Aue, Tatjana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7162893/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32300214
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61440-1
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author Singh, Laura
Schüpbach, Laurent
Moser, Dominik A.
Wiest, Roland
Hermans, Erno J.
Aue, Tatjana
author_facet Singh, Laura
Schüpbach, Laurent
Moser, Dominik A.
Wiest, Roland
Hermans, Erno J.
Aue, Tatjana
author_sort Singh, Laura
collection PubMed
description Optimism bias and positive attention bias are important features of healthy information processing. Recent findings suggest dynamic bidirectional optimism-attention interactions, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain to be identified. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, therefore, investigated the neural mechanisms underlying causal effects of optimistic expectancies on attention. We hypothesized that expectancies guide attention to confirmatory evidence in the environment, with enhanced salience and executive control network (SN/ECN) activity for unexpected information. Moreover, based on previous findings, we anticipated optimistic expectancies to more strongly impact attention and SN/ECN activity than pessimistic expectancies. Expectancies were induced with visual cues in 50 participants; subsequent attention to reward and punishment was assessed in a visual search task. As hypothesized, cues shortened reaction times to expected information, and unexpected information enhanced SN/ECN activity. Notably, these effects were stronger for optimistic than pessimistic expectancy cues. Our findings suggest that optimistic expectancies involve particularly strong predictions of reward, causing automatic guidance of attention to reward and great surprise about unexpected punishment. Such great surprise may be counteracted by visual avoidance of the punishing evidence, as revealed by prior evidence, thereby reducing the need to update (over)optimistic reward expectancies.
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spelling pubmed-71628932020-04-22 The effect of optimistic expectancies on attention bias: Neural and behavioral correlates Singh, Laura Schüpbach, Laurent Moser, Dominik A. Wiest, Roland Hermans, Erno J. Aue, Tatjana Sci Rep Article Optimism bias and positive attention bias are important features of healthy information processing. Recent findings suggest dynamic bidirectional optimism-attention interactions, but the underlying neural mechanisms remain to be identified. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, therefore, investigated the neural mechanisms underlying causal effects of optimistic expectancies on attention. We hypothesized that expectancies guide attention to confirmatory evidence in the environment, with enhanced salience and executive control network (SN/ECN) activity for unexpected information. Moreover, based on previous findings, we anticipated optimistic expectancies to more strongly impact attention and SN/ECN activity than pessimistic expectancies. Expectancies were induced with visual cues in 50 participants; subsequent attention to reward and punishment was assessed in a visual search task. As hypothesized, cues shortened reaction times to expected information, and unexpected information enhanced SN/ECN activity. Notably, these effects were stronger for optimistic than pessimistic expectancy cues. Our findings suggest that optimistic expectancies involve particularly strong predictions of reward, causing automatic guidance of attention to reward and great surprise about unexpected punishment. Such great surprise may be counteracted by visual avoidance of the punishing evidence, as revealed by prior evidence, thereby reducing the need to update (over)optimistic reward expectancies. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-04-16 /pmc/articles/PMC7162893/ /pubmed/32300214 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61440-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Singh, Laura
Schüpbach, Laurent
Moser, Dominik A.
Wiest, Roland
Hermans, Erno J.
Aue, Tatjana
The effect of optimistic expectancies on attention bias: Neural and behavioral correlates
title The effect of optimistic expectancies on attention bias: Neural and behavioral correlates
title_full The effect of optimistic expectancies on attention bias: Neural and behavioral correlates
title_fullStr The effect of optimistic expectancies on attention bias: Neural and behavioral correlates
title_full_unstemmed The effect of optimistic expectancies on attention bias: Neural and behavioral correlates
title_short The effect of optimistic expectancies on attention bias: Neural and behavioral correlates
title_sort effect of optimistic expectancies on attention bias: neural and behavioral correlates
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7162893/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32300214
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61440-1
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