Research master thesis | Psychology (research) (MSc)
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Novelty can be defined as a motivationally and attentionally salient learning signal. Past research has found benefits of novelty to include increased plasticity and enhanced memory encoding....Show moreNovelty can be defined as a motivationally and attentionally salient learning signal. Past research has found benefits of novelty to include increased plasticity and enhanced memory encoding. Briefly exposing subjects to a novel stimulus or environment in place of an expected threat has also been shown to enhance the extinction process following fear conditioning in both rodents and humans. This is important, as the treatment for trauma-based disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has only been demonstrated effective for up to 66% of those affected and a dysfunction in the fear extinction process appears central in the development and continuation of such disorders. The current study explored whether replacing a fear-inducing stimulus with a novel visual stimulus resulted in more effective fear extinction, as quantified using both subjective and objective parameters, namely subjective arousal, and pupil dilation. In addition, a condition with olfactory novelty was included to explore the effects of contextual novelty on preventing the reinstatement of the conditioned fear 24 hours following fear conditioning. The study successfully established fear conditioning using threatening visual stimuli in a classical conditioning paradigm. However, there was no support for novelty-enhanced fear extinction, nor for the benefit of olfactory novelty on the retention of fear extinction 24 hours post-extinction. Rather, an increase in pupil dilation in the context of a novel olfactory environment was found especially in conditions where a fear-inducing unconditioned stimulus had been paired with a novel replacement stimulus, possibly suggesting a contextual novelty-induced fear reinstatement effect.Show less
The two most common types of mindfulness are open monitoring (OM) meditation, describing the awareness of internal and external states, and focused attention (FA) meditation, when one fixates on a...Show moreThe two most common types of mindfulness are open monitoring (OM) meditation, describing the awareness of internal and external states, and focused attention (FA) meditation, when one fixates on a single stimulus while avoiding distractions. The effects of mindfulness have been well explored and show many beneficial effects. Theta oscillations, associated with learning and memory, increase during OM meditation. Mindfulness is also positively correlated with the trait novelty seeking, as well as openness to experience (OTE). In previous studies, these three variables have been found to interact. The influence of mindfulness on exploratory behaviour has not yet been explored, and research suggests that mindfulness may increase such behaviour. A sample of 39 participants took part in the current study, which was conducted over two consecutive days. Participants received a brief mindfulness intervention on day one or two, after which they explored either a familiar or novel virtual environment. Electroencephalogram (EEG) measures were recorded throughout. Theta power was found to be higher during the OM meditation compared to the control condition, eyes open at rest, suggesting that the current mindfulness intervention was successful in eliciting a mindfulness state by altering the levels of theta power in the brain. Regarding exploratory behaviour, no significant difference was found between those who experienced the meditation and those who did not. Additionally, no difference was found in terms of exploratory behaviour between those in the novel or familiar environment, after receiving the mindfulness intervention. Some reasons for this may be the nature of the mindfulness intervention being brief or not targeted enough at novelty. Further research avenues include exploring additional brain rhythm fluctuations during OM meditation, the influence of different experience levels with mindfulness on different behaviours, as well as whether age affects the influence mindfulness has on exploration behaviour and novelty.Show less
Attentional biases seem to perpetuate social anxiety by locking focus onto threat-related information. The classical dot-probe task has been the golden standard of measuring selective attention...Show moreAttentional biases seem to perpetuate social anxiety by locking focus onto threat-related information. The classical dot-probe task has been the golden standard of measuring selective attention based on variations in reaction times (RT) due to bottom-up saliency. In recent decades, concerns have grown over this task's reliability, partly due to statistical concerns over its indexing method and because it fails to account for top-down behavioral strategies that circumvent bottom-up attentional capture. This pilot study tested the novel Parallel Target Attention Task (PATAT) assessing attentional biases towards novel stimuli, as it aims to overcome these shortcomings. The task measured participant’s responses to two target stimuli presented in proximity to a familiar and a novel stimulus. An attentional bias was then calculated as a straightforward sum of participant responses to novel stimuli. By contrasting images of faces and natural scenes, we examined whether a bias for novelty is category specific. Last but not least, we investigated whether people who display higher levels of Behavioral Inhibition (BI), pay more attention to novel stimuli. The task was able to measure an attention bias toward novelty in the majority of participants but fell short on replicating a category-dependent bias. Also, contrary to our hypothesis that novel stimuli elicit more bottom-up attentional capture in such participants, data showed the opposite trend, consistent with the observation that such individuals generally avoid novel experiences. Theoretical and methodological implications of the results are discussed.Show less
Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent mental disorders. Treatment of these disorders, such as exposure-based treatment, is commonly derived from the principle of fear conditioning and fear...Show moreAnxiety disorders are highly prevalent mental disorders. Treatment of these disorders, such as exposure-based treatment, is commonly derived from the principle of fear conditioning and fear extinction. In the current study the element of novelty was introduced into the process of extinction to explore how to promote fear extinction, as with standard extinction fear frequently returns over time. Extinction by means of novelty was studied in 32 human subjects using a within-subjects design. First, the participants underwent fear conditioning, in which conditioned stimuli (sounds) were paired with fearful images. This phase was directly followed by an extinction phase with a novelty-facilitated, familiar and standard extinction condition. After a time gap of a minimum of 12 to a maximum of 36 hours responses to the conditioned stimuli were tested again. Pupil size measurements and subjective arousal ratings during this post-extinction phase did not indicate an effect for novelty-facilitated extinction on the extent of fear, this may be the result of potential weak conditioning in the current study. The results of this study express the need for more research to understand the effect of novelty on fear extinction. This could contribute to future implementation of novelty in treatment of anxiety disorders.Show less
Animal studies have shown that the exploration of novel environments has a positive effect on memory. As shown in virtual reality studies, this positive effect of novelty on memory also seems to...Show moreAnimal studies have shown that the exploration of novel environments has a positive effect on memory. As shown in virtual reality studies, this positive effect of novelty on memory also seems to hold for humans. However, one study failed to find such a positive effect. It is possible that this is due to individual differences in the novelty seeking personality trait. Therefore, in this master thesis the effect of novelty on recall and recognition memory is identified and the role of novelty seeking in these relationships is addressed. Since novelty processing is associated with dopaminergic neuromodulation in the hippocampus and novelty seeking is related to dopamine sensitivity, it was hypothesized that novelty affects hippocampus-dependent memory (recall) and that this effect is moderated by novelty seeking. No effect was expected on hippocampus-independent memory (recognition memory). Participants in the study were familiarized with a virtual environment and later explored the same (familiar) environment again or a novel one. After this exposure, the participants performed a word-learning task, a visuomotor adaptation task and a landmark test. They also filled out questionnaires regarding their mood and the novelty seeking personality trait. Hierarchical regression analyses suggested that novelty exposure has no effect on memory performance. No moderating effect of novelty seeking was found. Bayesian statistics support this null finding. Future studies need to investigate the influence of individual differences further with a wider range of novelty seekers and the inclusion of the variables age and depth of processing.Show less
The current study examines how to introduce complex novelty in a way that people become more interested, motivated to know more about it, and less confused. We test the prediction that a focus on...Show moreThe current study examines how to introduce complex novelty in a way that people become more interested, motivated to know more about it, and less confused. We test the prediction that a focus on discovery of new information vs a focus on specific information that is missing creates more interest, more motivation to explore, and less confusion towards complex innovations, while perceived complexity is predicted to remain the same. In total 102 participants were tested. They were presented with message framing manipulation, which put their focus on either general discovery or specific information that is missing, after which they had to read texts containing complex information. In contrast to our expectations, complexity did not remain the same across conditions. Participants in the diversive frame condition rated the information about the innovations to be more complex than the specific frame condition. Moreover, participants in the diversive frame condition were not more interested, more motivated to and less confused about the complex innovations than in the specific frame condition. Implication and future research of these findings are discussed at the end.Show less
