Neural Oscillation Profiles of a Premise Monotonicity Effect During Semantic Category-Based Induction

Context Modulates Perceived Fairness in Altruistic Punishment: Neural Signatures from ERPs and EEG Oscillations

Social norms and altruistic punitive behaviours are both based on the integration of information from multiple contexts. Individual behavioural performance can be altered by loss and gain contexts, which produce different mental states and subjective perceptions. In this study, we used event-related potential and time-frequency techniques to examine performance on a third-party punishment task and to explore the neural mechanisms underlying context-dependent differences in punishment decisions. The results indicated that individuals were more likely to reject unfairness in the context of loss (vs. gain) and to increase punishment as unfairness increased. In contrast, fairness appeared to cause an early increase in cognitive control signal enhancement, as indicated by the P2 amplitude and theta oscillations, and a later increase in emotional and motivational salience during decision-making in gain vs. loss contexts, as indicated by the medial frontal negativity and beta oscillations. In summary, individuals were more willing to sanction violations of social norms in the loss context than in the gain context and rejecting unfair losses induced more equity-related cognitive conflict than accepting unfair gains, highlighting the importance of context (i.e., gain vs. loss) in equity-related social decision-making processes.

The default-interventionist model underlies premise typicality weakening the premise diversity effect during category-based induction: Event-related potentials evidence

The diversity effect during category-based induction (CBI) means that the more diverse the evidence, the higher will be the conclusion's inductive strength. However, it is influenced by the premise typicality. Three competitive cognitive processing models account for this influence: (1) The pre-emptive conflict resolution model assumes that only premise typicality activates; (2) the parallel-competitive model assumes that premise typicality and diversity activate in parallel; and (3) the default-interventionist model assumes that a default response of premise diversity first activates and is subsequently followed by premise typicality, or premise typicality activates first, followed by premise diversity. The timing of premise typicality affecting the diversity effect during CBI was measured using event-related potentials to determine which cognitive model best explains this influence. Similar to previous studies, non-diverse premise inductive tasks involving two typical premise categories were compared with diverse premise inductive tasks involving a typical and an atypical category. The results showed that non-diverse conditions had higher "correct" response proportions, greater inductive strength, higher "definitely" response proportions, and shorter reaction times than diverse conditions, showing that premise typicality weakens the diversity effect. Moreover, the diverse premises elicited larger P2, smaller FN400, and greater frontal post-N400-positivity amplitudes than non-diverse premises, suggesting that premise diversity was facilitated during a relatively early time window and revised by premise typicality in a later window. These results support the default-interventionist in nature during thinking and reasoning.

Common and distinctive cognitive processes between categorization and category-based induction: Evidence from event-related potentials

Categorization involves forming equivalence classes of discriminable entities, whereas category-based induction (CBI) involves employing categorical knowledge to generalize novel properties. Previous studies have suggested either common or distinctive cognitive processing between categorization and CBI. However, no study has compared cognitive processes with the same stimuli sets using event-related potentials (ERPs), which help to determine the cognitive processes with a high temporal solution. In this study, we compared the ERP responses to categorization and CBI using two separate experiments (i.e., generic and specific conclusions), with the same task materials. Results from both experiments identified distinctive cognitive processing between categorization and CBI based on a greater proportion of "definitely" responses and smaller amplitudes of sustained negativity during categorization. These observations suggest that categorization involves decreased conflict monitoring and control than CBI under single-premise conditions. Contrastingly, categorization and CBI elicited similar FN400 amplitudes in both experiments, which suggests a common cognitive process between them. These findings present the common and distinctive cognitive processes between categorization and CBI.