A tribute to charlie chaplin: induced positive affect improves reward-based decision-learning in Parkinson's disease

Gender Stereotype Threat Undermines Dance Performance and Learning in Boys

The objective of the present study was to examine the effects of gender stereotype on the performance and learning of a classical ballet pirouette in 11-year-old boys. Participants in the stereotype threat (ST) group were informed that, in general, boys tend to show worse results when completing the pirouette task in comparison to girls. Participants in the stereotype lift (SL) group were told that girls tend to show worse results in comparison to boys. The control group did not receive stereotype instructions. The results demonstrated worse performance during practice and retention (next day) for the ST group relative to the SL and control groups; the SL and control groups did not differ. The findings indicate that gender stereotype threat can undermine motor performance and learning in boys.

Cooperation enhances motor learning

Relatedness represents the need to experience satisfaction from interpersonal acceptance and closeness with others and is considered a basic psychological human need. Studies testing the effects of supporting the learners' need for relatedness in motor learning (e.g., Gonzalez & Chiviacowsky, 2018) have manipulated relatedness basically by instructions from the experimenter and using practice and learning at an individual level. A different form of supporting the need for relatedness is through cooperative learning. In different domains, contexts involving cooperative effort strategies and goals were observed to result in greater positive interpersonal relationship and higher goal achievement in relation to individual efforts or competitive conditions. In this experiment, the effects of practice structured in cooperative or competitive ways on the learning of hitting a ball with a racket toward a target was tested. Adolescents practiced in pairs and were assigned to three experimental groups. In the cooperation group, the participants practiced in a cooperative condition while in the competitive group, the participants practiced in a competitive condition. Participants in a control group also practiced in the presence of another participant but were not induced at cooperative or competitive conditions. In the next day all groups performed retention and transfer tests. Questionnaires measured the participants' motivational and affective levels. The results show that cooperation increases intrinsic motivation, positive affect, self-efficacy, and task learning relative to individual efforts or competitive practice. Competition decreases perceived relatedness. The findings add to a growing body of evidence showing the importance of social relatedness for motor performance and learning. They also indicate a positive influential role of cooperation in motor learning.

Relatedness support enhances motivation, positive affect, and motor learning in adolescents

Social relatedness is a basic psychological need to experience satisfaction of interpersonal acceptance and closeness with others. In this experiment, the effects of social relatedness on the learning of a task (hitting a ball with a racket toward a target) were tested in adolescents. Participants were assigned to three experimental groups. After a pre-test and before practice, participants in the relatedness support (RS) condition received instructions emphasizing recognition, importance, and interest in the participant's experience. Participants in the relatedness frustration (RF) condition received instructions emphasizing disinterest in the participant as a person. Control participants did not receive specific relatedness instructions. One day later, they performed retention and transfer tests. Questionnaires measured participants' motivational and affective levels. The results showed that supporting the relatedness need enhances task learning in adolescents. Motivation and affective levels were also affected. The findings are the first to show that social relatedness affects adolescent's motor performance and learning and reveal underlying mechanisms implicated in such effects.

Revisiting positive affect and reward influences on cognitive control

Modulation of cognitive control by emotion and motivation has become a major topic in cognition research; however, characterizing the extent to which these influences may dissociate has proved challenging. Here, I examine recent advances in this literature, focusing on: (1) neuromodulator mechanisms underlying positive affect and reward motivation effects on cognitive control; (2) contingency and associative learning in interactions between affect/reward and cognitive control; (3) aspects of task design, unrelated to affect/reward, that may have acted as confounding influences on cognitive control in prior work. I suggest that positive affect and reward should not be considered singular in their effects on cognitive control, but instead varying on multiple parameters and interacting with task demands, to determine goal-directed, adaptive behavior.

Explicit and implicit activation of gender stereotypes additively impair soccer performance and learning in women

AbstractStudies involving the manipulation of instructions regarding the negative characteristics of a group or comparisons with members of another group (explicit activation of stereotypes) have shown that age, weight, and gender stereotypes can be harmful to motor performance and learning. To date, however, no study has observed whether implicit stereotype threats, such as the sex of the coach or experimenter, can also influence the acquisition of motor skills. In the present study, the individual and combined impact of implicit and explicit influences of gender stereotype on women's soccer performance and learning was examined. In a 2 × 2 design, 60 women were divided into four groups according to the presence or absence of explicit (ES) and implicit (IS) stereotypes: ES/IS, ES, IS, and control. The groups with implicit activation practiced in the presence of a male experimenter. The groups with explicit activation received instructions activating the gender negative stereotype. The control group practiced without stereotype activations. The results showed that both explicit and implicit activation additively impaired soccer performance and learning, with both main effects being significant for practice and retention. The ES/IS group showed lower scores on the task relative to the other groups, while the ES and IS groups showed worse scores compared with the control group. The findings suggest that stigmatised populations may be forced to cope with more than one social identity threat while learning sport motor skills and indicate the importance of further studies testing strategies to minimise the deleterious effects of negative stereotypes.

Expectancy and affective response to challenging balance practice conditions in individuals with Parkinson's disease

Psychological states can influence motor performance and learning. In Parkinson's disease (PD), placebo effects or expectancies for pharmacological treatment benefits are not uncommon, but little is known about whether self-efficacy, beliefs about personal performance capabilities, may play a role in this population. To address this question, we investigated whether experimental manipulations designed to enhance self-efficacy would benefit motor performance and learning in PD. A motor learning paradigm was utilized to determine the short-term (i.e., practice) and longer-term (i.e., retention) impact of self-efficacy enhancement when 44 individuals with PD (Hoehn and Yahr stage I-III) acquired a challenging balance skill. Using stratified randomization by Hoehn and Yahr stage, participants were assigned to a control group or one of two investigational groups: (a) an expectancy-relevant statement that encouraged an incremental mindset in which the balance skill, though initially challenging, was acquirable with practice (incremental theory group, IT), and (b) the expectancy-relevant statement in combination with a criterion for successful performance (incremental theory plus success criteria group, IT + SC). All groups improved their balance performance, but contrary to expectations, investigational groups did not outperform the control group at practice or retention. Unexpectedly, the IT + SC group reported greater nervousness than the control and IT groups, suggesting that the employed success criteria may have induced performance-related anxiety. Regression analyses revealed that self-efficacy increase from initial practice predicted performance at the end of practice and at retention. These findings highlight the potential contribution of psychological factors on motor function and rehabilitation in individuals with PD.

Relatedness support enhances motor learning

The present experiment was designed to test the effects of practice with relatedness support on motor learning. Forty-five young adults practiced a task in which they were required to learn to swim the front crawl stroke for one length in an indoor swimming pool (25 m) using 50% of the maximal speed. In the relatedness support condition (RS group), the instructions emphasized acknowledgement, caring, and interest in the participants' experiences, while in the relatedness thwart condition (RTh group), instructions emphasized disinterest in the participant as a person. A third, neutral condition (Control group) did not receive specific relatedness instructions. One day after practice, participants completed retention and transfer tests. The RS group demonstrated greater improvement in performance during practice and enhanced learning relative to the RTh and Control groups, while the RTh group showed decreased learning compared with the Control group. Furthermore, RS participants reported higher motivation and greater positive affect than the RTh and Control groups. The present findings demonstrate that relatedness support enhances the learning of motor skills. They also highlight motivational and affective effects that are observed when learners are provided with relatedness support.

Happier, faster: Developmental changes in the effects of mood and novelty on responses

Positive mood ameliorates several cognitive processes: It can enhance cognitive control, increase flexibility, and promote variety seeking in decision making. These effects of positive mood have been suggested to depend on frontostriatal dopamine, which is also associated with the detection of novelty. This suggests that positive mood could also affect novelty detection. In the present study, children and adults saw either a happy or a neutral movie to induce a positive or neutral mood. After that, they were shown novel and familiar images. On some trials a beep was presented over headphones either at the same time as the image or at a 200-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), and the task of the participant was to detect these auditory targets. Children were slower in responding than adults. Positive mood, however, speeded responses, especially in children, and induced facilitatory effects of novelty. These effects were consistent with increased arousal. Although effects of novelty were more consistent with an attentional response, in children who had watched a happy movie the novel images evoked a more liberal response criterion, suggestive of increased arousal. This suggests that mood and novelty may affect response behaviour stronger in children than in adults.