Constructing memory, imagination, and empathy: a cognitive neuroscience perspective

Taking stock of the past: A psychometric evaluation of the Autobiographical Interview

Autobiographical memory (AM) involves a rich phenomenological re-experiencing of a spatio-temporal event from the past, which is challenging to objectively quantify. The Autobiographical Interview (AI; Levine et al. Psychology and Aging, 17(4), 677-689, 2002) is a manualized performance-based assessment designed to quantify episodic (internal) and semantic (external) features of recalled and verbally conveyed prior experiences. The AI has been widely adopted, yet has not undergone a comprehensive psychometric validation. We investigated the reliability, validity, association to individual differences measures, and factor structure in healthy younger and older adults (N = 352). Evidence for the AI's reliability was strong: the subjective scoring protocol showed high inter-rater reliability and previously identified age effects were replicated. Internal consistency across timepoints was robust, suggesting stability in recollection. Central to our validation, internal AI scores were positively correlated with standard, performance-based measures of episodic memory, demonstrating convergent validity. The two-factor structure for the AI was not well supported by confirmatory factor analysis. Adjusting internal and external detail scores for the number of words spoken (detail density) improved trait estimation of AM performance. Overall, the AI demonstrated sound psychometric properties for inquiry into the qualities of autobiographical remembering.

Visualizing Compassion: Episodic Simulation as Contemplative Practice

Contemplative interventions designed to cultivate compassion are receiving increasing empirical attention. Accumulating evidence suggests that these interventions bolster prosocial motivation and warmth towards others. Less is known about how these practices impact compassion in everyday life. Here we consider one mechanistic pathway through which compassion practices may impact perception and action in the world: simulation. Evidence suggests that vividly imagining a situation simulates that experience in the brain as if it were, to a degree, actually happening. Thus, we hypothesize that simulation during imagery-based contemplative practices can construct sensorimotor patterns in the brain that prime an individual to act compassionately in the world. We first present evidence across multiple literatures in Psychology that motivates this hypothesis, including the neuroscience of mental imagery and the emerging literature on prosocial episodic simulation. Then, we examine the specific contemplative practices in compassion-based interventions that may construct such simulations. We conclude with future directions for investigating how compassion-based interventions may shape prosocial perception and action in everyday life.

What makes us more susceptible to false memories in the era of COVID-19? A focus on vaccines and Green Pass

INTRODUCTION

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was accompanied by an overabundance of fake news increasing the risk of developing false memories (FMs). Previous studies have shown that the relationship between fake news and FMs could be mediated by some individual variables, including attitudinal biases. We explored the role of these variables in true memories (TMs) and FMs formation, with special emphasis on vaccine- and Green Pass (GP)-related topics.

METHOD

We set up a large online survey exploring several constructs including media usage, attitude toward vaccines and GP, perceived (PK) and objective knowledge (OK) about COVID-19-related information, fear of the disease, depression and anxiety symptoms, coping mechanisms, and reasoning skills. Then, we asked participants whether they remembered certain news (true or fake), providing confidence ratings.

RESULTS

Data from 289 respondents (198 females) from the general population were analyzed. Participants with positive attitude reported a greater fear that their loved ones contracted the COVID-19, a more frequent use of traditional media, and a higher PK when compared with respondents with negative attitude. On the whole sample, participants reported higher confidence levels when required to judge their memory of true than fake news; however, participants with positive attitude reported a higher confidence for both true and fake news. The relationship between attitude and TM confidence was mediated by the PK, whereas the relationship between attitude and FM confidence was probably affected by OK.

CONCLUSION

Attitude can modulate individual behaviors in the context of health issues. The PK and OK may interact with attitude in the memory formation.

Influence of agent's self-disclosure on human empathy

As AI technologies progress, social acceptance of AI agents, including intelligent virtual agents and robots, is becoming even more important for more applications of AI in human society. One way to improve the relationship between humans and anthropomorphic agents is to have humans empathize with the agents. By empathizing, humans act positively and kindly toward agents, which makes it easier for them to accept the agents. In this study, we focus on self-disclosure from agents to humans in order to increase empathy felt by humans toward anthropomorphic agents. We experimentally investigate the possibility that self-disclosure from an agent facilitates human empathy. We formulate hypotheses and experimentally analyze and discuss the conditions in which humans have more empathy toward agents. Experiments were conducted with a three-way mixed plan, and the factors were the agents' appearance (human, robot), self-disclosure (high-relevance self-disclosure, low-relevance self-disclosure, no self-disclosure), and empathy before/after a video stimulus. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed using data from 918 participants. We found that the appearance factor did not have a main effect, and self-disclosure that was highly relevant to the scenario used facilitated more human empathy with a statistically significant difference. We also found that no self-disclosure suppressed empathy. These results support our hypotheses. This study reveals that self-disclosure represents an important characteristic of anthropomorphic agents which helps humans to accept them.

The missing construct: Impathy

This article is about impathy (introversive empathy), understood as the ability to share in and understand one’s own feelings, which is considered a critical psychological construct relevant for the recovery and maintenance of mental health. However, while the ability to empathize with oneself has received considerable attention from the clinical community, this has not been paralleled by the same scientific scrutiny, which was subject to the ability to empathize with others. Impathy has not yet been operationally defined and thus has remained relatively unexplored, both conceptually and empirically. This work describes an operational definition of impathy with four dimensions: Perceiving, Meta-Position, Accepting Attitude, and Understanding. Issues of differentiation from related constructs are discussed and avenues of clinical applicability are explored, suggesting that impathy exists as a distinct human capacity, which can be assessed and which has important clinical implications. The paper closes with future directions, including the assessment of impathy and possible research questions.

The different role of trait empathy and state social exclusion empathy on subsequent feelings about gambling outcome：Evidence from event-related potentials and time-frequency decompositions

Empathy plays an essential role in determining how we understand and respond to others' emotional experiences. Previous studies have mainly focused on the influencing factors of physical pain and monetary loss empathy, as well as on their effects on subsequent feelings. However, little is known about social pain empathy and its influence on subsequent feelings, and the role of personal trait empathy. In this study, we performed Cyberball Games and gambling tasks to explore the effect of social exclusion empathy on subsequent feelings for gambling outcomes (others' losses and gains) by analyzing the brain activity of excluded and non-excluded players at the gambling outcome feedback stage. It was found that both feedback-related negativity (FRN) and theta-band oscillatory are more negative for loss outcome than gain for the excluded players, while these effects cannot be found for the non-excluded players. Furthermore, we only observed a larger P300 amplitude in the gain outcome than that of loss, regardless of the players' role. More interestingly, we found state social pain empathy is negatively correlated with the d-FRN amplitude under non-excluded conditions, while trait empathy is positively correlated with P300 amplitude regardless of the players' role. These results provide insight into the different roles of state social pain empathy and trait empathy on subsequent gambling outcomes. Furthermore, different from previous studies, the current results show that d-FRN could reflect the state empathy discrepancy rather than the biomarker of state empathy.

How Imagination and Memory Shape the Moral Mind

Interdisciplinary research has proposed a multifaceted view of human cognition and morality, establishing that inputs from multiple cognitive and affective processes guide moral decisions. However, extant work on moral cognition has largely overlooked the contributions of episodic representation. The ability to remember or imagine a specific moment in time plays a broadly influential role in cognition and behavior. Yet, existing research has only begun exploring the influence of episodic representation on moral cognition. Here, we evaluate the theoretical connections between episodic representation and moral cognition, review emerging empirical work revealing how episodic representation affects moral decision-making, and conclude by highlighting gaps in the literature and open questions. We argue that a comprehensive model of moral cognition will require including the episodic memory system, further delineating its direct influence on moral thought, and better understanding its interactions with other mental processes to fundamentally shape our sense of right and wrong.

Objective Knowledge Mediates the Relationship between the Use of Social Media and COVID-19-Related False Memories

The exposure to relevant social and/or historical events can increase the generation of false memories (FMs). The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is a calamity challenging health, political, and journalistic bodies, with media generating confusion that has facilitated the spread of fake news. In this respect, our study aims at investigating the relationships between memories (true memories, TMs vs. FMs) for COVID-19-related news and different individual variables (i.e., use of traditional and social media, COVID-19 perceived and objective knowledge, fear of the disease, depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms). One hundred and seventy-one university students (131 females) were surveyed. Overall, our results suggested that depression and anxiety symptoms, reasoning skills, and coping mechanisms did not affect the formation of FMs. Conversely, the fear of loved ones contracting the infection was found to be negatively associated with FMs. This finding might be due to an empathy/prosociality-based positive bias boosting memory abilities, also explained by the young age of participants. Furthermore, objective knowledge (i) predicted an increase in TMs and decrease in FMs and (ii) significantly mediated the relationships between the use of social media and development of both TMs and FMs. In particular, higher levels of objective knowledge strengthened the formation of TMs and decreased the development of FMs following use of social media. These results may lead to reconsidering the idea of social media as the main source of fake news. This claim is further supported by either the lack of substantial differences between the use of traditional and social media among participants reporting FMs or the positive association between use of social media and levels of objective knowledge. The knowledge about the topic rather than the type of source would make a difference in the process of memory formation.

Cognitive Empathy as Imagination: Evidence From Reading the Mind in the Eyes in Autism and Schizotypy

How is cognitive empathy related to sociality, imagination, and other psychological constructs? How is it altered in disorders of human social cognition? We leveraged a large data set (1,168 students, 62% female) on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMET), the Autism Quotient (AQ), and the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ-BR) to test the hypotheses that the RMET, as a metric of cognitive empathy, reflects mainly social abilities, imagination, or both. RMET showed the expected female bias in performance, though only for eyes that expressed emotions and not for neutral expressions. RMET performance was significantly, and more strongly, associated with the AQ and SPQ subscales that reflect aspects of imagination (AQ-Imagination and SPQ-Magical Ideation) than aspects of social abilities (AQ-Social, AQ-Communication, and SPQ-Interpersonal subscales). These results were confirmed with multiple regression analysis, which also implicated increased attention (AQ-Attention Switching and, marginally non-significantly, AQ-Attention to Detail) in RMET performance. The two imagination-related correlates of RMET performance also show the strongest sex biases for the AQ and SPQ: male biased in AQ-Imagination, and female biased in SPQ-Magical Ideation, with small to medium effect sizes. Taken together, these findings suggest that cognitive empathy, as quantified by the RMET, centrally involves imagination, which is underdeveloped (with a male bias) on the autism spectrum and overdeveloped (with a female bias) on the schizotypy spectrum, with optimal emotion-recognition performance intermediate between the two. The results, in conjunction with previous studies, implicate a combination of optimal imagination and focused attention in enhanced RMET performance.

Legal decision-making and the abstract/concrete paradox

Higher courts sometimes assess the constitutionality of law by working through a concrete case, other times by reasoning about the underlying question in a more abstract way. Prior research has found that the degree of concreteness or abstraction with which an issue is formulated can influence people's prescriptive views: For instance, people often endorse punishment for concrete misdeeds that they would oppose if the circumstances were described abstractly. We sought to understand whether the so-called 'abstract/concrete paradox' also jeopardizes the consistency of judicial reasoning. In a series of experiments, both lay and professional judges sometimes reached opposite conclusions when reasoning about concrete cases versus the underlying issues formulated in abstract terms. This effect emerged whether participants reasoned with broad principles, such as human dignity, or narrow rules, and was largest among individuals high in trait empathy. Finally, to understand whether people reflectively endorse the discrepancy between abstract and concrete resolutions, we examined their reactions when evaluating both, either simultaneously or sequentially. These approaches revealed no single pattern across lay and expert populations, or exploratory and confirmatory studies. Taken together, our studies suggest that empathic concern plays a greater role in guiding the judicial resolution of concrete cases than in illuminating judges' professed standards-which may result in concrete decisions in violation of their own abstract principles.

Eavesdropping on Autobiographical Memory: A Naturalistic Observation Study of Older Adults' Memory Sharing in Daily Conversations

The retrieval of autobiographical memories is an integral part of everyday social interactions. Prior laboratory research has revealed that older age is associated with a reduction in the retrieval of autobiographical episodic memories, and the ability to elaborate these memories with episodic details. However, how age-related reductions in episodic specificity unfold in everyday social contexts remains largely unknown. Also, constraints of the laboratory-based approach have limited our understanding of how autobiographical semantic memory is linked to older age. To address these gaps in knowledge, we used a smartphone application known as the Electronically Activated Recorder, or “EAR,” to unobtrusively capture real-world conversations over 4 days. In a sample of 102 cognitively normal older adults, we extracted instances where memories and future thoughts were shared by the participants, and we scored the shared episodic memories and future thoughts for their make-up of episodic and semantic detail. We found that older age was associated with a reduction in real-world sharing of autobiographical episodic and semantic memories. We also found that older age was linked to less episodically and semantically detailed descriptions of autobiographical episodic memories. Frequency and level of detail of shared future thoughts yielded weaker relationships with age, which may be related to the low frequency of future thoughts in general. Similar to laboratory research, there was no correlation between autobiographical episodic detail sharing and a standard episodic memory test. However, in contrast to laboratory studies, episodic detail production while sharing autobiographical episodic memories was weakly related to episodic detail production while describing future events, unrelated to working memory, and not different between men and women. Overall, our findings provide novel evidence of how older age relates to episodic specificity when autobiographical memories are assessed unobtrusively and objectively “in the wild.”

Corporate Law Versus Social Autonomy: Law as Social Hazard

This article argues that corporate law has become the legal platform upon which is erected a social process impeding society's capacity to lucidly reflect on its primary ends; in this sense, corporate law is in conflict with social autonomy. This process is described here as a social feedback loop, in the structural centre of which lies the corporation which imposes its own purpose as an irrational social end, i.e. irrespective of its potentially catastrophic social consequences. The article argues that resolving the conflict between corporate law and social autonomy is impossible, because it presupposes a change of social paradigm towards one where corporate law as business organisation law has no obvious fit. This questions the social legitimacy of corporate law, signifies its non-permanence and thus opens up the field for seeking radical alternatives in the future.

Empathic responding and hippocampal volume in young children

Empathic responding-the capacity to understand, resonate with, and respond sensitively to others' emotional experiences-is a complex human faculty that calls upon multiple social, emotional, and cognitive capacities and their underlying neural systems. Emerging evidence in adults has suggested that the hippocampus and its associated network may play an important role in empathic responding, possibly via processes such as memory of emotional events, but the contribution of this structure in early childhood is unknown. We examined concurrent associations between empathic responding and hippocampal volume in a sample of 78 children (ages 4-8 years). Larger bilateral hippocampal volume (adjusted for intracranial volume) predicted greater observed empathic responses toward an experimenter in distress, but only for boys. The association was not driven by a specific subregion of the hippocampus (head, body, tail), nor did it vary with age. Empathic responding was not significantly related to amygdala volume, suggesting specificity of relations with the hippocampus. Results support the proposal that hippocampal structure contributes to individual differences in children's empathic responding, consistent with research in adults. Findings shed light on an understudied structure in the complex neural systems supporting empathic responding and raise new questions regarding sex differences in the neurodevelopment of empathy in early childhood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Time Frame Affects Vantage Point in Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory: Evidence from Response Latencies

Previous research suggests that, with the passage of time, representations of self in episodic memory become less dependent on their initial (internal) vantage point and shift toward an external perspective that is normally characteristic of how other people are represented. The present experiment examined this phenomenon in both episodic and semantic autobiographical memory using latency of self-judgments as a measure of accessibility of the internal vs. the external perspective. Results confirmed that in the case of representations of the self retrieved from recent autobiographical memories, trait-judgments regarding unobservable self-aspects (internal perspective) were faster than trait judgments regarding observable self-aspects (external perspective). Yet, in the case of self-representations retrieved from memories of a more distant past, judgments regarding observable self-aspects were faster. Those results occurred for both self-representations retrieved from episodic memory and for representations retrieved from the semantic memory. In addition, regardless of the effect of time, greater accessibility of unobservable (vs. observable) self-aspects was associated with the episodic rather than semantic autobiographical memory. Those results were modified by neither declared trait’s self-descriptiveness (yes vs. no responses) nor by its desirability (highly desirable vs. moderately desirable traits). Implications for compatibility between how self and others are represented and for the role of self in social perception are discussed.

Can the Psycho-Emotional State be Optimized by Regular Use of Positive Imagery?, Psychological and Electroencephalographic Study of Self-Guided Training

The guided imagery training is considered as an effective method and therefore widely used in modern cognitive psychotherapy, while less is known about the effectiveness of self-guided. The present study investigated the effects of regular use of self-guided positive imagery, applying both subjective (assessment of the psycho-emotional state) and objective (electroencephalographic, EEG) approaches to research. Thirty healthy subjects participated in the cognitive imagery-training program for 12 weeks. The schedule began with group training with an instructor for 2 days, where the participants learned various techniques of positive imagery, after which they continued their individual training at home. Psychological and EEG evaluations were applied at the baseline and at the end of the training period. The impact of training on the psycho-emotional states of the participants was evaluated through: Center for epidemiologic studies- Depression (CES-D) 20 item scale, Satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) and General Self-Efficacy scale (GSE). EEGs (19-channels) were recorded at rest with eyes closed. EEG analysis was performed using Low resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) software that allows the comparison of current source density (CSD) and functional connectivity (lagged phase and coherence) in the default mode network before and after a workout. Initial assessment with CES-D indicated that 22 participants had subthreshold depression. After the training participants had less prominent depressive symptoms (CES-D, p = 0.002), were more satisfied with their lives (SWLS, p = 0.036), and also evaluated themselves as more effective (GSE, p = 0.0002). LORETA source analysis revealed an increase in the CSD in the right mPFC (Brodmann area 10) for beta-2 band after training (p = 0.038). LORETA connectivity analysis demonstrated an increase in lagged coherence between temporal gyruses of both hemispheres in the delta band, as well as between the Posterior cingulate cortex and right BA21 in the theta band after a workout. Since mPFC is involved in emotional regulation, functional changes in this region can be seen in line with the results of psychological tests and their objective validation. A possible activation of GAMK-ergic system is discussed. Self-guided positive imagery (after instructions) can be helpful for emotional selfregulation in healthy subjects and has the potential to be useful in subthreshold depression.

Impact of episodic thinking on altruism

Episodic future thinking, which refers to the use of prospective imagery to concretely imagine oneself in future scenarios, has been shown to reduce delay discounting (enhance self-control). A parallel approach, in which prospective imagery is used to concretely imagine other's scenarios, may similarly reduce social discounting (i.e., enhance altruism). In study 1, participants engaged in episodic thinking about the self or others, in a repeated-measures design, while completing a social discounting task. Reductions in social discounting were observed as a function of episodic thinking about others, though an interaction with order was also observed. Using an independent-measures design in study 2, the effect of episodic thinking about others was replicated. Study 3 addressed a limitation of studies 1 and 2, the possibility that simply thinking about others decreased social discounting. Capitalizing on Construal Level Theory, which specifies that social distance and time in the future are both dimensions of a common psychological distance, we hypothesized that episodic future thinking should also decrease social discounting. Participants engaged in episodic future thinking or episodic present thinking, in a repeated-measures design, while completing a social discounting task. The pattern of results was similar to study 1, providing support for the notion that episodic thinking about psychologically distant outcomes (for others or in the future) reduces social discounting. Application of similar episodic thinking approaches may enhance altruism.

Storytelling, behavior planning, and language evolution in context

An attempt is made to specify the structure of the hominin bands that began steps to language. Storytelling could evolve without need for language yet be strongly subject to natural selection and could provide a major feedback process in evolving language. A storytelling model is examined, including its effects on the evolution of consciousness and the possible timing of language evolution. Behavior planning is presented as a model of language evolution from storytelling. The behavior programming mechanism in both directions provide a model of creating and understanding behavior and language. Culture began with societies, then family evolution, family life in troops, but storytelling created a culture of experiences, a final step in the long process of achieving experienced adults by natural selection. Most language evolution occurred in conversations where evolving non-verbal feedback ensured mutual agreements on understanding. Natural language evolved in conversations with feedback providing understanding of changes.

Episodic simulation and episodic memory can increase intentions to help others

Empathy plays an important role in human social interaction. A multifaceted construct, empathy includes a prosocial motivation or intention to help others in need. Although humans are often willing to help others in need, at times (e.g., during intergroup conflict), empathic responses are diminished or absent. Research examining the cognitive mechanisms underlying prosocial tendencies has focused on the facilitating roles of perspective taking and emotion sharing but has not previously elucidated the contributions of episodic simulation and memory to facilitating prosocial intentions. Here, we investigated whether humans' ability to construct episodes by vividly imagining (episodic simulation) or remembering (episodic memory) specific events also supports a willingness to help others. Three experiments provide evidence that, when participants were presented with a situation depicting another person's plight, the act of imagining an event of helping the person or remembering a related past event of helping others increased prosocial intentions to help the present person in need, compared with various control conditions. We also report evidence suggesting that the vividness of constructed episodes--rather than simply heightened emotional reactions or degree of perspective taking--supports this effect. Our results shed light on a role that episodic simulation and memory can play in fostering empathy and begin to offer insight into the underlying mechanisms.