Neural mechanisms of risky decision-making and reward response in adolescent onset cannabis use disorder.

Background: Neural mechanisms of decision-making and reward response in adolescent cannabis use disorder (CUD) are underexplored.

Methods: Three groups of male adolescents were studied: CUD in full remission (n=15); controls with psychopathology without substance use disorder history (n=23); and healthy controls (n=18). We investigated neural processing of decision-making and reward under conditions of varying risk and uncertainty with the Decision-Reward Uncertainty Task while participants were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Behavioral risk elicits selective activation of the executive system in adolescents: clinical implications.

We investigated adolescent brain processing of decisions under conditions of varying risk, reward, and uncertainty. Adolescents (n = 31) preformed a Decision-Reward Uncertainty task that separates decision uncertainty into behavioral and reward risk, while they were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Behavioral risk trials involved uncertainty about which action to perform to earn a fixed monetary reward.

The role of color diagnosticity in object recognition and representation.

The role of color diagnosticity in object recognition and representation was assessed in three Experiments. In Experiment 1a, participants named pictured objects that were strongly associated with a particular color (e.g.

Experiential simulations of negated text information.

We investigated the question of whether comprehenders mentally simulate a described situation even when this situation is explicitly negated in the sentence. In two experiments, participants read negative sentences such as There was no eagle in the sky, and subsequently responded to pictures of mentioned entities in the context of a recognition task. Participants' responses following negative sentences were faster when the depicted entity matched rather than mismatched the negated situation.

Simulating visibility during language comprehension.

In this study, participants performed a sentence-picture verification task in which they read sentences about an agent viewing an object (e.g., moose) through a differentially occlusive medium (e.

Perception of auditory motion affects language processing.

Previous reports have demonstrated that the comprehension of sentences describing motion in a particular direction (toward, away, up, or down) is affected by concurrently viewing a stimulus that depicts motion in the same or opposite direction. We report 3 experiments that extend our understanding of the relation between perception and language processing in 2 ways. First, whereas most previous studies of the relation between perception and language processing have focused on visual perception, our data show that sentence processing can be affected by the concurrent processing of auditory stimuli.

Attentional bias affects change detection.

Thirty smokers and 30 nonsmokers participated in a flicker study in which the role of attentional bias in change detection was examined. The participants observed picture pairs of everyday objects flicker on a computer screen until they detected the one object that had changed. In half of the pictures, a smoking-related object (e.

Perception of motion affects language processing.

Recently developed accounts of language comprehension propose that sentences are understood by constructing a perceptual simulation of the events being described. These simulations involve the re-activation of patterns of brain activation that were formed during the comprehender's interaction with the world. In two experiments we explored the specificity of the processing mechanisms required to construct simulations during language comprehension.

Lateralization of object-shape information in semantic processing.

An experiment was conducted to examine whether perceptual information, specifically the shape of objects, is activated during semantic processing. Subjects judged whether a target word was related to a prime word. Prime-target pairs that were not associated, but whose referents had similar shapes (e.

The role of age and perceptual symbols in language comprehension.

Older and younger participants read sentences about objects and were then shown a picture of an object that either matched or mismatched the implied shape of the object in the sentence. Participants' response times were recorded when they judged whether the object had been mentioned in the sentence. Responses were faster in the shape-matching condition for all participants, but the mismatch effect was stronger for older than for younger adults, even when the larger variability of the older group's response times was controlled for.

Spatial iconicity affects semantic relatedness judgments.

Three experiments were conducted to examine whether spatial iconicity affects semantic-relatedness judgments. Subjects made speeded decisions with regard to whether members of a simultaneously presented word pair were semantically related. In Experiment 1, the words were presented one above the other.

Hemispheric differences in semantic-relatedness judgments.

Subjects judged the semantic relatedness of word pairs presented to the left or right visual field. The word pairs were presented one below the other. On critical trials, the words' referents had a typical spatial relation, with one referent oriented above the other (e.

Language comprehenders mentally represent the shapes of objects.

We examined the prediction that people activate perceptual symbols during language comprehension. Subjects read sentences describing an animal or object in a certain location. The shape of the object or animal changed as a function of its location (e.