Social media use bears no measurable relationship to adolescents' cognitive skills; negative effects of social media use may have been overstated in past research

Associations between social media use and cognitive abilities: Results from a large-scale study of adolescents. Stefan Stieger, Sabine Wunderl. Computers in Human Behavior, June 16 2022, 107358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107358

Highlights

• Social media use is not substantially associated with results from tests of cognitive abilities and skills.

• Results from random-forest models suggest low importance of all test results compared to known sex- and age-differences.

• Negative effects of social media use may have been overstated in past research.

Abstract: In adolescence, smartphone use in general and social media use in particular has often been associated with negative effects, such as higher anxiety levels and body dissatisfaction. Other outcomes – such as fundamental cognitive abilities and skills (e.g., intelligence, information processing, spatial perception) – have rarely been the focus of research. Here, we analysed data from a large sample of adolescents (12–16 years; N > 12,000) who performed a series of psychometric tests ranging from intelligence, spatial perception, and information processing, to practical numeracy, and compared their test results with their social media usage (average active and passive time per day, problematic social media use). We additionally applied a random-forest model approach, useful for designs with many predictors and expected small effect sizes. Almost all associations did not outperform known age- and sex-differences on social media use; that is, effect sizes were small-to-tiny and had low importance in the random-forest analyses compared to dominant demographic effects. Negative effects of social media use may have been overstated in past research, at least in samples with adolescents.

Keywords: Cognitive abilitySocial media useAdolescentsIntelligenceRandom-forest model

4. Discussion

The results of the present study can be summarised and discussed as follows. The PSMU scale using a Likert-type response option revealed very good reliability, whereas the reliability was very low for the binary response format (see also Andreassen et al., 2013; Wartberg et al., 2017). Therefore, Likert-type scales should be given preference for the PSMU scale, at least when used with adolescent samples.

The correlation between PSMU scores and the average time using social media per day was low (∼0.27; see also Wartberg et al., 2017, who also used adolescent samples and found r = 0.34 for pathological Internet use in general). This supports the assumption that adolescents of that age might miss an objective reference frame of which social media use behaviour is acceptable. As long as the core family (e.g., parents) does not provide negative feedback about adolescents’ possible social media overuse (or even show similar social media behaviour themselves), adolescents will probably not state problems in the PSMU scale although they may use social media for a substantial amount of time on average each day. Additionally, using a parent-form of the PSMU scale or non-parametric measures of social media use (e.g., objectively assessed social media usage behaviour by smartphone apps; e.g., Ellis et al., 2019) might be a good approach for future research.

Past research has found evidence that it makes a difference whether one uses social media actively (e.g., chatting, sharing photos) or passively (e.g., browsing, reposting messages, looking at content; Escobar-Viera et al., 2018; Thorisdottir et al., 2019). In the present study, some support for this assumption was found, but differences were of very low effect size (see correlation differences in Table 1, sixth column). Girls were significantly more likely to be actively using social media compared to boys, whereas boys were significantly more likely to be passively using social media compared to girls. Furthermore, active social media users had slightly lower verbal intelligence, whereas passive social media users had slightly higher scores, which is rather counterintuitive. If adolescents’ active use of social media by writing texts and so forth is associated with positive aspects, then we should not expect a negative association with verbal intelligence. Further, although past research found that social media use reduces working memory short-term (e.g., Aharony & Zion, 2019), it does not seem to have long-term effects because the association between active social media use and the long-term memory was, although in the expected direction, of tiny effect size (−0.021; see Table 1) and of marginal importance (third least important predictor in the RF model; see Fig. 1).

Although we cannot draw conclusions about the causal directions of the found effects, in general, the effects themselves were of very weak effect sizes and, compared with each other, the importance of effects mostly did not outperform known demographic differences, such as sex- or age-differences in social media usage (e.g., Coyne et al., 2020). For example, when it comes to the time social media is used actively per day, the association with fluid intelligence (figural) had only about a quarter of importance compared with the sex-difference between boys and girls (girls using social media more than boys). Or put differently, being a boy or a girl is by far more impactful on differences in active social media use than the effect found for figural fluid intelligence.

Furthermore, we found no evidence of any substantial association with adolescents’ intelligence, spatial perception, information processing, technical understanding, creativity, spelling skills, and vocabulary. The only exception was practical numeracy, where we at least found effects similar in effect size to demographics, such as sex-differences (see Fig. 1). Adolescents with higher social media use or higher PSMU scores had lower practical numeracy ability and vice versa. Because of the cross-sectional design, it remains unclear whether adolescents with lower practical numeracy skills more actively search for social media communication or the other (more alarming) way round; that is, more social media usage leads to reduced numeracy abilities, i.e., reduced ability to solve simple text-based mathematical problems (e.g., calculation of areas). Although we also found an association between social media passive use and information processing outperforming demographics, the overall explained variance was very low (1.6%); therefore, we did not interpret this result in detail.

However, the results are interesting from another point-of-view, namely the impact of social media use on cognitions in general, such as the ability to concentrate, hold attention, keep information in memory, and executive functioning (for a review, see Wilmer et al., 2017). Previous research has found evidence that even short-term interaction with smartphones can impact ongoing cognitions by impairing the ability to concentrate or distort attention (Wilmer et al., 2017). For example, one oft-described aspect of smartphone usage in everyday life is multitasking (Judd, 2014), which can have negative effects, such as delayed completion of primary tasks (e.g., Leiva, Böhmer, Gehring, & Krüger, 2012, September) but also positive ones, such as better task-switching abilities (Alzahabi & Becker, 2013) or better multisensory integration (Lui & Wong, 2012). Furthermore, past research has found that even the mere presence of a smartphone can reduce cognitive capacity, resulting in lower scores on intelligence tests (e.g., working memory, fluid intelligence; Ward et al., 2017) or reduced task performance, especially for tasks with high cognitive demands (Thornton et al., 2014).5 Similar studies exist about children doing a school test (Beland & Murphy, 2016; Levine et al., 2007).

Looking at the pattern of effects in Table 1, the directions of effects largely correspond to these earlier results. Negative significant associations were predominantly found on tests with high cognitive demand (intelligence test, spatial perception test, technical understanding, practical numeracy, spelling skills [although less spelling errors for highly active social media users]), which were all speeded tests with time restrictions. In contrast, significant positive associations were found on the speeded test with low cognitive demand, namely the information processing test (i.e., more correct answers, fewer errors), which uses simple reaction time tasks. Therefore, the effect pattern could also mean that adolescents do not have lower abilities on the tested concepts (e.g., intelligence, spatial perception), but instead have difficulties with the test procedures themselves because they needed to concentrate and focus their cognitions on a specific task under time constraints. This would also explain why these adolescents performed better in the information perception task. Here, multitasking is beneficial: coordinating information from different senses (seeing, hearing) to perform different hand/foot coordination tasks by pressing buttons. Although this might be a possible reason why we found detrimental effects on low vs. high cognitive demand tests, we do not have direct evidence for that based on the current data, though this would be a fruitful approach for future research.

The present study has also limitations. First, some of the measures (2.2.6 to 2.2.10) were developed and validated in-house at VIC and are not published in any peer-reviewed journal. Nevertheless, all measures were developed over several years under the premisses of being valid, reliable, practical, easy-to-administer, and short. Most of them have a clear face validity (e.g., technical understanding, practical numeracy) and a clear and objective test score calculation (e.g., sum of correct answers). Tests are frequently re-standardised as suggested by the DIN 33430 norm.6 Furthermore, in the present study we assessed the time of social media usage subjectively. Because past research found that subjectively assessed usage time does not necessarily correspond to objectively assessed usage time (e.g., through software-based accurate time assessments; Ellis et al., 2019; Sewall et al., 2020), future research should try to replicate the present findings by using an objective measure of social media usage. Because past research found lower associations between objective social media use with, for example, well-being (Sewall et al., 2020), it could be that when focusing on the present results, the uncovered low effect sizes could drop. Another limitation comes from the conceptual distinguishing between active and passive social media use, which has frequently been questioned (for a thoughtful discussion, see Meier & Krause, 2022, March 22), as well as the rather unspecific focus of the measure without explicitly differentiating between the broad range of possible behaviours from texting to watching videos. Because all measures were self-assessed by adolescents, we also cannot rule out a possible shared method-specific variance of the used psychometric tests with social media use. Using objective measures of social media use in future research would resolve that issue.

In conclusion, we did not find any substantial negative associations between social media use and the tested concepts. The effects found did not substantially outperform other known effects, such as sex- or age-differences (except a slightly higher value for practical numeracy on PSMU) if at all. To conclude, although past research found negative effects of social media use in early adolescents (<11 years of age; e.g., Charmaraman, Lynch, Richer, & Grossman, 2021) or children (e.g., 4 and 8 years; Skalická et al., 2019; for a review, see Wiederhold, 2019), cognitive abilities and skills of adolescents between 12 and 16 years of age do not seem to be overly affected by social media use.

How Often and Why Do Guilty and Innocent Suspects Confess, Deny, or Remain Silent in Police Interviews?

How Often and Why Do Guilty and Innocent Suspects Confess, Deny, or Remain Silent in Police Interviews? Lennart May, Yonna Raible, Elsa Gewehr, Johannes Zimmermann & Renate Volbert. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, Jun 16 2022. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11896-022-09522-w

Abstract: This study examines how often and why suspects who have reported being either guilty or innocent remain silent, confess, or deny accusations in police interview situations. Convicted offenders under current probation or parole in Germany (N = 280) completed a questionnaire about their perceptions of up to six specific police interview situations they had experienced in their lifetime. As predicted, more suspects reported having confessed truthfully (64.3%) compared to falsely (4.1%) at least once in their lifetime; and more suspects reported having remained silent in guilty interview situations (58.4%) compared to innocent interview situations (18.4%). Unexpectedly, approximately an equal number of suspects reported having denied truthfully (39.8%) and falsely (40.2%) at least once in their lifetime. The main reasons reported for these statement types were that evidence seemed to indicate guilt (true confessions), suspects desired to end the uncomfortable interview situation or protect the real perpetrator/another person (false confessions), evidence seemed weak (false denials), suspects felt innocent (true denials), they desired to protect themselves (silence while being interviewed when guilty), and they followed their attorneys’ advice (silence while being interviewed when innocent). Findings are discussed in the context of the police and psychological research and practice.

Discussion

The present study examined the lifetime prevalences, conditional probabilities, and reasons for suspects’ confessions, denials, and remaining silent in police interviews. We will interpret our findings on the three statement behaviors comprehensively and then discuss their scientific and practical implications.

First, as expected, more suspects reported having confessed at least once in their lifetime in guilty interview situations compared to innocent interview situations. The prevalence of false confessions among our sample was 4.1% and slightly below the range between 5.9 and 24% presented in Table 1 for inmates, offenders and forensic patients. However, the corresponding credibility interval in this study includes this range (95% CI [2.3, 6.9]. The false confessions reported here refer to different types of offenses (theft, fraud, assault, robbery, property damage, drug offenses, sexual offenses). The main reported motives for false confessions were to protect the real perpetrator/another person and a desire to end the uncomfortable interview situation. Ending the interview because of an aversive situation can be assigned to the type of coercive false confessions (e.g., Kassin and Wrightsman 1985), and researchers have already given recommendations on how to decrease the risk of this (e.g., Kassin et al. 2010). In contrast, protecting another person belongs to the type of voluntary false confessions (e.g., Kassin and Wrightsman 1985). Whereas this is a frequently reported reason for false confessions, we know of no literature focusing on how interviewers can detect and minimize voluntary false confessions in order to protect another person. This could be a line for future research.

The lifetime prevalence of true confessions in this study (64%) falls in between the wide range of the four self-report studies examining true confessions (28 to 92%; see Table 1). Also, the true confessions reported here refer to different types of offenses, with most being for theft, assault, and drug offenses. The most frequently mentioned reasons for true confessions were that the evidence seemed to indicate guilt and the suspect’s feeling of guilt. This result is in line with a review by Moston and Engelberg (2011) showing that the strength of evidence is a major predictor for a confession, and the meta-analysis by Houston et al. (2014) who found that true confessions were associated with the suspects’ emotional reactions to the interview and their perceptions of the evidence and their guilt. However, suspects also frequently reported the hope to get a lower sentence as a reason for true confessions. This was also a frequently mentioned reason for false confessions. It indicates that suspects consider the perceived consequences when contemplating confessing (on the effect of consequences on confession decisions, see Madon et al. 2012).

Second, as expected, more suspects reported having remained silent at least once in their lifetime in guilty interview situations (58%) compared to innocent interview situations (18%). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the reasons for being silent in guilty and innocent interview situations from the suspect’s perspective. Here, we want to highlight two results: First, the vast majority of suspects reported having remained silent at least once in their lifetime in guilty interview situations because they wanted to protect themselves against misuse of any statement they made. Furthermore, numerous suspects reported that they remained silent at least once in their lifetime in innocent interview situations because they generally do not make statements to the police. This reflects a rather critical picture of the police, and further research on this needs to follow. Second, the attorney’s advice to remain silent was a frequently reported reason for being silent at least once in a lifetime in both guilty and innocent interview situations. Future research could involve attorneys in order to understand the considerations and decisions of suspects and the interview interactions in more detail.

The lifetime prevalence of false denials (40%) was about the same as that for true denials (40%). This result was unexpected and contradicts the findings by Volbert et al. (2019) indicating a higher prevalence of true denials than false denials among forensic patients. Further research should examine this in more detail. However, both studies show that suspects frequently report true denials. Kassin et al. (2003) have argued that a true denial puts innocent suspects at risk: They found that interviewers tried hardest to obtain a confession when they presumed the suspect’s guilt, but the suspect was in fact innocent. From a suspect’s perspective, being innocent and truly denying an accusation can lead to facing an interviewer aiming to coerce a confession. Coercive and accusatorial interviewing, in turn, raises the risk of false confessions (e.g., Meissner et al. 2014). From the police perspective, “truly denying” is a highly challenging statement behavior. The rationale of this is the cognitive mindset of an interviewer: they may launch a suspect interview when they assume that the suspect is guilty. In this mindset, they may assess denials which do not contain conclusive exculpatory information as a sign of the suspect’s guilt. A pitfall here is that they need to distinguish true from false denials, but the ability of interviewers and humans in general to detect deception is poor (e.g., Bond and DePaulo (2006) found an overall accuracy rate of 54%). Probably the only reliable way to assess the validity of denials is by comparing statements with other evidence (e.g., Vredeveldt et al. 2014), but this becomes impossible if corroborating as well as exculpatory evidence is lacking. Suspects most frequently explained false denying in reported guilty interview situations with seemingly unclear evidence, the hope of not being convicted, and the hope of being released from custody. We believe it is fair to assume that these reasons relate to the strength of the evidence. Taking into account the most frequently reported reason for true confessions (evidence seemingly indicating guilt), this indicates the significant role of evidence from the suspects’ perspective.

This study also shows that the suspects made different statements in police interviews, and specific statement behaviors cannot be attributed solely to innocence or to guilt. Taking the reported guilt or innocence as a starting point, we calculated conditional probabilities that allow descriptions of which types of statements the suspects reported most probably for guilty or innocent interviews. Considering the reported guilty interview situations, the probability was highest for remaining silent (40%), followed by true confessions (36%), and false denial (24%). In contrast, for reported innocent interview situations, the probability was highest for true denial (60%), followed by remaining silent (36%), and eventually false confessions (4%). This finding is highly relevant to investigative practice: First, it shows that suspects—when they make a statement—most commonly make true statements (i.e., true confessions and true denials). Second, from a police perspective, the diversity of statement behaviors in innocent and guilty suspects shows the need to conduct suspect interviews in an open-ended manner. Interviewers’ open-ended mindset is at the core of investigating interviewing and is implemented, for example, in the PEACE model (e.g., Bull 2019). The results of the present study provide support for the international effort to introduce and implement investigative interviewing (e.g., European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 2019), and generally an open-minded interview approach (Principles on Effective Interviewing for Investigations and Information Gathering 2021).

Finally, for innocent interview situations, the probability that suspects will waive their right to remain silent and deny is higher than that of remaining silent (at least once in their lifetime). In line with experimental findings (Kassin and Norwick 2004), Kassin (2005) has assumed that innocent suspects waive their right to remain silent because they may (a) trust in the fairness of the justice and legal system and expect that their innocence will be believed if they “just tell it like it happened,” and (b) believe that interviewers will be able to read their thoughts and emotions and hence will “see their innocence.” In the present study, the most and exclusive reason for denying in innocent interview situations was the suspects’ explanation “I was innocent.” This underpins Kassin (2005) claim that “innocents put innocence at risk,” because waiving the right to remain silent is an essential antecedent for false confessions. Scherr et al. (2016) also found that suspects’ willingness to waive their rights and deny an offense increased with the strength of their just-world beliefs. However, from a police interviewer’s perspective, the situation is different: Interviewers may conduct suspect interviews when they presume some degree of guilt. Thus, they may assume that the suspect is guilty, assess remaining silent and denying (when no other evidence for cross-checking is available) as an indicator for their guilt, and aim to overcome this and collect confessions. Differently put, remaining silent or denying when being innocent can lead to a risky interview situation with biased perceptions and assessments and coercive interviewing by the police interviewer. This, in turn, can result in false confessions by suspects.

Limitations

This study is based on retrospective self-reports that have some methodological limitations (e.g., social desirability, cognitive biases, remembering specific events out of multiple similar events, estimated frequencies of events), and we had no information with which to validate the participants’ self-reports (e.g., about their status of being guilty or innocent). These limitations hold true when surveying inmates (e.g., Gudjonsson and Sigurdsson 1994) but also police investigators (e.g., Kassin et al. 2007). Nevertheless, suspects are clearly central to suspect interviews, and their perspectives provide crucial information on them. Second, the current nonrepresentative sample limits the generalizability of the results (e.g., all participants were from one German federal state, German-speaking, without extensive cognitive disabilities). Third, the number of false confessions was small, and this limits the precision of the findings on the reasons for confessing when innocent. Future studies should remedy these limitations by including (a) more and a wider range of participants (e.g., persons from different German federal states, non-German speakers, suspects with cognitive disabilities), and (b) more information about the interview context (e.g., duration, location, persons present) and the personal characteristics of the suspects (e.g., mental health).

Fertility Status Does Not Facilitate Women’s Judgment of Male Sexual Orientation

Fertility Status Does Not Facilitate Women’s Judgment of Male Sexual Orientation. Scott W. Semenyna, Nicholas O. Rule & Paul L. Vasey. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jun 15 2022. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02356-x#citeas

Abstract: Previous research has demonstrated that women can correctly distinguish between gay and heterosexual men’s faces significantly better than chance. This ability appears to be heightened during the most fertile portion of their ovulatory cycle. Here, we sought to replicate and extend these findings in a large sample of undergraduate women (N = 1960). Although women correctly identified men’s sexual orientation significantly better than chance (62% average accuracy), a subsample of naturally cycling women (n = 426) did not judge men’s sexual orientation from faces more accurately when in the fertile phase of their ovulatory cycle. These results further replicate the visibility of male sexual orientation, but do not show that this ability has strong links to estimated fertility.

What the study of spinal cord injured patients can tell us about the significance of the body in cognition

What the study of spinal cord injured patients can tell us about the significance of the body in cognition. V. Moro, M. Scandola & S. M. Aglioti. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Jun 13 2022. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-022-02129-6

Abstract: Although in the last three decades philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists have produced numerous studies on human cognition, the debate concerning its nature is still heated and current views on the subject are somewhat antithetical. On the one hand, there are those who adhere to a view implying ‘disembodiment’ which suggests that cognition is based entirely on symbolic processes. On the other hand, a family of theories referred to as the Embodied Cognition Theories (ECT) postulate that creating and maintaining cognition is linked with varying degrees of inherence to somatosensory and motor representations. Spinal cord injury induces a massive body-brain disconnection with the loss of sensory and motor bodily functions below the lesion level but without directly affecting the brain. Thus, SCI may represent an optimal model for testing the role of the body in cognition. In this review, we describe post-lesional cognitive modifications in relation to body, space and action representations and various instances of ECT. We discuss the interaction between body-grounded and symbolic processes in adulthood with relevant modifications after body-brain disconnection.

(Dis)Embodied approaches to cognition

The traditional occidental concept of the human mind seems to be essentially based on mind-body dualism deriving from the Cartesian distinction between the mind (res cogitans) and the body (res extensa). The mind-body dichotomy has been taken to imply not only that basic perceptual and motor functions are separated from higher order ones (Block, 1995), but also that the latter are exclusively based on the manipulation of abstract, amodal symbols and are largely independent from the former (Newell & Simon, 1972). In the last few decades, this radical view has been challenged by ever increasing psychological and neuroscientific evidence that human cognition is profoundly influenced by basic sensorimotor processes and that even complex concepts such as the abstract aspects of language are largely grounded on body representations and their relations with the world. This is the central tenet of a group of theories that are included under the umbrella definition of ‘Embodied Cognition Theories’ (ECTs). According to these theories, all human experience is grounded in the body, not only perceptual and emotional processes and social interactions, but also the acquisition and creative use of language (e.g., the use of metaphors), judgment capacities and the creation of cultural artefacts (Gallagher, 2005). Since their original formulation (Glenberg, 1997), ECTs have attracted the interest of many disciplines, such as psychology, psychotherapy (Khoury et al., 2017; Tschacher et al., 2017), education (Pouw et al., 2014), philosophy, anthropology, robotics (Hoffmann et al., 2010), artificial intelligence (Shapiro, 2011) and, last but not least, neuroscience (Freund et al., 2016; Kiefer & Pulvermüller, 2012; Mahon & Caramazza, 2008). However, ECTs do not refer to a unitary construct and each theory does in effect differ from another in the way it conceives the reciprocal relations between the body, the mind and the environment and the modalities by means of which bodily representations affect cognition. The various different theories range from a general idea of an instrumental role of the body in information processing (Körner et al., 2015) to a more radical view asserting that “all cognitive processes are based on sensory, motor and emotional processes, which are themselves grounded in body morphology and physiology” (Glenberg, 2015, p. 166).

Importantly, however, a sort of continuum is identifiable within these various theories (Fig. 1). At one extreme of this continuum, there is a hypothesis that presupposes the hierarchical organisation of cognition with a symbolic system that is separated from the sensorimotor system that can merely activate motor responses (Leshinskaya & Caramazza, 2016). At the other extreme is the idea that cognition emerges from a dynamic circle of interactions between the brain, the body, and the environment without the need for symbols (Brooks, 1991; van Gelder, 1998). What distinguishes these two perspectives regards the role that the body and its connection to objects plays in cognition (Shapiro, 2019). The body may be considered to ‘participate’ in building cognition since cognition may be altered depending on the shape, size and experiences of the body (Glenberg, 1997; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999; Varela et al., 1991). From a different perspective, the body can be considered to be ‘constitutive’ in the sense that cognition would not exist without it (e.g., the Perceptual Symbol theory; Barsalou, 2008; O’Regan & Noë, 2001). Objects are only taken into account in some of these theories in which it is suggested that they participate in building cognition (e.g., the Extended mind theory, Clark, 2006; the Dynamical systems theory, van Gelder, 1998). An example is the act of writing and thinking at the same time, a task that gives a specific result due to the interaction between the brain and the body and thence to a pen and paper, and from there back again to the brain (Clark, 2006). Accordingly, if one changes either the gesture or the object, the final product will also be different. One might ask whether in this case the mind extends to the body (e.g., the Peripheral mind theory, Aranyosi, 2013) and also to the objects (Clark, 2006) or, alternatively, the mind incorporates the body and the objects it is interacting with (Borghi, 2005). This is a question that remains unanswered.

Fig. 1

The various different models of embodied cognition theories are represented in a progression from one extreme with Disembodied Cognition to the other extreme positions inside the Embodied Cognition Theories. The co-existence of modal and amodal symbols in adulthood is suggested

Full size image

Recent studies on the link between embodiment and higher order functions in people with sensory deprivation highlight the importance of both sensory and conceptual representations (Ostarek & Bottini, 2021). For example, anterior temporal lobe activation in colour-knowledge tasks turned out to be very similar in congenital and early blind subjects (Wang et al., 2020). In contrast, activation in the ventral occipito-temporal colour perception regions was found only in sighted controls. This pattern of results points to the existence of two forms of object representation in the human brain: a sensory-derived and a cognitive-derived form of knowledge (Wang et al., 2020), with the former being experience-dependent and the latter experience-independent (Ostarek & Bottini, 2021). Crucially, the analyses of connectivity in Wang et al.’s study shows that the two systems relating to colour knowledge are integrated and part of a widespread network (Wang et al., 2020). Thus, a crucial question concerns not only whether but also how the two levels interact and if the sensory level is able to modulate and modify the conceptual level. If so, one can conclude that knowledge is embodied, although embodiment is not the only way the brain understands the world.

While no single clinical condition makes it possible to distinguish between the various different ECTs, alterations in the body may provide novel information on the different variables that play a role in these processes. Studies of amputees, for example, may highlight possible representational bodily changes that might, however, be due to multiple aspects, such as the visual appreciation of conspicuous changes in body shape as well as the somatosensory and motor disconnection between the body and the brain. In the following section, we focus on individuals suffering from spinal cord injury (SCI) in whom the general body shape is unchanged in spite of a massive somatosensory de-afferentation and motor de-efferentation. The specificity of this neurological model with respect to other clinical conditions will be analysed, then the changes in cognitive functions associated with SCIs are reviewed, starting from the representation of static and acting bodies, and continuing with an exploration of object and space representations. The potential contribution of these experimental data to the debate on embodied cognition will conclude the review.

Sweet memories have extraordinary potential to relieve the bitterness of life

The power of negative and positive episodic memories. Samantha E. Williams, Jaclyn H. Ford & Elizabeth A. Kensinger. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, Jun 14 2022. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13415-022-01013-z

Abstract: The power of episodic memories is that they bring a past moment into the present, providing opportunities for us to recall details of the experiences, reframe or update the memory, and use the retrieved information to guide our decisions. In these regards, negative and positive memories can be especially powerful: Life’s highs and lows are disproportionately represented in memory, and when they are retrieved, they often impact our current mood and thoughts and influence various forms of behavior. Research rooted in neuroscience and cognitive psychology has historically focused on memory for negative emotional content. Yet the study of autobiographical memories has highlighted the importance of positive emotional memories, and more recently, cognitive neuroscience methods have begun to clarify why positive memories may show powerful relations to mental wellbeing. Here, we review the models that have been proposed to explain why emotional memories are long-lasting (durable) and likely to be retrieved (accessible), describing how in overlapping—but distinctly separable—ways, positive and negative memories can be easier to retrieve, and more likely to influence behavior. We end by identifying potential implications of this literature for broader topics related to mental wellbeing, education, and workplace environments.

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Positive memories also hold a power all their own. Unlike the affect associated with negative memories, which tends to fade relatively quickly, positive memories are more likely to retain their affective intensity (Walker et al., 1997; see recent review by Skowronski et al., 2014). This may be part of the reason why positive autobiographical memories act as rewards in themselves (Speer et al., 2014) and can buffer effects of stress (Speer & Delgado, 2017). Memories for positive personal events become more integrally tied to our sense of self and can perpetuate self-esteem (Çili & Stopa, 2015) and become an important part of our life story (Berntsen et al., 2011).

Given these features of positive autobiographical memories, it may come as no surprise that they have high utility and can be strategically recalled to good purposes (Figure 3). Positive memories are powerful in their ability to repair our moods after a negative mood induction (Joormann et al., 2007; Joormann & Siemer, 2004), to connect us socially (Rasmussen & Berntsen, 2009; Wolf & Demiray, 2019), and to inspire us toward prosocial behavior (Gaesser & Schacter, 2014). By activating reward circuitry, they even may trigger mnemonic circuitry that increases the likelihood that we encode the good in the world around us. We will review the literature shedding light on the power of positive memories.