New paper out! October 2024
Floor, Mingqian, Bernd, and their colleagues investigated the role of an intertemporal Pavlovian bias as psychological mechanism contributing to impatient intertemporal choice behaviour. Using a newly developed reinforcement learning go/no-go task, they showed that the anticipation of immediate rewards facilitated goal-directed approach but impaired goal-directed inhibition. RL models suggested that cues signalling immediate rewards elicited a stronger Pavlovian approach response than cues signalling preference-matched delayed rewards. This “Pavlovian impatience” may contribute to our difficulty to inhibit ourselves in the face of immediate gratification, possibly at the cost of long-term goals. Their paper was published in Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience. Congratulations to all authors!
A warm welcome to our new students September 2024
We are very happy to welcome Davide, Eva, Maia, Panagiota, Jiahao, and Benedikt to our lab, many of whom will be doing research in our lab for their bachelor or master. Great that you are all joining, welcome!
Meghana and Ben become Master of Science September 2024
We are proud to announce that Meghana and Ben both graduated from the researcher master Behavioural Science at Radboud University. Ben has now started a PhD position at Tilburg University, and Meghana will start a PhD position at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. Congratulations both, very well done, and we wish you all the best for the future!
Version 2.0 of our Mixed-Effects Models SOP released August 2024
We proudly present version 2.0 of our Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for using mixed-effects models! This version follows on the first version that was released in 2020. The SOP contains a principled workflow describing the steps that we usually take when running mixed-effects models. You can find the latest version under Resources and here.
Three new papers out! August 2024
Several of us published new work over the summer:
Zhang and his colleague Pieter van Dessel studied how executing go/no-go or approach/avoidance responses toward a stimulus can change its evaluation. They developed a novel training task that combines both go/no-go and approach/avoidance actions orthogonally. They observed that when the task instructions referred to the go/no-go actions, participants evaluated no-go items less positively than both go and untrained items, while no effect of approach/avoidance actions was observed. Contrarily, when the task instructions referred to the approach/avoidance actions, they observed an approach/avoidance effect but not a go/no-go effect. The authors conclude that action interpretation determines whether go/no-go or approach/avoidance actions influence stimulus evaluation. The paper was published in Open Mind. Congratulations to Zhang and Pieter!
Fritz and his colleagues performed a systematic review and meta-analyis on audiovisual speech integration in autism. Across 18 studies, they found impaired audiovisual speech integration in autistic compared to non-autistic individuals. This difference between groups seemed to be larger for children than for adults. The authors discuss several reasons for observed differences in findings between studies, and provide key directions for future research. Their paper was published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. Congraulations to all authors!
Last but not least, Bernd and his colleagues studied adolescent risk-taking likelihood and perceptions in five different domains, as well as how the risk-taking likelihood is informed by risk and benefit perceptions, and how individuals with ADHD differ from controls. The results point towards a peak in risk-taking likelihood in late adolescence in the Health-Safety domain only, and heightened perceived benefits but attenuated perceived risks in mid-to-late adolescence for Health-Safety, Recreational, and Ethical risks. Adolescents with ADHD reported a higher Social risk-taking likelihood than controls. They also found evidence for domain-specific risk versus return (benefit) weighing. Their paper was published in Personality and Individual Differences. Congratulations to the authors!
Congratulations Dr. Klaassen! June 2024
We are delighted to announce that on June 5th, Felix successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “At the heart of the decision: On the role of defensive freezing states in approach-avoidance decision-making under threat“. Felix has been a long-time D2P2 member, and is currently a post-doctoral researcher in our lab. After the summer, he will start a post-doctoral position at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Congratulations Felix, we are very proud of you and wish you all the best in the future!
Zhang obtains FWO fellowship May 2024
After a thorough selection procedure, Zhang has been awarded a senior postdoc fellowship of the Scientific Research Foundation, Flanders. He will be using this fellowship to study loss-chasing and win-chasing behaviour in gambling, using an experimental and computational approach. Congratulations Zhang, very well-deserved! We are very happy to continue collaborating with you on this research.
Paper alert! May 2024
Felix, Bernd, and their colleagues investigated how the decision to approach or avoid depends on freezing-related bradycardia, a psychophysiological state induced by threat. Using model-based fMRI analyses, they show that bradycardia states are associated with increased threat-induced avoidance, as well as a stronger tendency to approach vs. avoid when expected reward outweighs threat. An amygdala-striatal-prefrontal circuit supports approach-avoidance arbitration under threat by integrating reward-threat value and bradycardia states. These findings highlight the role of human freezing states in value-based decision making, relevant for optimal threat coping. Their paper was published in Communications Biology. Congratulations to all authors!
Congratulations Dr. Quandt! March 2024
We are very proud to announce that on March 13th, Julian Quandt successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “On the origin of confidence in value-based decision making: The role of previous experiences“. Very well-deserved Julian, congratulations! Julian was a D2P2 lab member from 2017 until 2023, and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Vienna University of Business and Economics. Julian, we are proud of you and wish you all the best for the future!
New paper out! January 2024
Floor, former D2P2 member Vivian, Bernd, and their colleagues studied the role of Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) in contributing to the impatience elicited by immediate rewards (compared to delayed) rewards. They developed an intertemporal variant of a three-phase PIT task to investigate whether the reward amount and delays associated with Pavlovian cues bias goal-directed go/no-go behaviour. They observed that, as expected, cues associated with larger rewards increased go responses compared to cues associated with smaller rewards. However, the reward delay associated with the cues did not bias go/no-go behaviour. Thus, no evidence was found for the hypothesis that PIT effects driven by reward delay form a psychological mechanism contributing to impatient intertemporal choice. The paper was published in Judgment and Decision Making. Congratulations to all authors!
Welcome Zhang! November 2023
Despite having been in the lab for a few months already, we do also want to officially announce Zhang as lab member. Zhang is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, studying loss-chasing, the phenomenon that gamblers often continue or even intensify their betting after losing. To study this, he combines analyzing large-scale secondary data from real-world gambling behavior with an experimental approach in which he designs gambling-like tasks to isolate the influence of specific design features of gambling products. Welcome Zhang!
Scholarship awarded to Meylisa November 2023
We are delighted to announce that Meylisa has obtained the Beasiswa Pendidikan Indonesia Scholarship from the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia. She will use this scholarship to do a PhD project in our lab, with Bernd as her supervisor. In her PhD project, Meylisa will be studying the role of cultural differences in time perception in intertemporal decision-making, specifically in the the context of retirement saving decisions. Congratulations Meylisa, great news!
Paper alert! November 2023
Together with his colleagues Rasoul Heshmati and Ellen Driessen, Fritz published a paper on the effects of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP) on depressive symptoms, negative affect and emotional repression in single treatment-resistant depression. Using a randomized controlled trial, they found that compared to a waitlist control condition, ISTDP decreased depressive symptoms, emotional repression, and negative affect directly after treatment and at a 3-month follow-up. Their paper was published in Psychotherapy (see the link to the journal or the accepted manuscript version). Congratulations to all authors!
Welcome Ben! October 2023
A warm welcome to Ben Kretzler, who will be completing a lab rotation (a short internship) in our lab. Ben is doing a double research master in Cognitive Neuroscience and in Behavioural Science at Radboud University. He will be working with Floor on a study investigating the role of impatient intertemporal choice across mental health problems. Great to have you here!
New paper out! October 2023
Together with Iris Ikink and Karin Roelofs, Bernd studied the conditions under which people show time-ambiguity aversion, i.e., a preference for intertemporal choice options with time-exact delays over options with time-ambiguous delays. They found that time-ambiguity preferences are distinguishable from time-risk and delay preferences, and that the aversiveness of time ambiguity depends on the delay and amount magnitude. Their paper was published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. Great work, congratulations!
Kaycee becomes Master of Science September 2023
After defending her thesis successfully, Kaycee has obtained her M.Sc. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Western Ontario. Congratulations Kaycee, we are very proud of you!
Fritz wins APA Division 29 Donald K Freedheim Paper Award September 2023
We are very proud to announce that Fritz has received the Donald K Freedheim Paper Award from the Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy and the APA Division 29 Student Development Committee. He received this award for his individual participant data meta-analysis on efficacy and moderators of short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy for depression. Congratulations Fritz!
Virag becomes Master of Science September 2023
We are very happy to announce that Virag has succesfully defended her master thesis and has thereby graduated from the research master Cognitive Neuroscience at Radboud University. She also completed a short internship in our lab over the past months. Below a picture of Virag celebrating her graduation on a well-deserved mountain trip. Great work, congratulations Virag!
D2P2 @ SPUDM 2023 August 2023
From August 20-24, Bernd, Jesse, Mingqian, and Floor attended the Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making (SPUDM) conference in Vienna, Austria. Each of them presented their work through a talk. Great to share the D2P2 work and meet with other researchers in the field!
Ömer becomes Master of Science August 2023
We are very happy to announce that Ömer has successfully defended his master thesis and has thereby graduated from the research master Behavioural Science at Radboud University. In September, he will start as a PhD student at Utrecht University. Well done Ömer, congratulations!
Floor presents at CPC 2023 July 2023
Floor presented her research on Pavlovian biases in intertemporal choice at the inaugural Computational Psychiatry Conference (CPC) in Dublin, Ireland. Her poster was titled “Pavlovian impatience: Anticipating immediate rewards increases approach behavior compared to delayed rewards”. Great job, Floor!
Jesse wins BSI Best Paper Award July 2023
During the annual Behavioural Science Institute (BSI) day, Jesse won the first prize for the 2022 Best Paper Award. He was awarded for his meta-analysis on the adaptiveness of impulsive behaviour across a range of environments. Great work, congratulations Jesse!
Grant awarded to Fritz and colleagues June 2023
In collaboration with Ellen Driessen and Ednei Soares, our lab member Fritz has received a prestigious research grant of €5000 from the Stichting Psychoanalytische Fondsen. This grant will support their research focused on the examination of defense mechanisms and their association with depression. This comprehensive research project aims to bridge the gap between the theoretical frameworks of prominent psychoanalytic scholars such as Sigmund & Anna Freud, Otto Kernberg, and Melanie Klein, and empirical research in psychoanalytic-oriented treatments for depression.
The team will delve into various aspects, including the theoretical stability and modification of defense mechanisms over time. They will also explore the factor structure of the Defenses Style Questionnaire (DSQ), a frequently used tool, to gain insights into the best categorization of defense mechanisms. Lastly, they will analyze the network structure and investigate the bidirectional relationship between changes in defense mechanisms and alterations in depressive symptoms within the context of short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy compared to cognitive-behavioral therapy. By integrating Freud’s concepts with real-world data, this research has the potential to significantly enhance our understanding of defense mechanisms and their role in depression. Ultimately, these findings will contribute to the development of more effective psychotherapeutic interventions.
Congratulations with this great achievement!
Paper alert! June 2023
In a recent article published in Clinical Psychology Review, Fritz, in collaboration with a team of international researchers, conducted an individual participant data meta-analysis (IPDMA) to address the question which individuals benefit the most from short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (STPP). The results of the IPDMA demonstrated that STPP showed greater efficacy among participants with longer episode durations compared to those with shorter durations. Furthermore, the findings highlighted that STPP outperformed control conditions (such as care-as-usual) in reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and general psychopathology, while simultaneously enhancing the overall quality of life of participants. Great work, congratulations to all authors!
Felix presents at EMHFC 2023 June 2023
Felix presented his research at the European Meeting of Human Fear Conditioning (EMHFC) in Salzburg, Austria. In his talk, he discussed the neurocomputational link between bradycardia states and approach-avoidance decision-making, and showed his latest findings on this topic. Very well done!
Three new papers out! June 2023
People tend to take more risks when options are framed in terms of losses, than when they are framed in terms of gains. Bernd and his collaborators compared several major theories in their ability to describe this framing effect, as well as the task-related, individual, and developmental differences therein. They conclude that the majority of decision makers decide according to the hybrid theory, and a sizable minority according to cumulative prospect theory and fuzzy trace theory. Their paper was published in Decision. Very recently, they also published a reply to comments on this paper.
Furthermore, together with former lab member Iris Ikink and other colleagues, Bernd published a paper on age differences in intertemporal choice. Young adults were found to make more patient decisions than children and adolescents. Their results additionally suggest that this age-related increase in patience may be driven specifically by stronger sensitivity to (absolute and relative) amount differences with age. The paper was published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Last but not least, Felix, together with Karin Roelofs and Peter Dayan, published a reply to comments on an earlier paper on freezing responses. In their reply, they discuss the role of the hippocampus in post-encounter freezing during approach-avoidance conflict. The reply was published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
Great work, congratulations to all authors!
Welcome Virag, Meghana, and Dongxian! May 2023
We are very happy to welcome three new D2P2 members into our lab. Virag Fodor is a Cognitive Neuroscience research master student who will be completing a short internship in our lab. Meghana Vaddakedath Dharmapalan and Dongxian Jin are Behavioural Science research master students who will be doing their master thesis project in our lab. A warm welcome to all!
Congratulations Dr. Algermissen! April 2023
Continuing the streak of lab festivities, we are very excited to announce that on April 3rd, former lab member Johannes Algermissen successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “On the origin and control over Pavlovian biases in learning and decision making“, which he obtained with the distinction cum laude. Johannes joined our lab as a master’s and PhD student, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. Congratulations Johannes, we are very proud of you!
Congratulations Dr. Fenneman! March 2023
We are very proud to announce that on March 1st, Jesse successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Is impulsivity adaptive in harsh and unpredictable environments? Reviewing, integrating, and developing formal models of impulsivity.“, and can (should?) now officially be addressed as Dr. Jesse. Very well-deserved Jesse, congratulations! We have the pleasure of continuing to work with Dr. Jesse, as he is currently a postdoctoral researcher in our lab.
New papers out! January 2023
In December 2022, Jesse, together with Willem E. Frankenhuis and Peter M. Todd, published a systematic review of 30 formal models, which they used to evaluate whether information impulsivity (acting without considering consequences) and temporal impulsivity (choosing sooner outcomes over later outcomes) are adaptive or maladaptive in harsh or unpredictable environments. Their review provides six broad conclusions on the adaptive value of these types of impulsivity in different environmental conditions. The paper was published in Psychological Bulletin.
Moreover, in January 2023, Jesse published a paper together with Yannick Griep, Johannes M. Kraak, Aflredo Jiménez, and Xander D. Lub. In their work, they found support for the hypothesis that by breaching psychological contract obligations, organizations may trigger negative reciprocity, increasing deviant behavior in the workplace. This paper was published in the Journal of Business Research.
Congratulations Jesse!
Workshop Announcement October 2022
Exciting news! As part of the Radboud-Western collaboration, Kaycee and fellow researchers from the University of Western Ontario will visit Radboud University in November. Together with Bernd, Floor, and Anna Tyborowska, they are hosting a workshop on November 8th and 9th on the impact of early-life trauma and adversity on reward-based learning and decision-making later in life.
The workshop includes talks by experts, a masterclass during which you, as participants, can present your work, statistical and modeling sessions, and a round-table discussion. Our speaker line-up includes several D2P2 members (Kaycee, Mingqian, Jesse, and Floor), as well as J Bruce Morton, Lucy Overbeek, Niki H. Kamkar, Cassandra Lowe, and Anna Tyborowska.
You can find more information about the workshop, the program and the sign-up link on the BSI event page (to directly sign up, click here). The workshop will be hybrid. For in-person participants wo wish to receive a lunch on November 8th, the sign-up deadline is October 31st (we might still be able to arrange a lunch if you sign up later, but it’s not guaranteed).
It is also possible to attend only the keynote by Bruce Morton without joining the remainder of the workshop. See here for more information and here for the direct sign-up link.
We are looking forward to seeing your registration!
Welcome Kaycee, Ömer, and Meylisa! September 2022
A warm welcome to Kaycee Stewart, Ömer Ergün, and Meylisa Sari! Kaycee is a graduate student from the University of Western Ontario and is a member of the Radboud-Western collaboration research team. Ömer is a research master student studying social decision-making with prof. Alan Sanfey and Bernd. Meylisa is orienting herself towards potentially doing a PhD project, and will be visiting us in the near future. Great to have you all here!
Paper alert! September 2022
Julian and his colleagues reviewed research on the effect of go/no-go training on food consumption. Taking a value-based decision-making perspective, they theorize that through action/inaction decisions, go/no-go training updates the value of food items. Their paper was published in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. Congratulations!
Congratulations David! August 2022
After graduating from the Research Master Behavioural Science in 2021, David Esmeijer has now also graduated from the Master in Clinical Psychology. Great work, congratulations David! David will be teaching at Radboud University, and will work as a psychologist while being trained to become a GZ-psychologist.
Radboud-Western collaboration grant to Bernd and colleagues June 2022
Together with a research team from the University of Western Ontario (Western University) headed by Dr. Bruce Morton, Bernd and colleagues have received a Radboud-Western collaboration grant to study the impact of early-life adversity and trauma on reward-based learning and decision-making later in life. Very exciting news, congratulations!
New paper out! March 2022
Together with his colleagues, Bernd developed a censored mixture model to model risk taking. With this model, they aimed to tackle difficulties that often arise when modeling risk taking, specifically focusing on censored observations, attractiveness to certain outcomes, and unobserved individual risk preferences. Their paper was published in Psychometrika. Congratulations!
Congratulations Dr. Ikink! December 2021
We are very happy to announce that on November 26, Iris successfully defended her PhD thesis titled “The role of time ambiguity in intertemporal choice”. Iris’ work over the past years has resulted in an impressive dissertation, which she defended brilliantly. Iris currently works as a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University. Congratulations Dr. Ikink, we are very proud of you!
New paper out! December 2021
Johannes and his colleagues investigated the neural mechanisms by which people selectively rely on motivational action biases (i.e., the tendency to invigorate actions when there is a prospect of reward, but to hold back when there is a threat of punishments) when they are helpful, and suppress them when they are not helpful. Their findings point to a dual nature of midfrontal theta power, with early components reflecting valence processing in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and late components reflecting motivation for action in the striatum. The paper has been published in Cerebral Cortex. Congratulations!
Paper alert! October 2021
Julian, Bernd, and their colleagues studied the nature of confidence in value-based decisions. Through three preregistered experiments, they provide support for the hypothesis that the feeling of confidence reflects the variation of an underlying value distribution and that this value distribution represents previously experienced values related to an object. Their paper has been published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Congratulations!
Congratulations David & David! August 2021
We are happy to announce that our two Davids, David Renjaän and David Esmeijer, have successfully completed and defended their master’s thesis, and have hereby graduated from the Research Master Behavioural Science. Congratulations to both!
New paper out! June 2021
Felix, Leslie, Bernd, and colleagues investigated how the threat-induced psychophysiological state of freezing is related to approach-avoidance decision-making. They developed a task in which participants made passive and active approach-avoidance decisions in the prospect of receiving varying amounts of money and electrical shocks. They observed that choice behaviour was best predicted by a model that included not only the effect of the potential outcomes, but also participants’ psychophysiological state (bradycardia), and passive-active response tendencies. Their paper was published in Scientific Reports. Congratulations!
Paper alert! April 2021
In this recently published paper, Felix, Leslie, and their fellow researchers from the Dare2Approach Group discuss the literature on the potential role of threat-induced bodily states on decision-making, and provide a new neurocomputational framework explaining how these effects can facilitate or bias approach-avoid decisions under threat. Their paper was published in Frontiers in Neuroscience. Congrats all!
New publication! March 2021
Bernd and several researchers from New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University found that adolescents with a family history of substance use disorder (SUD) showed greater impatience in a delay discounting task compared to adolescents without a family history of SUD, specifically when the sooner-smaller reward was available immediately. However, no differences in associated brain activity between the two groups were found. Their paper was published in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. Congratulations!
New paper out! January 2021
Bernd worked with Anneloes Hulsman, Reinoud Kaldewaij, Mahur Hashemi, Wei Zhang, Saskia Koch, Karin Roelofs, and Floris Klumpers to develop a novel Fearful Avoidance Task (FAT) in order to study individual differences in costly fearful avoidance and the relation with psychophysiology. Their paper was published in Behaviour Research and Therapy. Congratulations!
Preregistration award to Floor November 2020
During the PhD days of the Behavioural Science Institute, Floor received the annual BSI preregistration award for her MSc thesis preregistration on Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer in intertemporal choice. Congratulations Floor!
Welcome Mingqian and David! September 2020
A warm welcome to Mingqian Guo and David Renjaän! Mingqian will be starting his PhD project, and David will carry out his Master’s thesis project in our lab.
Furthermore, we are happy to announce that after doing her Master’s thesis project in our lab last year, Floor Burghoorn will now continue to work in our lab as a PhD student.
Mixed-Effects Models SOP July 2020
After working on it for quite a while, we proudly present version 1.0.0 of our SOP for Using Mixed-Effects Models. In the Standard Operatings Procedure (SOP) document, we elaborate on how we proceed when analyzing data with Mixed-Effects Models, for example, what we deem good practices when powering, fitting and interpreting Mixed-Effects Models. We hope that this document may be of help to those who find it difficult to follow a principled approach when working with Mixed-Effects Models and serve as a guide on the journey from data-collection planning to the interpretation of results.
Poster presentation Iris October 2019
Iris is presenting her poster at the SNE (Society for NeuroEconomics) conference in Dublin –> Oct 6, poster session 3, poster 3-I-37
Welcome Lena, Liis, Edwin, Leon, and Julian! September 2017
A warm welcome to Lena, Liis, Edwin, Leon and Julian who are extending our labgroup during their Master’s/PhD project.
Congratulations Johannes! July 2017
We congratulate Johannes who got awarded a PhD position in the Learning and Decision-Making group directed by Hanneke den Ouden at the Donders Centre for Cognition in Nijmegen. For the next four years, he will be working on how humans arbitrate whether to use model-based or model-free learning, and how this arbitration is changed in patients with psychiatric disorders.
Congratulations Niels! July 2017
PhD position awarded! We congratulate Niels who got awarded a PhD position.
Thesis awards to Jesse and Vivian June 2017
Two of our lab members received an award for their master-thesis at the annual BSI day. Jesse Fenneman has received the first price for his thesis on impulsivity in harsh and uncertain environments, and Vivian Heuvelmans has received the third price for her thesis on Pavlovian influences in intertemporal decision making. Congratulations!
Welcome Nicole! June 2017
We welcome Nicole Wasalek to our labgroup! She will start as a PhD candidate in september 2017. During her project, she will develop mathematical models and learning algorithms to understand how changing environments shape the development of sensitive periods throughout the lifespan of an individual.