Humans and dogs have a long history together. The dog’s purpose has changed from being a practical tool to being a “co-therapist”. Today, animal-assisted therapy is a common phenomenon internationally. However, the evidence for animal-assisted interventions is not very recognised in Norway. The present study aimed to investigate dogs’ ability as a form of emotional support for people in therapy in ...

Many studies have shown the negative effects of mind wandering (MW) on performance in sustained attention tasks, however, its effects on reinforcement learning (RL), a process based on reward- and loss-based learning, is an unexplored field. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between MW and RL by employing a novel RL task to observe how MW influences performance. In ...

People with an ethnic minority background are becoming more prevalent in Western societies, and are more represented in the workforce as a consequence. Negative stereotypes and attitudes towards ethnic minorities persist in terms of lack of skill and knowledge that leads to discrimination and negative outcomes in their career progression. These obstacles make a glass ceiling that limit the potential ...

This study investigated whether there are gender differences in children's understanding of hidden emotions. Additionally, it explored whether there are gender differences in hidden emotion understanding in different social contexts (peer vs. family) and for different emotion categories (submissive emotions vs. disharmonious emotions). Our sample included 27 children aged four to six years and 17 ...

Humans display an ability to rapidly adapt behaviour to novelly instructed relations. Instructions typically bind known stimuli and responses in novel ways that must be retained for future implementation, which can induce unintentional effects on a secondary task. This effect can be adjusted based on the degree of preparation for the retained instruction. Cues can be used to explicitly signal upcoming ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect time-pressure and incentives have on deliberate reasoning. A person’s tendency to engage in and enjoy processes that require reasoning, i.e., their need for cognition, and their algorithmic ability are factors that may moderate performance in reasoning tasks when they are under time-pressure or given monetary reward. Identifying how to increase ...

Introduction: Studies suggest facial expressions of caregivers may be important in placebo effects; however, this has not been systematically tested. This experiment investigated the effects of caregivers’ singular positive nonverbal behaviours (NBs) on pain reports.<p> <p>Methods: Fifty-one males and 53 females (total of 104) participants were randomized to four groups that were displayed positive ...

Hensikten med denne studien var å undersøke om imitasjon i løpet av de første leveårene kan forklares av engasjement. Dette ble undersøkt gjennom å kartlegge barnets blikk mot eksperimentet under demonstrasjonen av en objektrelatert handling, samt ved å kartlegge barnets håndteringer av objektet under eksperimentfasen. Deretter ble frekvens av imitative handlinger kartlagt basert på barnets håndteringer ...

Background - The health care is likely to break down unless we are able to increase the level of functioning for the growing number of patients with complex, chronic illnesses. Hence, novel high-capacity and cost-effective treatments with trans-diagnostic effects are warranted. In accordance with the protocol paper, we aimed to examine the acceptability, satisfaction, and effectiveness of an ...

This study aims to investigate the underlying neurobiological mechanisms that regulate natural reward seeking behaviors, specifically in the context of sexual behavior and sucrose self-administration. The role of CaMKIIa+neurons in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) was explored using chemogenetic silencing and -stimulation. Additionally, the study examined how these effects ...