Alexander Fengler

Modeling decision dynamics disentangles working memory, cognitive control and reinforcement learning and reveals clinical differences

Various neurocognitive processes contribute to reinforcement learning (RL) and decision making, requiring careful task designs and computational modeling to disentangle them. People rely on capacity-limited working memory (WM) to rapidly and flexibly adapt behavior during learnin...

Affect labeling down-regulates amygdala only in a dominant native language

A successful strategy to down-regulate emotions is to simply label them (e.g., saying “I’m sad” when feeling sad). It however remains unresolved which mechanism is responsible for the efficacy of this approach known as affect labeling. Here, we constrain the proposed mechanisms o...

The perils of omitting omissions when modeling evidence accumulation

Response deadlines are commonly imposed in decision-making research to incentivize speedy decisions and sustained attention. This procedure frequently leads to a proportion of trials in which no response is made, and these omissions are often simply removed from the data during a...