Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

Although a substantial body of evidence has demonstrated that emotional interference affects cognitive performance, relatively little is known about its temporal evolution and the respective brain regions underlying its regulation. The present study investigated the temporal dynamics of emotional interference and the contribution of prefrontal regions involved in its regulation. Forty-eight participants completed a 2-back task and a Set-switching task under neutral and negative emotional conditions while receiving sham, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), or ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) stimulation. Stimulation was administered either online during task performance or after a 5 min pre-task period. Consistent with previous findings, negative emotions impaired executive performance, particularly during high-demand updating conditions. Critically, time-resolved analyses revealed that emotional interference evolved dynamically throughout task performance and was differentially modulated by prefrontal stimulation. The most consistent stimulation effects emerged after approximately 10 minutes of cumulative stimulation exposure and varied as a function of the stimulation site, executive-control demands, and stimulation timing. Notably, online stimulation produced more consistent modulation than pre-task stimulation. Together, these findings indicate that both emotional interference and its neuromodulation are dynamic processes. More broadly, they suggest that the contribution of prefrontal control systems to emotion-cognition interactions may be better understood through their temporal evolution rather than through static measures of performance alone.

BACKGROUND: An individual's adaptation to threatening environments under uncertainty is reflected in stress responses. Predictability (the ability to anticipate events) and controllability (the ability to control outcomes) are central to how one adapts, yet their joint influence on aversive learning remains unclear. METHODS: Thirty healthy adults completed a probabilistic aversive learning task in which cue-outcome contingencies varied across levels of predictability and controllability, i.e. whether shock intensity depended on prediction accuracy. Prediction accuracy, reaction time, subjective stress ratings, and skin conductance responses were recorded throughout. Trial-wise learning dynamics were estimated using the Volatile Kalman Filter. RESULTS: Prediction accuracy reduced as environments became less predictable and negatively associated with higher learning rates across predictability levels, with the strongest relationship observed in highly predictable blocks. Skin conductance responses showed that moderately predictable environments elicited responses like those in highly predictable environments when accurate predictions reduced shock intensity, but resembled responses in unpredictable environments when shock intensity was uncontrollable. Model comparison revealed a double dissociation between subjective stress ratings and skin conductance responses. Subjective ratings were best explained by model-derived volatility when prediction accuracy determined shock intensity and by belief uncertainty when it was independent of prediction accuracy, whereas skin conductance responses showed the reverse pattern. Reaction times were best explained by belief uncertainty when predictions influenced shock intensity. Higher anxiety was associated with elevated learning rates in highly and moderately predictable blocks when predictions did not control shock intensity.

Creative performance fluctuates from moment to moment, suggesting that it depends partly on transient internal states present before creative thinking begins. Although such fluctuations have been identified in central neural activity, it remains unclear whether they are also reflected in autonomic physiology. We examined whether cardiac and electrodermal activity during a brief pre-trial resting period was associated with subsequent creative performance. Photoplethysmography, electrocardiography, and electrodermal activity were recorded while 28 participants completed the Alternative Uses Test and Fusion Innovation Test, assessing divergent and convergent creative thinking, respectively. Data from 27 participants was included in the analyses. Heart rate, heart rate variability, tonic skin conductance level, and phasic skin conductance activity were extracted from observation windows ranging from 11 to 30 s within a 30-s pre-trial rest period. Trial-level creativity was evaluated using GPT-based ratings of novelty, feasibility, and goal attainment. Linear mixed-effects models showed that higher pre-trial tonic skin conductance level was consistently associated with better subsequent creative performance across tasks, with overall model fit peaking at a 21-s observation window. Permutation-based feature-importance analysis provided convergent support for the contribution of tonic skin conductance, whereas the cardiac and phasic electrodermal indicators showed no reliable independent associations. However, the model explained only a small proportion of behavioral variance. These findings suggest that tonic sympathetic arousal reflects a momentary physiological state associated with creativity potential, while autonomic signals alone remain insufficient for accurate individual-level prediction.

In this study, we investigated the neural and behavioral basis of motivationally objective versus subjective value-based decisions. Using a within-subject fMRI design, healthy participants performed a risky decision-making task that elicited different levels of subjectivity in decision-making in two task conditions. In the Best or objective condition, choices were rewarded only when they were objectively best on a given trial, incentivizing decisions based on externally specified per-trial point maximization. In the Choice or subjective condition, participants received the reward associated with the chosen option, irrespective of how it compared to the unchosen option, allowing greater freedom to exercise subjective preferences in decision policy. Behaviorally, participants relied more on objectively optimal policy in the Best than the Choice condition. There was also a greater consensus across participants in behaviorally displayed and self-reported policies in the Best condition as well as a greater commitment to a single policy by individual participants in this condition, further confirming more objective behavior in the Best condition, compared to Choice. Moreover, behavioral inferences showed a greater agreement with self-report in the Best condition. Our fMRI results showed that the decision-making in Choice, relative to the Best condition, was associated with greater BOLD response in mid-cingulum/posterior cingulate cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, suggesting their involvement in less externally constrained, or motivationally subjective, decision-making.

Despite the importance of sustaining attention focus throughout a task, sustained attention research demonstrates a rapid decline of task-focus with time-on-task. Separate research body highlights perceptual load as critical determinant of focused attention, showing that increased perceptual load draws more neural energy into task-relevant processing (Bruckmaier et al., 2020) and improves attention focus (Lavie, 2005). However, the effect of perceptual load on the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying time-on-task impact on sustained attention remains unknown. This was the aim of the present study. Participants performed a gradual continuous-performance task, detecting infrequent mountain scenes, among streams of city scenes, under either high or low perceptual load (with or without overlaid salt-and-pepper noise, respectively). EEG was recorded and parameterised into periodic and aperiodic components; the aperiodic 1/f slope linked with excitation-inhibition (E/I) balance: steeper slopes reflecting reduced E/I ratio (Gao et al., 2017). Time-on-task resulted in a wide-spread increase in alpha power, and a steeper 1/f slope in a left temporal-parietal cluster, accompanied by reduced detection sensitivity and increased response variability, as well as increased mind wandering, with reduced thoughts detail. Perceptual load improved task focus, as indexed by reduced mind wandering, but exacerbated the effect of time-on-task on detection sensitivity, and the 1/f slope, which was steeper with time-on-task in a right parieto-occipital cluster with increased load. Overall, the findings suggest that sustained attention decline with time-on-task can be attributed to depletion of neural energy needed for excitatory signalling, which is further drained with increased processing demands in tasks of high perceptual load.

People often must decide how long to continue waiting for rewards that will arrive at an uncertain time in the future. We propose that these persistence decisions involve weighing the benefits of continued waiting against opportunity costs of waiting, a balance that may shift over time. This framework suggests that persistence decisions share neural mechanisms with foraging decisions, which require ongoing comparisons between a current resource and possible alternatives. Dopamine and serotonin have been proposed to play opposing roles in foraging, with dopamine promoting exploration and serotonin promoting exploitation. Here we investigated their roles in persistence. In a within-subjects, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in young adults (n = 42), we examined the effects of increasing dopamine with L-dopa and increasing serotonin with escitalopram. We predicted that L-dopa would decrease persistence and escitalopram would increase it. Participants also completed patch-foraging, time perception, risk tolerance, and temporal discounting tasks to explore potential mechanisms of drug effects on persistence. Escitalopram increased persistence, after adjusting for the effects of anxiety and condition order, such that participants waited longer for rewards after taking the serotonergic drug. L-dopa did not influence persistence. In exploratory analyses controlling for age, however, L-dopa reduced persistence and increased exploration in foraging.

Aversion to inequity is innate in humans and constitutes a major contributor to social tension. Such aversion can be triggered either when one receives more (advantageous inequity-AI) or less (disadvantageous inequity-DI) than others. However, it remains unclear whether oxytocin can modulate how humans respond to inequity. The present pre-registered study combined behavioral measures, computational modelling, and fMRI in a novel monetary allocation evaluation paradigm to examine oxytocins modulation of behavioral and neural responses to inequity. Results showed that oxytocin increased perceived fairness and AI allocation choices via enhancing AI preference independent of gain vs. loss contexts, which was further confirmed by model-based results of oxytocin decreasing AI aversion. In parallel at the neural level, oxytocin increased fairness rating-related activity in regions within fairness-related norm enforcement systems involved in norm violation detection, salience processing, and cognitive control. Multivariate-based representational similarity analyses provided further evidence that oxytocin induced distinct representational patterns of inequity in these core regions. These results suggest that oxytocin promoted AI preference possibly by strengthening regulatory control to support the pursuit of economic self-interest, while simultaneously enhancing the salience of AI allocations. Our study provides new insights into behavioral and neural mechanisms through which oxytocin modulates fairness-related behavior.

We recently reported that rats performed better at a task distance of 2 m than at 0 m in a T-maze delayed alternation paradigm using a movable home cage in the longer-delay condition (Takita & Ichitani, 2026). We simultaneously recorded local field potentials from the bilateral prefrontal cortex, intermediate hippocampus, and ventral hippocampus. Across task epochs, coherence and two cross-frequency measures (phase-locking value and modulation index [MI]) revealed differences between correct and error trials in prefrontal interactions with hippocampal subregions. Among these measures, only MI was affected by task distance during the pre-task delay epoch. MI was highest in 2-m error trials and lowest in correct trials. In 0-m error trials, MI transiently increased during arm entry to levels comparable to those in 2-m error trials before declining toward the levels observed in correct trials during the later post-task delay. These MI dynamics appeared to be consistent with distance-dependent differences in behavioral performance. In addition, normalized Correct-Error Indices calculated for each electrophysiological measure revealed differential contributions of prefrontal coupling with the intermediate and ventral hippocampus across task distances. These findings suggest the existence of distinct near and far working memory states underlying distance-dependent behavioral differences, with distinct yet complementary contributions of the intermediate and ventral hippocampus to prefrontal interactions.

Generalization is a key cognitive process that allows humans to flexibly apply prior knowledge to guide new behaviors. Difficulties with generalization and flexibility are observed across neurodevelopmental disorders, especially autism, limiting adaptive function and quality of life. Cognitive-behavioral treatment benefits some but not all autistic individuals. As treatment requires application of learned skills to everyday life, variability in generalization ability may limit intervention success in autism. While cognitive substrates of learning and generalization are well established, their potential for explaining clinical outcomes is not known. Here, we combined a category learning task with computational modelling to distinguish two learning strategies underlying generalization -- prototype abstraction vs. exemplar memorization -- and tested whether individual differences in these learning strategies predicted real-world intervention outcomes in autistic youth. Fifty-four participants completed the category learning task at two pre-intervention timepoints, and then completed Unstuck and On Target:14-22 intervention targeting flexible problem solving, goal setting, and planning. We found that participants who consistently relied on prototype abstraction (N=26) were subsequently more likely to benefit from the intervention, showing improvement in parent- and self-reported flexibility. These findings identify prototype abstraction as a clinically relevant cognitive capacity that may help explain individual differences in intervention response and support the tailoring of interventions. More broadly, they demonstrate the value of linking basic cognitive mechanisms to clinical outcomes and may inform strategies to enhance the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral interventions for youth with developmental disabilities.

Intelligence or general cognitive ability (GCA) is fundamental to human behavior and cognition. It impacts important life outcomes like educational success and even health and longevity have been related to differences in GCA. Understanding the biological basis of such individual variations presents a crucial goal of neuroscience. The mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related brain potential that can be measured when--within a series of frequent standard stimuli, rare deviants are presented--and is suggested to reflect conscious (active) or unconscious (passive) detection processes of the brain. Importantly, variations in MMN amplitude and latency have been linked to differences in GCA. Yet findings vary considerably. This preregistered meta-analysis provides a comprehensive and structured overview of the current state of research. Following the study selection process in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines, and the rating of study design quality with the Study Design and Implementation Assessment Device for Individual Difference Research (DIAD-ID), the association between GCA and MMN amplitude and latency was examined in 695 healthy adults across 13 included studies. The estimated across-sample associations between MMN and GCA were small, but significant (MMN amplitude-GCA: r = -0.08, MMN latency-GCA: r = -0.13; p < 0.05) and moderators were identified. Between-sample heterogeneity was moderate, with no evidence of publication bias. Our findings suggest that higher cognitive ability is associated with slightly stronger and faster MMN responses. However, the low estimated across-sample effect sizes and the small number of included studies also highlight the need for more research.

The rat gambling task (rGT) has been widely used to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying risky choice and motor impulsivity. Here, rats sample between four options (P1-P4) that vary in the size and probability of reward and time-out penalties. The optimal strategy is to avoid risky options that may yield higher per-trial gains, but deliver longer and more frequent time-outs. Previous reports suggest pairing wins with salient audiovisual cues increases risky decision making, but behavioural variation is high, and it is unclear whether motor impulsivity is also affected. Here we leveraged rGT data from over 750 rats to characterize behavioural performance across sex and cue condition. We compared different methods of classifying rats as optimal or risk-preferring, using either a unitary decision score variable or specific P-choice preference, and applied drift diffusion modeling (DDM) to explore whether divergent cognitive mechanisms underlie risky decision making across subgroups. We confirmed that risky choice is higher on the cued rGT, partly due to a greater proportion of risk-preferring rats, but also because net optimal decision-makers chose the risky options more often. Risk-preferring rats made more impulsive, premature responses regardless of cue condition, as did males. Optimal decision-makers made more premature responses when cues were present, such that premature response rates were higher overall on the cued rGT. DDM and response latency data suggest divergent cognitive processes underpinning risky decisions across sex. Wider decision boundaries were associated with both highly optimal and highly risky choice patterns, indicating risky choices are made deliberatively by highly risk-preferring individuals. Similar results were obtained regardless of classification method.

Metastability is a fundamental dynamical property of large-scale brain networks and reflects the capacity of the brain to flexibly reorganize transient coordination patterns. In this study, we investigated whether metastable properties of resting-state electroencephalographic (EEG) phase synchronization networks are associated with individual differences in autistic traits. Resting-state EEG data from 88 neurotypical adults were analyzed using two complementary metrics: synchrony coalition entropy (SCE), which quantifies the diversity of transient phase synchronization patterns, and the metastability index (MSI), which quantifies temporal variance in global phase synchronization. SCE showed frequency-specific associations with the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) attention-switching subscore at 18-24 Hz and the communication subscore at 4-8 Hz, suggesting that frequency- and network-specific patterns of metastable synchronization are associated with distinct aspects of autistic traits. In contrast, MSI showed a modest association with the social-skill subscore in the lower-beta range, but this effect did not survive a cluster-based permutation test. This exploratory observation suggests that global synchronization variability may capture a weaker, complementary aspect of trait-related metastable dynamics. These findings suggest that, within a neurotypical population, individual differences in autistic traits may be more sensitively captured by the repertoire of transient phase synchronization patterns, as indexed by SCE, than by global phase synchronization variability, as indexed by MSI. Moreover, the associations of distinct AQ subscores with SCE in different frequency ranges suggest that different dimensions of autistic traits may be related to metastable network dynamics operating at different temporal scales. Author SummaryThe brain constantly coordinates activity across many regions, and this coordination changes over time rather than remaining constant. Understanding these dynamic patterns is important for explaining individual differences in cognition and behavior. In this study, we focused on a dynamical property called "metastability," which describes how brain activity flexibly shifts between different patterns of coordination. Instead of remaining in a stable state, the brain repeatedly forms and dissolves coordinated activity across regions. We analyzed brain signals recorded with resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) and examined whether these dynamic patterns were related to individual differences in autistic traits. We found that different aspects of time-varying coordination were linked to different dimensions of autistic traits in a neurotypical population. These findings suggest that examining how brain activity changes over time, rather than relying only on time-averaged measures, can reveal neural features associated with individual differences in autistic traits. Our study highlights metastability as a useful concept for understanding the flexible and dynamic nature of human brain function.

Laboratory stress tasks are widely used to assess individual differences in acute stress reactivity, yet it remains unclear how these responses correspond to stress experienced in everyday life. Here, we combined the Montreal imaging stress task (MIST) with ecological momentary assessment (EMA) over three months to assess acute and everyday stress in 67 healthy women. Greater within-person variability in everyday stress, but not average stress levels, were associated with stronger overall stress-related brain responses (b = 0.73, p = .039), with a whole-brain association particularly evident in the bilateral caudate (rROI = .32, pcluster.FWE < .001). Greater everyday stress variability was also associated with stronger stress-related functional connectivity between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and parietal and posterior medial regions (pcluster.FWE < .001). We conclude that acute neural stress responses relate more closely to fluctuations in perceived stress than to how stressed an individual feels on average. This suggests that laboratory stress tasks capture acute stress responsivity that is distinct from average stress exposure, highlighting the importance of considering what these tasks measure when interpreting individual differences in acute stress responses.

Resolving the inner conflict between improving eating habits (change talk) and sticking to unhealthy ones (sustain talk) is a key target in communication-based behavioral change interventions such as motivational interviewing (MI). Recent work has shown that this inner conflict affects how tastiness and healthiness are traded off in dietary decision-making. The effect varied with body mass index (BMI). Here we aimed to identify why participants with higher BMI shifted toward healthier food choices after listening to change talk. An evidence accumulation model found that BMI affected health evidence sampling when listening to change talk, and taste evidence sampling when listening to sustain talk. A serial mediation analysis showed that the effect of BMI on change-talk-induced health evidence sampling was explained by stronger resting-state connectivity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex within the default mode network (DMN), which in turn predicted greater motivation to change eating habits. These cross-sectional findings indicate that the intrinsic functional organization of valuation-related regions within the DMN is associated with motivation to change. They provide evidence that these neural and behavioral factors need to align with contextual cues, such as weight status (as reflected by BMI), and with reasons for behavioral change to promote healthier decision-making.

Empirical evidence from traditional inhibitory control tasks regarding inhibitory deficits in high autistic traits has been mixed, indicating that this issue remains controversial. Although sex differences are widely documented in autistic cognitive profiles, their role in inhibitory gating mechanisms remains underexplored. Given that the expression of inhibitory gating deficits may be modulated by the social versus non-social nature of stimuli, and no prior study has investigated this topic by integrating both sex differences and stimulus domain, we addressed these two questions with the attribute amnesia paradigm. We manipulated stimulus type (non-social vs. social). In Experiment 1, participants performed a location task with animal drawings as targets and were unexpectedly asked to report animal identity on a surprise trial. High autistic trait females showed significantly higher accuracy on the surprise trial than all other groups, reflecting a failure to actively filter out task-irrelevant non-social information, that is, a reduced inhibitory gating efficiency. In Experiment 2, using face stimuli and a self-vs. other-face design, this gating deficit was no longer expressed: all groups performed at chance levels on the identity judgment, regardless of autistic trait level, sex, or face type. This dissociation aligns with a dual-mechanism framework: the inhibitory gating deficit in high autistic trait females is specific to non-social stimuli and masked by camouflaging for social ones. This study demonstrates that the inhibitory gating deficit in high autistic trait females is not a global impairment but rather a stimulus-dependent one, highlighting the need to consider sex and stimulus type.

Metacognition is the ability to reflect on and evaluate our own cognitive processes. It is often altered in psychopathology. Yet, the computational mechanisms underlying these alterations remain unclear. In this work, we extend Hierarchical Gaussian Filter (HGF) models to jointly fit trial-by-trial predictions and confidence ratings in a predictive inference task, providing an individualised characterisation on metacognitive processing. Applying our cognitive computational model to a large subclinical open dataset (N=430), we are able to achieve, on average, excellent fit of prediction responses [Formula] and a moderate to good fit of confidence ratings [Formula]. Analysis of experimental change-points revealed that our model accurately captures confidence self-reports dynamics around these change-points. Posterior parameter estimates reveal a negative effect of sensory input prediction errors and a positive effect of sensory input prediction precision on confidence ratings, respectively. In addition, we replicate state-of-the-art findings related to compulsivity as measured by a transdiagnostic factor score, such as inflated confidence and a decoupling of action updates (here, prediction errors) and confidence in compulsivity. These results demonstrate the robustness of our methodology and the potential of joint prediction-confidence modelling to uncover latent metacognitive alterations in psychopathology.

IntroductionExecutive functions (EF) are higher-order cognitive processes essential for academic performance in university settings. Although there is extensive research on EF training in children, studies in young adults are scarce, particularly those involving interventions tailored to specific needs. ObjectiveTo evaluate the effect of the University Executive Network-Training Program (NExT-U), based on specific needs, on the executive functioning of Cuban university students. MethodologyA quasi-experimental study with a non-equivalent control group and pretest-posttest measurements. Participants were 27 second-year Psychology students (74% female; mean age = 19 years). The experimental group (n=7) received three training sessions focused on Conscious Regulation of Behavior, Decision-Making, Emotional Regulation, and Monitoring of Responsibilities, identified through an initial assessment using the UEF-1 Scale. The control group (n=20) continued with their usual academic activities. Non-parametric analyses and the residual gain method were employed. ResultsThe experimental group showed significant improvements in Conscious Regulation of Behavior (p = .026; r = .51), Emotional Regulation (p = .030; r = .49), and the Supervisory Attention System (p = .046; r = .44), with large effect sizes. The control group experienced no significant changes in any of the functions evaluated. ConclusionsA brief, personalized program can enhance specific executive functions in university students, demonstrating cognitive plasticity in young adults. The findings support the design of contextually relevant interventions to strengthen transversal competencies in higher education.

Self-directed learning allows learners to actively control their learning experience and has been shown to enhance memory compared with matched yoked learning. However, it remains unclear when and how active control modulates memory-related neural activity during learning and retrieval. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) while participants encoded objects under active and yoked learning conditions and again during a delayed recognition test approximately 24 h later. We examined event-related potential (ERP) activity across earlier processing windows, including pre-stimulus slow potentials and early N2 activity, and later processing windows, including P300, late slow-wave, and post-stimulus slow-potential activity. We also examined encoding-retrieval similarity (ERS) between neural patterns during encoding and retrieval. Behaviorally, active control improved delayed recognition, with the advantage selectively expressed in detailed recognition. In the ERP analyses, earlier processing windows showed memory-related effects, with pre-stimulus slow-potential and N2 activity differentiating subsequently remembered from forgotten items, but were not modulated by active control. By contrast, active control modulated later memory-related ERP activity, with remembered-forgotten differences expressed during late stimulus-related and immediate post-stimulus processing only in the active condition. ERS showed a similar active-control modulation: memory-related encoding-retrieval pattern similarity was evident under active learning, but not under yoked learning, with this effect involving relatively late encoding and retrieval windows. Together, these findings support a constructive-processing account, suggesting that memory formation under active control depends more strongly on rich, detailed encoding representations that can be reinstated during retrieval.

Spontaneous thought changes over time, yet the moment-to-moment factors shaping these changes remain poorly understood. We examined whether heartbeat-related bodily processing, operating largely outside explicit awareness, is associated with the organization of ongoing thought. Forty adults performed an auditory attention task with intermittent thought probes in which auditory events were scheduled either 200 ms after each detected R peak (synch condition) or independently of ongoing cardiac timing (asynch condition), with occasional omissions in both conditions. Heartbeat-synchronous omissions in this paradigm have been shown to induce cardiac deceleration and modulate heartbeat-evoked potentials (HEPs). The score of the heartbeat counting task (HCT) served as a behavioral index related to cardiac interoceptive accuracy. The results showed that higher HCT score was associated with a stronger synch-asynch shift toward more self-related and less task/self-unrelated thought. HEPs showed a synch-related negative shift across several thought groups, although the magnitude of this condition effect did not reliably differ among thought groups. Overall thought-group distributions were similar across conditions, while transition analyses suggested a tendency in the synch condition toward more frequent transitions linking predominantly interoceptive stimulus-dependent thought with both on-task and self-related thought. Together, these findings suggest that heartbeat-related bodily processing may influence the organization of spontaneous thought, particularly in individuals with greater cardiac interoceptive accuracy. Bodily signals may therefore act as an automatic constraint on the ongoing stream of thought, biasing which thought contents and transitions become more likely over time.

Theft, including shoplifting, extorts a pervasive societal and economic burden. However, the neurobehavioral mechanisms underlying recurrent theft remain sparsely understood. In this study, we investigated social cognition deficits in theft recidivists with kleptomania (TR+K) and instrumental theft recidivists without kleptomania (TR-K) compared to control subjects without criminal records (CT), for which the Social Norms Questionnaire (SNQ-22) to assess explicit moral knowledge, alongside the Dictator Game (DG) and Hawk-Dove Game (HDG) to evaluate discretionary and competitive resource allocation with others, respectively, were administered. Bayesian statistical analyses revealed that all groups demonstrated comparable social norm recognition in SNQ-22 and prosociality in the DG. However, distinct behavioral profiles emerged in specific contexts, such that TR+K exhibited more unfairness than CT and TR-K at discretionary resource allocations in the DG, whereas in the HDG, TR-K demonstrated more aggressive, resource-monopolizing responses, particularly when against an aggressive opponent, than CT and TR+K. These results suggest that theft recidivism may stem from contextual failures rather than general deficits in moral knowledge, which are distinct between TR+K rooted in the internal factor, such as heightened loss aversion, and TR-K characterized by impulsivity over the external factor, such as social conflicts with others.