TY - JOUR A1 - Hommers, L. G. A1 - Richter, J. A1 - Yang, Y. A1 - Raab, A. A1 - Baumann, C. A1 - Lang, K. A1 - Schiele, M. A. A1 - Weber, H. A1 - Wittmann, A. A1 - Wolf, C. A1 - Alpers, G. W. A1 - Arolt, V. A1 - Domschke, K. A1 - Fehm, L. A1 - Fydrich, T. A1 - Gerlach, A. A1 - Gloster, A. T. A1 - Hamm, A. O. A1 - Helbig-Lang, S. A1 - Kircher, T. A1 - Lang, T. A1 - Pané-Farré, C. A. A1 - Pauli, P. A1 - Pfleiderer, B. A1 - Reif, A. A1 - Romanos, M. A1 - Straube, B. A1 - Ströhle, A. A1 - Wittchen, H.-U. A1 - Frantz, S. A1 - Ertl, G. A1 - Lohse, M. J. A1 - Lueken, U. A1 - Deckert, J. T1 - A functional genetic variation of SLC6A2 repressor hsa-miR-579-3p upregulates sympathetic noradrenergic processes of fear and anxiety JF - Translational Psychiatry N2 - Increased sympathetic noradrenergic signaling is crucially involved in fear and anxiety as defensive states. MicroRNAs regulate dynamic gene expression during synaptic plasticity and genetic variation of microRNAs modulating noradrenaline transporter gene (SLC6A2) expression may thus lead to altered central and peripheral processing of fear and anxiety. In silico prediction of microRNA regulation of SLC6A2 was confirmed by luciferase reporter assays and identified hsa-miR-579-3p as a regulating microRNA. The minor (T)-allele of rs2910931 (MAFcases = 0.431, MAFcontrols = 0.368) upstream of MIR579 was associated with panic disorder in patients (pallelic = 0.004, ncases = 506, ncontrols = 506) and with higher trait anxiety in healthy individuals (pASI = 0.029, pACQ = 0.047, n = 3112). Compared to the major (A)-allele, increased promoter activity was observed in luciferase reporter assays in vitro suggesting more effective MIR579 expression and SLC6A2 repression in vivo (p = 0.041). Healthy individuals carrying at least one (T)-allele showed a brain activation pattern suggesting increased defensive responding and sympathetic noradrenergic activation in midbrain and limbic areas during the extinction of conditioned fear. Panic disorder patients carrying two (T)-alleles showed elevated heart rates in an anxiety-provoking behavioral avoidance test (F(2, 270) = 5.47, p = 0.005). Fine-tuning of noradrenaline homeostasis by a MIR579 genetic variation modulated central and peripheral sympathetic noradrenergic activation during fear processing and anxiety. This study opens new perspectives on the role of microRNAs in the etiopathogenesis of anxiety disorders, particularly their cardiovascular symptoms and comorbidities. KW - clinical genetics KW - psychiatric disorders Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-322497 VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Holtfrerich, Sarah K. C. A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - El Gammal, Alexander T. A1 - Bellon, Eugen A1 - Diekhof, Esther K. T1 - Endogenous testosterone and exogenous oxytocin influence the response to baby schema in the female brain JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Nurturing behavior may be critically influenced by the interplay of different hormones. The neuropeptide oxytocin is known to promote maternal behavior and its reduction has been associated with postpartum depression risk and child neglect. Contrariwise, the observed decrease in testosterone level during early parenthood may benefit caretaking behavior, whereas increased testosterone may reduce attention to infants. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the interactive influence of testosterone and oxytocin on selective attention to and neural processing of the baby schema (BS). 57 nulliparous women performed a target detection task with human faces with varying degree of BS following double-blinded placebo-controlled oxytocin administration in a between-subjects design. Our results support the idea that oxytocin enhances attention to the BS. Oxytocin had a positive effect on activation of the inferior frontal junction during identification of infant targets with a high degree of BS that were presented among adult distractors. Further, activation of the putamen was positively correlated with selective attention to the BS, but only in women with high endogenous testosterone who received oxytocin. These findings provide initial evidence for the neural mechanism by which oxytocin may counteract the negative effects of testosterone in the modulation of nurturing behavior. KW - attention KW - reward Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-322285 VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gottschalk, Michael G. A1 - Richter, Jan A1 - Ziegler, Christiane A1 - Schiele, Miriam A. A1 - Mann, Julia A1 - Geiger, Maximilian J. A1 - Schartner, Christoph A1 - Homola, György A. A1 - Alpers, Georg W. A1 - Büchel, Christian A1 - Fehm, Lydia A1 - Fydrich, Thomas A1 - Gerlach, Alexander L. A1 - Gloster, Andrew T. A1 - Helbig-Lang, Sylvia A1 - Kalisch, Raffael A1 - Kircher, Tilo A1 - Lang, Thomas A1 - Lonsdorf, Tina B. A1 - Pané-Farré, Christiane A. A1 - Ströhle, Andreas A1 - Weber, Heike A1 - Zwanzger, Peter A1 - Arolt, Volker A1 - Romanos, Marcel A1 - Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich A1 - Hamm, Alfons A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Reif, Andreas A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Neufang, Susanne A1 - Höfler, Michael A1 - Domschke, Katharina T1 - Orexin in the anxiety spectrum: association of a HCRTR1 polymorphism with panic disorder/agoraphobia, CBT treatment response and fear-related intermediate phenotypes JF - Translational Psychiatry N2 - Preclinical studies point to a pivotal role of the orexin 1 (OX1) receptor in arousal and fear learning and therefore suggest the HCRTR1 gene as a prime candidate in panic disorder (PD) with/without agoraphobia (AG), PD/AG treatment response, and PD/AG-related intermediate phenotypes. Here, a multilevel approach was applied to test the non-synonymous HCRTR1 C/T Ile408Val gene variant (rs2271933) for association with PD/AG in two independent case-control samples (total n = 613 cases, 1839 healthy subjects), as an outcome predictor of a six-weeks exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in PD/AG patients (n = 189), as well as with respect to agoraphobic cognitions (ACQ) (n = 483 patients, n = 2382 healthy subjects), fMRI alerting network activation in healthy subjects (n = 94), and a behavioral avoidance task in PD/AG pre- and post-CBT (n = 271). The HCRTR1 rs2271933 T allele was associated with PD/AG in both samples independently, and in their meta-analysis (p = 4.2 × 10−7), particularly in the female subsample (p = 9.8 × 10−9). T allele carriers displayed a significantly poorer CBT outcome (e.g., Hamilton anxiety rating scale: p = 7.5 × 10−4). The T allele count was linked to higher ACQ sores in PD/AG and healthy subjects, decreased inferior frontal gyrus and increased locus coeruleus activation in the alerting network. Finally, the T allele count was associated with increased pre-CBT exposure avoidance and autonomic arousal as well as decreased post-CBT improvement. In sum, the present results provide converging evidence for an involvement of HCRTR1 gene variation in the etiology of PD/AG and PD/AG-related traits as well as treatment response to CBT, supporting future therapeutic approaches targeting the orexin-related arousal system. KW - human behaviour KW - molecular neuroscience KW - personalized medicine KW - predictive markers KW - psychiatric disorders Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-227479 VL - 9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Landmann, Eva A1 - Breil, Christina A1 - Huestegge, Lynn A1 - Böckler, Anne T1 - The semantics of gaze in person perception: a novel qualitative-quantitative approach JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Interpreting gaze behavior is essential in evaluating interaction partners, yet the ‘semantics of gaze’ in dynamic interactions are still poorly understood. We aimed to comprehensively investigate effects of gaze behavior patterns in different conversation contexts, using a two-step, qualitative-quantitative procedure. Participants watched video clips of single persons listening to autobiographic narrations by another (invisible) person. The listener’s gaze behavior was manipulated in terms of gaze direction, frequency and direction of gaze shifts, and blink frequency; emotional context was manipulated through the valence of the narration (neutral/negative). In Experiment 1 (qualitative-exploratory), participants freely described which states and traits they attributed to the listener in each condition, allowing us to identify relevant aspects of person perception and to construct distinct rating scales that were implemented in Experiment 2 (quantitative-confirmatory). Results revealed systematic and differential meanings ascribed to the listener’s gaze behavior. For example, rapid blinking and fast gaze shifts were rated more negatively (e.g., restless and unnatural) than slower gaze behavior; downward gaze was evaluated more favorably (e.g., empathetic) than other gaze aversion types, especially in the emotionally negative context. Overall, our study contributes to a more systematic understanding of flexible gaze semantics in social interaction. KW - human behaviour KW - psychology KW - semantics of gaze KW - person perception KW - face perception Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-361413 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 14 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hauf, Juliane E. K. A1 - Nieding, Gerhild A1 - Seger, Benedikt T. T1 - The development of dynamic perceptual simulations during sentence comprehension JF - Cognitive Processing N2 - Based on an embodied account of language comprehension, this study investigated the dynamic characteristics of children and adults’ perceptual simulations during sentence comprehension, using a novel paradigm to assess the perceptual simulation of objects moving up and down a vertical axis. The participants comprised adults (N = 40) and 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children (N = 116). After listening in experimental trials to sentences implying that objects moved upward or downward, the participants were shown pictures and had to decide as quickly as possible whether the objects depicted had been mentioned in the sentences. The target pictures moved either up or down and then stopped in the middle of the screen. All age groups’ reaction times were found to be shorter when the objects moved in the directions that the sentences implied. Age exerted no developmental effect on reaction times. The findings suggest that dynamic perceptual simulations are fundamental to language comprehension in text recipients aged 6 and older. KW - embodied cognition KW - sentence comprehension KW - dynamic perceptual simulation; KW - children KW - adults Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-283665 VL - 21 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ju, Qianqian A1 - Gan, Yiqun A1 - Rinn, Robin A1 - Duan, Yanping A1 - Lippke, Sonia T1 - Health Status Stability of Patients in a Medical Rehabilitation Program: What Are the Roles of Time, Physical Fitness Level, and Self-efficacy? JF - International Journal of Behavioral Medicine N2 - Background Individuals’ physical and mental health, as well as their chances of returning to work after their ability to work is damaged, can be addressed by medical rehabilitation. Aim This study investigated the developmental trends of mental and physical health among patients in medical rehabilitation and the roles of self-efficacy and physical fitness in the development of mental and physical health. Design A longitudinal design that included four time-point measurements across 15 months. Setting A medical rehabilitation center in Germany. Population Participants included 201 patients who were recruited from a medical rehabilitation center. Methods To objectively measure physical fitness (lung functioning), oxygen reabsorption at anaerobic threshold (VO2AT) was used, along with several self-report scales. Results We found a nonlinear change in mental health among medical rehabilitation patients. The results underscored the importance of medical rehabilitation for patients’ mental health over time. In addition, patients’ physical health was stable over time. The initial level of physical fitness (VO2AT) positively predicted their mental health and kept the trend more stable. Self-efficacy appeared to have a positive relationship with mental health after rehabilitation treatment. Conclusions This study revealed a nonlinear change in mental health among medical rehabilitation patients. Self-efficacy was positively related to mental health, and the initial level of physical fitness positively predicted the level of mental health after rehabilitation treatment. Clinical Rehabilitation More attention could be given to physical capacity and self-efficacy for improving and maintaining rehabilitants’ mental health. KW - latent growth curve model KW - mental health KW - physical fitness KW - self-efficacy KW - physical health Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-308445 SN - 1070-5503 SN - 1532-7558 VL - 29 IS - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bürger, Arne A1 - Schoenfeld, Cornelia von A1 - Scheiner, Christin A1 - Seidel, Alexandra A1 - Wasserscheid, Antonia A1 - Gad, Doreya A1 - Kittel-Schneider, Sarah A1 - Romanos, Marcel A1 - Reiter, Andrea M. F. T1 - Universal prevention for non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents is scarce - A systematic review JF - Frontiers in Psychiatry N2 - Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) during adolescence is a high-risk marker for the development and persistence of mental health problems and has been recognized as a significant public health problem. Whereas targeted prevention has indeed shown to be effective in reducing NSSI and improve mental health problems, access to such programs is limited. By face validity, universal prevention of NSSI seems an ideal starting point for a stepped-care model to circumvent a lack of resources in the medical care system. However, it is yet unclear how effective such approaches are. Here, we provide a summary of existing work on universal prevention of NSSI in adolescents younger than 21 years based on a systematic literature search. We found that only seven studies are available. None of the programs evaluated was found to be effective in reducing the incidence or frequency of NSSI. After providing a comprehensive summary of the existing work, we evaluate the fact that existing work primarily focusses on selected/targeted prevention and on psychoeducational methods. We derive implications for future directions in the field of universal prevention of NSSI. KW - non-suicidal self-injury KW - NSSI KW - emotion regulation KW - prevention KW - universal prevention KW - adolescence KW - mental health Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-357490 VL - 14 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kleih-Dahms, Sonja C. A1 - Botrel, Loic T1 - Neurofeedback therapy to improve cognitive function in patients with chronic post-stroke attention deficits: a within-subjects comparison JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Introduction We investigated a slow-cortical potential (SCP) neurofeedback therapy approach for rehabilitating chronic attention deficits after stroke. This study is the first attempt to train patients who survived stroke with SCP neurofeedback therapy. Methods We included N = 5 participants in a within-subjects follow-up design. We assessed neuropsychological and psychological performance at baseline (4 weeks before study onset), before study onset, after neurofeedback training, and at 3 months follow-up. Participants underwent 20 sessions of SCP neurofeedback training. Results Participants learned to regulate SCPs toward negativity, and we found indications for improved attention after the SCP neurofeedback therapy in some participants. Quality of life improved throughout the study according to engagement in activities of daily living. The self-reported motivation was related to mean SCP activation in two participants. Discussion We would like to bring attention to the potential of SCP neurofeedback therapy as a new rehabilitation method for treating post-stroke cognitive deficits. Studies with larger samples are warranted to corroborate the results. KW - stroke KW - slow cortical potentials (SCP) KW - attention deficit KW - neurofeedback training KW - self-efficacy KW - brain-computer interfaces (BCI) Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-322454 VL - 17 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Froehlich, Matthias A1 - Zahner, Antonia A1 - Schmalzing, Marc A1 - Gernert, Michael A1 - Strunz, Patrick-Pascal A1 - Hueper, Sebastian A1 - Portegys, Jan A1 - Schwaneck, Eva Christina A1 - Gadeholt, Ottar A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Hewig, Johannes A1 - Ziebell, Philipp T1 - Patient-reported outcomes provide evidence for increased depressive symptoms and increased mental impairment in giant cell arteritis JF - Frontiers in Medicine N2 - Objectives The spectrum of giant cell arteritis (GCA) and polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) represents highly inflammatory rheumatic diseases. Patients mostly report severe physical impairment. Possible consequences for mental health have been scarcely studied. The aim of this study was to investigate psychological well-being in the context of GCA and PMR. Methods Cross-sectional study with N = 100 patients with GCA and/or PMR (GCA-PMR). Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) were measured using the Short Form 36 Version 2 (SF-36v2) and visual analog scale (VAS) assessment. Moreover, the Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) was used in 35 of 100 patients to detect depression. To compare PROs with physician assessment, VAS was also rated from physician perspective. To assess a possible association with inflammation itself, serological parameters of inflammation (C-reactive protein [CRP], erythrocyte sedimentation rate [ESR]) were included. Results In all scales of the SF-36v2 except General Health (GH) and in the physical and mental sum score (PCS, MCS), a significant impairment compared to the German reference collective was evident (MCS: d = 0.533, p < 0.001). In the PHQ-9 categorization, 14 of the 35 (40%) showed evidence of major depression disorder. VAS Patient correlated significantly with PHQ-9 and SF-36 in all categories, while VAS Physician showed only correlations to physical categories and not in the mental dimensions. Regarding inflammatory parameters, linear regression showed CRP to be a complementary significant positive predictor of mental health subscale score, independent of pain. Conclusion PRO show a relevant impairment of mental health up to symptoms of major depression disorder. The degree of depressive symptoms is also distinctly associated with the serological inflammatory marker CRP. KW - giant cell arteritis KW - PRO KW - depression KW - mental impairment KW - SF-36 KW - PHQ-9 KW - VAS KW - polymyalgia rheumatica Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-319761 VL - 10 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weis, Patrick P. A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Overreliance on inefficient computer-mediated information retrieval is countermanded by strategy advice that promotes memory-mediated retrieval JF - Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications N2 - With ubiquitous computing, problems can be solved using more strategies than ever, though many strategies feature subpar performance. Here, we explored whether and how simple advice regarding when to use which strategy can improve performance. Specifically, we presented unfamiliar alphanumeric equations (e.g., A + 5 = F) and asked whether counting up the alphabet from the left letter by the indicated number resulted in the right letter. In an initial choice block, participants could engage in one of three cognitive strategies: (a) internal counting, (b) internal retrieval of previously generated solutions, or (c) computer-mediated external retrieval of solutions. Participants belonged to one of two groups: they were either instructed to first try internal retrieval before using external retrieval, or received no specific use instructions. In a subsequent internal block with identical instructions for both groups, external retrieval was made unavailable. The ‘try internal retrieval first’ instruction in the choice block led to pronounced benefits (d = .76) in the internal block. Benefits were due to facilitated creation and retrieval of internal memory traces and possibly also due to improved strategy choice. These results showcase how simple strategy advice can greatly help users navigate cognitive environments. More generally, our results also imply that uninformed use of external tools (i.e., technology) can bear the risk of not developing and using even more superior internal processing strategies. KW - extended cognition KW - technology use KW - strategy advice KW - strategy selection KW - memory formation Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-357892 VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reis, Moritz A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - Kunde, Wilfried A1 - Foerster, Anna T1 - Creative thinking does not promote dishonesty JF - Royal Society Open Science N2 - We assessed the relation of creativity and unethical behaviour by manipulating the thinking style of participants (N = 450 adults) and measuring the impact of this manipulation on the prevalence of dishonest behaviour. Participants performed one of three inducer tasks: the alternative uses task to promote divergent thinking, the remote associates task to promote convergent thinking, or a simple classification task for rule-based thinking. Before and after this manipulation, participants conducted the mind game as a straightforward measure of dishonesty. Dishonest behaviour increased from before to after the intervention, but we found no credible evidence that this increase differed between induced mindsets. Exploratory analyses did not support any relation of trait creativity and dishonesty either. We conclude that the influence of creative thinking on unethical behaviour seems to be more ambiguous than assumed in earlier research or might be restricted to specific populations or contexts. KW - dishonesty KW - creativity KW - thinking style KW - unethical behaviour KW - morality Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349859 SN - 2054-5703 VL - 10 IS - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ziebell, Philipp A1 - Rodrigues, Johannes A1 - Forster, André A1 - Sanguinetti, Joseph L. A1 - Allen, John JB. A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - Inhibition of midfrontal theta with transcranial ultrasound explains greater approach versus withdrawal behavior in humans JF - Brain Stimulation N2 - Highlights • Transcranial ultrasound neuromodulation/stimulation (TUS) is a growing field. • We conducted a double-blind sham-controlled within-subjects large sample TUS study. • Right prefrontal cortex TUS inhibits midfrontal theta electroencephalography (MFT). • TUS MFT inhibition explains greater approach versus withdrawal in a virtual T-maze. • This distinct TUS-MFT-behavior link merits future basic and applied research. Abstract Recent reviews highlighted low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound (TUS) as a promising new tool for non-invasive neuromodulation in basic and applied sciences. Our preregistered double-blind within-subjects study (N = 152) utilized TUS targeting the right prefrontal cortex, which, in earlier work, was found to positively enhance self-reported global mood, decrease negative states of self-reported emotional conflict (anxiety/worrying), and modulate related midfrontal functional magnetic resonance imaging activity in affect regulation brain networks. To further explore TUS effects on objective physiological and behavioral variables, we used a virtual T-maze task that has been established in prior studies to measure motivational conflicts regarding whether participants execute approach versus withdrawal behavior (with free-choice responses via continuous joystick movements) while allowing to record related electroencephalographic data such as midfrontal theta activity (MFT). MFT, a reliable marker of conflict representation on a neuronal level, was of particular interest to us since it has repeatedly been shown to explain related behavior, with relatively low MFT typically preceding approach-like risky behavior and relatively high MFT typically preceding withdrawal-like risk aversion. Our central hypothesis is that TUS decreases MFT in T-maze conflict situations and thereby increases approach and reduces withdrawal. Results indicate that TUS led to significant MFT decreases, which significantly explained increases in approach behavior and decreases in withdrawal behavior. This study expands TUS evidence on a physiological and behavioral level with a large sample size of human subjects, suggesting the promise of further research based on this distinct TUS-MFT-behavior link to influence conflict monitoring and its behavioral consequences. Ultimately, this can serve as a foundation for future clinical work to establish TUS interventions for emotional and motivational mental health. KW - approach versus withdrawal KW - electroencephalography (EEG) KW - midfrontal theta (MFT) KW - right prefrontal cortex (PFC) KW - transcranial ultrasound neuromodulation/stimulation (TUS) KW - virtual reality Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349890 VL - 16 IS - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - Schwarz, Katharina A. A1 - Holzmann, Patricia A1 - Reis, Moritz A1 - Yogeeswaran, Kumar A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Headlines win elections: mere exposure to fictitious news media alters voting behavior JF - PloS One N2 - Repeatedly encountering a stimulus biases the observer’s affective response and evaluation of the stimuli. Here we provide evidence for a causal link between mere exposure to fictitious news reports and subsequent voting behavior. In four pre-registered online experiments, participants browsed through newspaper webpages and were tacitly exposed to names of fictitious politicians. Exposure predicted voting behavior in a subsequent mock election, with a consistent preference for frequent over infrequent names, except when news items were decidedly negative. Follow-up analyses indicated that mere media presence fuels implicit personality theories regarding a candidate’s vigor in political contexts. News outlets should therefore be mindful to cover political candidates as evenly as possible. KW - elections KW - Twitter KW - behavior KW - United States KW - India KW - metaanalysis KW - personality KW - political theory Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349845 VL - 18 IS - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Krause, Lisa-Marie A1 - Herbort, Oliver T1 - Just visual context or part of the gesture? The role of arm orientation in bent pointing interpretation JF - Acta Psychologica N2 - Pointing gestures can take on different shapes. For example, people often point with a bent wrist at a referent that is occluded by another object. We hypothesized that while the extrapolation of the index finger is the most important visual cue in such bent pointing gestures, arm orientation is affecting interpretations as well. We tested two competing hypotheses. First, the arm could be processed as a less reliable but additional direction cue also indicating the referent. Consequently, the index finger extrapolation would be biased towards the arm direction (assimilation effect). Second, the arm could be perceived as visual context of the index finger, leading to an interpretation that is repulsed from the arm direction (contrast effect). To differentiate between both, we conducted two experiments in which arm and finger orientation of a virtual pointer were independently manipulated. Participants were asked to determine the pointed-at location. As expected, participants based their interpretations on the extrapolation of the index finger. In line with the second hypothesis, the more the arm was oriented upwards, the lower the point was interpreted and vice versa. Thus, interpretation pattern indicated a contrast effect. Unexpectedly, gestures with aligned arm and index finger deviated from the general contrast effect and were interpreted linearly compared to bent gestures. In sum, the experiments show that interpretations of bent pointing gestures are not only based on the direction of the index finger but also depend on the arm orientation and its relationship to the index finger orientation. KW - pointing interpretation KW - non-verbal communication KW - bent pointing KW - contrast effect Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349839 VL - 241 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wehrheim, Maren H. A1 - Faskowitz, Joshua A1 - Sporns, Olaf A1 - Fiebach, Christian J. A1 - Kaschube, Matthias A1 - Hilger, Kirsten T1 - Few temporally distributed brain connectivity states predict human cognitive abilities JF - NeuroImage N2 - Highlights • Brain connectivity states identified by cofluctuation strength. • CMEP as new method to robustly predict human traits from brain imaging data. • Network-identifying connectivity ‘events’ are not predictive of cognitive ability. • Sixteen temporally independent fMRI time frames allow for significant prediction. • Neuroimaging-based assessment of cognitive ability requires sufficient scan lengths. Abstract Human functional brain connectivity can be temporally decomposed into states of high and low cofluctuation, defined as coactivation of brain regions over time. Rare states of particularly high cofluctuation have been shown to reflect fundamentals of intrinsic functional network architecture and to be highly subject-specific. However, it is unclear whether such network-defining states also contribute to individual variations in cognitive abilities – which strongly rely on the interactions among distributed brain regions. By introducing CMEP, a new eigenvector-based prediction framework, we show that as few as 16 temporally separated time frames (< 1.5% of 10 min resting-state fMRI) can significantly predict individual differences in intelligence (N = 263, p < .001). Against previous expectations, individual's network-defining time frames of particularly high cofluctuation do not predict intelligence. Multiple functional brain networks contribute to the prediction, and all results replicate in an independent sample (N = 831). Our results suggest that although fundamentals of person-specific functional connectomes can be derived from few time frames of highest connectivity, temporally distributed information is necessary to extract information about cognitive abilities. This information is not restricted to specific connectivity states, like network-defining high-cofluctuation states, but rather reflected across the entire length of the brain connectivity time series. KW - functional connectivity KW - resting state KW - machine learning KW - predictive modeling KW - general cognitive ability Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349874 VL - 277 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zillig, Anna-Lena A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Wieser, Matthias A1 - Reicherts, Philipp T1 - Better safe than sorry? - On the influence of learned safety on pain perception JF - PloS One N2 - The experience of threat was found to result—mostly—in increased pain, however it is still unclear whether the exact opposite, namely the feeling of safety may lead to a reduction of pain. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two between-subject experiments (N = 94; N = 87), investigating whether learned safety relative to a neutral control condition can reduce pain, while threat should lead to increased pain compared to a neutral condition. Therefore, participants first underwent either threat or safety conditioning, before entering an identical test phase, where the previously conditioned threat or safety cue and a newly introduced visual cue were presented simultaneously with heat pain stimuli. Methodological changes were performed in experiment 2 to prevent safety extinction and to facilitate conditioning in the first place: We included additional verbal instructions, increased the maximum length of the ISI and raised CS-US contingency in the threat group from 50% to 75%. In addition to pain ratings and ratings of the visual cues (threat, safety, arousal, valence, and contingency), in both experiments, we collected heart rate and skin conductance. Analysis of the cue ratings during acquisition indicate successful threat and safety induction, however results of the test phase, when also heat pain was administered, demonstrate rapid safety extinction in both experiments. Results suggest rather small modulation of subjective and physiological pain responses following threat or safety cues relative to the neutral condition. However, exploratory analysis revealed reduced pain ratings in later trials of the experiment in the safety group compared to the threat group in both studies, suggesting different temporal dynamics for threat and safety learning and extinction, respectively. Perspective: The present results demonstrate the challenge to maintain safety in the presence of acute pain and suggest more research on the interaction of affective learning mechanism and pain processing. KW - pain KW - pain sensation KW - functional electrical stimulation KW - heart rate KW - sensory cues KW - learning KW - emotions KW - behavioral conditioning Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349905 VL - 18 IS - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gutzeit, Julian A1 - Weller, Lisa A1 - Muth, Felicitas A1 - Kürten, Jens A1 - Huestegge, Lynn T1 - Eye did this! Sense of agency in eye movements JF - Acta Psychologica N2 - This study investigates the sense of agency (SoA) for saccades with implicit and explicit agency measures. In two eye tracking experiments, participants moved their eyes towards on-screen stimuli that subsequently changed color. Participants then either reproduced the temporal interval between saccade and color-change (Experiment 1) or reported the time points of these events with an auditory Libet clock (Experiment 2) to measure temporal binding effects as implicit indices of SoA. Participants were either made to believe to exert control over the color change or not (agency manipulation). Explicit ratings indicated that the manipulation of causal beliefs and hence agency was successful. However, temporal binding was only evident for caused effects, and only when a sufficiently sensitive procedure was used (auditory Libet clock). This suggests a feebler connection between temporal binding and SoA than previously proposed. The results also provide evidence for a relatively fast acquisition of sense of agency for previously never experienced types of action-effect associations. This indicates that the underlying processes of action control may be rooted in more intricate and adaptable cognitive models than previously thought. Oculomotor SoA as addressed in the present study presumably represents an important cognitive foundation of gaze-based social interaction (social sense of agency) or gaze-based human-machine interaction scenarios. Public significance statement: In this study, sense of agency for eye movements in the non-social domain is investigated in detail, using both explicit and implicit measures. Therefore, it offers novel and specific insights into comprehending sense of agency concerning effects induced by eye movements, as well as broader insights into agency pertaining to entirely newly acquired types of action-effect associations. Oculomotor sense of agency presumably represents an important cognitive foundation of gaze-based social interaction (social agency) or gaze-based human-machine interaction scenarios. Due to peculiarities of the oculomotor domain such as the varying degree of volitional control, eye movements could provide new information regarding more general theories of sense of agency in future research. KW - perception and action KW - sense of agency KW - temporal binding KW - saccades KW - oculomotor control Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349819 VL - 243 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Strobach, Tilo A1 - Kürten, Jens A1 - Huestegge, Lynn T1 - Benefits of repeated alternations - task-specific vs. task-general sequential adjustments of dual-task order control JF - Acta Psychologica N2 - An important cognitive requirement in multitasking is the decision of how multiple tasks should be temporally scheduled (task order control). Specifically, task order switches (vs. repetitions) yield performance costs (i.e., task-order switch costs), suggesting that task order scheduling is a vital part of configuring a task set. Recently, it has been shown that this process takes specific task-related characteristics into account: task order switches were easier when switching to a preferred (vs. non-preferred) task order. Here, we ask whether another determinant of task order control, namely the phenomenon that a task order switch in a previous trial facilitates a task order switch in a current trial (i.e., a sequential modulation of task order switch effect) also takes task-specific characteristics into account. Based on three experiments involving task order switches between a preferred (dominant oculomotor task prior to non-dominant manual/pedal task) and a non-preferred (vice versa) order, we replicated the finding that task order switching (in Trial N) is facilitated after a previous switch (vs. repetition in Trial N - 1) in task order. There was no substantial evidence in favor of a significant difference when switching to the preferred vs. non-preferred order and in the analyses of the dominant oculomotor task and the non-dominant manual task. This indicates different mechanisms underlying the control of immediate task order configuration (indexed by task order switch costs) and the sequential modulation of these costs based on the task order transition type in the previous trial. KW - dual tasking KW - task coordination KW - task control KW - task-order control KW - adjustment Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-349868 VL - 236 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bellinger, Daniel A1 - Wehrmann, Kristin A1 - Rohde, Anna A1 - Schuppert, Maria A1 - Störk, Stefan A1 - Flohr-Jost, Michael A1 - Gall, Dominik A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Herrmann, Martin J. A1 - Erhardt-Lehmann, Angelika T1 - The application of virtual reality exposure versus relaxation training in music performance anxiety: a randomized controlled study JF - BMC Psychiatry N2 - Background Performance anxiety is the most frequently reported anxiety disorder among professional musicians. Typical symptoms are - on a physical level - the consequences of an increase in sympathetic tone with cardiac stress, such as acceleration of heartbeat, increase in blood pressure, increased respiratory rate and tremor up to nausea or flush reactions. These symptoms can cause emotional distress, a reduced musical and artistical performance up to an impaired functioning. While anxiety disorders are preferably treated using cognitive-behavioral therapy with exposure, this approach is rather difficult for treating music performance anxiety since the presence of a public or professional jury is required and not easily available. The use of virtual reality (VR) could therefore display an alternative. So far, no therapy studies on music performance anxiety applying virtual reality exposure therapy have investigated the therapy outcome including cardiovascular changes as outcome parameters. Methods This mono-center, prospective, randomized and controlled clinical trial has a pre-post design with a follow-up period of 6 months. 46 professional and semi-professional musicians will be recruited and allocated randomly to an VR exposure group or a control group receiving progressive muscle relaxation training. Both groups will be treated over 4 single sessions. Music performance anxiety will be diagnosed based on a clinical interview using ICD-10 and DSM-5 criteria for specific phobia or social anxiety. A behavioral assessment test is conducted three times (pre, post, follow-up) in VR through an audition in a concert hall. Primary outcomes are the changes in music performance anxiety measured by the German Bühnenangstfragebogen and the cardiovascular reactivity reflected by heart rate variability (HRV). Secondary outcomes are changes in blood pressure, stress parameters such as cortisol in the blood and saliva, neuropeptides, and DNA-methylation. Discussion The trial investigates the effect of VR exposure in musicians with performance anxiety compared to a relaxation technique on anxiety symptoms and corresponding cardiovascular parameters. We expect a reduction of anxiety but also a consecutive improvement of HRV with cardiovascular protective effects. Trial registration This study was registered on clinicaltrials.gov. (ClinicalTrials.gov Number: NCT05735860) KW - music performance anxiety KW - virtual reality exposure therapy KW - progressive muscle relaxation KW - heart rate variability Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-357833 VL - 23 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lenhard, Alexandra A1 - Minten, Marie-Pierre A1 - Lenhard, Wolfgang T1 - When biology takes over: TV formats like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette confirm evolutionary theories of partner selection JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Introduction: In this study, we investigated the impact of age on mate selection preferences in males and females, and explored how the formation and duration of committed relationships depend on the sex of the person making the selection. Methods: To this end, we utilized data from the television dating shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. In these programs, either a single man (“bachelor”) or a woman (“bachelorette”) has the opportunity to select a potential long-term partner from a pool of candidates. Our analysis encompassed a total of n = 169 seasons from 23 different countries, beginning with the first airing in 2002. Results: We found that the likelihood of the final couple continuing their relationship beyond the broadcast was higher in The Bachelorette than in The Bachelor, although the duration of these relationships was not significantly influenced by the type of show. On average, women were younger, both when selecting their partner and when being chosen. However, men exhibited a greater preference for larger age differences than women. Furthermore, the age of the chosen male partners significantly increased with the age of the “bachelorettes,” whereas “bachelors” consistently favored women around 25.5 years old, regardless of their own age. Discussion: We discuss these findings within the context of parental investment theory and sexual strategies theory. KW - mating strategies KW - parental investment theory KW - sex differences KW - relationship duration KW - Cox proportional regression analysis Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-325717 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 14 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Huestegge, Lynn A1 - Pieczykolan, Aleks A1 - Koch, Iring T1 - A Gestalt account of human behavior is supported by evidence from switching between single and dual actions JF - Scientific Reports N2 - The question of how behavior is represented in the mind lies at the core of psychology as the science of mind and behavior. While a long-standing research tradition has established two opposing fundamental views of perceptual representation, Structuralism and Gestalt psychology, we test both accounts with respect to action representation: Are multiple actions (characterizing human behavior in general) represented as the sum of their component actions (Structuralist view) or holistically (Gestalt view)? Using a single-/dual-response switch paradigm, we analyzed switches between dual ([A + B]) and single ([A], [B]) responses across different effector systems and revealed comparable performance in partial repetitions and full switches of behavioral requirements (e.g., in [A + B] → [A] vs. [B] → [A], or [A] → [A + B] vs. [B] → [A + B]), but only when the presence of dimensional overlap between responses allows for Gestalt formation. This evidence for a Gestalt view of behavior in our paradigm challenges some fundamental assumptions in current (tacitly Structuralist) action control theories (in particular the idea that all actions are represented compositionally with reference to their components), provides a novel explanatory angle for understanding complex, highly synchronized human behavior (e.g., dance), and delimitates the degree to which complex behavior can be analyzed in terms of its basic components. KW - cognitive neuroscience KW - human behaviour KW - learning and memory Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-357862 VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Human perception of spatial frequency varies with stimulus orientation and location in the visual field JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Neuroanatomical variations across the visual field of human observers go along with corresponding variations of the perceived coarseness of visual stimuli. Here we show that horizontal gratings are perceived as having lower spatial frequency than vertical gratings when occurring along the horizontal meridian of the visual field, whereas gratings occurring along the vertical meridian show the exact opposite effect. This finding indicates a new peculiarity of processes operating along the cardinal axes of the visual field. KW - neuroscience KW - psychology Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-357888 VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Changes in body perception following virtual object manipulation are accompanied by changes of the internal reference scale JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Changes in body perception often arise when observers are confronted with related yet discrepant multisensory signals. Some of these effects are interpreted as outcomes of sensory integration of various signals, whereas related biases are ascribed to learning-dependent recalibration of coding individual signals. The present study explored whether the same sensorimotor experience entails changes in body perception that are indicative of multisensory integration and those that indicate recalibration. Participants enclosed visual objects by a pair of visual cursors controlled by finger movements. Then either they judged their perceived finger posture (indicating multisensory integration) or they produced a certain finger posture (indicating recalibration). An experimental variation of the size of the visual object resulted in systematic and opposite biases of the perceived and produced finger distances. This pattern of results is consistent with the assumption that multisensory integration and recalibration had a common origin in the task we used. KW - human behaviour KW - perception Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-357876 VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hilger, Kirsten A1 - Häge, Anne-Sophie A1 - Zedler, Christina A1 - Jost, Michael A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Virtual reality to understand pain-associated approach behaviour: a proof-of-concept study JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Pain-associated approach and avoidance behaviours are critically involved in the development and maintenance of chronic pain. Empirical research suggests a key role of operant learning mechanisms, and first experimental paradigms were developed for their investigation within a controlled laboratory setting. We introduce a new Virtual Reality paradigm to the study of pain-related behaviour and investigate pain experiences on multiple dimensions. The paradigm evaluates the effects of three-tiered heat-pain stimuli applied contingent versus non-contingent with three types of arm movements in naturalistic virtual sceneries. Behaviour, self-reported pain-related fear, pain expectancy and electrodermal activity were assessed in 42 healthy participants during an acquisition phase (contingent movement-pain association) and a modification phase (no contingent movement-pain association). Pain-associated approach behaviour, as measured by arm movements followed by a severe heat stimulus, quickly decreased in-line with the arm movement-pain contingency. Slower effects were observed in fear of movement-related pain and pain expectancy ratings. During the subsequent modification phase, the removal of the pain contingencies modified all three indices. In both phases, skin conductance responses resemble the pattern observed for approach behaviour, while skin conductance levels equal the pattern observed for the self-ratings. Our findings highlight a fast reduction in approach behaviour in the face of acute pain and inform about accompanying psychological and physiological processes. We discuss strength and limitations of our paradigm for future investigations with the ultimate goal of gaining a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms involved in chronic pain development, maintenance, and its therapy. KW - anxiety KW - human behaviour Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-357817 VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lawitschka, Anita A1 - Brunmair, Matthias A1 - Bauer, Dorothea A1 - Zubarovskaya, Natalia A1 - Felder-Puig, Rosemarie A1 - Strahm, Brigitte A1 - Bader, Peter A1 - Strauss, Gabriele A1 - Albert, Michael A1 - Luettichau, Irene von A1 - Greinix, Hildegard A1 - Wolff, Daniel A1 - Peters, Christina T1 - Psychometric properties of the Activities Scale for Kids-performance after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in adolescents and children BT - Results of a prospective study on behalf of the German-Austrian-Swiss GVHD Consortium JF - Wiener klinische Wochenschrift N2 - Background The psychometric properties of an instrument, the Activity Scale for Kids-performance (ASKp), were assessed which was proposed to capture physical functioning after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Additionally, this multicenter observational prospective study investigated the influence of clinical correlates focusing on chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD). Methods Patient-reported ASKp, clinician-reported Karnofsky/Lansky status (KPS/PSS), patient characteristics and cGVHD details were assessed of 55 patients with a median age of 12 years at baseline after day +100 post-HSCT and every 3 months during the next 18 months. The psychometric properties were evaluated and ASKp and KPS/PSS status was compared using ANOVAS and multiple regression models. Results The German version of the ASKp showed good psychometric properties except for ceiling effects. Discrimination ability of the ASKp was good regarding the need for devices but failed to predict cGVHD patients. Both the ASKp and the KPS/PSS were associated with patients after adoptive cell therapy being in need for devices, suffering from overlap cGVHD and from steroid side effects but not with patients’ age and gender. In contrast to the KPS/PSS the ASKp only showed significant differences after merging moderate and severe cGHVD patients when comparing them to No-cGVHD (F = 4.050; p = 0.049), being outperformed by the KPS/PSS (F = 20.082; p < 0.001). Conclusion The ASKp showed no clear advantages compared to KPS/PSS even though economical and patients’ effort was higher. Further application range may be limited through ceiling effects. Both should be taken into consideration. Therefore, the results may not support the usage of ASKp after HSCT and rather suggest KPS/PSS, both patient and clinician reported. KW - physical functioning KW - cancer patients KW - AYAs KW - GVHD Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-281100 VL - 133 IS - 1-2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hausman, Hannah A1 - Kubik, Veit T1 - Delayed metacomprehension judgments do not directly improve learning from texts JF - Journal of Intelligence N2 - Making judgments of learning (JOLs) after studying can directly improve learning. This JOL reactivity has been shown for simple materials but has scarcely been investigated with educationally relevant materials such as expository texts. The few existing studies have not yet reported any consistent gains in text comprehension due to providing JOLs. In the present study, we hypothesized that increasing the chances of covert retrieval attempts when making JOLs after each of five to-be-studied text passages would produce comprehension benefits at 1 week compared to restudy. In a between-subjects design, we manipulated both whether participants (N = 210) were instructed to covertly retrieve the texts, and whether they made delayed target-absent JOLs. The results indicated that delayed, target-absent JOLs did not improve text comprehension after 1 week, regardless of whether prior instructions to engage in covert retrieval were provided. Based on the two-stage model of JOLs, we reasoned that participants’ retrieval attempts during metacomprehension judgments were either insufficient (i.e., due to a quick familiarity assessment) or were ineffective (e.g., due to low retrieval success). KW - JOL reactivity KW - judgments of learning KW - metacomprehension KW - covert retrieval Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-323361 SN - 2079-3200 VL - 11 IS - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Franz, David J. T1 - Moral responsibility for self-deluding beings JF - Philosophia N2 - In this article, I argue for four theses. First, libertarian and compatibilist accounts of moral responsibility agree that the capability of practical reason is the central feature of moral responsibility. Second, this viewpoint leads to a reasons-focused account of human behavior. Examples of human action discussed in debates about moral responsibility suggest that typical human actions are driven primarily by the agent’s subjective reasons and are sufficiently transparent for the agent. Third, this conception of self-transparent action is a questionable idealization. As shown by psychological research on self-assessment, motivated reasoning, and terror management theory, humans oftentimes have only a limited understanding of their conduct. Self-deception is rather the rule than the exception. Fourth, taking the limited self-transparency of practical reason seriously leads to a socially contextualized conception of moral responsibility. KW - moral responsibility KW - self-deception KW - reasoning biases KW - practical reasoning KW - rationalization KW - motivated reasoning Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324871 SN - 0048-3893 VL - 50 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Foerster, Anna A1 - Moeller, Birte A1 - Frings, Christian A1 - Pfister, Roland T1 - What is left after an error? Towards a comprehensive account of goal-based binding and retrieval JF - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics N2 - The cognitive system readily detects and corrects erroneous actions by establishing episodic bindings between representations of the acted upon stimuli and the intended correct response. If these stimuli are encountered again, they trigger the retrieval of the correct response. Thus, binding and retrieval efficiently pave the way for future success. The current study set out to define the role of the erroneous response itself and explicit feedback for the error during these processes of goal-based binding and retrieval. Two experiments showed robust and similar binding and retrieval effects with and without feedback and pointed towards sustained activation of the unbound, erroneous response. The third experiment confirmed that the erroneous response is more readily available than a neutral alternative. Together, the results demonstrate that episodic binding biases future actions toward success, guided primarily through internal feedback processes, while the erroneous response still leaves detectable traces in human action control. KW - error processing KW - episodic binding KW - action control Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324851 VL - 85 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rinn, Robin A1 - Ludwig, Jonas A1 - Fassler, Pauline A1 - Deutsch, Roland T1 - Cues of wealth and the subjective perception of rich people JF - Current Psychology N2 - These pre-registered studies shed light on the cues that individuals use to identify rich people. In two studies (N = 598), we first developed a factor-analytical model that describes the content and the mental structure of 24 wealth cues. A third within-subject study (N = 89) then assessed the perception of rich subgroups based on this model of wealth cues. Participants evaluated the extent to which the wealth cues applied to two distinct subgroups of rich people. The results show: German and US-American participants think that one can identify rich people based on the same set of cues which can be grouped along the following dimensions: luxury consumption, expensive hobbies, spontaneous spending, greedy behavior, charismatic behavior, self-presentation, and specific possessions. However, Germans and US-Americans relied on these cues to different degrees to diagnose wealth in others. Moreover, we found evidence for subgroup-specific wealth cue profiles insofar as target individuals who acquired their wealth via internal (e.g., hard work) compared to external means (e.g., lottery winners) were evaluated differently on these wealth cues, presumably because of their perceived differences in valence and competence. Together, this research provides new insights in the cognitive representation of the latent construct of wealth. Practical implications for research on the perception of affluence, and implications for political decision makers, are discussed in the last section. KW - impression formation KW - the rich KW - subjective wealth cues KW - judgement KW - implications of wealth Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324922 SN - 1046-1310 VL - 42 IS - 31 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Foerster, Anna A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - Wirth, Robert A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Post-execution monitoring in dishonesty JF - Psychological Research N2 - When telling a lie, humans might engage in stronger monitoring of their behavior than when telling the truth. Initial evidence has indeed pointed towards a stronger recruitment of capacity-limited monitoring processes in dishonest than honest responding, conceivably resulting from the necessity to overcome automatic tendencies to respond honestly. Previous results suggested monitoring to be confined to response execution, however, whereas the current study goes beyond these findings by specifically probing for post-execution monitoring. Participants responded (dis)honestly to simple yes/no questions in a first task and switched to an unrelated second task after a response–stimulus interval of 0 ms or 1000 ms. Dishonest responses did not only prolong response times in Task 1, but also in Task 2 with a short response–stimulus interval. These findings support the assumption that increased monitoring for dishonest responses extends beyond mere response execution, a mechanism that is possibly tuned to assess the successful completion of a dishonest act. KW - lying KW - dishonest responding KW - monitoring Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324862 VL - 87 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reis, Moritz A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - Foerster, Anna T1 - Cognitive load promotes honesty JF - Psychological Research N2 - In three experiments, we examined the cognitive underpinnings of self-serving dishonesty by manipulating cognitive load under different incentive structures. Participants could increase a financial bonus by misreporting outcomes of private die rolls without any risk of detection. At the same time, they had to remember letter strings of varying length. If honesty is the automatic response tendency and dishonesty is cognitively demanding, lying behavior should be less evident under high cognitive load. This hypothesis was supported by the outcome of two out of three experiments. We further manipulated whether all trials or only one random trial determined payoff to modulate reward adaptation over time (Experiment 2) and whether payoff was framed as a financial gain or loss (Experiment 3). The payoff scheme of one random or all trials did not affect lying behavior and, discordant to earlier research, facing losses instead of gains did not increase lying behavior. Finally, cognitive load and incentive frame interacted significantly, but contrary to our assumption gains increased lying under low cognitive load. While the impact of cognitive load on dishonesty appears to be comparably robust, motivational influences seem to be more elusive than commonly assumed in current theorizing. KW - cognitive load KW - self-serving dishonesty KW - lying behavior Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324913 VL - 87 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoffmann, Mareike A. A1 - Koch, Iring A1 - Huestegge, Lynn T1 - Are some effector systems harder to switch to? In search of cost asymmetries when switching between manual, vocal, and oculomotor tasks JF - Memory & Cognition N2 - In task-switching studies, performance is typically worse in task-switch trials than in task-repetition trials. These switch costs are often asymmetrical, a phenomenon that has been explained by referring to a dominance of one task over the other. Previous studies also indicated that response modalities associated with two tasks may be considered as integral components for defining a task set. However, a systematic assessment of the role of response modalities in task switching is still lacking: Are some response modalities harder to switch to than others? The present study systematically examined switch costs when combining tasks that differ only with respect to their associated effector systems. In Experiment 1, 16 participants switched (in unpredictable sequence) between oculomotor and vocal tasks. In Experiment 2, 72 participants switched (in pairwise combinations) between oculomotor, vocal, and manual tasks. We observed systematic performance costs when switching between response modalities under otherwise constant task features and could thereby replicate previous observations of response modality switch costs. However, we did not observe any substantial switch-cost asymmetries. As previous studies using temporally overlapping dual-task paradigms found substantial prioritization effects (in terms of asymmetric costs) especially for oculomotor tasks, the present results suggest different underlying processes in sequential task switching than in simultaneous multitasking. While more research is needed to further substantiate a lack of response modality switch-cost asymmetries in a broader range of task switching situations, we suggest that task-set representations related to specific response modalities may exhibit rapid decay. KW - cognitive control KW - task switching KW - response modalities Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324887 VL - 50 IS - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Eck, Julia A1 - Dignath, David A1 - Kalckert, Andreas A1 - Pfister, Roland T1 - Instant disembodiment of virtual body parts JF - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics N2 - Evidence from multisensory body illusions suggests that body representations may be malleable, for instance, by embodying external objects. However, adjusting body representations to current task demands also implies that external objects become disembodied from the body representation if they are no longer required. In the current web-based study, we induced the embodiment of a two-dimensional (2D) virtual hand that could be controlled by active movements of a computer mouse or on a touchpad. Following initial embodiment, we probed for disembodiment by comparing two conditions: Participants either continued moving the virtual hand or they stopped moving and kept the hand still. Based on theoretical accounts that conceptualize body representations as a set of multisensory bindings, we expected gradual disembodiment of the virtual hand if the body representations are no longer updated through correlated visuomotor signals. In contrast to our prediction, the virtual hand was instantly disembodied as soon as participants stopped moving it. This result was replicated in two follow-up experiments. The observed instantaneous disembodiment might suggest that humans are sensitive to the rapid changes that characterize action and body in virtual environments, and hence adjust corresponding body representations particularly swiftly. KW - body representation KW - embodiment KW - disembodiment KW - moving rubber hand illusion KW - virtual hand illusion Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324844 VL - 84 IS - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kürten, Jens A1 - Raettig, Tim A1 - Gutzeit, Julian A1 - Huestegge, Lynn T1 - Dual-action benefits: global (action-inherent) and local (transient) sources of action prepotency underlying inhibition failures in multiple action control JF - Psychological Research N2 - Previous research has shown that the simultaneous execution of two actions (instead of only one) is not necessarily more difficult but can actually be easier (less error-prone), in particular when executing one action requires the simultaneous inhibition of another action. Corresponding inhibitory demands are particularly challenging when the to-be-inhibited action is highly prepotent (i.e., characterized by a strong urge to be executed). Here, we study a range of important potential sources of such prepotency. Building on a previously established paradigm to elicit dual-action benefits, participants responded to stimuli with single actions (either manual button press or saccade) or dual actions (button press and saccade). Crucially, we compared blocks in which these response demands were randomly intermixed (mixed blocks) with pure blocks involving only one type of response demand. The results highlight the impact of global (action-inherent) sources of action prepotency, as reflected in more pronounced inhibitory failures in saccade vs. manual control, but also more local (transient) sources of influence, as reflected in a greater probability of inhibition failures following trials that required the to-be-inhibited type of action. In addition, sequential analyses revealed that inhibitory control (including its failure) is exerted at the level of response modality representations, not at the level of fully specified response representations. In sum, the study highlights important preconditions and mechanisms underlying the observation of dual-action benefits. KW - dual action benefits KW - action prepotency KW - inhibition failures KW - multiple action control KW - global (action-inherent) KW - local (transient) Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324893 VL - 87 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schwarz, Katharina A. A1 - Weller, Lisa T1 - Distracted to a fault: attention, actions, and time perception JF - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics N2 - In the last years, it has become general consensus that actions change our time perception. Performing an action to elicit a specific event seems to lead to a systematic underestimation of the interval between action and effect, a phenomenon termed temporal (or previously intentional) binding. Temporal binding has been closely associated with sense of agency, our perceived control over our actions and our environment, and because of its robust behavioral effects has indeed been widely utilized as an implicit correlate of sense of agency. The most robust and clear temporal binding effects are typically found via Libet clock paradigms. In the present study, we investigate a crucial methodological confound in these paradigms that provides an alternative explanation for temporal binding effects: a redirection of attentional resources in two-event sequences (as in classical operant conditions) versus singular events (as in classical baseline conditions). Our results indicate that binding effects in Libet clock paradigms may be based to a large degree on such attentional processes, irrespective of intention or action-effect sequences. Thus, these findings challenge many of the previously drawn conclusions and interpretations with regard to actions and time perception. KW - attention KW - perception and action KW - temporal processing KW - temporal binding Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-324936 VL - 85 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Scheiner, Christin A1 - Seis, Christian A1 - Kleindienst, Nikolaus A1 - Buerger, Arne T1 - Psychopathology, protective factors, and COVID-19 among adolescents: a structural equation model JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health N2 - Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2019 and the associated restrictions, mental health in children and adolescents has been increasingly discussed in the media. Negative impacts of the pandemic, including a sharp increase in psychopathology and, consequently, reduced quality of life, appear to have particularly affected children and young people, who may be especially vulnerable to the adverse effects of isolation. Nevertheless, many children and adolescents have managed to cope well with the restrictions, without deterioration of their mental health. The present study therefore explored the links between COVID-19 infection (in oneself or a family member, as well as the death of a family member due to the virus), protective factors such as self-efficacy, resilience, self-esteem, and health-related quality of life, and measures of psychopathology such as depression scores, internalizing/externalizing problems, emotion dysregulation, and victimization. For this purpose, we examined data from 2129 adolescents (mean age = 12.31, SD = 0.67; 51% male; 6% born outside of Germany) using a structural equation model. We found medium to high loadings of the manifest variables with the latent variables (COVID-19, protective factors, and psychopathology). Protective factors showed a significant negative correlation with psychopathology. However, COVID-19 had a weak connection with psychopathology in our sample. External pandemic-related factors (e.g., restrictions) and their interaction with existing psychopathology or individual protective factors appear to have a greater influence on young people’s mental health than the impact of the virus per se. Sociopolitical efforts should be undertaken to foster prevention and promote individual resilience, especially in adolescence. KW - adolescence KW - mental health KW - psychopathology KW - protective factors KW - COVID-19 Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-304475 SN - 1660-4601 VL - 20 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rodrigues, Johannes A1 - Weiß, Martin A1 - Mussel, Patrick A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - On second thought … the influence of a second stage in the ultimatum game on decision behavior, electro-cortical correlates and their trait interrelation JF - Psychophysiology N2 - Previous EEG research only investigated one stage ultimatum games (UGs). We investigated the influence of a second bargaining stage in an UG concerning behavioral responses, electro-cortical correlates and their moderations by the traits altruism, anger, anxiety, and greed in 92 participants. We found that an additional stage led to more rejection in the 2-stage UG (2SUG) and that increasing offers in the second stage compared to the first stage led to more acceptance. The FRN during a trial was linked to expectance evaluation concerning the fairness of the offers, while midfrontal theta was a marker for the needed cognitive control to overcome the respective default behavioral pattern. The FRN responses to unfair offers were more negative for either low or high altruism in the UG, while high trait anxiety led to more negative FRN responses in the first stage of 2SUG, indicating higher sensitivity to unfairness. Accordingly, the mean FRN response, representing the trait-like general electrocortical reactivity to unfairness, predicted rejection in the first stage of 2SUG. Additionally, we found that high trait anger led to more rejections for unfair offer in 2SUG in general, while trait altruism led to more rejection of unimproving unfair offers in the second stage of 2SUG. In contrast, trait anxiety led to more acceptance in the second stage of 2SUG, while trait greed even led to more acceptance if the offer was worse than in the stage before. These findings suggest, that 2SUG creates a trait activation situation compared to the UG. KW - bargaining behavior KW - two-stage ultimatum game KW - reward positivity/FRN/MFN/N2 KW - trait activation in two-stage ultimatum game, KW - midfrontal theta KW - fairness evaluation vs. cognitive effort KW - EEG Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-318983 VL - 59 IS - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Haberstumpf, Sophia A1 - Forster, André A1 - Leinweber, Jonas A1 - Rauskolb, Stefanie A1 - Hewig, Johannes A1 - Sendtner, Michael A1 - Lauer, Martin A1 - Polak, Thomas A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Herrmann, Martin J. T1 - Measurement invariance testing of longitudinal neuropsychiatric test scores distinguishes pathological from normative cognitive decline and highlights its potential in early detection research JF - Journal of Neuropsychology N2 - Objective Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a growing challenge worldwide, which is why the search for early-onset predictors must be focused as soon as possible. Longitudinal studies that investigate courses of neuropsychological and other variables screen for such predictors correlated to mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, one often neglected issue in analyses of such studies is measurement invariance (MI), which is often assumed but not tested for. This study uses the absence of MI (non-MI) and latent factor scores instead of composite variables to assess properties of cognitive domains, compensation mechanisms, and their predictability to establish a method for a more comprehensive understanding of pathological cognitive decline. Methods An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and a set of increasingly restricted confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were conducted to find latent factors, compared them with the composite approach, and to test for longitudinal (partial-)MI in a neuropsychiatric test battery, consisting of 14 test variables. A total of 330 elderly (mean age: 73.78 ± 1.52 years at baseline) were analyzed two times (3 years apart). Results EFA revealed a four-factor model representing declarative memory, attention, working memory, and visual–spatial processing. Based on CFA, an accurate model was estimated across both measurement timepoints. Partial non-MI was found for parameters such as loadings, test- and latent factor intercepts as well as latent factor variances. The latent factor approach was preferable to the composite approach. Conclusion The overall assessment of non-MI latent factors may pose a possible target for this field of research. Hence, the non-MI of variances indicated variables that are especially suited for the prediction of pathological cognitive decline, while non-MI of intercepts indicated general aging-related decline. As a result, the sole assessment of MI may help distinguish pathological from normative aging processes and additionally may reveal compensatory neuropsychological mechanisms. KW - Alzheimer’s disease KW - early-onset predictors KW - mild cognitive impairment Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-318932 VL - 16 IS - 2 SP - 324 EP - 352 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gary, Sebastian A1 - Lenhard, Wolfgang A1 - Lenhard, Alexandra T1 - Modelling norm scores with the cNORM package in R JF - Psych N2 - In this article, we explain and demonstrate how to model norm scores with the cNORM package in R. This package is designed specifically to determine norm scores when the latent ability to be measured covaries with age or other explanatory variables such as grade level. The mathematical method used in this package draws on polynomial regression to model a three-dimensional hyperplane that smoothly and continuously captures the relation between raw scores, norm scores and the explanatory variable. By doing so, it overcomes the typical problems of classical norming methods, such as overly large age intervals, missing norm scores, large amounts of sampling error in the subsamples or huge requirements with regard to the sample size. After a brief introduction to the mathematics of the model, we describe the individual methods of the package. We close the article with a practical example using data from a real reading comprehension test. KW - regression-based norming KW - continuous norming KW - inferential norming KW - data smoothing KW - curve fitting KW - percentile estimation Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-284143 SN - 2624-8611 VL - 3 IS - 3 SP - 501 EP - 521 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stegmann, Yannik A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Keil, Andreas A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. T1 - Investigating sustained attention in contextual threat using steady‐state VEPs evoked by flickering video stimuli JF - Psychophysiology N2 - Anxiety is characterized by anxious anticipation and heightened vigilance to uncertain threat. However, if threat is not reliably indicated by a specific cue, the context in which threat was previously experienced becomes its best predictor, leading to anxiety. A suitable means to induce anxiety experimentally is context conditioning: In one context (CTX+), an unpredictable aversive stimulus (US) is repeatedly presented, in contrast to a second context (CTX−), in which no US is ever presented. In this EEG study, we investigated attentional mechanisms during acquisition and extinction learning in 38 participants, who underwent a context conditioning protocol. Flickering video stimuli (32 s clips depicting virtual offices representing CTX+/−) were used to evoke steady‐state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) as an index of visuocortical engagement with the contexts. Analyses of the electrocortical responses suggest a successful induction of the ssVEP signal by video presentation in flicker mode. Furthermore, we found clear indices of context conditioning and extinction learning on a subjective level, while cortical processing of the CTX+ was unexpectedly reduced during video presentation. The differences between CTX+ and CTX− diminished during extinction learning. Together, these results indicate that the dynamic sensory input of the video presentation leads to disruptions in the ssVEP signal, which is greater for motivationally significant, threatening contexts. KW - anxiety KW - EEG KW - oscillation KW - threat KW - time frequency analyses KW - visual processes Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-312430 VL - 60 IS - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stegmann, Yannik A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. T1 - The effect of inherently threatening contexts on visuocortical engagement to conditioned threat JF - Psychophysiology N2 - Fear and anxiety are crucial for adaptive responding in life‐threatening situations. Whereas fear is a phasic response to an acute threat accompanied by selective attention, anxiety is characterized by a sustained feeling of apprehension and hypervigilance during situations of potential threat. In the current literature, fear and anxiety are usually considered mutually exclusive, with partially separated neural underpinnings. However, there is accumulating evidence that challenges this distinction between fear and anxiety, and simultaneous activation of fear and anxiety networks has been reported. Therefore, the current study experimentally tested potential interactions between fear and anxiety. Fifty‐two healthy participants completed a differential fear conditioning paradigm followed by a test phase in which the conditioned stimuli were presented in front of threatening or neutral contextual images. To capture defense system activation, we recorded subjective (threat, US‐expectancy), physiological (skin conductance, heart rate) and visuocortical (steady‐state visual evoked potentials) responses to the conditioned stimuli as a function of contextual threat. Results demonstrated successful fear conditioning in all measures. In addition, threat and US‐expectancy ratings, cardiac deceleration, and visuocortical activity were enhanced for fear cues presented in threatening compared with neutral contexts. These results are in line with an additive or interactive rather than an exclusive model of fear and anxiety, indicating facilitated defensive behavior to imminent danger in situations of potential threat. KW - anxiety KW - EEG KW - emotion KW - fear KW - heart rate KW - ssVEP Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-312465 VL - 60 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - klein Selle, Nathalie A1 - Suchotzki, Kristina A1 - Pertzov, Yoni A1 - Gamer, Matthias T1 - Orienting versus inhibition: The theory behind the ocular‐based Concealed Information Test JF - Psychophysiology N2 - When trying to conceal one's knowledge, various ocular changes occur. However, which cognitive mechanisms drive these changes? Do orienting or inhibition—two processes previously associated with autonomic changes—play a role? To answer this question, we used a Concealed Information Test (CIT) in which participants were either motivated to conceal (orienting + inhibition) or reveal (orienting only) their knowledge. While pupil size increased in both motivational conditions, the fixation and blink CIT effects were confined to the conceal condition. These results were mirrored in autonomic changes, with skin conductance increasing in both conditions while heart rate decreased solely under motivation to conceal. Thus, different cognitive mechanisms seem to drive ocular responses. Pupil size appears to be linked to the orienting of attention (akin to skin conductance changes), while fixations and blinks rather seem to reflect arousal inhibition (comparable to heart rate changes). This knowledge strengthens CIT theory and illuminates the relationship between ocular and autonomic activity. KW - arousal inhibition KW - autonomic KW - Concealed Information Test (CIT) KW - oculomotor KW - orienting response KW - response fractionation Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-312626 VL - 60 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ludwig, Jonas A1 - Strack, Fritz T1 - Asymmetrical friendships? People are willing to risk COVID‐19 infection from friends but are reluctant to pass it on to them JF - Journal of Applied Social Psychology N2 - Although most protective behaviors related to the COVID‐19 pandemic come with personal costs, they will produce the largest benefit if everybody cooperates. This study explores two interacting factors that drive cooperation in this tension between private and collective interests. A preregistered experiment (N = 299) examined (a) how the quality of the relation among interacting partners (social proximity), and (b) how focusing on the risk of self‐infection versus onward transmission affected intentions to engage in protective behaviors. The results suggested that risk focus was an important moderator of the relation between social proximity and protection intentions. Specifically, participants were more willing to accept the risk of self‐infection from close others than from strangers, resulting in less caution toward a friend than toward a distant other. However, when onward transmission was the primary concern, participants were more reluctant to effect transmission to close others, resulting in more caution toward friends than strangers. These findings inform the debate about effective nonclinical measures against the pandemic. Practical implications for risk communication are discussed. KW - Covid-19 KW - protective behavior KW - cooperation Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-312411 VL - 53 IS - 1 SP - 69 EP - 79 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rinn, Robin A1 - Krishna, Anand A1 - Deutsch, Roland T1 - The psychology of income wealth threshold estimations: A registered report JF - British Journal of Social Psychology N2 - How do people estimate the income that is needed to be rich? Two correlative survey studies (Study 1 and 2, N = 568) and one registered experimental study (Study 3, N = 500) examined the cognitive mechanisms that are used to derive an answer to this question. We tested whether individuals use their personal income (PI) as a self‐generated anchor to derive an estimate of the income needed to be rich (= income wealth threshold estimation, IWTE). On a bivariate level, we found the expected positive relationship between one's PI and IWTE and, in line with previous findings, we found that people do not consider themselves rich. Furthermore, we predicted that individuals additionally use information about their social status within their social circles to make an IWTE. The findings from study 2 support this notion and show that only self‐reported high‐income individuals show different IWTEs depending on relative social status: Individuals in this group who self‐reported a high status produced higher IWTEs than individuals who self‐reported low status. The registered experimental study could not replicate this pattern robustly, although the results trended non‐significantly in the same direction. Together, the findings revealed that the income of individuals as well as the social environment are used as sources of information to make IWTE judgements, although they are likely not the only important predictors. KW - affluence KW - anchoring KW - heuristics KW - income wealth threshold estimations KW - social comparisons KW - subjective perception of wealth KW - the rich KW - wealth estimation Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-311847 VL - 62 IS - 1 SP - 630 EP - 650 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Grapp, Miriam A1 - Ell, Johanna A1 - Kiermeier, Senta A1 - Haun, Markus W. A1 - Kübler, Andrea A1 - Friederich, Hans-Christoph A1 - Maatouk, Imad T1 - Feasibility study of a self-guided internet-based intervention for family caregivers of patients with cancer (OAse) JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Despite high levels of distress, family caregivers of patients with cancer rarely seek psychosocial support and Internet-based interventions (IBIs) are a promising approach to reduce some access barriers. Therefore, we developed a self-guided IBI for family caregivers of patients with cancer (OAse), which, in addition to patients' spouses, also addresses other family members (e.g., adult children, parents). This study aimed to determine the feasibility of OAse (recruitment, dropout, adherence, participant satisfaction). Secondary outcomes were caregivers’ self-efficacy, emotional state, and supportive care needs. N = 41 family caregivers participated in the study (female: 65%), mostly spouses (71%), followed by children (20%), parents (7%), and friends (2%). Recruitment (47%), retention (68%), and adherence rates (76% completed at least 4 of 6 lessons) support the feasibility of OAse. Overall, the results showed a high degree of overall participant satisfaction (96%). There were no significant pre-post differences in secondary outcome criteria, but a trend toward improvement in managing difficult interactions/emotions (p = .06) and depression/anxiety (p = .06). Although the efficacy of the intervention remains to be investigated, our results suggest that OAse can be well implemented in caregivers’ daily lives and has the potential to improve family caregivers’ coping strategies. KW - cancer KW - oncology KW - psychology Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-300537 VL - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zyberaj, Jetmir A1 - Seibel, Sebastian A1 - Schowalter, Annika F. A1 - Pötz, Lennart A1 - Richter-Killenberg, Stefanie A1 - Volmer, Judith T1 - Developing sustainable careers during a pandemic: the role of psychological capital and career adaptability JF - Sustainability N2 - The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has not only had negative effects on employees' health, but also on their prospects to gain and maintain employment. Using a longitudinal research design with two measurement points, we investigated the ramifications of various psychological and organizational resources on employees' careers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, in a sample of German employees (N = 305), we investigated the role of psychological capital (PsyCap) for four career-related outcomes: career satisfaction, career engagement, coping with changes in career due to COVID-19, and career-related COVID-19 worries. We also employed leader–member exchange (LMX) as a moderator and career adaptability as a mediating variable in these relationships. Results from path analyses revealed a positive association between PsyCap and career satisfaction and career coping. Furthermore, PsyCap was indirectly related to career engagement through career adaptability. However, moderation analysis showed no moderating role of LMX on the link between PsyCap and career adaptability. Our study contributes to the systematic research concerning the role of psychological and organizational resources for employees' careers and well-being, especially for crisis contexts. KW - psychological capital KW - career adaptability KW - LMX KW - career engagement KW - career satisfaction KW - career coping KW - COVID-19 Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-267286 SN - 2071-1050 VL - 14 IS - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thiele, Jonas A. A1 - Richter, Aylin A1 - Hilger, Kirsten T1 - Multimodal brain signal complexity predicts human intelligence JF - eNeuro N2 - Spontaneous brain activity builds the foundation for human cognitive processing during external demands. Neuroimaging studies based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) identified specific characteristics of spontaneous (intrinsic) brain dynamics to be associated with individual differences in general cognitive ability, i.e., intelligence. However, fMRI research is inherently limited by low temporal resolution, thus, preventing conclusions about neural fluctuations within the range of milliseconds. Here, we used resting-state electroencephalographical (EEG) recordings from 144 healthy adults to test whether individual differences in intelligence (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices scores) can be predicted from the complexity of temporally highly resolved intrinsic brain signals. We compared different operationalizations of brain signal complexity (multiscale entropy, Shannon entropy, Fuzzy entropy, and specific characteristics of microstates) regarding their relation to intelligence. The results indicate that associations between brain signal complexity measures and intelligence are of small effect sizes (r ∼ 0.20) and vary across different spatial and temporal scales. Specifically, higher intelligence scores were associated with lower complexity in local aspects of neural processing, and less activity in task-negative brain regions belonging to the default-mode network. Finally, we combined multiple measures of brain signal complexity to show that individual intelligence scores can be significantly predicted with a multimodal model within the sample (10-fold cross-validation) as well as in an independent sample (external replication, N = 57). In sum, our results highlight the temporal and spatial dependency of associations between intelligence and intrinsic brain dynamics, proposing multimodal approaches as promising means for future neuroscientific research on complex human traits. KW - brain signal complexity KW - cognitive ability KW - EEG KW - intelligence KW - microstates KW - resting-state Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-312949 VL - 10 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weiß, Martin A1 - Rodrigues, Johannes A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - Big Five personality factors in relation to coping with contact restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic: a small sample study JF - Social Sciences N2 - To slow down the spread of the SARS-Cov-2 virus, countries worldwide severely restricted public and social life. In addition to the physical threat posed by the viral disease (COVID-19), the pandemic also has implications for psychological well-being. Using a small sample (N = 51), we examined how Big Five personality traits relate to coping with contact restrictions during three consecutive weeks in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. We showed that extraversion was associated with suffering from severe contact restrictions and with benefiting from their relaxation. Individuals with high neuroticism did not show a change in their relatively poor coping with the restrictions over time, whereas conscientious individuals seemed to experience no discomfort and even positive feelings during the period of contact restrictions. Our results support the assumption that neuroticism is a vulnerability factor in relation to psychological wellbeing but also show an influence of contact restrictions on extraverted individuals. KW - Big Five KW - coping KW - COVID-19 KW - positive affect KW - negative affect Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-290556 SN - 2076-0760 VL - 11 IS - 10 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rubo, Marius A1 - Gamer, Matthias T1 - Visuo-tactile congruency influences the body schema during full body ownership illusion JF - Consciousness and Cognition N2 - Previous research showed that full body ownership illusions in virtual reality (VR) can be robustly induced by providing congruent visual stimulation, and that congruent tactile experiences provide a dispensable extension to an already established phenomenon. Here we show that visuo-tactile congruency indeed does not add to already high measures for body ownership on explicit measures, but does modulate movement behavior when walking in the laboratory. Specifically, participants who took ownership over a more corpulent virtual body with intact visuo-tactile congruency increased safety distances towards the laboratory's walls compared to participants who experienced the same illusion with deteriorated visuo-tactile congruency. This effect is in line with the body schema more readily adapting to a more corpulent body after receiving congruent tactile information. We conclude that the action-oriented, unconscious body schema relies more heavily on tactile information compared to more explicit aspects of body ownership. KW - Full body ownership illusion KW - Visuo-tactile congruency KW - Body schema KW - Movement behavior Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-227095 VL - 73 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kiser, Dominik P. A1 - Gromer, Daniel A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Hilger, Kirsten T1 - A virtual reality social conditioned place preference paradigm for humans: Does trait social anxiety affect approach and avoidance of virtual agents? JF - Frontiers in Virtual Reality N2 - Approach and avoidance of positive and negative social cues are fundamental to prevent isolation and ensure survival. High trait social anxiety is characterized by an avoidance of social situations and extensive avoidance is a risk factor for the development of social anxiety disorder (SAD). Therefore, experimental methods to assess social avoidance behavior in humans are essential. The social conditioned place preference (SCPP) paradigm is a well-established experimental paradigm in animal research that is used to objectively investigate social approach–avoidance mechanisms. We retranslated this paradigm for human research using virtual reality. To this end, 58 healthy adults were exposed to either a happy- or angry-looking virtual agent in a specific room, and the effects of this encounter on dwell time as well as evaluation of this room in a later test without an agent were examined. We did not observe a general SCPP effect on dwell time or ratings but discovered a moderation by trait social anxiety, in which participants with higher trait social anxiety spent less time in the room in which the angry agent was present before, suggesting that higher levels of trait social anxiety foster conditioned social avoidance. However, further studies are needed to verify this observation and substantiate an association with social anxiety disorder. We discussed the strengths, limitations, and technical implications of our paradigm for future investigations to more comprehensively understand the mechanisms involved in social anxiety and facilitate the development of new personalized treatment approaches by using virtual reality. KW - retranslational research KW - conditioned place preference KW - approach–avoidance KW - social anxiety KW - virtual reality KW - personality traits KW - individual differences Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-293564 SN - 2673-4192 VL - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schumann, Frank A1 - Steinborn, Michael B. A1 - Kürten, Jens A1 - Cao, Liyu A1 - Händel, Barbara Friederike A1 - Huestegge, Lynn T1 - Restoration of attention by rest in a multitasking world: theory, methodology, and empirical evidence JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - In this work, we evaluate the status of both theory and empirical evidence in the field of experimental rest-break research based on a framework that combines mental-chronometry and psychometric-measurement theory. To this end, we (1) provide a taxonomy of rest breaks according to which empirical studies can be classified (e.g., by differentiating between long, short, and micro-rest breaks based on context and temporal properties). Then, we (2) evaluate the theorizing in both the basic and applied fields of research and explain how popular concepts (e.g., ego depletion model, opportunity cost theory, attention restoration theory, action readiness, etc.) relate to each other in contemporary theoretical debates. Here, we highlight differences between all these models in the light of two symbolic categories, termed the resource-based and satiation-based model, including aspects related to the dynamics and the control (strategic or non-strategic) mechanisms at work. Based on a critical assessment of existing methodological and theoretical approaches, we finally (3) provide a set of guidelines for both theory building and future empirical approaches to the experimental study of rest breaks. We conclude that a psychometrically advanced and theoretically focused research of rest and recovery has the potential to finally provide a sound scientific basis to eventually mitigate the adverse effects of ever increasing task demands on performance and well-being in a multitasking world at work and leisure. KW - rest breaks KW - attention restoration theory KW - cognitive resources KW - mental fatigue KW - ego depletion KW - multitasking KW - energy management KW - motivated cognition Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-267913 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rodrigues, Johannes A1 - Ziebell, Philipp A1 - Müller, Mathias A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - Standardizing continuous data classifications in a virtual T-maze using two-layer feedforward networks JF - Scientific Reports N2 - There continues to be difficulties when it comes to replication of studies in the field of Psychology. In part, this may be caused by insufficiently standardized analysis methods that may be subject to state dependent variations in performance. In this work, we show how to easily adapt the two-layer feedforward neural network architecture provided by Huang1 to a behavioral classification problem as well as a physiological classification problem which would not be solvable in a standardized way using classical regression or “simple rule” approaches. In addition, we provide an example for a new research paradigm along with this standardized analysis method. This paradigm as well as the analysis method can be adjusted to any necessary modification or applied to other paradigms or research questions. Hence, we wanted to show that two-layer feedforward neural networks can be used to increase standardization as well as replicability and illustrate this with examples based on a virtual T-maze paradigm\(^{2−5}\) including free virtual movement via joystick and advanced physiological data signal processing. KW - standardized analysis method KW - neural network architecture KW - two‑layer feedforward networks Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301096 VL - 12 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reis, Moritz A1 - Pfister, Roland T1 - Being Observed Does Not Boost Rule Retrieval JF - Advances in Cognitive Psychology N2 - Previous research, mainly focusing on the situational preconditions of rule violations, indicates that feelings of being watched by other agents promote rule compliance. However, the cognitive underpinnings of this effect and of rule violations in general have only attracted little scientific attention yet. In this study, we investigated whether cues of being observed not only reduce the likelihood of violating rules but also affect the underlying cognitive processes of such behavior when still putting a rule violation into action. Therefore, we applied a motion-tracking paradigm in which participants could violate a simple stimulus-response mapping rule while being faced with pictures of either open or closed eyes. In line with prior research, temporal and spatial measures of the participants' movements indicated that violating this rule induced substantial cognitive conflict. However, conflict during rulebreaking was not moderated by the eye stimuli. This outcome suggests that rule retrieval constitutes an automatic process which is not or is only barely influenced by situational parameters. Moreover, our results imply that the effect of perceived observation on rule conformity is driven by normative influences on decision-making instead of social facilitation of dominant action tendencies. KW - rule retrieval KW - motion tracking KW - cognitive conflict KW - observation Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301089 VL - 18 IS - 3 SP - 173 EP - 178 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Perceptual changes after learning of an arbitrary mapping between vision and hand movements JF - Scientific Reports N2 - The present study examined the perceptual consequences of learning arbitrary mappings between visual stimuli and hand movements. Participants moved a small cursor with their unseen hand twice to a large visual target object and then judged either the relative distance of the hand movements (Exp.1), or the relative number of dots that appeared in the two consecutive target objects (Exp.2) using a two-alternative forced choice method. During a learning phase, the numbers of dots that appeared in the target object were correlated with the hand movement distance. In Exp.1, we observed that after the participants were trained to expect many dots with larger hand movements, they judged movements made to targets with many dots as being longer than the same movements made to targets with few dots. In Exp.2, another group of participants who received the same training judged the same number of dots as smaller when larger rather than smaller hand movements were executed. When many dots were paired with smaller hand movements during the learning phase of both experiments, no significant changes in the perception of movements and of visual stimuli were observed. These results suggest that changes in the perception of body states and of external objects can arise when certain body characteristics co-occur with certain characteristics of the environment. They also indicate that the (dis)integration of multimodal perceptual signals depends not only on the physical or statistical relation between these signals, but on which signal is currently attended. KW - vision KW - hand movements KW - learning arbitrary mappings Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301074 VL - 12 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gram, Maximilian A1 - Albertova, P. A1 - Schirmer, V. A1 - Blaimer, M. A1 - Gamer, M. A1 - Herrmann, M. J. A1 - Nordbeck, P. A1 - Jakob, P. M. T1 - Towards robust in vivo quantification of oscillating biomagnetic fields using Rotary Excitation based MRI JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Spin-lock based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has the potential for direct spatially-resolved detection of neuronal activity and thus may represent an important step for basic research in neuroscience. In this work, the corresponding fundamental effect of Rotary EXcitation (REX) is investigated both in simulations as well as in phantom and in vivo experiments. An empirical law for predicting optimal spin-lock pulse durations for maximum magnetic field sensitivity was found. Experimental conditions were established that allow robust detection of ultra-weak magnetic field oscillations with simultaneous compensation of static field inhomogeneities. Furthermore, this work presents a novel concept for the emulation of brain activity utilizing the built-in MRI gradient system, which allows REX sequences to be validated in vivo under controlled and reproducible conditions. Via transmission of Rotary EXcitation (tREX), we successfully detected magnetic field oscillations in the lower nano-Tesla range in brain tissue. Moreover, tREX paves the way for the quantification of biomagnetic fields. KW - functional magnetic resonance imaging KW - Rotary EXcitation (REX) KW - oscillating biomagnetic fields Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-300862 VL - 12 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Eidel, M. A1 - Kübler, A. T1 - Identifying potential training factors in a vibrotactile P300-BCI JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Brain–computer interfaces (BCI) often rely on visual stimulation and feedback. Potential end-users with impaired vision, however, cannot use these BCIs efficiently and require a non-visual alternative. Both auditory and tactile paradigms have been developed but are often not sufficiently fast or accurate. Thus, it is particularly relevant to investigate if and how users can train and improve performance. We report data from 29 healthy participants who trained with a 4-choice tactile P300-BCI during five sessions. To identify potential training factors, we pre-post assessed the robustness of the BCI performance against increased workload in a dual task condition and determined the participants’ somatosensory sensitivity thresholds with a forced-choice intensity discrimination task. Accuracy (M = 79.2% to 92.0%) and tactually evoked P300 amplitudes increased significantly, confirming successful training. Pre-post somatosensory sensitivity increased, and workload decreased significantly, but results of the dual task condition remained inconclusive. The present study confirmed the previously reported feasibility and trainability of our tactile BCI paradigm within a multi-session design. Importantly, we provide first evidence of improvement in the somatosensory system as a potential mediator for the observed training effects. KW - Brain–computer interfaces (BCI) KW - training KW - non-visual Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301064 VL - 12 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Eder, Andreas B. A1 - Maas, Franzisca A1 - Schubmann, Alexander A1 - Krishna, Anand A1 - Erle, Thorsten M. T1 - Motivations underlying self-infliction of pain during thinking for pleasure JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Previous research suggested that people prefer to administer unpleasant electric shocks to themselves rather than being left alone with their thoughts because engagement in thinking is an unpleasant activity. The present research examined this negative reinforcement hypothesis by giving participants a choice of distracting themselves with the generation of electric shock causing no to intense pain. Four experiments (N = 254) replicated the result that a large proportion of participants opted to administer painful shocks to themselves during the thinking period. However, they administered strong electric shocks to themselves even when an innocuous response option generating no or a mild shock was available. Furthermore, participants inflicted pain to themselves when they were assisted in the generation of pleasant thoughts during the waiting period, with no difference between pleasant versus unpleasant thought conditions. Overall, these results question that the primary motivation for the self-administration of painful shocks is avoidance of thinking. Instead, it seems that the self-infliction of pain was attractive for many participants, because they were curious about the shocks, their intensities, and the effects they would have on them. KW - pain KW - self-infliction KW - thinking Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301059 VL - 12 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boschet, Juliane M. A1 - Scherbaum, Stefan A1 - Pittig, Andre T1 - Costly avoidance of Pavlovian fear stimuli and the temporal dynamics of its decision process JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Conflicts between avoiding feared stimuli versus approaching them for competing rewards are essential for functional behavior and anxious psychopathology. Yet, little is known about the underlying decision process. We examined approach-avoidance decisions and their temporal dynamics when avoiding Pavlovian fear stimuli conflicted with gaining rewards. First, a formerly neutral stimulus (CS+) was repeatedly paired with an aversive stimulus (US) to establish Pavlovian fear. Another stimulus (CS−) was never paired with the US. A control group received neutral tones instead of aversive USs. Next, in each of 324 trials, participants chose between a CS−/low reward and a CS+/high reward option. For the latter, probability of CS+ presentation (Pavlovian fear information) and reward magnitude (reward information) varied. Computer mouse movements were tracked to capture the decision dynamics. Although no more USs occurred, pronounced and persistent costly avoidance of the Pavlovian fear CS+ was found. Time-continuous multiple regression of movement trajectories revealed a stronger and faster impact of Pavlovian fear compared to reward information during decision-making. The impact of fear information, but not reward information, modestly decreased across trials. These findings suggest a persistently stronger weighting of fear compared to reward information during approach-avoidance decisions, which may facilitate the development of pathological avoidance. KW - decision process KW - fear stimuli KW - approach-avoidance decisions Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301041 VL - 12 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Abendroth, Johanna A1 - Nauroth, Peter A1 - Richter, Tobias A1 - Gollwitzer, Mario T1 - Non-strategic detection of identity-threatening information: Epistemic validation and identity defense may share a common cognitive basis JF - PLoS ONE N2 - Readers use prior knowledge to evaluate the validity of statements and detect false information without effort and strategic control. The present study expands this research by exploring whether people also non-strategically detect information that threatens their social identity. Participants (N = 77) completed a task in which they had to respond to a “True” or “False” probe after reading true, false, identity-threatening, or non-threatening sentences. Replicating previous studies, participants reacted more slowly to a positive probe (“True”) after reading false (vs. true) sentences. Notably, participants also reacted more slowly to a positive probe after reading identity-threatening (vs. non-threatening) sentences. These results provide first evidence that identity-threatening information, just as false information, is detected at a very early stage of information processing and lends support to the notion of a routine, non-strategic identity-defense mechanism. KW - social identity KW - cognitive basis KW - identity defense Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301019 VL - 17 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Breil, Christina A1 - Kanske, Philipp A1 - Pittig, Roxana A1 - Böckler, Anne T1 - A revised instrument for the assessment of empathy and Theory of Mind in adolescents: Introducing the EmpaToM-Y JF - Behavior Research Methods N2 - Empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM) are two core components of social understanding. The EmpaToM is a validated social video task that allows for independent manipulation and assessment of the two capacities. First applications revealed that empathy and ToM are dissociable constructs on a neuronal as well as on a behavioral level. As the EmpaToM has been designed for the assessment of social understanding in adults, it has a high degree of complexity and comprises topics that are inadequate for minors. For this reason, we designed a new version of the EmpaToM that is especially suited to measure empathy and ToM in youths. In experiment 1, we successfully validated the EmpaToM-Y on the original EmpaToM in an adult sample (N = 61), revealing a similar pattern of results across tasks and strong correlations of all constructs. As intended, the performance measure for ToM and the control condition of the EmpaToM-Y showed reduced difficulty. In experiment 2, we tested the feasibility of the EmpaToM-Y in a group of teenagers (N = 36). Results indicate a reliable empathy induction and higher demands of ToM questions for adolescents. We provide a promising task for future research targeting inter-individual variability of socio-cognitive and socio-affective capacities as well as their precursors and outcomes in healthy minors and clinical populations. KW - empathy KW - Theory of Mind KW - social cognition KW - social understanding KW - mentalizing KW - asolescence KW - development Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-302877 VL - 53 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rubo, Marius A1 - Gamer, Matthias T1 - Social content and emotional valence modulate gaze fixations in dynamic scenes JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Previous research has shown that low-level visual features (i.e., low-level visual saliency) as well as socially relevant information predict gaze allocation in free viewing conditions. However, these studies mainly used static and highly controlled stimulus material, thus revealing little about the robustness of attentional processes across diverging situations. Secondly, the influence of affective stimulus characteristics on visual exploration patterns remains poorly understood. Participants in the present study freely viewed a set of naturalistic, contextually rich video clips from a variety of settings that were capable of eliciting different moods. Using recordings of eye movements, we quantified to what degree social information, emotional valence and low-level visual features influenced gaze allocation using generalized linear mixed models. We found substantial and similarly large regression weights for low-level saliency and social information, affirming the importance of both predictor classes under ecologically more valid dynamic stimulation conditions. Differences in predictor strength between individuals were large and highly stable across videos. Additionally, low-level saliency was less important for fixation selection in videos containing persons than in videos not containing persons, and less important for videos perceived as negative. We discuss the generalizability of these findings and the feasibility of applying this research paradigm to patient groups. KW - Human behaviour KW - Motion detection KW - Social neuroscience Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-227106 VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Neszmélyi, Bence A1 - Weller, Lisa A1 - Kunde, Wilfried A1 - Pfister, Roland T1 - Social action effects: representing predicted partner responses in social interactions JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - The sociomotor framework outlines a possible role of social action effects on human action control, suggesting that anticipated partner reactions are a major cue to represent, select, and initiate own body movements. Here, we review studies that elucidate the actual content of social action representations and that explore factors that can distinguish action control processes involving social and inanimate action effects. Specifically, we address two hypotheses on how the social context can influence effect-based action control: first, by providing unique social features such as body-related, anatomical codes, and second, by orienting attention towards any relevant feature dimensions of the action effects. The reviewed empirical work presents a surprisingly mixed picture: while there is indirect evidence for both accounts, previous studies that directly addressed the anatomical account showed no signs of the involvement of genuinely social features in sociomotor action control. Furthermore, several studies show evidence against the differentiation of social and non-social action effect processing, portraying sociomotor action representations as remarkably non-social. A focus on enhancing the social experience in future studies should, therefore, complement the current database to establish whether such settings give rise to the hypothesized influence of social context. KW - motor control KW - action effects KW - action representation KW - sociomotor control KW - ideomotor theory Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-276609 SN - 1662-5161 VL - 16 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gründahl, Marthe A1 - Weiß, Martin A1 - Maier, Lisa A1 - Hewig, Johannes A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Hein, Grit T1 - Construction and validation of a scale to measure loneliness and isolation during social distancing and its effect on mental health JF - Frontiers in Psychiatry N2 - A variety of factors contribute to the degree to which a person feels lonely and socially isolated. These factors may be particularly relevant in contexts requiring social distancing, e.g., during the COVID-19 pandemic or in states of immunodeficiency. We present the Loneliness and Isolation during Social Distancing (LISD) Scale. Extending existing measures, the LISD scale measures both state and trait aspects of loneliness and isolation, including indicators of social connectedness and support. In addition, it reliably predicts individual differences in anxiety and depression. Data were collected online from two independent samples in a social distancing context (the COVID-19 pandemic). Factorial validation was based on exploratory factor analysis (EFA; Sample 1, N = 244) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; Sample 2, N = 304). Multiple regression analyses were used to assess how the LISD scale predicts state anxiety and depression. The LISD scale showed satisfactory fit in both samples. Its two state factors indicate being lonely and isolated as well as connected and supported, while its three trait factors reflect general loneliness and isolation, sociability and sense of belonging, and social closeness and support. Our results imply strong predictive power of the LISD scale for state anxiety and depression, explaining 33 and 51% of variance, respectively. Anxiety and depression scores were particularly predicted by low dispositional sociability and sense of belonging and by currently being more lonely and isolated. In turn, being lonely and isolated was related to being less connected and supported (state) as well as having lower social closeness and support in general (trait). We provide a novel scale which distinguishes between acute and general dimensions of loneliness and social isolation while also predicting mental health. The LISD scale could be a valuable and economic addition to the assessment of mental health factors impacted by social distancing. KW - loneliness KW - social isolation KW - social distancing KW - depression KW - anxiety Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-269446 SN - 1664-0640 VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schiele, Miriam A. A1 - Ziegler, Christiane A1 - Kollert, Leonie A1 - Katzorke, Andrea A1 - Schartner, Christoph A1 - Busch, Yasmin A1 - Gromer, Daniel A1 - Reif, Andreas A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Herrmann, Martin J. A1 - Domschke, Katharina T1 - Plasticity of Functional MAOA Gene Methylation in Acrophobia JF - International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology N2 - Epigenetic mechanisms have been proposed to mediate fear extinction in animal models. Here, MAOA methylation was analyzed via direct sequencing of sodium bisulfite-treated DNA extracted from blood cells before and after a 2-week exposure therapy in a sample of n = 28 female patients with acrophobia as well as in n = 28 matched healthy female controls. Clinical response was measured using the Acrophobia Questionnaire and the Attitude Towards Heights Questionnaire. The functional relevance of altered MAOA methylation was investigated by luciferase-based reporter gene assays. MAOA methylation was found to be significantly decreased in patients with acrophobia compared with healthy controls. Furthermore, MAOA methylation levels were shown to significantly increase after treatment and correlate with treatment response as reflected by decreasing Acrophobia Questionnaire/Attitude Towards Heights Questionnaire scores. Functional analyses revealed decreased reporter gene activity in presence of methylated compared with unmethylated pCpGfree_MAOA reporter gene vector constructs. The present proof-of-concept psychotherapy-epigenetic study for the first time suggests functional MAOA methylation changes as a potential epigenetic correlate of treatment response in acrophobia and fosters further investigation into the notion of epigenetic mechanisms underlying fear extinction. KW - monoamine oxidase A KW - anxiety KW - extinction KW - epigenetics KW - DNA methylation Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-228571 VL - 21 IS - 9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rodrigues, Johannes A1 - Marzban, Dorna A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - The influence of mental imagery expertise of pen and paper players versus computer gamers upon performance and electrocortical correlates in a difficult mental rotation task JF - Symmetry N2 - We investigated the influence of mental imagery expertise in 15 pen and paper role-players as an expert group compared to the gender-matched control group of computer role-players in the difficult Vandenberg and Kuse mental rotation task. In this task, the participants have to decide which two of four rotated figures match the target figure. The dependent measures were performance speed and accuracy. In our exploratory investigation, we further examined midline frontal theta band activation, parietal alpha band activation, and parietal alpha band asymmetry in EEG as indicator for the chosen rotation strategy. Additionally, we explored the gender influence on performance and EEG activation, although a very small female sample section was given. The expected gender difference concerning performance accuracy was negated by expertise in pen and paper role-playing women, while the gender-specific difference in performance speed was preserved. Moreover, gender differences concerning electro-cortical measures revealed differences in rotation strategy, with women using top-down strategies compared to men, who were using top-down strategies and active inhibition of associative cortical areas. These strategy uses were further moderated by expertise, with higher expertise leading to more pronounced activation patters, especially during successful performance. However, due to the very limited sample size, the findings of this explorative study have to be interpreted cautiously. KW - mental rotation KW - expertise in visual imagery KW - pen and paper vs. computer role-players KW - midline frontal theta band frequency activation KW - parietal alpha band frequency activation KW - gender influence KW - EEG Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-252253 SN - 2073-8994 VL - 13 IS - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Franz, David J. T1 - Is Applied Ethics Morally Problematic? JF - Journal of Academic Ethics N2 - This paper argues that applied ethics can itself be morally problematic. As illustrated by the case of Peter Singer’s criticism of social practice, morally loaded communication by applied ethicists can lead to protests, backlashes, and aggression. By reviewing the psychological literature on self-image, collective identity, and motivated reasoning three categories of morally problematic consequences of ethical criticism by applied ethicists are identified: serious psychological discomfort, moral backfiring, and hostile conflict. The most worrisome is moral backfiring: psychological research suggests that ethical criticism of people’s central moral convictions can reinforce exactly those attitudes. Therefore, applied ethicists unintentionally can contribute to a consolidation of precisely those social circumstances that they condemn to be unethical. Furthermore, I argue that the normative concerns raised in this paper are not dependent on the commitment to one specific paradigm in moral philosophy. Utilitarianism, Aristotelian virtue ethics, and Rawlsian contractarianism all provide sound reasons to take morally problematic consequences of ethical criticism seriously. Only the case of deontological ethics is less clear-cut. Finally, I point out that the issues raised in this paper provide an excellent opportunity for further interdisciplinary collaboration between applied ethics and social sciences. I also propose strategies for communicating ethics effectively. KW - consequences of ethical criticism KW - applied ethics KW - motivated reasoning KW - Peter Singer KW - interdisciplinary moral philosophy KW - moral reasoning Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-269095 SN - 1572-8544 VL - 20 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Zetzl, Teresa A1 - Pittig, Andre A1 - Renner, Agnes A1 - van Oorschott, Birgitt A1 - Jentschke, Elisabeth T1 - Yoga therapy to reduce fatigue in cancer: effects of reminder e-mails and long-term efficacy JF - Supportive Care in Cancer N2 - Objective To examine the efficacy of reminder e-mails to continue yoga therapy on practice frequency and fatigue in cancer patients and long-term effects of yoga on fatigue, depression, and quality of life. Methology One hundred two cancer patients who completed an 8-week yoga therapy were randomly allocated to two groups: reminder (N = 51) vs. no-reminder group (N = 51). After completing yoga therapy, the reminder group received weekly e-mails for 24 weeks, which reminded them of practicing yoga, whereas the no-reminder group did not. Primary outcomes were fatigue and practice frequency, and long-term outcomes were fatigue, depression, and quality of life. Data were assessed using questionnaires after yoga therapy (T1) and 6 months after completing yoga therapy (T2). Result A significantly stronger reduction of general (p = 0.038, d = 0.42) and emotional fatigue (p = 0.004, d = 0.59) and a higher increase of practice frequency (p = 0.015, d = 0.52) between T1 and T2 were found for the reminder group compared to the no-reminder group. In the mediation model, practice frequency as a mediator partially explained the changes in emotional fatigue (indirect effect B =  - 0.10). Long-term effects of yoga therapy regarding fatigue, depression, and quality of life were found (F > 7.46, p < 0.001, d > 0.54). Conclusion Weekly reminder e-mails after yoga therapy can positively affect general and emotional fatigue and help cancer patients with fatigue establish a regular yoga practice at home. However, higher practice frequency did not lead to higher physical or cognitive fatigue improvement, suggesting other factors that mediate efficacy on physical or cognitive fatigue, such as mindfulness or side effects of therapy. KW - reminder e-mails KW - mind–body intervention KW - complementary alternative medicine KW - long-term effects KW - Yoga KW - fatigue Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-268415 SN - 1433-7339 VL - 29 IS - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Murali, Supriya A1 - Händel, Barbara T1 - Motor restrictions impair divergent thinking during walking and during sitting JF - Psychological Research N2 - Creativity, specifically divergent thinking, has been shown to benefit from unrestrained walking. Despite these findings, it is not clear if it is the lack of restriction that leads to the improvement. Our goal was to explore the effects of motor restrictions on divergent thinking for different movement states. In addition, we assessed whether spontaneous eye blinks, which are linked to motor execution, also predict performance. In experiment 1, we compared the performance in Guilford's alternate uses task (AUT) during walking vs. sitting, and analysed eye blink rates during both conditions. We found that AUT scores were higher during walking than sitting. Albeit eye blinks differed significantly between movement conditions (walking vs. sitting) and task phase (baseline vs. thinking vs. responding), they did not correlate with task performance. In experiment 2 and 3, participants either walked freely or in a restricted path, or sat freely or fixated on a screen. When the factor restriction was explicitly modulated, the effect of walking was reduced, while restriction showed a significant influence on the fluency scores. Importantly, we found a significant correlation between the rate of eye blinks and creativity scores between subjects, depending on the restriction condition. Our study shows a movement state-independent effect of restriction on divergent thinking. In other words, similar to unrestrained walking, unrestrained sitting also improves divergent thinking. Importantly, we discuss a mechanistic explanation of the effect of restriction on divergent thinking based on the increased size of the focus of attention and the consequent bias towards flexibility. KW - creativity KW - humans KW - sitting KW - walking KW - thinking Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-267722 SN - 1430-2772 VL - 86 IS - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Käthner, Ivo A1 - Eidel, Matthias A1 - Häge, Anne-Sophie A1 - Gram, Annika A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Observing physicians acting with different levels of empathy modulates later assessed pain tolerance JF - British Journal of Health Psychology N2 - Objectives The patient–physician relationship is essential for treatment success. Previous studies demonstrated that physicians who behave empathic in their interaction with patients have a positive effect on health outcomes. In this study, we investigated if the mere perception of physicians as empathic/not empathic modulates pain despite an emotionally neutral interaction with the patients. Methods N = 60 women took part in an experimental study that simulated a clinical interaction. In the paradigm, each participant watched two immersive 360° videos via a head-mounted display from a patient’s perspective. The physicians in the videos behaved either empathic or not empathic towards a third person. Importantly, these physicians remained emotionally neutral in the subsequent virtual interaction with the participants. Finally, participants received a controlled, painful pressure stimulus within the narratives of the videos. Results The physicians in the high compared with the low empathy videos were rated as more empathic and more likable, indicating successful experimental manipulation. In spite of later neutral behaviour of physicians, this short observation of physicians’ behaviour towards a third person was sufficient to modulate pain tolerance of the participants. Conclusions The finding of this study that the mere observation of physicians’ behaviour towards a third person modulates pain, despite a neutral direct interaction with the participants, has important clinical implications. Further, the proposed paradigm enables investigating aspects of patient–physician communication that are difficult to examine in a clinical setting. KW - patient–physician relationship KW - empathy KW - psychology KW - pain KW - 360° videos Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-258368 VL - 27 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pfister, Roland A1 - Foerster, Anna T1 - How to measure post-error slowing: The case of pre-error speeding JF - Behavior Research Methods N2 - Post-error slowing is one of the most widely employed measures to study cognitive and behavioral consequences of error commission. Several methods have been proposed to quantify the post-error slowing effect, and we discuss two main methods: The traditional method of comparing response times in correct post-error trials to response times of correct trials that follow another correct trial, and a more recent proposal of comparing response times in correct post-error trials to the corresponding correct pre-error trials. Based on thorough re-analyses of two datasets, we argue that the latter method provides an inflated estimate by also capturing the (partially) independent effect of pre-error speeding. We propose two solutions for improving the assessment of human error processing, both of which highlight the importance of distinguishing between initial pre-error speeding and later post-error slowing. KW - response-time analysis KW - post-error slowing KW - pre-error speeding KW - performance monitoring Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-273244 SN - 1554-3528 VL - 54 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Kunde, Wilfried A1 - Herbort, Oliver T1 - Impact of proprioception on the perceived size and distance of external objects in a virtual action task JF - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review N2 - Previous research has revealed changes in the perception of objects due to changes of object-oriented actions. In present study, we varied the arm and finger postures in the context of a virtual reaching and grasping task and tested whether this manipulation can simultaneously affect the perceived size and distance of external objects. Participants manually controlled visual cursors, aiming at reaching and enclosing a distant target object, and judged the size and distance of this object. We observed that a visual-proprioceptive discrepancy introduced during the reaching part of the action simultaneously affected the judgments of target distance and of target size (Experiment 1). A related variation applied to the grasping part of the action affected the judgments of size, but not of distance of the target (Experiment 2). These results indicate that perceptual effects observed in the context of actions can directly arise through sensory integration of multimodal redundant signals and indirectly through perceptual constancy mechanisms. KW - visual perception KW - motor control KW - object-oriented actions Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-273235 SN - 1531-5320 VL - 28 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Breil, Christina A1 - Huestegge, Lynn A1 - Böckler, Anne T1 - From eye to arrow: Attention capture by direct gaze requires more than just the eyes JF - Attention, Perception & Psychophysics N2 - Human attention is strongly attracted by direct gaze and sudden onset motion. The sudden direct-gaze effect refers to the processing advantage for targets appearing on peripheral faces that suddenly establish eye contact. Here, we investigate the necessity of social information for attention capture by (sudden onset) ostensive cues. Six experiments involving 204 participants applied (1) naturalistic faces, (2) arrows, (3) schematic eyes, (4) naturalistic eyes, or schematic facial configurations (5) without or (6) with head turn to an attention-capture paradigm. Trials started with two stimuli oriented towards the observer and two stimuli pointing into the periphery. Simultaneous to target presentation, one direct stimulus changed to averted and one averted stimulus changed to direct, yielding a 2 × 2 factorial design with direction and motion cues being absent or present. We replicated the (sudden) direct-gaze effect for photographic faces, but found no corresponding effects in Experiments 2-6. Hence, a holistic and socially meaningful facial context seems vital for attention capture by direct gaze. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: The present study highlights the significance of context information for social attention. Our findings demonstrate that the direct-gaze effect, that is, the prioritization of direct gaze over averted gaze, critically relies on the presentation of a meaningful holistic and naturalistic facial context. This pattern of results is evidence in favor of early effects of surrounding social information on attention capture by direct gaze. KW - social interaction KW - social cognition KW - attention capture KW - direct gaze KW - social cues KW - face perception Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-273206 SN - 1943-393X VL - 84 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Klaffehn, Annika L. A1 - Sellmann, Florian B. A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Kunde, Wilfried A1 - Pfister, Roland T1 - Temporal binding as multisensory integration: Manipulating perceptual certainty of actions and their effects JF - Attention, Perception & Psychophysics N2 - It has been proposed that statistical integration of multisensory cues may be a suitable framework to explain temporal binding, that is, the finding that causally related events such as an action and its effect are perceived to be shifted towards each other in time. A multisensory approach to temporal binding construes actions and effects as individual sensory signals, which are each perceived with a specific temporal precision. When they are integrated into one multimodal event, like an action-effect chain, the extent to which they affect this event's perception depends on their relative reliability. We test whether this assumption holds true in a temporal binding task by manipulating certainty of actions and effects. Two experiments suggest that a relatively uncertain sensory signal in such action-effect sequences is shifted more towards its counterpart than a relatively certain one. This was especially pronounced for temporal binding of the action towards its effect but could also be shown for effect binding. Other conceptual approaches to temporal binding cannot easily explain these results, and the study therefore adds to the growing body of evidence endorsing a multisensory approach to temporal binding. KW - temporal processing KW - perception and action KW - multisensory processing Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-273195 SN - 1943-393X VL - 83 IS - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir T1 - On the relevance of task instructions for the influence of action on perception JF - Attention, Perception & Psychophysics N2 - The present study explored how task instructions mediate the impact of action on perception. Participants saw a target object while performing finger movements. Then either the size of the target or the size of the adopted finger postures was judged. The target judgment was attracted by the adopted finger posture indicating sensory integration of body-related and visual signals. The magnitude of integration, however, depended on how the task was initially described. It was substantially larger when the experimental instructions indicated that finger movements and the target object relate to the same event than when they suggested that they are unrelated. This outcome highlights the role of causal inference processes in the emergence of action specific influences in perception. KW - perception and action KW - multisensory processing KW - finger movements Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-273185 SN - 1943-393X VL - 83 IS - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirsch, Wladimir A1 - Kitzmann, Tim A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Action affects perception through modulation of attention JF - Attention, Perception & Psychophysics N2 - The present study explored the origin of perceptual changes repeatedly observed in the context of actions. In Experiment 1, participants tried to hit a circular target with a stylus movement under restricted feedback conditions. We measured the perception of target size during action planning and observed larger estimates for larger movement distances. In Experiment 2, we then tested the hypothesis that this action specific influence on perception is due to changes in the allocation of spatial attention. For this purpose, we replaced the hitting task by conditions of focused and distributed attention and measured the perception of the former target stimulus. The results revealed changes in the perceived stimulus size very similar to those observed in Experiment 1. These results indicate that action's effects on perception root in changes of spatial attention. KW - perception KW - action KW - attention Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-273176 SN - 1943-393X VL - 83 IS - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Seger, Benedikt T. A1 - Wannagat, Wienke A1 - Nieding, Gerhild T1 - Children’s surface, textbase, and situation model representations of written and illustrated written narrative text JF - Reading and Writing N2 - According to the tripartite model of text representation (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983), readers form representations of the text surface and textbase, and construct a situation model. In this study, an experiment was conducted to investigate whether these levels of representation would be affected by adding illustrations to narrative text and whether the order of text and illustrations would make a difference. Students aged between 7 and 13 years (N = 146) read 12 narrative texts, 4 of them with illustrations presented before their corresponding sentences, 4 with illustrations presented after, and 4 without any illustration. A sentence recognition task was used to assess the accuracy for text surface, textbase, and situation model. For the text surface and situation model, neither the presence of illustrations nor the order of text and illustrations influenced accuracy. However, the textbase was negatively affected by illustrations when they followed their corresponding sentences. We suggest that illustrations can initiate model inspection after situation model construction (Schnotz, 2014), a process that can make substantial changes to the textbase representation. KW - piicture comprehension KW - text comprehension KW - narrative text KW - children Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-269813 SN - 1573-0905 VL - 34 IS - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiemer, Julian A1 - Rauner, Milena M. A1 - Stegmann, Yannik A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Reappraising fear: is up-regulation more efficient than down-regulation? JF - Motivation and Emotion N2 - Catastrophizing thoughts may contribute to the development of anxiety, but functional emotion regulation may help to improve treatment. No study so far directly compared up- and down-regulation of fear by cognitive reappraisal. Here, healthy individuals took part in a cued fear experiment, in which multiple pictures of faces were paired twice with an unpleasant scream or presented as safety stimuli. Participants (N = 47) were asked (within-subjects) to down-regulate, to up-regulate and to maintain their natural emotional response. Valence and arousal ratings indicated successful up- and down-regulation of the emotional experience, while heart rate and pupil dilation increased during up-regulation, but showed no reduction in down-regulation. State and trait anxiety correlated with evaluations of safety but not threat stimuli, which supports the role of deficient safety learning in anxiety. Reappraisal did not modulate this effect. In conclusion, this study reveals evidence for up-regulation effects in fear, which might be even more efficient than down-regulation on a physiological level and highlights the importance of catastrophizing thoughts for the maintenance of fear and anxiety. KW - anxiety KW - fear conditioning KW - cognitive reappraisal KW - pupil diameter KW - heart rate Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-269187 SN - 1573-6644 VL - 45 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wong, Alex H. K. A1 - Pittig, Andre T1 - A dimensional measure of safety behavior: A non-dichotomous assessment of costly avoidance in human fear conditioning JF - Psychological Research N2 - Safety behavior prevents the occurrence of threat, thus it is typically considered adaptive. However, safety behavior in anxiety-related disorders is often costly, and persists even the situation does not entail realistic threat. Individuals can engage in safety behavior to varying extents, however, these behaviors are typically measured dichotomously (i.e., to execute or not). To better understand the nuances of safety behavior, this study developed a dimensional measure of safety behavior that had a negative linear relationship with the admission of an aversive outcome. In two experiments, a Reward group receiving fixed or individually calibrated incentives competing with safety behavior showed reduced safety behavior than a Control group receiving no incentives. This allowed extinction learning to a previously learnt warning signal in the Reward group (i.e., updating the belief that this stimulus no longer signals threat). Despite the Reward group exhibited extinction learning, both groups showed a similar increase in fear to the warning signal once safety behavior was no longer available. This null group difference was due to some participants in the Reward group not incentivized enough to disengage from safety behavior. Dimensional assessment revealed a dissociation between low fear but substantial safety behavior to a safety signal in the Control group. This suggests that low-cost safety behavior does not accurately reflect the fear-driven processes, but also other non-fear-driven processes, such as cost (i.e., engage in safety behavior merely because it bears little to no cost). Pinpointing both processes is important for furthering the understanding of safety behavior. KW - safety behavior KW - anxiety KW - threat Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-267688 SN - 1430-2772 VL - 86 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Liesner, Marvin A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Environment-Related and Body-Related Components of the Minimal Self JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Perceptual changes that an agent produces by efferent activity can become part of the agent’s minimal self. Yet, in human agents, efferent activities produce perceptual changes in various sensory modalities and in various temporal and spatial proximities. Some of these changes occur at the “biological” body, and they are to some extent conveyed by “private” sensory signals, whereas other changes occur in the environment of that biological body and are conveyed by “public” sensory signals. We discuss commonalties and differences of these signals for generating selfhood. We argue that despite considerable functional overlap of these sensory signals in generating self-experience, there are reasons to tell them apart in theorizing and empirical research about development of the self. KW - active self KW - exteroception KW - ideomotor theory KW - interoception KW - minimal self KW - self-construction KW - sense of agency KW - sense of ownership Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-250007 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hein, Grit A1 - Gamer, Matthias A1 - Gall, Dominik A1 - Gründahl, Marthe A1 - Domschke, Katharina A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Social cognitive factors outweigh negative emotionality in predicting COVID-19 related safety behaviors JF - Preventive Medicine Reports N2 - Emotion-motivation models propose that behaviors, including health behaviors, should be predicted by the same variables that also predict negative affect since emotional reactions should induce a motivation to avoid threatening situations. In contrast, social cognitive models propose that safety behaviors are predicted by a different set of variables that mainly reflect cognitive and socio-structural aspects. Here, we directly tested these opposing hypotheses in young adults (N = 4134) in the context of COVID-19-related safety behaviors to prevent infections. In each participant, we collected measures of negative affect as well as cognitive and socio-structural variables during the lockdown in the first infection wave in Germany. We found a negative effect of the pandemic on emotional responses. However, this was not the main predictor for young adults’ willingness to comply with COVID-19-related safety measures. Instead, individual differences in compliance were mainly predicted by cognitive and socio-structural variables. These results were confirmed in an independent data set. This study shows that individuals scoring high on negative affect during the pandemic are not necessarily more likely to comply with safety regulations. Instead, political measures should focus on cognitive interventions and the societal relevance of the health issue. These findings provide important insights into the basis of health-related concerns and feelings as well as behavioral adaptations. KW - social cognitive KW - negative affect KW - safety behavior KW - survey KW - COVID-19 Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-265008 VL - 24 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Krishna, Anand A1 - Rodrigues, Johannes A1 - Mitschke, Vanessa A1 - Eder, Andreas B. T1 - Self-reported mask-related worrying reduces relative avoidance bias toward unmasked faces in individuals with low Covid19 anxiety syndrome JF - Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications N2 - Facial masks have become and may remain ubiquitous. Though important for preventing infection, they may also serve as a reminder of the risks of disease. Thus, they may either act as cues for threat, priming avoidance-related behavior, or as cues for a safe interaction, priming social approach. To distinguish between these possibilities, we assessed implicit and explicit evaluations of masked individuals as well as avoidance bias toward relatively unsafe interactions with unmasked individuals in an approach-avoidance task in an online study. We further assessed Covid19 anxiety and specific attitudes toward mask-wearing, including mask effectiveness and desirability, hindrance of communication from masks, aesthetic appeal of masks, and mask-related worrying. Across one sample of younger (18–35 years, N = 147) and one of older adults (60+ years, N = 150), we found neither an average approach nor avoidance bias toward mask-wearing compared to unmasked individuals in the indirect behavior measurement task. However, across the combined sample, self-reported mask-related worrying correlated with reduced avoidance tendencies toward unmasked individuals when Covid19 anxiety was low, but not when it was high. This relationship was specific to avoidance tendencies and was not observed in respect to explicit or implicit preference for mask-wearing individuals. We conclude that unsafe interaction styles may be reduced by targeting mask-related worrying with public interventions, in particular for populations that otherwise have low generalized Covid19 anxiety. KW - approach-avoidance KW - Covid19 KW - masks KW - anxiety Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-265720 VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cao, Liyu A1 - Steinborn, Michael B. A1 - Haendel, Barbara F. T1 - Delusional thinking and action binding in healthy individuals JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Action binding is the effect that the perceived time of an action is shifted towards the action related feedback. A much larger action binding effect in schizophrenia compared to normal controls has been shown, which might be due to positive symptoms like delusions. Here we investigated the relationship between delusional thinking and action binding in healthy individuals, predicting a positive correlation between them. The action binding effect was evaluated by comparing the perceived time of a keypress between an operant (keypress triggering a sound) and a baseline condition (keypress alone), with a novel testing method that massively improved the precision of the subjective timing measurement. A positive correlation was found between the tendency of delusional thinking (measured by the 21-item Peters et al. delusions inventory) and action binding across participants after controlling for the effect of testing order between operant and baseline conditions. The results indicate that delusional thinking in particular influences action time perception and support the notion of a continuous distribution of schizotypal traits with normal controls at one end and clinical patients at the other end. KW - cognitive neuroscience KW - psychology Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-264707 VL - 11 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Krishna, Anand A1 - Ried, Sophia A1 - Meixner, Marie T1 - State-trait interactions in regulatory focus determine impulse buying behavior JF - PLoS One N2 - Little research has focused on motivational state-trait interactions to explain impulse buying. Although the trait chronic regulatory focus has been linked to impulse buying, no evidence yet exists for an effect of situational regulatory focus and no research has examined whether the fit of chronic and situational regulatory focus can influence impulse buying with actual consumptive consequences rather than purchase intentions. Two laboratory experiments (total N = 250) manipulated situational regulatory focus before providing opportunities for impulse buying. In addition, cognitive constraint was manipulated as a potential boundary condition for regulatory focus effects. Situational promotion focus increased impulse buying relative to situational prevention focus in participants with strong chronic promotion, consistent with regulatory fit theory and independently of cognitive constraint. Surprisingly, situational promotion focus also increased impulse buying in participants with strong chronic prevention, but only under low cognitive constraint. These results may be explained by diverging mediating cognitive processes for promotion vs. prevention focus' effect on impulse buying. Future research must focus more on combining relevant states and traits in predicting consumer behavior. Marketing implications are discussed. KW - behavior KW - cognition KW - cognitive psychology KW - motivation KW - open science KW - emotions KW - marketing KW - owls Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-261206 VL - 16 IS - 7 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tibken, Catharina A1 - Richter, Tobias A1 - Linden, Nicole von der A1 - Schmiedeler, Sandra A1 - Schneider, Wolfgang T1 - The role of metacognitive competences in the development of school achievement among gifted adolescents JF - Child Development N2 - Gifted underachievers perform worse in school than would be expected based on their high intelligence. Possible causes for underachievement are low motivational dispositions (need for cognition) and metacognitive competences. This study tested the interplay of these variables longitudinally with gifted and non-gifted students from Germany (N = 341, 137 females) in Grades 6 (M = 12.02 years at t1) and 8 (M = 14.07 years). Declarative and procedural metacognitive competences were assessed in the domain of reading comprehension. Path analyses showed incremental effects of procedural metacognition over and above intelligence on the development of school achievement in gifted students (β = .139). Moreover, declarative metacognition and need for cognition interactively predicted procedural metacognition (β = .169), which mediated their effect on school achievement. KW - metacognitive competences KW - high intelligence KW - school Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-258376 VL - 93 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kirschmann, Nicole A1 - Lenhard, Wolfgang A1 - Suggate, Sebastian T1 - Influences from working memory, word and sentence reading on passage comprehension and teacher ratings JF - Journal of Research in Reading N2 - Reading fluency is a major determinant of reading comprehension but depends on moderating factors such as auditory working memory (AWM), word recognition and sentence reading skills. We investigated how word and sentence reading skills relate to reading comprehension differentially across the first 6 years of schooling and tested which reading variable best predicted teacher judgements. We conducted our research in a rather transparent language, namely, German, drawing on two different data sets. The first was derived from the normative sample of a reading comprehension test (ELFE-II), including 2056 first to sixth graders with readings tests at the word, sentence and text level. The second sample included 114 students from second to fourth grade. The latter completed a series of tests that measured word and sentence reading fluency, pseudoword reading, AWM, reading comprehension, self-concept and teacher ratings. We analysed the data via hierarchical regression analyses to predict reading comprehension and teacher judgements. The impact of reading fluency was strongest in second and third grade, afterwards superseded by sentence comprehension. AWM significantly contributed to reading comprehension independently of reading fluency, whereas basic decoding skills disappeared after considering fluency. Students' AWM and reading comprehension predicted teacher judgements on reading fluency. Reading comprehension judgements depended both on the students' self-concept and reading comprehension. Our results underline that the role of word reading accuracy for reading comprehension quickly diminishes during elementary school and that teachers base their assessments mainly on the current reading comprehension skill. KW - word recognition KW - reading skills KW - reading comprehension KW - teacher assessments KW - passage comprehension Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-258043 VL - 44 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Stegmann, Yannik A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Wieser, Matthias J. T1 - Associative learning shapes visual discrimination in a web-based classical conditioning task JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Threat detection plays a vital role in adapting behavior to changing environments. A fundamental function to improve threat detection is learning to differentiate between stimuli predicting danger and safety. Accordingly, aversive learning should lead to enhanced sensory discrimination of danger and safety cues. However, studies investigating the psychophysics of visual and auditory perception after aversive learning show divergent findings, and both enhanced and impaired discrimination after aversive learning have been reported. Therefore, the aim of this web-based study is to examine the impact of aversive learning on a continuous measure of visual discrimination. To this end, 205 participants underwent a differential fear conditioning paradigm before and after completing a visual discrimination task using differently oriented grating stimuli. Participants saw either unpleasant or neutral pictures as unconditioned stimuli (US). Results demonstrated sharpened visual discrimination for the US-associated stimulus (CS+), but not for the unpaired conditioned stimuli (CS-). Importantly, this finding was irrespective of the US's valence. These findings suggest that associative learning results in increased stimulus salience, which facilitates perceptual discrimination in order to prioritize attentional deployment. KW - classical conditioning KW - fear conditioning KW - psychology KW - sensory processing KW - visual system Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-260480 VL - 11 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mitschke, Vanessa A1 - Eder, Andreas B. T1 - Facing the enemy: Spontaneous facial reactions towards suffering opponents JF - Psychophysiology N2 - The suffering of an opponent is an important social affective cue that modulates how aggressive interactions progress. To investigate the affective consequences of opponent suffering on a revenge seeking individual, two experiments (total N = 82) recorded facial muscle activity while participants observed the reaction of a provoking opponent to a (retaliatory) sound punishment in a laboratory aggression task. Opponents reacted via prerecorded videos either with facial displays of pain, sadness, or neutrality. Results indicate that participants enjoyed seeing the provocateur suffer: indexed by a coordinated muscle response featuring an increase in zygomaticus major (and orbicularis oculi muscle) activation accompanied by a decrease in corrugator supercilii activation. This positive facial reaction was only shown while a provoking opponent expressed pain. Expressions of sadness, and administration of sound blasts to nonprovoking opponents, did not modulate facial activity. Overall, the results suggest that revenge-seeking individuals enjoy observing the offender suffer, which could represent schadenfreude or satisfaction of having succeeded in the retaliation goal. KW - suffering KW - facial electromyography KW - facial expression KW - reactive aggression KW - revenge Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-259672 VL - 58 IS - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kleih-Dahms, Sonja Christina A1 - Botrel, Loic A1 - Kübler, Andrea T1 - The influence of motivation and emotion on sensorimotor rhythm-based brain-computer interface performance JF - Psychophysiology N2 - While decades of research have investigated and technically improved brain–computer interface (BCI)-controlled applications, relatively little is known about the psychological aspects of brain–computer interfacing. In 35 healthy students, we investigated whether extrinsic motivation manipulated via monetary reward and emotional state manipulated via video and music would influence behavioral and psychophysiological measures of performance with a sensorimotor rhythm (SMR)-based BCI. We found increased task-related brain activity in extrinsically motivated (rewarded) as compared with nonmotivated participants but no clear effect of emotional state manipulation. Our experiment investigated the short-term effect of motivation and emotion manipulation in a group of young healthy subjects, and thus, the significance for patients in the locked-in state, who may be in need of a BCI, remains to be investigated. KW - brain-computer interface KW - sensorimotor rhythm KW - psychological variables KW - motivation KW - emotional state KW - electroencephalogram Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-259664 VL - 58 IS - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gromer, Daniel A1 - Kiser, Dominik P. A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Thigmotaxis in a virtual human open field test JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Animal models are used to study neurobiological mechanisms in mental disorders. Although there has been significant progress in the understanding of neurobiological underpinnings of threat-related behaviors and anxiety, little progress was made with regard to new or improved treatments for mental disorders. A possible reason for this lack of success is the unknown predictive and cross-species translational validity of animal models used in preclinical studies. Re-translational approaches, therefore, seek to establish cross-species translational validity by identifying behavioral operations shared across species. To this end, we implemented a human open field test in virtual reality and measured behavioral indices derived from animal studies in three experiments (N=31, N=30, and N=80). In addition, we investigated the associations between anxious traits and such behaviors. Results indicated a strong similarity in behavior across species, i.e., participants in our study-like rodents in animal studies-preferred to stay in the outer region of the open field, as indexed by multiple behavioral parameters. However, correlational analyses did not clearly indicate that these behaviors were a function of anxious traits of participants. We conclude that the realized virtual open field test is able to elicit thigmotaxis and thus demonstrates cross-species validity of this aspect of the test. Modulatory effects of anxiety on human open field behavior should be examined further by incorporating possible threats in the virtual scenario and/or by examining participants with higher anxiety levels or anxiety disorder patients. KW - anxiety KW - human behavior KW - anciety-like behavior KW - approach-avoidance conflict KW - elevated plus-maze KW - spatial navigation KW - mental disorders KW - fear KW - threat KW - circuits KW - reality KW - metaanalysis Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-259850 VL - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Berti, Stefan A1 - Vossel, Gerhard A1 - Gamer, Matthias T1 - The orienting response in healthy aging: Novelty P3 indicates no general decline but reduced efficacy for fast stimulation rates JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Automatic orienting to unexpected changes in the environment is a pre-requisite for adaptive behavior. One prominent mechanism of automatic attentional control is the Orienting Response (OR). Despite the fundamental significance of the OR in everyday life, only little is known about how the OR is affected by healthy aging. We tested this question in two age groups (19–38 and 55–72 years) and measured skin-conductance responses (SCRs) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to novels (i.e., short environmental sounds presented only once in the experiment; 10% of the trials) compared to standard sounds (600 Hz sinusoidal tones with 200 ms duration; 90% of the trials). Novel and standard stimuli were presented in four conditions differing in the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) with a mean ISI of either 10, 3, 1, or 0.5 s (blocked presentation). In both age groups, pronounced SCRs were elicited by novels in the 10 s ISI condition, suggesting the elicitation of stable ORs. These effects were accompanied by pronounced N1 and frontal P3 amplitudes in the ERP, suggesting that automatic novelty processing and orientation of attention are effective in both age groups. Furthermore, the SCR and ERP effects declined with decreasing ISI length. In addition, differences between the two groups were observable with the fastest presentation rates (i.e., 1 and 0.5 s ISI length). The most prominent difference was a shift of the peak of the frontal positivity from around 300 to 200 ms in the 19–38 years group while in the 55–72 years group the amplitude of the frontal P3 decreased linearly with decreasing ISI length. Taken together, this pattern of results does not suggest a general decline in processing efficacy with healthy aging. At least with very rare changes (here, the novels in the 10 s ISI condition) the OR is as effective in healthy older adults as in younger adults. With faster presentation rates, however, the efficacy of the OR decreases. This seems to result in a switch from novelty to deviant processing in younger adults, but less so in the group of older adults. KW - psychology KW - attention KW - change detection KW - auditory system KW - novelty processing KW - event-related potential (ERP) KW - P300 KW - skin conductance response (SCR) Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-173651 VL - 8 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Pittig, Andre A1 - Heinig, Ingmar A1 - Goerigk, Stephan A1 - Thiel, Freya A1 - Hummel, Katrin A1 - Scholl, Lucie A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Domschke, Katharina A1 - Lueken, Ulrike A1 - Fydrich, Thomas A1 - Fehm, Lydia A1 - Plag, Jens A1 - Ströhle, Andreas A1 - Kircher, Tilo A1 - Straube, Benjamin A1 - Rief, Winfried A1 - Koelkebeck, Katja A1 - Arolt, Volker A1 - Dannlowski, Udo A1 - Margraf, Jürgen A1 - Totzeck, Christina A1 - Schneider, Silvia A1 - Neudeck, Peter A1 - Craske, Michelle G. A1 - Hollandt, Maike A1 - Richter, Jan A1 - Hamm, Alfons A1 - Wittchen, Hans-Ulrich T1 - Efficacy of temporally intensified exposure for anxiety disorders: A multicenter randomized clinical trial JF - Depression and Anxiety N2 - Background The need to optimize exposure treatments for anxiety disorders may be addressed by temporally intensified exposure sessions. Effects on symptom reduction and public health benefits should be examined across different anxiety disorders with comorbid conditions. Methods This multicenter randomized controlled trial compared two variants of prediction error-based exposure therapy (PeEx) in various anxiety disorders (both 12 sessions + 2 booster sessions, 100 min/session): temporally intensified exposure (PeEx-I) with exposure sessions condensed to 2 weeks (n = 358) and standard nonintensified exposure (PeEx-S) with weekly exposure sessions (n = 368). Primary outcomes were anxiety symptoms (pre, post, and 6-months follow-up). Secondary outcomes were global severity (across sessions), quality of life, disability days, and comorbid depression. Results Both treatments resulted in substantial improvements at post (PeEx-I: d\(_{within}\) = 1.50, PeEx-S: d\(_{within}\) = 1.78) and follow-up (PeEx-I: d\(_{within}\) = 2.34; PeEx-S: d\(_{within}\) = 2.03). Both groups showed formally equivalent symptom reduction at post and follow-up. However, time until response during treatment was 32% shorter in PeEx-I (median = 68 days) than PeEx-S (108 days; TR\(_{PeEx-I}\)-I = 0.68). Interestingly, drop-out rates were lower during intensified exposure. PeEx-I was also superior in reducing disability days and improving quality of life at follow-up without increasing relapse. Conclusions Both treatment variants focusing on the transdiagnostic exposure-based violation of threat beliefs were effective in reducing symptom severity and disability in severe anxiety disorders. Temporally intensified exposure resulted in faster treatment response with substantial public health benefits and lower drop-out during the exposure phase, without higher relapse. Clinicians can expect better or at least comparable outcomes when delivering exposure in a temporally intensified manner. KW - randomized controlled trial KW - anxiety disorders KW - exposure therapy KW - intensified treatment KW - public health Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-257331 VL - 38 IS - 11 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Muth, Felicitas V. A1 - Heilig, Michael A1 - Marquardt, Dorothea A1 - Mittelberg, Linda A1 - Sebald, Albrecht A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - Lightness perception of structured surfaces JF - Color Research and Application N2 - Visual perception of surfaces is of utmost importance in everyday life. Therefore, it comes naturally, that different surface structures evoke different visual impressions in the viewer even if the material underlying these surface structures is the same. This topic is especially virulent for manufacturing processes in which more than one stakeholder is involved, but where the final product needs to meet certain criteria. A common practice to address such slight but perceivable differences in the visual appearance of structured surfaces is that trained evaluators assess the samples and assign a pass or fail. However, this process is both time consuming and cost intensive. Thus, we conducted two studies to analyze the relationship between physical surface structure parameters and participants visual assessment of the samples. With the first experiment, we aimed at uncovering a relationship between physical roughness parameters and visual lightness perception while the second experiment was designed to test participants' discrimination sensitivity across the range of stimuli. Perceived lightness and the measured surface roughness were nonlinearly related to the surface structure. Additionally, we found a linear relationship between the engraving parameter and physical brightness. Surface structure was an ideal predictor for perceived lightness and participants discriminated equally well across the entire range of surface structures. KW - surface structure KW - appearance KW - color perception KW - maximum likelihood difference scaling KW - psychophysics Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-257314 VL - 47 IS - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ghafoor, Hina A1 - Nordbeck, Peter A1 - Ritter, Oliver A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Schulz, Stefan M. T1 - Can Religiosity and Social Support Explain Effects of Trait Emotional Intelligence on Health-Related Quality of Life: A Cross-Cultural Study JF - Journal of Religion and Health N2 - Religion and social support along with trait emotional intelligence (EI) help individuals to reduce stress caused by difficult situations. Their implications may vary across cultures in reference to predicting health-related quality of life (HRQoL). A convenience sample of N = 200 chronic heart failure (CHF) patients was recruited at cardiology centers in Germany (n = 100) and Pakistan (n = 100). Results indicated that trait-EI predicted better mental component of HRQoL in Pakistani and German CHF patients. Friends as social support appeared relevant for German patients only. Qualitative data indicate an internal locus of control in German as compared to Pakistani patients. Strengthening the beneficial role of social support in Pakistani patients is one example of how the current findings may inspire culture-specific treatment to empower patients dealing with the detrimental effects of CHF. KW - cross-cultural comparison KW - chronic heart failure KW - religion KW - social support KW - trait emotional intelligence KW - health-related quality of life Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-232823 SN - 0022-4197 VL - 61 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Madeira, Octavia A1 - Gromer, Daniel A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Effects of Acrophobic Fear and Trait Anxiety on Human Behavior in a Virtual Elevated Plus-Maze JF - Frontiers in Virtual Reality N2 - The Elevated Plus-Maze (EPM) is a well-established apparatus to measure anxiety in rodents, i.e., animals exhibiting an increased relative time spent in the closed vs. the open arms are considered anxious. To examine whether such anxiety-modulated behaviors are conserved in humans, we re-translated this paradigm to a human setting using virtual reality in a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) system. In two studies, we examined whether the EPM exploration behavior of humans is modulated by their trait anxiety and also assessed the individuals’ levels of acrophobia (fear of height), claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces), sensation seeking, and the reported anxiety when on the maze. First, we constructed an exact virtual copy of the animal EPM adjusted to human proportions. In analogy to animal EPM studies, participants (N = 30) freely explored the EPM for 5 min. In the second study (N = 61), we redesigned the EPM to make it more human-adapted and to differentiate influences of trait anxiety and acrophobia by introducing various floor textures and lower walls of closed arms to the height of standard handrails. In the first experiment, hierarchical regression analyses of exploration behavior revealed the expected association between open arm avoidance and Trait Anxiety, an even stronger association with acrophobic fear. In the second study, results revealed that acrophobia was associated with avoidance of open arms with mesh-floor texture, whereas for trait anxiety, claustrophobia, and sensation seeking, no effect was detected. Also, subjects’ fear rating was moderated by all psychometrics but trait anxiety. In sum, both studies consistently indicate that humans show no general open arm avoidance analogous to rodents and that human EPM behavior is modulated strongest by acrophobic fear, whereas trait anxiety plays a subordinate role. Thus, we conclude that the criteria for cross-species validity are met insufficiently in this case. Despite the exploratory nature, our studies provide in-depth insights into human exploration behavior on the virtual EPM. KW - elevated plus-maze KW - EPM KW - anxiety KW - virtual reality KW - translational neuroscience KW - acrophobia KW - trait anxiety Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-258709 VL - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Winter, Carla A1 - Kern, Florian A1 - Gall, Dominik A1 - Latoschik, Marc Erich A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Käthner, Ivo T1 - Immersive virtual reality during gait rehabilitation increases walking speed and motivation: a usability evaluation with healthy participants and individuals with multiple sclerosis and stroke JF - Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation N2 - Background: The rehabilitation of gait disorders in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and stroke is often based on conventional treadmill training. Virtual reality (VR)-based treadmill training can increase motivation and improve therapy outcomes. The present study evaluated an immersive virtual reality application (using a head-mounted display, HMD) for gait rehabilitation with patients to (1) demonstrate its feasibility and acceptance and to (2) compare its short-term effects to a semi-immersive presentation (using a monitor) and a conventional treadmill training without VR to assess the usability of both systems and estimate the effects on walking speed and motivation. Methods: In a within-subjects study design, 36 healthy participants and 14 persons with MS or stroke participated in each of the three experimental conditions (VR via HMD, VR via monitor, treadmill training without VR). Results: For both groups, the walking speed in the HMD condition was higher than in treadmill training without VR and in the monitor condition. Healthy participants reported a higher motivation after the HMD condition as compared with the other conditions. Importantly, no side effects in the sense of simulator sickness occurred and usability ratings were high. No increases in heart rate were observed following the VR conditions. Presence ratings were higher for the HMD condition compared with the monitor condition for both user groups. Most of the healthy study participants (89%) and patients (71%) preferred the HMD-based training among the three conditions and most patients could imagine using it more frequently. Conclusions For the first time, the present study evaluated the usability of an immersive VR system for gait rehabilitation in a direct comparison with a semi-immersive system and a conventional training without VR with healthy participants and patients. The study demonstrated the feasibility of combining a treadmill training with immersive VR. Due to its high usability and low side effects, it might be particularly suited for patients to improve training motivation and training outcome e. g. the walking speed compared with treadmill training using no or only semi-immersive VR. Immersive VR systems still require specific technical setup procedures. This should be taken into account for specific clinical use-cases during a cost-benefit assessment. KW - rehabilitation KW - gait disorder KW - virtual reality KW - multiple sclerosis KW - stroke KW - head-mounted display KW - motivation Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-258698 SN - 1743-0003 VL - 18 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Liesner, Marvin A1 - Hinz, Nina-Alisa A1 - Kunde, Wilfried T1 - How Action Shapes Body Ownership Momentarily and Throughout the Lifespan JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Objects which a human agent controls by efferent activities (such as real or virtual tools) can be perceived by the agent as belonging to his or her body. This suggests that what an agent counts as “body” is plastic, depending on what she or he controls. Yet there are possible limitations for such momentary plasticity. One of these limitations is that sensations stemming from the body (e.g., proprioception) and sensations stemming from objects outside the body (e.g., vision) are not integrated if they do not sufficiently “match”. What “matches” and what does not is conceivably determined by long–term experience with the perceptual changes that body movements typically produce. Children have accumulated less sensorimotor experience than adults have. Consequently, they express higher flexibility to integrate body-internal and body-external signals, independent of their “match” as suggested by rubber hand illusion studies. However, children’s motor performance in tool use is more affected by mismatching body-internal and body-external action effects than that of adults, possibly because of less developed means to overcome such mismatches. We review research on perception-action interactions, multisensory integration, and developmental psychology to build bridges between these research fields. By doing so, we account for the flexibility of the sense of body ownership for actively controlled events and its development through ontogeny. This gives us the opportunity to validate the suggested mechanisms for generating ownership by investigating their effects in still developing and incomplete stages in children. We suggest testable predictions for future studies investigating both body ownership and motor skills throughout the lifespan. KW - body ownership KW - attentional reweighting KW - children KW - haptic neglect KW - ideomotor theory KW - ontogeny KW - perception and action Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-241869 SN - 1662-5161 VL - 15 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Greving, Carla Elisabeth A1 - Richter, Tobias T1 - Beyond the Distributed Practice Effect: Is Distributed Learning Also Effective for Learning With Non-repeated Text Materials? JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Distributed learning is often recommended as a general learning strategy, but previous research has established its benefits mainly for learning with repeated materials. In two experiments, we investigated distributed learning with complementary text materials. 77 (Experiment 1) and 130 (Experiment 2) seventh graders read two texts, massed vs. distributed, by 1 week (Experiment 1) or 15 min (Experiment 2). Learning outcomes were measured immediately and 1 week later and metacognitive judgments of learning were assessed. In Experiment 1, distributed learning was perceived as more difficult than massed learning. In both experiments, massed learning led to better outcomes immediately after learning but learning outcomes were lower after 1 week. No such decrease occurred for distributed learning, yielding similar outcomes for massed and distributed learning after 1 week. In sum, no benefits of distributed learning vs. massed learning were found, but distributed learning might lower the decrease in learning outcomes over time. KW - distributed practice KW - learning from text KW - retention interval KW - spacing effect KW - reading Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-247944 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herzog, Katharina A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - Schneider, Kristina A1 - Schiele, Miriam A. A1 - Domschke, Katharina A1 - Romanos, Marcel A1 - Deckert, Jürgen A1 - Pauli, Paul T1 - Reducing Generalization of Conditioned Fear: Beneficial Impact of Fear Relevance and Feedback in Discrimination Training JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Anxiety patients over-generalize fear, possibly because of an incapacity to discriminate threat and safety signals. Discrimination trainings are promising approaches for reducing such fear over-generalization. Here we investigated the efficacy of a fear-relevant vs. a fear-irrelevant discrimination training on fear generalization and whether the effects are increased with feedback during training. Eighty participants underwent two fear acquisition blocks, during which one face (conditioned stimulus, CS+), but not another face (CS−), was associated with a female scream (unconditioned stimulus, US). During two generalization blocks, both CSs plus four morphs (generalization stimuli, GS1–GS4) were presented. Between these generalization blocks, half of the participants underwent a fear-relevant discrimination training (discrimination between CS+ and the other faces) with or without feedback and the other half a fear-irrelevant discrimination training (discrimination between the width of lines) with or without feedback. US expectancy, arousal, valence ratings, and skin conductance responses (SCR) indicated successful fear acquisition. Importantly, fear-relevant vs. fear-irrelevant discrimination trainings and feedback vs. no feedback reduced generalization as reflected in US expectancy ratings independently from one another. No effects of training condition were found for arousal and valence ratings or SCR. In summary, this is a first indication that fear-relevant discrimination training and feedback can improve the discrimination between threat and safety signals in healthy individuals, at least for learning-related evaluations, but not evaluations of valence or (physiological) arousal. KW - fear generalization KW - feedback KW - discrimination training KW - fear-relevant training KW - classical conditioning Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-239970 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Rodrigues, Johannes A1 - Weiß, Martin A1 - Hewig, Johannes A1 - Allen, John J. B. T1 - EPOS: EEG Processing Open-Source Scripts JF - Frontiers in Neuroscience N2 - Background: Since the replication crisis, standardization has become even more important in psychological science and neuroscience. As a result, many methods are being reconsidered, and researchers’ degrees of freedom in these methods are being discussed as a potential source of inconsistencies across studies. New Method: With the aim of addressing these subjectivity issues, we have been working on a tutorial-like EEG (pre-)processing pipeline to achieve an automated method based on the semi-automated analysis proposed by Delorme and Makeig. Results: Two scripts are presented and explained step-by-step to perform basic, informed ERP and frequency-domain analyses, including data export to statistical programs and visual representations of the data. The open-source software EEGlab in MATLAB is used as the data handling platform, but scripts based on code provided by Mike Cohen (2014) are also included. Comparison with existing methods: This accompanying tutorial-like article explains and shows how the processing of our automated pipeline affects the data and addresses, especially beginners in EEG-analysis, as other (pre)-processing chains are mostly targeting rather informed users in specialized areas or only parts of a complete procedure. In this context, we compared our pipeline with a selection of existing approaches. Conclusion: The need for standardization and replication is evident, yet it is equally important to control the plausibility of the suggested solution by data exploration. Here, we provide the community with a tool to enhance the understanding and capability of EEG-analysis. We aim to contribute to comprehensive and reliable analyses for neuro-scientific research. KW - EEG KW - electroencephalography KW - event-related potentials-ERP KW - EEG processing KW - EEG preprocessing KW - EEG frequency band analysis Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-240221 SN - 1662-453X VL - 15 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weiß, Martin A1 - Paelecke, Marko A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - In Your Face(t) — Personality Traits Interact With Prototypical Personality Faces in Economic Decision Making JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - In everyday life, assumptions about our peers' as well as our own personality shape social interactions. We investigated whether self-rated personality and inferences drawn from partners' faces influence economic decisions. Participants (N = 285) played the trust game in the role of the trustor as well as the ultimatum game in the role of the proposer and interacted with trustees and receivers represented by prototypical personality faces. Participants also evaluated both their own traits and the personality of the faces. In the trust game, trustees represented by faces rated higher on agreeableness yielded higher transferred amounts. This effect was more pronounced for trustors low on dispositional trust, whereas trustors high on dispositional trust did not relate their decisions to the faces. Trustees represented by faces rated higher on conscientiousness yielded higher transferred amounts only for trustors high on dispositional anxiety. In the ultimatum game, receivers represented by faces rated higher on conscientiousness yielded lower offers only for proposers high on dispositional assertiveness. These results extend previous findings on the inferences drawn from facial features and the influence of personality on decision making. They highlight the importance of considering the personality of both interaction partner, as well as potential interactions of players' traits. KW - big five KW - personality KW - trust game KW - personality faceaurus KW - ultimatum game Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-237051 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 ER -