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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Richter, Tobias A1 - Hertel, Silke A1 - Kubik, Veit A1 - Marksteiner, Tamara A1 - Souvignier, Elmar A1 - Sparfeldt, Jörn R. T1 - In welchen Branchen und für welche beruflichen Tätigkeiten werden Psychologinnen und Psychologen gesucht und was sollten sie können? : Eine systematische Inhaltsanalyse von Stellenanzeigen JF - Psychologische Rundschau N2 - Über die Struktur des Arbeitsmarkts für Psychologinnen und Psychologen, insbesondere über die quantitative Verteilung von Stellen auf verschiedene Beschäftigungsbereiche, berufliche Tätigkeiten, geforderte Kompetenzen und Abschlüsse, liegen keine zuverlässigen und aktuellen Informationen vor. Wir berichten die Ergebnisse einer systematischen Inhaltsanalyse von 2025 Stellenanzeigen, die im Zeitraum von jeweils einem Monat in den Jahren 2018 und 2020 in gängigen deutschen Online-Stellenbörsen veröffentlicht wurden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Arbeitsmarkt für Psychologinnen und Psychologen äußerst vielfältig ist und eine große Bandbreite beruflicher Tätigkeiten im Gesundheits-‍, Bildungs- und Sozialwesen, der Wirtschaft, der Wissenschaft sowie bei Polizei, Justiz und Verwaltung umfasst. Die Psychotherapie war mit 35 % das größte Berufsfeld, während sich die Mehrzahl der Stellen auf berufliche Tätigkeiten verteilte, die sich in der Regel keinem einzelnen Fachgebiet der Psychologie zuordnen ließen. Für 27 % der ausgeschriebenen Stellen war eine Approbation erforderlich, und 28 % der Stellen waren befristet. Die Ergebnisse liefern wichtige Informationen für die Konzeption und professionsorientierte Gestaltung von psychologischen Studiengängen. N2 - No reliable and up-to-date information is available regarding the structure of the labor market for psychologists, including the quantitative distribution of jobs across different employment sectors, professional activities, required skills, and degrees. We report the results of a systematic content analysis of 2,025 job advertisements published on popular German online job boards during one month in 2018 and one month in 2020. The results show that the job market for psychologists is extremely diverse, with a wide range of professional activities in health, education, social services, business, academia as well as police, justice, and administration. Psychotherapy was the largest occupational field, comprising 35 % of the job advertisements, whereas most jobs were spread across a wide range of activities that generally could not be assigned to any single field of psychology. Licensure as a psychotherapist was required for 27 % of the advertised positions, and 28 % of the positions were temporary. The results provide important information for designing the curriculum of psychology programs at the university according to profession. T2 - In which areas and for which professional activities are psychologists sought and what should they be able to do? A systematic content analysis of job advertisements KW - Arbeitsmarkt für Psychologinnen und Psychologen KW - Inhaltsanalyse KW - Stellenanzeigen KW - Studiengangsgestaltung KW - job market for psychologists KW - content analysis KW - job advertisements KW - design of study programs Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-251451 SN - 0033-3042 SN - 2190-6238 VL - 73 IS - 4 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Teichmüller, K. A1 - Bast, L. A1 - Rittner, H. L. A1 - Kindl, G. T1 - Chronische Schmerzen im Seniorenalter vor dem Hintergrund der COVID-19-Pandemie JF - Der Schmerz N2 - Hintergrund Internationale Studien belegen negative Auswirkungen der COVID-19-Pandemie auf Stimmung und Stresslevel befragter Personen. Auch konnten Zusammenhänge zwischen der Pandemie und höheren Schmerzstärken sowie stärkerer schmerzbedingter Beeinträchtigung nachgewiesen werden. Die Studienlage dazu, ob ältere Menschen besser oder schlechter mit der Pandemie und ihren Auswirkungen umgehen können als jüngere Personen, ist aber uneindeutig. Methodik Seit einigen Jahren bietet das Universitätsklinikum Würzburg ein multimodales Schmerztherapieprogramm für SeniorInnen an. Für die vorliegende Arbeit wurden retrospektiv klinische Routinedaten zum Zeitpunkt des interdisziplinären multimodalen Assessments von n = 75 TeilnehmerInnen in den Jahren 2018 und 2019 mit denen von n = 42 Patientinnen während der COVID-19-Pandemie 2020–2021 verglichen. Wir untersuchten Schmerz, psychische Belastung und körperliches Funktionsniveau mithilfe des Deutschen Schmerzfragebogens, klinischer Diagnostik und geriatrischer Funktionstests. Ergebnisse Die beiden Teilstichproben unterschieden sich nicht in demografischen Merkmalen. Bezüglich Schmerzintensität und Beeinträchtigung sowie der psychischen Belastung fanden sich ebenfalls keine signifikanten Unterschiede. Lediglich die Anzahl der schmerzbedingt beeinträchtigten Tage war vor Corona signifikant höher. Die geriatrischen Funktionstests zeigten signifikant bessere Werte während der Pandemie an. Diskussion Die vorliegenden Daten zeigen keine Verschlechterung von Schmerz und körperlichem sowie psychischem Wohlbefinden bei SeniorInnen vor dem Hintergrund der Pandemie. Weitere Studien sollten die möglichen Gründe dafür untersuchen. Diese könnten in einer höheren Resilienz der SeniorInnen basierend auf ihrer Lebenserfahrung, finanziellen Sicherheit oder einer geringeren Veränderung des Lebensalltags liegen. N2 - Background International studies have shown negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mood and levels of distress. Correlations between the pandemic and higher levels of pain as well as greater pain-related disability have also been found; however, studies report ambiguous results about whether elderly people cope differently with the pandemic and its effects. Methods The University Hospital of Würzburg offers multimodal pain therapy for older adults. The current study performed a retrospective analysis of routine data measured during an interdisciplinary multimodal assessment. We compared n = 75 patients taking part in the therapy during 2018 and 2019 to n = 42 patients assessed in 2020–2021. We measured pain, mental distress and physical functioning using the German Pain Questionnaire, clinical diagnosis, and geriatric tests of physical fitness. Results Both subgroups did not differ in demographic characteristics, neither did we find significant differences regarding pain intensity, pain-related disability, and mental health; however, patients before the pandemic reported a higher number of days on which they felt limited due to pain. In the physical performance test, we even found significantly better results during the COVID-19 pandemic. Discussion The current data do not support an aggravation of pain or mental and physical well-being. Possible explanations could be better resilience in elderly people due to their experience of life, financial security or less change in their daily life. KW - SARS-CoV‑2 KW - höheres Lebensalter KW - biopsychosoziales Schmerzmodell KW - Deutscher Schmerzfragebogen KW - schmerzbedingte Beeinträchtigung KW - SARS-CoV‑2 KW - older adults KW - biopsychosocial model of pain KW - German Pain Questionnaire KW - pain-related disability Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-346778 VL - 36 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - THES A1 - Hartlieb [geb. Faust], Verena T1 - Die Bedeutung der phonologischen Bewusstheit für die Entwicklung mathematischer Kompetenzen bei Kindern mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund : Ergebnisse einer Längsschnittstudie vom Beginn des Vorschuljahres bis zum Ende der ersten Klasse T1 - The importance of phonological awareness for the development of mathematical competencies in children with and without migration background N2 - Die Entwicklung mathematischer Kompetenzen beginnt bereits vor Schuleintritt und wird durch viele Faktoren beeinflusst. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird primär untersucht, ob die phonologische Bewusstheit als (meta-)sprachliche Kompetenz auch für die frühe mathematische Kompetenzentwicklung bedeutsam ist und ob sich bei Kindern mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund vergleichbare Zusammenhänge finden lassen. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt bildet die Überprüfung von differenziellen Effekten von ausgewählten, mathematischen Vorschultrainings sowie eines Trainings der phonologischen Bewusstheit auf die mathematischen Kompetenzen unter Berücksichtigung des Migrationshintergrundes. Die statistischen Analysen basieren auf einer Stichprobe von über 370 Kindern, die im Verlauf der Längsschnittstudie zu vier Messzeitpunkten, jeweils am Beginn und Ende des Vorschul- bzw. ersten Schuljahres, untersucht wurden. Durch Berechnung hierarchischer Regressionsanalysen ließ sich global kein zusätzlicher Erklärungsbeitrag der phonologischen Bewusstheit neben den mathematischen Ausgangskompetenzen feststellen. Der Vergleich der beiden Migrationsgruppen ergab keine strukturellen Unterschiede. Die Überprüfung von spezifischen Effekten durch mathematische Vorschulprogramme (Krajewski et al., 2007; Friedrich & de Galgóczy, 2004; Preiß, 2004, 2005) und von unspezifischen Effekten durch ein Training der phonologischen Bewusstheit und der Buchstaben-Laut-Zuordnung (Küspert & Schneider, 2008; Plume & Schneider, 2004) auf die mathematischen Kompetenzen lieferte nur vereinzelt positive Effekte, die jedoch bei Berücksichtigung von individuellen und familiären Kontrollvariablen reduziert wurden. Die Generalisierbarkeit der Ergebnisse ist durch die komplexe Datenstruktur verbunden mit kleinen Stichprobengrößen in den jeweiligen Faktorenstufen limitiert. Insgesamt ermöglicht die vorliegende Arbeit eine differenzierte Betrachtung der mathematischen Kompetenzentwicklung bei Kindern mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund und liefert wichtige Implikationen für Forschung und Praxis. N2 - The development of mathematical competencies begins even before entering school and is influenced by many factors. The present work primarily investigates whether phonological awareness as a (meta-)linguistic competence is also important for the early development of mathematical competencies and whether comparable relations can be found in children with and without migration background. Another focus is the examination of differential effects of selected, mathematical preschool trainings as well as a training of phonological awareness on mathematical competencies, taking into account the migration background. The statistical analyses are based on a sample of over 370 children who were examined at four measurement points during the longitudinal study, each at the beginning and end of the preschool or first school year. By calculating hierarchical regression analyses, no additional explanatory contribution of phonological awareness in addition to the initial mathematical competencies could be determined globally. The comparison of children with and without migration background revealed no structural differences. The verification of specific effects by preschool mathematical trainings (Krajewski et al., 2007; Friedrich & de Galgóczy, 2004; Preiß, 2004, 2005) and of non-specific effects by a training of phonological awareness and of letter-sound correspondences (Küspert & Schneider, 2008; Plume & Schneider, 2004) on mathematical competencies provides only some positive effects, which have been reduced when individual and family aspects were controlled for. The generalizability of the results is limited by the complex data structure combined with small sample sizes in the respective factor levels. Overall, the present work enables a differentiated consideration of the development of competencies in mathematics in children with and without migration background and provides important implications for research and practice. KW - Mathematik KW - Phonologische Bewusstheit KW - Migrationshintergrund KW - mathematische Kompetenzentwicklung KW - mathematische und schriftsprachliche Vorläuferkompetenzen KW - spezifische und unspezifische Trainingseffekte KW - Kinder im Vorschulalter und frühen Grundschulalter Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-244047 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weiß, Martin A1 - Hein, Grit A1 - Hewig, Johannes T1 - Between joy and sympathy: Smiling and sad recipient faces increase prosocial behavior in the dictator game JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health N2 - In human interactions, the facial expression of a bargaining partner may contain relevant information that affects prosocial decisions. We were interested in whether facial expressions of the recipient in the dictator game influence dictators´ ehavior. To test this, we conducted an online study (n = 106) based on a modified version of a dictator game. The dictators allocated money between themselves and another person (recipient), who had no possibility to respond to the dictator. Importantly, before the allocation decision, the dictator was presented with the facial expression of the recipient (angry, disgusted, sad, smiling, or neutral). The results showed that dictators sent more money to recipients with sad or smiling facial expressions and less to recipients with angry or disgusted facial expressions compared with a neutral facial expression. Moreover, based on the sequential analysis of the decision and the interaction partner in the preceding trial, we found that decision-making depends upon previous interactions. KW - emotional influence KW - dictator game KW - facial expression KW - social decision-making Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-241106 VL - 18 IS - 11 ER - TY - THES A1 - Gromer, Daniel T1 - Mechanisms Underlying Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Specific Phobias T1 - Wirkmechanismen der Expositionstherapie in virtueller Realität bei spezifischen Phobien N2 - Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is an effective cognitive-behavioral treatment for anxiety disorders that comprises systematic confrontations to virtual representations of feared stimuli and situations. However, not all patients respond to VRET, and some patients relapse after successful treatment. One explanation for this limitation of VRET is that its underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood, leaving room for further improvement. On these grounds, the present thesis aimed to investigate two major research questions: first, it explored how virtual stimuli induce fear responses in height-fearful participants, and second, it tested if VRET outcome could be improved by incorporating techniques derived from two different theories of exposure therapy. To this end, five studies in virtual reality (VR) were conducted. Study 1 (N = 99) established a virtual environment for height exposure using a Computer Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) and investigated the effects of tactile wind simulation in VR. Height-fearful and non-fearful participants climbed a virtual outlook, and half of the participants received wind simulation. Results revealed that height-fearful participants showed stronger fear responses, on both a subjective and behavioral level, and that wind simulation increased subjective fear. However, adding tactile wind simulation in VR did not affect presence, the user's sense of 'being there' in the virtual environment. Replicating previous studies, fear and presence in VR were correlated, and the correlation was higher in height-fearful compared to non-fearful participants. Study 2 (N = 43) sought to corroborate the findings of the first study, using a different VR system for exposure (a head-mounted display) and measuring physiological fear responses. In addition, the effects of a visual cognitive distractor on fear in VR were investigated. Participants' fear responses were evident on both a subjective and physiological level---although much more pronounced on skin conductance than on heart rate---but the virtual distractor did not affect the strength of fear responses. In Study 3 (N = 50), the effects of trait height-fearfulness and height level on fear responses were investigated in more detail. Self-rated level of acrophobia and five different height levels in VR (1 m--20 m) were used as linear predictors of subjective and physiological indices of fear. Results showed that subjective fear and skin conductance responses were a function of both trait height-fearfulness and height level, whereas no clear effects were visible for heart rate. Study 4 (N = 64 + N = 49) aimed to advance the understanding of the relationship between presence and fear in VR. Previous research indicates a positive correlation between both measures, but possible causal mechanisms have not yet been identified. The study was the first to experimentally manipulate both presence (via the visual and auditive realism of the virtual environment) and fear (by presenting both height and control situations). Results indicated a causal effect of fear on presence, i.e., experiencing fear in a virtual environment led to a stronger sense of `being there' in the virtual environment. However, conversely, presence increased by higher scene realism did not affect fear responses. Nonetheless, presence seemed to have some effects on fear responding via another pathway, as participants whose presence levels were highest in the first safe context were also those who had the strongest fear responses in a later height situation. This finding indicated the importance of immersive user characteristics in the emergence of presence and fear in VR. The findings of the first four studies were integrated into a model of fear in VR, extending previous models and highlighting factors that lead to the emergence of both fear and presence in VR. Results of the studies showed that fear responses towards virtual heights were affected by trait height-fearfulness, phobic elements in the virtual environment, and, at least to some degree, on presence. Presence, on the other hand, was affected by experiencing fear in VR, immersion---the characteristics of the VR system---and immersive user characteristics. Of note, the manipulations of immersion used in the present thesis, visual and auditory realism of the virtual environment and tactile wind simulation, were not particularly effective in manipulating presence. Finally, Study 5 (N = 34) compared two different implementations of VRET for acrophobia to investigate mechanisms underlying its efficacy. The first implementation followed the Emotional Processing Theory, assuming that fear reduction during exposure is crucial for positive treatment outcome. In this condition, patients were asked to focus on their fear responses and on the decline of fear (habituation) during exposures. The second implementation was based on the inhibitory learning model, assuming that expectancy violation is the primary mechanism underlying exposure therapy efficacy. In this condition, patients were asked to focus on the non-occurrence of feared outcomes (e.g., 'I could fall off') during exposure. Based on predictions of the inhibitory learning model, the hypothesis for the study was that expectancy-violation-based exposure would outperform habituation-based exposure. After two treatment sessions in VR, both treatment conditions effectively reduced the patients' fear of heights, but the two conditions did not differ in their efficacy. The study replicated previous studies by showing that VRET is an effective treatment for acrophobia; however, contrary to the assumption, explicitly targeting the violation of threat expectancies did not improve outcome. This finding adds to other studies failing to provide clear evidence for expectancy violation as the primary mechanism underlying exposure therapy. Possible explanations for this finding and clinical implications are discussed, along with suggestions for further research. N2 - Die Expositionstherapie in virtueller Realität (VRET) ist ein wirksames kognitiv-verhaltenstherapeutisches Verfahren zur Behandlung von Angststörungen. Bei einer VRET werden Patienten nach psychoedukativer Vorbereitung mit virtuellen Repräsentationen der von ihnen gefürchteten Objekte oder Situationen konfrontiert. Die VRET zeigt allerdings nicht bei allen Patienten die gewünschte Wirksamkeit, und einige Patienten erleben selbst nach erfolgreicher Therapie eine Rückkehr der Angst. Da die zugrunde liegenden Wirkfaktoren der VRET noch nicht ausreichend aufgeklärt sind, lässt sich ihre Effektivtät möglicherweise noch weiter verbessern. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war es daher zwei Fragen zu untersuchen. Zum einen, wie genau virtuelle Reize Furchtreaktionen bei höhenängstlichen Personen auslösen, und zum anderen, ob sich VRET durch den Einsatz spezifischer Techniken, welche aus Theorien zur Expositionstherapie abgeleitet wurden, verbessern lässt. Um die Fragen zu beantworten, wurden im Rahmen der Dissertation fünf Studien durchgeführt. In Studie 1 (N = 99) wurde eine virtuelle Umgebung für Höhenexposition etabliert und Effekte von taktiler Windsimulation in virtueller Realität (VR) untersucht. In der Studie hatten höhenängstliche und nicht-ängstliche Probanden die Aufgabe einen virtuellen Turm zu besteigen, wobei die Hälfte der Probanden währenddessen eine Windsimulation dargeboten bekam. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass höhenängstliche Probanden stärkere Furchtreaktionen zeigten, was sich sowohl im Bericht als auch im Verhalten äußerte. Zusätzlich erhöhte die Windsimulation die subjektiv Furcht der Probanden. Die Windsimulation hatte allerdings keinen Einfluss auf das Präsenzerleben, d. h. wie sehr sich Probanden so gefühlt hatten als seien sie tatsächlich in der virtuellen Umgebung gewesen. In der Studie konnten darüber hinaus zwei Befunde vorheriger Studien zum Präsenzerleben repliziert werden. Furcht und Präsenz korrelierten positiv, und dieser Zusammenhang war bei höhenängstlichen Probanden stärker als bei nicht-ängstlichen Probanden. Die Studie konnte zeigen, dass sich VR eignet um Furcht auf verschiedenen Reaktionsebenen zu untersuchen und es darüber hinaus möglich ist, Furcht in VR experimentell zu manipulieren. In Studie 2 (N = 43) sollten die Ergebnisse der ersten Studie bestätigt werden. Hierfür wurden ein anderes VR-System für die Exposition eingesetzt sowie die Erfassung von Furchtreaktionen um physiologische Maße ergänzt. Zusätzlich wurde der Einfluss einer visuell-kognitiven Distraktionsaufgabe in VR auf Furchtreaktionen untersucht. Die Furchtreaktionen der Probanden zeigten sich sowohl auf subjektiver als auch physiologischer Ebene, wobei Reaktionen der Hautleitfähigkeit stärker ausgeprägt waren als Veränderungen der Herzrate. Ein Einfluss der ablenkenden visuell-kognitiven Aufgabe auf Furchtreaktionen konnte nicht gezeigt werden. Die Studie konnte insgesamt verdeutlichen, dass die Eigenschaft von VR, Furcht zu erzeugen, nicht an einen bestimmten Versuchsaufbau gebunden ist und sich Furcht in VR auf allen Reaktionsebenen zeigt. Studie 3 (N = 50) hatte das Ziel, den Einfluss von Höhenängstlichkeit und Höhe auf Furchreaktionen genauer zu untersuchen. Hierfür wurde per Fragebogen erfasste Höhenängstlichkeit sowie fünf verschiedene Höhen (1 m--20 m) als lineare Prädiktoren für subjektive und physiologische Furchtindizes verwendet. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass subjektive Furcht und Hautleitfähigkeitsreaktionen in Abhängigkeit von sowohl Höhenängstlichkeit als auch Höhe zunahmen. Für die Herzrate zeigten sich hingegen keine eindeutigen Effekte. Die Studie konnte zusammenfassend zeigen, dass sich die Furchtreaktionen in VR spezifisch auf Höhe zeigten. In Studie 4 (N = 64 + N = 49) sollte der Zusammenhang zwischen Furcht und Präsenzerleben in VR genauer untersucht werden. Vorangegangene Studien zeigten eine positive Korrelation zwischen beiden Maßen, konnten jedoch keine Aussagen über einen möglichen Kausalzusammenhang machen. Die vorliegende Studie war daher die erste, welche sowohl Präsenz als auch Furcht experimentell manipulierte. Präsenz wurde über die Darbietung unterschiedlich realistischer virtueller Umgebungen, Furcht über die Darbietung von Höhen und Kontrollumgebungen manipuliert. Die Ergebnisse der Studie zeigten, dass es einen kausalen Effekt von Furcht auf Präsenzerleben gab, d. h. das Erleben von Furcht in einer Höhensituation in VR führte zu erhöhtem Präsenzerleben. Umgekehrt gab es jedoch keinen Effekt von experimentell manipuliertem Präsenzerleben auf die Stärke der Furchtreaktion. Es zeigte sich allerdings, dass Personen, welche in der ersten sicheren Situation das stärkste Präsenzerleben berichteten, später auch die stärksten Furchtreaktionen zeigten, was darauf schließen lässt, dass es möglicherwiese dennoch Effekte von Präsenzerleben auf Furcht gibt. Dieses Ergebnis weist auf die Bedeutung von möglichen Persönlichkeitsunterschieden hin, welche für das Erleben von Präsenz und Furcht in VR von Bedeutung sind. Die Studie verdeutlichte damit zum einen die Komplexität des Zusammenhangs zwischen Furcht und Präsenzerleben und erlaubte zum anderen erstmals Kausalschlüsse zwischen beiden Maßen. Die Ergebnisse der ersten vier Studien wurden in einem Modell zur Furcht in VR zusammengefasst. Basierend auf bestehenden Modellen zeigt das neue Modell Faktoren auf, welche für die Entstehung von Furcht und Präsenz bedeutsam sind. So konnten die Studien zeigen, dass Furchtreaktionen in Abhängigkeit von habitueller Höhenangst, der furchtbezogenen Relevanz der virtuellen Umgebung (z. B. Höhe), sowie zum Teil vom Präsenzerleben, auftreten. Bezüglich des Präsenzerlebens betont das Modell die Relevanz von aktuellem Furchterleben, Immersion (den Charakteristika des VR-Systems) und immersiven Nutzercharakteristika (z. B. Absorption). Zu erwähnen ist, dass die in der vorliegenden Dissertation untersuchten Manipulationen von Immersion (visueller und auditiver Realismus der virtuellen Umgebung und taktile Windsimulation) jedoch keine sonderlich starken Effekte auf Präsenz hatten. In Studie 5 (N = 34) wurden abschließend im Rahmen einer Therapiestudie zwei verschiedene VRET-Ansätze miteinander verglichen. Die erste Gruppe von Patienten erhielt hierbei eine Therapie auf Basis der Emotional Processing Theory. In dieser Bedingung wurden die Patienten während der Exposition gebeten, sich auf ihr Furchterleben und dessen Rückgang über die Zeit (Habituation) zu konzentrieren. Die zweite Gruppe von Patienten erhielt eine Therapie auf Basis des Inhibitory Learning Models. In dieser Bedingung wurden die Patienten gebeten, gezielt ihre Befürchtungen (z. B. "Ich könnte herunterfallen") zu überprüfen und zu widerlegen. Es wurde auf Basis der Vorhersage des Inhibitory Learning Models, dass Erwartungswiderlegung der zentrale Wirkfaktor der Expositionstherapie ist, angenommen, dass eine Therapie auf Basis der Widerlegung von Befürchtungen effektiver ist als eine Therapie auf Basis von Habituation. Nach zwei Therapiesitzungen berichteten die Patienten in beiden Gruppen einen signifikaten Rückgang ihrer Höhenangst, es zeigten sich jedoch keine Wirksamkeitsunterschiede zwischen den Gruppen. Die Studie konnte damit zwar vorherige Befunde replizieren, die zeigten, dass VRET eine effektive Behandlung für Höhenangst ist, die spezifische Fokussierung auf Erwartungswiderlegung zeigte jedoch keinen Vorteil. Dieser Befund reiht sich damit in eine Reihe von Studien ein, die Erwartungswiderlegung als zentralen Wirkfaktor der Expositionstherapie nicht nachweisen konnten. Mögliche Gründe für diesen Befund sowie daraus folgende klinische Implikationen und Vorschläge für weitere Forschung werden diskutiert. KW - Virtuelle Realität KW - Höhenangst KW - Expositionstherapie Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-207334 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Schindler, Julia A1 - Richter, Tobias A1 - Mar, Raymond T1 - Does generation benefit learning for narrative and expository texts? A direct replication attempt JF - Applied Cognitive Psychology N2 - Generated information is better recognized and recalled than information that is read. This so‐called generation effect has been replicated several times for different types of material, including texts. Perhaps the most influential demonstration was by McDaniel et al. (1986, Journal of Memory and Language, 25, 645–656; henceforth MEDC). This group tested whether the generation effect occurs only if the generation task stimulates cognitive processes not already stimulated by the text. Numerous studies, however, report difficulties replicating this text by generation‐task interaction, which suggests that the effect might only be found under conditions closer to the original method of MEDC. To test this assumption, we will closely replicate MEDC's Experiment 2 in German and English‐speaking samples. Replicating the effect would suggest that it can be reproduced, at least under limited conditions, which will provide the necessary foundation for future investigations into the boundary conditions of this effect, with an eye towards its utility in applied contexts. KW - expository texts KW - generation effect KW - learning KW - narrative texts KW - replication Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-224496 VL - 35 IS - 2 SP - 559 EP - 564 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Seibel, Sebastian A1 - Volmer, Judith T1 - A Diary Study on Anticipated Leisure Time, Morning Recovery, and Employees’ Work Engagement JF - International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health N2 - Recovery during yesterday’s leisure time is beneficial for morning recovery, and morning recovery fosters employees’ work engagement, a positive, motivational state associated with job performance. We extended existing research by assuming that both, morning recovery (considered a resource) and anticipated leisure time (considered an anticipated resource gain), relate to work engagement. Anticipated leisure time comprises two constructs: general anticipation of leisure time, which refers to employees’ cognitive evaluation of their entire upcoming leisure time, and pleasant anticipation of a planned leisure activity, which describes a positive affective reaction because of one specific, upcoming leisure activity. We suggested that employees with high pleasant anticipation generate more thoughts of a planned leisure activity (ToPLA), which may distract them from their work, reducing their work engagement. A diary study over five days showed that morning recovery and general anticipation of leisure time were positively related to work engagement. Furthermore, employees with higher pleasant anticipation of a planned leisure activity reported more ToPLA. In contrast to our expectations, neither pleasant anticipation nor ToPLA was related to work engagement. In sum, this study introduced anticipated leisure time as a novel antecedent of work engagement and demonstrated that anticipated resource gains are important for high work engagement. KW - morning recovery KW - leisure time KW - pleasant anticipation KW - work engagement KW - thoughts of a planned leisure activity KW - diary study Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-246090 SN - 1660-4601 VL - 18 IS - 18 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Farmer, Adam D. A1 - Strzelczyk, Adam A1 - Finisguerra, Alessandra A1 - Gourine, Alexander V. A1 - Gharabaghi, Alireza A1 - Hasan, Alkomiet A1 - Burger, Andreas M. A1 - Jaramillo, Andrés M. A1 - Mertens, Ann A1 - Majid, Arshad A1 - Verkuil, Bart A1 - Badran, Bashar W. A1 - Ventura-Bort, Carlos A1 - Gaul, Charly A1 - Beste, Christian A1 - Warren, Christopher M. A1 - Quintana, Daniel S. A1 - Hämmerer, Dorothea A1 - Freri, Elena A1 - Frangos, Eleni A1 - Tobaldini, Eleonora A1 - Kaniusas, Eugenijus A1 - Rosenow, Felix A1 - Capone, Fioravante A1 - Panetsos, Fivos A1 - Ackland, Gareth L. A1 - Kaithwas, Gaurav A1 - O'Leary, Georgia H. A1 - Genheimer, Hannah A1 - Jacobs, Heidi I. L. A1 - Van Diest, Ilse A1 - Schoenen, Jean A1 - Redgrave, Jessica A1 - Fang, Jiliang A1 - Deuchars, Jim A1 - Széles, Jozsef C. A1 - Thayer, Julian F. A1 - More, Kaushik A1 - Vonck, Kristl A1 - Steenbergen, Laura A1 - Vianna, Lauro C. A1 - McTeague, Lisa M. A1 - Ludwig, Mareike A1 - Veldhuizen, Maria G. A1 - De Couck, Marijke A1 - Casazza, Marina A1 - Keute, Marius A1 - Bikson, Marom A1 - Andreatta, Marta A1 - D'Agostini, Martina A1 - Weymar, Mathias A1 - Betts, Matthew A1 - Prigge, Matthias A1 - Kaess, Michael A1 - Roden, Michael A1 - Thai, Michelle A1 - Schuster, Nathaniel M. A1 - Montano, Nicola A1 - Hansen, Niels A1 - Kroemer, Nils B. A1 - Rong, Peijing A1 - Fischer, Rico A1 - Howland, Robert H. A1 - Sclocco, Roberta A1 - Sellaro, Roberta A1 - Garcia, Ronald G. A1 - Bauer, Sebastian A1 - Gancheva, Sofiya A1 - Stavrakis, Stavros A1 - Kampusch, Stefan A1 - Deuchars, Susan A. A1 - Wehner, Sven A1 - Laborde, Sylvain A1 - Usichenko, Taras A1 - Polak, Thomas A1 - Zaehle, Tino A1 - Borges, Uirassu A1 - Teckentrup, Vanessa A1 - Jandackova, Vera K. A1 - Napadow, Vitaly A1 - Koenig, Julian T1 - International Consensus Based Review and Recommendations for Minimum Reporting Standards in Research on Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation (Version 2020) JF - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience N2 - Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation(VNS) and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results between studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. KW - transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation KW - minimum reporting standards KW - guidelines & recommendations KW - transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation KW - transcutaneous cervical vagus nerve stimulation Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-234346 SN - 1662-5161 VL - 14 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Postema, Merel C. A1 - Hoogman, Martine A1 - Ambrosino, Sara A1 - Asherson, Philip A1 - Banaschewski, Tobias A1 - Bandeira, Cibele E. A1 - Baranov, Alexandr A1 - Bau, Claiton H.D. A1 - Baumeister, Sarah A1 - Baur‐Streubel, Ramona A1 - Bellgrove, Mark A. A1 - Biederman, Joseph A1 - Bralten, Janita A1 - Brandeis, Daniel A1 - Brem, Silvia A1 - Buitelaar, Jan K. A1 - Busatto, Geraldo F. A1 - Castellanos, Francisco X. A1 - Cercignani, Mara A1 - Chaim‐Avancini, Tiffany M. A1 - Chantiluke, Kaylita C. A1 - Christakou, Anastasia A1 - Coghill, David A1 - Conzelmann, Annette A1 - Cubillo, Ana I. A1 - Cupertino, Renata B. A1 - de Zeeuw, Patrick A1 - Doyle, Alysa E. A1 - Durston, Sarah A1 - Earl, Eric A. A1 - Epstein, Jeffery N. A1 - Ethofer, Thomas A1 - Fair, Damien A. A1 - Fallgatter, Andreas J. A1 - Faraone, Stephen V. A1 - Frodl, Thomas A1 - Gabel, Matt C. A1 - Gogberashvili, Tinatin A1 - Grevet, Eugenio H. A1 - Haavik, Jan A1 - Harrison, Neil A. A1 - Hartman, Catharina A. A1 - Heslenfeld, Dirk J. A1 - Hoekstra, Pieter J. A1 - Hohmann, Sarah A1 - Høvik, Marie F. A1 - Jernigan, Terry L. A1 - Kardatzki, Bernd A1 - Karkashadze, Georgii A1 - Kelly, Clare A1 - Kohls, Gregor A1 - Konrad, Kerstin A1 - Kuntsi, Jonna A1 - Lazaro, Luisa A1 - Lera‐Miguel, Sara A1 - Lesch, Klaus‐Peter A1 - Louza, Mario R. A1 - Lundervold, Astri J. A1 - Malpas, Charles B A1 - Mattos, Paulo A1 - McCarthy, Hazel A1 - Namazova‐Baranova, Leyla A1 - Nicolau, Rosa A1 - Nigg, Joel T. A1 - Novotny, Stephanie E. A1 - Oberwelland Weiss, Eileen A1 - O'Gorman Tuura, Ruth L. A1 - Oosterlaan, Jaap A1 - Oranje, Bob A1 - Paloyelis, Yannis A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Picon, Felipe A. A1 - Plessen, Kerstin J. A1 - Ramos‐Quiroga, J. Antoni A1 - Reif, Andreas A1 - Reneman, Liesbeth A1 - Rosa, Pedro G.P. A1 - Rubia, Katya A1 - Schrantee, Anouk A1 - Schweren, Lizanne J.S. A1 - Seitz, Jochen A1 - Shaw, Philip A1 - Silk, Tim J. A1 - Skokauskas, Norbert A1 - Soliva Vila, Juan C. A1 - Stevens, Michael C. A1 - Sudre, Gustavo A1 - Tamm, Leanne A1 - Tovar‐Moll, Fernanda A1 - van Erp, Theo G.M. A1 - Vance, Alasdair A1 - Vilarroya, Oscar A1 - Vives‐Gilabert, Yolanda A1 - von Polier, Georg G. A1 - Walitza, Susanne A1 - Yoncheva, Yuliya N. A1 - Zanetti, Marcus V. A1 - Ziegler, Georg C. A1 - Glahn, David C. A1 - Jahanshad, Neda A1 - Medland, Sarah E. A1 - Thompson, Paul M. A1 - Fisher, Simon E. A1 - Franke, Barbara A1 - Francks, Clyde T1 - Analysis of structural brain asymmetries in attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder in 39 datasets JF - Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry N2 - Objective Some studies have suggested alterations of structural brain asymmetry in attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but findings have been contradictory and based on small samples. Here, we performed the largest ever analysis of brain left‐right asymmetry in ADHD, using 39 datasets of the ENIGMA consortium. Methods We analyzed asymmetry of subcortical and cerebral cortical structures in up to 1,933 people with ADHD and 1,829 unaffected controls. Asymmetry Indexes (AIs) were calculated per participant for each bilaterally paired measure, and linear mixed effects modeling was applied separately in children, adolescents, adults, and the total sample, to test exhaustively for potential associations of ADHD with structural brain asymmetries. Results There was no evidence for altered caudate nucleus asymmetry in ADHD, in contrast to prior literature. In children, there was less rightward asymmetry of the total hemispheric surface area compared to controls (t = 2.1, p = .04). Lower rightward asymmetry of medial orbitofrontal cortex surface area in ADHD (t = 2.7, p = .01) was similar to a recent finding for autism spectrum disorder. There were also some differences in cortical thickness asymmetry across age groups. In adults with ADHD, globus pallidus asymmetry was altered compared to those without ADHD. However, all effects were small (Cohen’s d from −0.18 to 0.18) and would not survive study‐wide correction for multiple testing. Conclusion Prior studies of altered structural brain asymmetry in ADHD were likely underpowered to detect the small effects reported here. Altered structural asymmetry is unlikely to provide a useful biomarker for ADHD, but may provide neurobiological insights into the trait. KW - attention‐deficit KW - hyperactivity disorder KW - brain asymmetry KW - brain laterality KW - structural MRI KW - large‐scale data Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-239968 VL - 62 IS - 10 SP - 1202 EP - 1219 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 - 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 - THES A1 - Riechelmann [verh. Steinbacher], Eva Katharina T1 - Gaze interaction: Cognitive mechanisms of oculomotor action control T1 - Blickinteraktion: Kognitive Mechanismen der okulomotorischen Handlungskontrolle N2 - Humans use their eyes not only as visual input devices to perceive the environment, but also as an action tool in order to generate intended effects in their environment. For instance, glances are used to direct someone else's attention to a place of interest, indicating that gaze control is an important part of social communication. Previous research on gaze control in a social context mainly focused on the gaze recipient by asking how humans respond to perceived gaze (gaze cueing). So far, this perspective has hardly considered the actor’s point of view by neglecting to investigate what mental processes are involved when actors decide to perform an eye movement to trigger a gaze response in another person. Furthermore, eye movements are also used to affect the non-social environment, for instance when unlocking the smartphone with the help of the eyes. This and other observations demonstrate the necessity to consider gaze control in contexts other than social communication whilst at the same time focusing on commonalities and differences inherent to the nature of a social (vs. non-social) action context. Thus, the present work explores the cognitive mechanisms that control such goal-oriented eye movements in both social and non-social contexts. The experiments presented throughout this work are built on pre-established paradigms from both the oculomotor research domain and from basic cognitive psychology. These paradigms are based on the principle of ideomotor action control, which provides an explanatory framework for understanding how goal-oriented, intentional actions come into being. The ideomotor idea suggests that humans acquire associations between their actions and the resulting effects, which can be accessed in a bi-directional manner: Actions can trigger anticipations of their effects, but the anticipated resulting effects can also trigger the associated actions. According to ideomotor theory, action generation involves the mental anticipation of the intended effect (i.e., the action goal) to activate the associated motor pattern. The present experiments involve situations where participants control the gaze of a virtual face via their eye movements. The triggered gaze responses of the virtual face are consistent to the participant’s eye movements, representing visual action effects. Experimental situations are varied with respect to determinants of action-effect learning (e.g., contingency, contiguity, action mode during acquisition) in order to unravel the underlying dynamics of oculomotor control in these situations. In addition to faces, conditions involving changes in non-social objects were included to address the question of whether mechanisms underlying gaze control differ for social versus non-social context situations. The results of the present work can be summarized into three major findings. 1. My data suggest that humans indeed acquire bi-directional associations between their eye movements and the subsequently perceived gaze response of another person, which in turn affect oculomotor action control via the anticipation of the intended effects. The observed results show for the first time that eye movements in a gaze-interaction scenario are represented in terms of their gaze response in others. This observation is in line with the ideomotor theory of action control. 2. The present series of experiments confirms and extends pioneering results of Huestegge and Kreutzfeldt (2012) with respect to the significant influence of action effects in gaze control. I have shown that the results of Huestegge and Kreutzfeldt (2012) can be replicated across different contexts with different stimulus material given that the perceived action effects were sufficiently salient. 3. Furthermore, I could show that mechanisms of gaze control in a social gaze-interaction context do not appear to be qualitatively different from those in a non-social context. All in all, the results support recent theoretical claims emphasizing the role of anticipation-based action control in social interaction. Moreover, my results suggest that anticipation-based gaze control in a social context is based on the same general psychological mechanisms as ideomotor gaze control, and thus should be considered as an integral part rather than as a special form of ideomotor gaze control. N2 - Der Mensch nutzt die Augen nicht nur zur Wahrnehmung seiner Umwelt, sondern auch als Handlungsinstrument, um intendierte Effekte in seiner Umwelt zu erzeugen. So werden Blicke beispielsweise dazu verwendet, die Aufmerksamkeit eines anderen auf einen bestimmten Ort zu lenken. Dies weist darauf hin, dass Blickkontrolle einen wichtigen Bestandteil in der sozialen Kommunikation darstellt. Die Forschung zu Blickkontrolle im sozialen Kontext hat sich bisher hauptsächlich auf den Blick-Empfänger konzentriert, um die Frage zu beantworten, wie Menschen auf wahrgenommene Blicke reagieren (Gaze Cueing). Dieser Ansatz hat dementsprechend bisher kaum den Standpunkt des Blick-Senders berücksichtigt. So wurde beispielsweise noch nicht untersucht, welche mentalen Prozesse der Ausübung einer Augenbewegung zugrunde liegen, die zum Ziel hat, bei einer anderen Person eine bestimmte Blickreaktion auszulösen. Darüber hinaus werden zielgerichtete Augenbewegungen auch im nicht-sozialen Kontext eingesetzt, beispielsweise beim Entsperren des Smartphones mithilfe der Augen. Diese und andere Beobachtungen zeigen allerdings klar die Notwendigkeit, Blickkontrolle sowohl in der sozialen Kommunikation als auch in anderen, nicht-sozialen Kontexten zu berücksichtigen und dabei gleichzeitig auf Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zu achten, die der Natur eines sozialen (vs. nicht-sozialen) Handlungskontextes innewohnen. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht daher die kognitiven Mechanismen, die solchen zielgerichteten Blickbewegungen in sozialen wie in nicht-sozialen Kontexten zugrunde liegen. Die in der vorliegenden Arbeit vorgestellten Experimente bauen auf bereits etablierten Paradigmen aus der Forschung zu Okulomotorik und zu basalen kognitiven Prozessen auf. Diese Paradigmen basieren auf dem Prinzip der ideomotorischen Handlungskontrolle, das eine Erklärung für die Entstehung zielgerichteter und beabsichtigter Handlungen liefert. Der ideomotorische Gedanke legt nahe, dass Menschen Assoziationen zwischen ihren Handlungen und den daraus resultierenden Effekten erwerben, die in zwei Richtungen wirken können: Eine Handlung kann die Antizipation ihrer Effekte auslösen, aber die aktive Antizipation eines Handlungseffektes kann auch die damit verbundene Handlung auslösen. Nach der ideomotorischen Theorie beinhaltet Handlungsgenerierung die mentale Antizipation des beabsichtigten Handlungseffektes, um das zugehörige motorische Muster zu aktivieren. Die vorliegenden Experimente beinhalten Situationen, in denen die Probanden den Blick eines virtuellen Gesichts mithilfe ihre eigenen Augenbewegungen steuern. Die im virtuellen Gesicht ausgelösten Blickreaktionen repräsentieren die visuellen Handlungseffekte. Die Situationen werden in Bezug auf die Determinanten von Handlungs-Effekt-Lernen (Kontingenz, Kontiguität, Handlungsmodus während des Lernens) variiert, um die zugrundeliegende Dynamik der okulomotorischen Handlungskontrolle in diesen Situationen zu verstehen. Zusätzlich zu den Gesichtern wurden Handlungseffekte in nicht-sozialen Objekten untersucht, um die Frage zu klären, ob sich die der Blickkontrolle zugrundeliegenden Mechanismen für soziale und nicht-soziale Kontextsituationen unterscheiden. Die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Arbeit lassen sich in drei Hauptergebnisse zusammenfassen. 1. Meine Resultate legen nahe, dass Menschen bi-direktionale Assoziationen zwischen ihren Augenbewegungen und der darauf folgenden Blickreaktion einer anderen Person erwerben, was über die Antizipation der beabsichtigten Effekte die okulomotorische Handlungssteuerung beeinflusst. Die beobachteten Ergebnisse zeigen zum ersten Mal, dass Augenbewegungen in einem Blickinteraktionsszenario in Form einer bei der anderen Person ausgelösten Blickreaktion repräsentiert werden. Diese Beobachtung steht im Einklang mit dem ideomotorischen Prinzip der Handlungskontrolle. 2. Die vorliegende Versuchsreihe belegt und erweitert die wegweisenden Ergebnisse von Huestegge und Kreutzfeldt (2012) in Bezug auf den bedeutenden Einfluss von Handlungseffekten in der okulomotorischen Handlungskontrolle. Ich konnte zeigen, dass sich die Ergebnisse von Huestegge und Kreutzfeldt (2012) über verschiedene Kontexte mit unterschiedlichem Stimulus-Material replizieren lassen unter der Bedingung, dass die wahrgenommenen Handlungseffekte ausreichend stark ausgeprägt waren. 3. Zudem konnte ich zeigen, dass sich Mechanismen der Blickkontrolle in einem sozialen Blickinteraktionskontext vermutlich nicht qualitativ von denen in einem nicht-sozialen Kontext unterscheiden. Zusammenfassend unterstützen die Ergebnisse die jüngsten theoretischen Überlegungen, die die Rolle von antizipativen Prozessen in der Handlungssteuerung in sozialen Interaktionskontexten betonen. Darüber hinaus legen meine Ergebnisse nahe, dass antizipationsbasierte Blickkontrolle im sozialen Kontext auf den gleichen allgemeinen psychologischen Mechanismen wie ideomotorische Blickkontrolle basiert und somit als integraler Bestandteil, und nicht als eine spezielle Form der ideomotorischen Blickkontrolle, betrachtet werden sollte. KW - Verhaltenskontrolle KW - Blickbewegung KW - Kognition KW - Ideomotorische Blickkontrolle KW - Soziomotorische Blickkontrolle KW - Blickinteraktion KW - Soziale Handlungseffekte KW - Effektantizipation KW - Ideomotor gaze control KW - Sociomotor gaze control KW - Gaze interaction KW - Social action effects KW - Effect anticipation KW - Ideomotorik Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-215279 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 - 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 - 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 - THES A1 - Seger, Benedikt Thomas T1 - Children's Comprehension of Illustrated Narrative Text: The Role of Tripartite Representations and Perceptual Simulation T1 - Verständnis illustrierter narrativer Texte bei Kindern: Die Rolle von drei Repräsentationsebenen und perzeptueller Simulation N2 - This doctoral thesis is part of a research project on the development of the cognitive compre-hension of film at Würzburg University that was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) between 2013 and 2019 and awarded to Gerhild Nied-ing. That project examined children’s comprehension of narrative text and its development in illustrated versus non-illustrated formats. For this purpose, van Dijk and Kintsch’s (1983) tri-partite model was used, according to which text recipients form text surface and textbase rep-resentations and construct a situation model. In particular, predictions referring to the influ-ence of illustrations on these three levels of text representation were derived from the inte-grated model of text and picture comprehension (ITPC; Schnotz, 2014), which holds that text-picture units are processed on both text-based (descriptive) and picture-based (depictive) paths. Accordingly, illustrations support the construction of a situation model. Moreover, in line with the embodied cognition account (e.g., Barsalou, 1999), it was assumed that the situa-tion model is grounded in perception and action; text recipients mentally simulate the situation addressed in the text through their neural systems related to perception (perceptual simulation) and action (motor resonance). Therefore, the thesis also examines whether perceptual simula-tion takes place during story reception, whether it improves the comprehension of illustrated stories, and whether motor resonance is related to the comprehension of text accompanied by dynamic illustrations. Finally, predictions concerning the development of comprehending illus-trated text were made in line with Springer’s (2001) hypotheses according to which younger children, compared with older children and adults, focus more on illustrations during text comprehension (perceptual boundedness) and use illustrations for the development of cogni-tive skills (perceptual support). The first research question sought to validate the tripartite model in the context of children’s comprehension of narrative text, so Hypothesis 1 predicted that children yield representations of the text surface, the textbase, and the situation model during text reception. The second research question comprised the assumptions regarding the impact of illustrations on text comprehension. Accordingly, it was expected that illustrations improve the situation model (Hypothesis 2a), especially when they are processed before their corresponding text passages (Hypothesis 2b). Both hypotheses were derived from the ITPC and the assumption that per-ceptual simulation supports the situation model. It was further predicted that dynamic illustra-tions evoke more accurate situation models than static ones (Hypothesis 2c); this followed from the assumption that motor resonance supports the situation model. In line with the ITPC, it was assumed that illustrations impair the textbase (Hypothesis 2d), especially when they are presented after their corresponding text passages (Hypothesis 2e). In accordance with earlier results, it was posited that illustrations have a beneficial effect for the text surface (Hypothesis 2f). The third research question addressed the embodied approach to the situation model. Here, it was assumed that perceptual simulation takes place during text reception (Hypothesis 3a) and that it is more pronounced in illustrated than in non-illustrated text (Hypothesis 3b); the latter hypothesis was related to a necessary premise of the assumption that perceptual sim-ulation improves the comprehension of illustrated text. The fourth research question was relat-ed to perceptual boundedness and perceptual support and predicted age-related differences; younger children were expected to benefit more from illustrations regarding the situation model (Hypothesis 4a) and to simulate vertical object movements in a more pronounced fash-ion (Hypothesis 4b) than older children. In addition, Hypothesis 4c held that perceptual simu-lation is more pronounced in younger children particularly when illustrations are present. Three experiments were conducted to investigate these hypotheses. Experiment 1 (Seger, Wannagat, & Nieding, submitted).compared the tripartite representations of written text without illustrations, with illustrations presented first, and with illustrations presented after their corresponding sentences. Students between 7 and 13 years old (N = 146) took part. Ex-periment 2 (Seger, Wannagat, & Nieding, 2019) investigated the tripartite representations of auditory text, audiovisual text with static illustrations, and audiovisual text with dynamic il-lustrations among children in the same age range (N = 108). In both experiments, a sentence recognition method similar to that introduced by Schmalhofer and Glavanov (1986) was em-ployed. This method enables the simultaneous measurement of all three text representations. Experiment 3 (Seger, Hauf, & Nieding, 2020) determined the perceptual simulation of vertical object movements during the reception of auditory and audiovisual narrative text among chil-dren between 5 and 11 years old and among adults (N = 190). For this experiment, a picture verification task based on Stanfield and Zwaan’s (2001) paradigm and adapted from Hauf (2016) was used. The first two experiments confirmed Hypothesis 1, indicating that the tripartite model is appli-cable to the comprehension of auditory and written narrative text among children. A benefi-cial effect of illustrations to the situation model was observed when they were presented syn-chronously with auditory text (Hypotheses 2a), but not when presented asynchronously with written text (Hypothesis 2b), so the ITPC is partly supported on this point. Hypothesis 2c was rejected, indicating that motor resonance does not make an additional contribution to the comprehension of narrative text with dynamic illustrations. Regarding the textbase, a general negative effect of illustrations was not observed (Hypothesis 2d), but a specific negative effect of illustrations that follow their corresponding text passages was seen (Hypothesis 2e); the latter result is also in line with the ITPC. The text surface (Hypothesis 2f) appears to benefit from illustrations in auditory but not written text. The results obtained in Experiment 3 sug-gest that children and adults perceptually simulate vertical object movements (Hypothesis 3a), but there appears to be no difference between auditory and audiovisual text (Hypothesis 3b), so there is no support for a functional relationship between perceptual simulation and the situ-ation model in illustrated text. Hypotheses 4a–4c were investigated in all three experiments and did not receive support in any of them, which indicates that representations of illustrated and non-illustrated narrative text remain stable within the age range examined here. N2 - Die vorliegende Doktorthesis ist Teil eines Forschungsprojektes zur Entwicklung des kogni-tiven Filmverständnisses an der Universität Würzburg, das von der Deutschen Forschungs-gemeinschaft im Zeitraum 2013 – 2019 als Zuwendung an Gerhild Nieding finanziert wurde. In diesem Projekt wurde das Verständnis narrativer Texte mit und ohne Illustrationen bei Kindern sowie dessen Entwicklung untersucht. Zu diesem Zweck wurde van Dijk und Kintschs (1983) Drei-Ebenen-Modell verwendet, demzufolge Textrezipient*innen eine Re-präsentation der Textoberfläche und der Textbasis bilden sowie ein Situationsmodell kon-struieren. Im Speziellen wurden Vorhersagen in Bezug auf den Einfluss von Illustrationen auf diese drei Textrepräsentationsebenen vom integrierten Modell des Text- und Bildver-ständnisses (ITPC; Schnotz, 2014) abgeleitet; dieses nimmt an, dass Text-Bild-Einheiten sowohl auf einem textbasierten (deskriptiven) als auch auf einem bildbasierten (depiktiven) Pfad verarbeitet werden. Demzufolge unterstützen Illustrationen den Aufbau eines Situati-onsmodells. Darüber hinaus wurde mit Bezug auf den Ansatz der verkörperten Kognition (z.B. Barsalou, 1999) angenommen, dass das Situationsmodell im Wahrnehmen und Han-deln begründet ist; Textrezipient*innen simulieren demnach die im Text dargestellte Situati-on durch die neuronalen Systeme, die mit Wahrnehmung (perzeptuelle Simulation) und Handlung (motorische Resonanz) in Verbindung stehen. Deshalb untersucht diese Thesis auch, ob perzeptuelle Simulation während der Textrezeption stattfindet, ob diese das Verste-hen illustrierter Geschichten verbessert und ob motorische Resonanz einen Bezug zum Ver-stehen von Texten mit dynamischen Illustrationen aufweist. Schließlich wurden Vorhersagen bezüglich der Entwicklung des Verständnisses illustrierter Texte anhand von Springers (2001) Hypothesen getroffen, wonach jüngere Kinder während des Textverstehens stärker auf Illustrationen fokussieren als ältere Kinder und Erwachsene (perzeptuelle Gebundenheit) und wonach sie Illustrationen für die Entwicklung kognitiver Fertigkeiten nutzen (perzeptu-elle Unterstützung). Die erste Forschungsfrage zielte darauf ab, das Drei-Ebenen-Modell im Zusammenhang mit dem Verständnis narrativer Texte bei Kindern zu validieren, daher sagte Hypothese 1 voraus, dass Kinder während der Textrezeption Repräsentationen der Textoberfläche, der Textbasis und des Situationsmodells aufweisen. Die zweite Forschungsfrage umfasste Annahmen be-züglich des Einflusses von Illustrationen auf das Textverständnis. Demnach wurde erwartet, dass Illustrationen das Situationsmodell verbessern (Hypothese 2a), vor allem, wenn diese vor den ihr jeweils zugeordneten Textpassagen verarbeitet werden (Hypothese 2b). Beide Hypothesen wurden hergeleitet aus dem ITPC sowie aus der Annahme, dass perzeptuelle Simulation das Situationsmodell unterstützt. Es wurde ferner vorhergesagt, dass dynamische Illustrationen genauere Situationsmodelle hervorrufen als statische (Hypothese 2c); dies folg-te aus der Annahme, dass motorische Resonanz das Situationsmodell unterstützt. In Überein-stimmung mit dem ITPC wurde angenommen, dass Illustrationen die Textbasis beeinträchti-gen (Hypothese 2d), vor allem, wenn diese nach den ihnen zugeordneten Textpassagen prä-sentiert werden (Hypothese 2e). Basierend auf früheren Ergebnissen wurde für die Textober-fläche die Hypothese aufgestellt, dass Illustrationen sich günstig auswirken (Hypothese 2f). Die dritte Forschungsfrage nahm Bezug auf den verkörperten Ansatz des Situationsmodells. Hierbei wurde postuliert, dass perzeptuelle Simulationen während der Textrezeption stattfin-den (Hypothese 3a) und dass diese stärker ausgeprägt sind bei illustriertem im Gegensatz zu nicht-illustriertem Text (Hypothese 3b); letztere Hypothese stand in Zusammenhang mit ei-ner notwendigen Voraussetzung der Annahme, dass perzeptuelle Simulation das Verständnis illustrierter Texte erhöht. Die vierte Forschungsfrage stand im Kontext der Annahmen perzeptueller Gebundenheit und perzeptueller Unterstützung und sagte Altersunterschiede voraus; es wurde erwartet, dass jüngere im Gegensatz älteren Kindern in Bezug auf das Situa-tionsmodell mehr von Illustrationen profitieren (Hypothese 4a) und vertikale Objektbewe-gungen stärker simulieren (Hypothese 4b). Zudem nahm Hypothese 4c an, dass die perzeptu-elle Simulation bei jüngeren Kindern vor allem dann stärker ausgeprägt ist, wenn Illustratio-nen gezeigt werden. Zur Überprüfung dieser Hypothesen wurden drei Experimente durchgeführt. Experiment 1 (Seger, Wannagat & Nieding, eingereicht) verglich die drei Repräsentationsebenen bei schriftlichem Text ohne Illustrationen, schriftlichem Text mit Illustrationen, die vor dem jeweiligen Text erschienen und schriftlichem Text mit Illustrationen, die danach erschienen. Schüler*innen im Alter von 7 bis 13 Jahren (N = 146) nahmen daran teil. Experiment 2 (Se-ger, Wannagat & Nieding, 2019) erforschte die drei Repräsentationsebenen bei auditivem Text, audiovisuellem Text mit statischen Illustrationen und audiovisuellem Text mit dyna-mischen Illustrationen in einer Stichprobe von Kindern desselben Alters (N = 108). In bei-den Experimenten wurde eine Satzrekognitionsmethode ähnlich der von Schmalhofer und Glavanov (1986) angewendet. Diese Methode ermöglicht die simultane Messung aller drei Repräsentationsebenen. Experiment 3 (Seger, Hauf & Nieding, 2020) untersuchte die perzep-tuelle Simulation von vertikalen Objektbewegungen bei der Rezeption auditiver und audio-visueller narrativer Texte bei Kindern im Alter von 5 bis 11 Jahren sowie bei Erwachsenen (N = 190). Hierbei wurde eine Bildverifikationsaufgabe verwendet, die auf Stanfield und Zwaans (2001) Paradigma aufbaut und von Hauf (2016) adaptiert wurde. Die ersten beiden Experimente bestätigen Hypothese 1, was darauf hindeutet, dass das Drei-Ebenen-Modell auf den Kontext des Verständnisses auditiver und schriftlicher narrativer Texte bei Kindern angewendet werden kann. Eine günstige Auswirkung von Illustrationen auf das Situationsmodell wurde beobachtet, wenn diese synchron mit auditivem Text (Hypo-these 2a), jedoch nicht wenn diese asynchron mit schriftlichem Text präsentiert wurden (Hy-pothese 2b); dies stellt eine partielle Bestätigung der ITPC in diesem Punkt dar. Hypothese 2c wurde verworfen, demnach trägt motorische Resonanz nicht zusätzlich zum Verständnis narrativer Texte mit dynamischen Illustrationen bei. Im Hinblick auf die Textbasis wurde kein genereller negativer Effekt von Illustrationen beobachtet (Hypothese 2d), jedoch ein spezifischer negativer Effekt wenn diese der ihnen jeweils zugeordneten Textpassage folgten (Hypothese 2e); letzteres Ergebnis steht ebenfalls im Einklang mit der ITPC. Die Textober-fläche (Hypothese 2f) scheint von Illustrationen bei auditivem, jedoch nicht bei schriftlichem Text zu profitieren. Die Ergebnisse von Experiment 3 legen nahe, dass Kinder und Erwach-sene vertikale Objektbewegungen perzeptuell simulieren (Hypothese 3a), es scheint jedoch diesbezüglich keinen Unterschied zwischen auditivem und audiovisuellem Text zu geben (Hypothese 3b); folglich wird die Annahme nicht unterstützt, dass perzeptuelle Simulationen beim Aufbau des Situationsmodells bei illustrierten Texten eine funktionale Rolle spielen. Die Hypothesen 4a–4c wurden in allen drei Experimenten untersucht und in keinem davon bestätigt; daraus folgt, dass Repräsentationen illustrierter und nicht illustrierter narrativer Texte innerhalb des untersuchten Altersbereichs stabil bleiben. KW - Textverstehen KW - Grundschulkind KW - Audiovisuelle Medien KW - Illustration KW - text comprehension KW - situation model KW - narrative text KW - perceptual simulation KW - perceptual support KW - Illustration Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-242280 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 - Ziegler, Georg C. A1 - Ehlis, Ann-Christine A1 - Weber, Heike A1 - Vitale, Maria Rosaria A1 - Zöller, Johanna E. M. A1 - Ku, Hsing-Ping A1 - Schiele, Miriam A. A1 - Kürbitz, Laura I. A1 - Romanos, Marcel A1 - Pauli, Paul A1 - Kalisch, Raffael A1 - Zwanzger, Peter A1 - Domschke, Katharina A1 - Fallgatter, Andreas J. A1 - Reif, Andreas A1 - Lesch, Klaus-Peter T1 - A Common CDH13 Variant is Associated with Low Agreeableness and Neural Responses to Working Memory Tasks in ADHD JF - Genes N2 - The cell—cell signaling gene CDH13 is associated with a wide spectrum of neuropsychiatric disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and major depression. CDH13 regulates axonal outgrowth and synapse formation, substantiating its relevance for neurodevelopmental processes. Several studies support the influence of CDH13 on personality traits, behavior, and executive functions. However, evidence for functional effects of common gene variation in the CDH13 gene in humans is sparse. Therefore, we tested for association of a functional intronic CDH13 SNP rs2199430 with ADHD in a sample of 998 adult patients and 884 healthy controls. The Big Five personality traits were assessed by the NEO-PI-R questionnaire. Assuming that altered neural correlates of working memory and cognitive response inhibition show genotype-dependent alterations, task performance and electroencephalographic event-related potentials were measured by n-back and continuous performance (Go/NoGo) tasks. The rs2199430 genotype was not associated with adult ADHD on the categorical diagnosis level. However, rs2199430 was significantly associated with agreeableness, with minor G allele homozygotes scoring lower than A allele carriers. Whereas task performance was not affected by genotype, a significant heterosis effect limited to the ADHD group was identified for the n-back task. Heterozygotes (AG) exhibited significantly higher N200 amplitudes during both the 1-back and 2-back condition in the central electrode position Cz. Consequently, the common genetic variation of CDH13 is associated with personality traits and impacts neural processing during working memory tasks. Thus, CDH13 might contribute to symptomatic core dysfunctions of social and cognitive impairment in ADHD. KW - ADHD KW - CDH13 KW - neurodevelopment KW - executive functions KW - working memory KW - Big Five KW - agreeableness Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-245220 SN - 2073-4425 VL - 12 IS - 9 ER - TY - THES A1 - Zetzl, Teresa Margarete T1 - Cancer-related fatigue intervention T1 - Interventionen gegen krebsbedingte Fatigue N2 - The incidence of cancer cases is rising steadily, while improved early detection and new cancer-specific therapies are reducing the mortality rate. In addition to curing cancer or prolonging life, increasing the quality of life is thus an important goal of oncology, which is why the burdens of cancer and treatment are becoming more important. A common side effect of cancer and its therapy is cancer-related fatigue, a tiredness that manifests itself on physical, emotional and cognitive levels and is not in proportion to previous physical efforts. Since the etiology of fatigue has not yet been fully clarified, symptom-oriented therapy is preferable to cause-specific therapy. In addition to activity management, sleep hygiene, and cognitive behavioral therapy, mind-body interventions such as yoga are recommended for reducing fatigue. Previous studies with small sample sizes were able to examine the efficacy of yoga regarding fatigue predominantly in patients with breast cancer. Long-term effects of yoga have rarely been studied and there have been no attempts to increase long-term effects through interventions such as reminder e-mails. This dissertation takes a closer look at these mentioned aspects of the study sample and long-term effects. An 8-week randomized controlled yoga intervention was conducted, including patients with different cancer types reporting mild to severe fatigue. Following the 8-week yoga therapy, a randomized group of participants received weekly reminder e-mails for 6 months for regular yoga practice, whereas the control group did not receive reminder e-mails. The first paper is a protocol article, which addresses the design and planned implementation of the research project this dissertation is based upon. This serves to ensure better replicability and comparability with other yoga studies. Due to a very low consent rate of patients in the pilot phase, it was necessary to deviate from the protocol article in the actual implementation and the planned inclusion criterion of fatigue >5 was reduced to fatigue >1. The second paper examines the efficacy of the eight-week yoga intervention. Patients in the intervention group who participated in the yoga classes seven times or more showed a significantly greater reduction in general and physical fatigue than those who participated less often. The efficacy of yoga was related to the number of attended yoga sessions. Women with breast cancer who participated in yoga reported greater reductions in fatigue than women with other cancer types. There was also an improvement for depression and quality of life after eight weeks of yoga therapy compared to no yoga therapy. These results imply that yoga is helpful in reducing depression and cancer-related fatigue, especially in terms of physical aspects and improving quality of life. The third paper focuses on the efficacy of reminder e-mails in terms of fatigue and practice frequency. Patients who received reminder e-mails reported greater reductions in general and emotional fatigue, as well as significant increases in practice frequency, compared to patients who did not receive reminder e-mails. Compared to fatigue scores before yoga, significantly lower fatigue and depression scores and higher quality of life were reported after yoga therapy and at follow-up six months later. Weekly e-mail reminders after yoga therapy may have positive effects on 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 improvement in physical fatigue as found in Paper 2. This may indicate other factors that influence the efficacy of yoga practice on physical fatigue, such as mindfulness or side effects of therapy. This research project provides insight into the efficacy of yoga therapy for oncology patients with fatigue. It is important that such interventions be offered early, while fatigue symptoms are not too severe. Regular guided yoga practice can reduce physical fatigue, but subsequent yoga practice at home does not further reduce physical fatigue. Reminder emails after completed yoga therapy could only reduce patients' emotional fatigue. It may be that physical fatigue was reduced as much as possible by the previous yoga therapy and that there was a floor effect, or it may be that reminder emails are not suitable as an intervention to reduce physical fatigue at all. Further research is needed to examine the mechanisms of the different interventions in more detail and to find appropriate interventions that reduce all levels of fatigue equally. N2 - Die Anzahl der Krebs-Neuerkrankungen steigt stetig, während durch verbesserte Früherkennung und neue krebsspezifische Therapien die Sterberate sinkt. Neben der Heilung von Krebs oder Verlängerung der Lebenszeit ist somit eine Erhöhung der Lebensqualität wichtige Aufgabe der Onkologie, weshalb Nebenwirkungen der Krebsbehandlung näher betrachtet werden müssen. Eine häufige Folge von Krebserkrankungen und deren Therapie ist die krebsbedingte Fatigue, eine Müdigkeit, die sich auf physischer, emotionaler und kognitiver Ebene zeigt und nicht im Verhältnis zu vorhergehenden Anstrengungen steht. Da die Ätiologie der Fatigue bisher nicht vollständig geklärt ist, ist eine symptomorientierte Therapie der ursachenspezifischen Therapie vorzuziehen. Neben Aktivitätsmanagement, Schlafhygiene und kognitiver Umstrukturierung werden Mind-Body-Interventionen wie Yoga zur Reduktion von krebsbedingter Fatigue empfohlen. Bisherige Studien mit geringer Stichprobengröße konnten die Wirksamkeit von Yoga hinsichtlich Fatigue überwiegend bei Brustkrebspatientinnen überprüfen. Langfristige Effekte von Yoga wurden nur selten überprüft. Es gibt bisher keine Interventionen, wie beispielsweise Erinnerungs-E-Mails, die darauf zielen, derartige langfristige Effekte zu erhöhen. In dieser Dissertation werden auf die Aspekte Stichprobe und langfristige Effekte, näher eingegangen. Es wurde eine achtwöchige randomisierte, kontrollierte Yoga-Intervention durchgeführt, die in die Stichprobe alle PatientInnen mit onkologischen Erkrankungen einschloss, die leichte bis schwere Fatigue berichteten. Im Anschluss an die achtwöchige Yogatherapie erhielt eine randomisierte Gruppe der Teilnehmenden für sechs Monate wöchentliche Erinnerungs-E-Mails für die regelmäßige Yogapraxis, die die Kontrollgruppe nicht erhielt. Das erste Paper befasst sich als Protokollartikel genauer mit dem Aufbau und der geplanten Durchführung des gesamten Forschungsprojekts. Dies dient der Sicherung einer besseren Replizierbarkeit und Vergleichbarkeit mit anderen Yogastudien. Aufgrund einer sehr geringen Zustimmungsrate der PatientInnen in der Pilotphase musste vom Protokollartikel abgewichen werden und das geplante Einschlusskriterium der Fatigue >5 auf Fatigue >1 gesetzt werden. Das zweite Paper beschäftigt sich mit der Wirksamkeit der achtwöchigen Yoga-Intervention. PatientInnen in der Interventionsgruppe, die sieben Mal oder häufiger an der Yogaintervention teilgenommen haben, zeigten eine signifikant stärkere Reduktion der allgemeinen und physischen Fatigue als die PatientInnen der Kontrollgruppe. Die Wirksamkeit der Yoga-Intervention stand im Zusammenhang mit der Anzahl der teilgenommenen Yogastunden. Frauen mit Brustkrebs, die am Yoga teilnahmen, berichteten eine stärkere Reduktion der Fatigue als Frauen mit anderen Krebsarten. Auch für Depression und Lebensqualität konnte durch die achtwöchige Yogatherapie eine Verbesserung erzielt werden. Diese Ergebnisse implizieren, dass Yoga hilfreich ist, krebsbedingte Fatigue zu reduzieren, vor allem hinsichtlich physischer Aspekte. Das dritte Paper beschäftigt sich mit der Wirksamkeit von Erinnerungs-E-Mails hinsichtlich der Fatigue und Übungshäufigkeit. PatientInnen, die Erinnerungs-E-Mails erhielten, berichteten von einer stärkeren Reduktion der allgemeinen und emotionalen Fatigue, sowie einer signifikanten Erhöhung der Übungshäufigkeit. Im Vergleich zu den Werten vor der Yogatherapie wurden nach Yogatherapie und im Follow-Up sechs Monate später signifikant geringere Fatigue und Depressionswerte sowie eine höhere Lebensqualität berichtet. Wöchentliche Erinnerungs-E-Mails nach einer Yogatherapie können positive Effekte auf die allgemeine und emotionale Fatigue haben und KrebspatientInnen mit Fatigue helfen, eine regelmäßige Yogapraxis zu Hause zu etablieren. Eine höhere Übungshäufigkeit führte jedoch nicht zu einer höheren Verbesserung der physischen Fatigue, wie es in Paper 2 zu finden war. Dies kann auf andere Faktoren hindeuten, die die Wirksamkeit der Yogapraxis auf die physische Fatigue beeinflussen, wie Achtsamkeit oder Nebenwirkungen der Therapie. Dieses Forschungsprojekt gibt Aufschluss über die Wirksamkeit der Yogatherapie bei onkologischen PatientInnen mit Fatigue. Wichtig ist, dass derartige Interventionen früh angeboten werden, solange die Fatigue-Symptomatik nicht stark ausgeprägt ist. Regelmäßige geleitete Yogapraxis kann die physische Fatigue verringern, anschließend mehr Yogapraxis zu Hause reduzierte jedoch die physische Fatigue in diesem Forschungsprojekt nicht mehr weiter. Erinnerungs-E-Mails nach abgeschlossener Yogatherapie wirkten sich nur positiv auf die emotionale Fatigue der PatientInnen aus. Dies kann daran liegen, dass physische Fatigue durch die vorhergehende Yogatherapie bereits so stark wie möglich reduziert wurde und ein Boden-Effekt vorlag oder auch daran, dass die Erinnerungs-E-Mails als Intervention zur Reduktion von physischer Fatigue nicht ausreichend geeignet sind. Weitere Forschung ist notwendig, um die Mechanismen der verschiedenen Interventionen genauer zu überprüfen und geeignete Interventionen zu entwickeln, die alle Ebenen der Müdigkeit gleichermaßen reduzieren. KW - Ermüdungssyndrom KW - Krebs KW - yoga KW - cancer-related fatigue KW - cancer KW - fatigue KW - e-mail Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-251662 ER - TY - THES A1 - Schmidts, Constantin T1 - Affective regulation of cognitive conflict T1 - Affektive Regulation von kognitivem Konflikt N2 - Kognitive Kontrolle beschreibt Prozesse die nötig sind um zielgerichtetes Handeln im Angesicht von internen oder externen Widerständen zu ermöglichen. Wenn wir aus eigenen Stücken oder inspiriert durch unsere Umwelt Handlungen vorbereiten die unseren aktuellen Zielen entgegen stehen, kommt es zu Konflikten. Solche Konflikte können sich auf nachfolgendes Erleben und Verhalten auswirken. Aversive Konsequenzen von Konflikt könnten in einem Konfliktüberwachungsmodul registriert werden, welches anschließend Aufmerksamkeitsänderungen und Handlungstendenzen zur Reduzierung dieses negativen Affektes in Gang setzt. Wenn das der Fall wäre, könnten die vielfach beobachteten Verhaltensanpassungen an kognitiven Konflikt ein Ausdruck von Emotionsregulation sein. Ein theoretischer Eckpfeiler der gegenwärtigen Forschung zur Emotionsregulation ist das Prozessmodell der Emotionsregulation, das aus den Regulationsstrategien Situationsauswahl, Situationsmodifikation, Aufmerksamkeitslenkung, kognitiven Veränderungen und Reaktionsmodulation besteht. Unter der Annahme, dass Konfliktanpassung und Affektregulation auf gemeinsamen Mechanismen fußen, habe ich aus dem Prozessmodell der Emotionsregulation Vorhersagen zur kognitiven Kontrolle abgeleitet und diese in elf Experimenten getestet (N = 509). Die Versuchsteilnehmer zeigten Situationsauswahl in Bezug auf Konflikte, allerdings nur dann, wenn sie ausdrücklich auf Handlungs- und Ergebniskontingenzen hingewiesen wurden (Experimente 1 bis 3). Ich fand Anzeichen für einen Mechanismus, der der Situationsmodifikation ähnelt, aber keine Hinweise auf eine Beteiligung von Affekt (Experimente 4 bis 10). Eine Änderung der Konfliktbewertung hatte keinen Einfluss auf das Ausmaß der Konfliktadaptation (Experiment 11). Insgesamt gab es Hinweise auf eine explizite Aversivität kognitiver Konflikte, jedoch weniger auf implizite Aversivität, was darauf hindeutet, dass Konflikte vor allem dann Affektregulationsprozesse auslösen, wenn Menschen explizit Affektregulationsziele vor Augen haben. N2 - Cognitive control is what makes goal-directed actions possible. Whenever the environment or our impulses strongly suggests a response that is incompatible with our goals, conflict arises. Such conflicts are believed to cause negative affect. Aversive consequences of conflict may be registered in a conflict monitoring module, which subsequently initiates attentional changes and action tendencies to reduce negative affect. This association suggests that behavioral adaptation might be a reflection of emotion regulation. The theoretical cornerstone of current research on emotion regulation is the process model of emotion regulation, which postulates the regulation strategies situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. Under the assumption that conflict adaptation and affect regulation share common mechanisms, I derived several predictions regarding cognitive control from the process model of emotion regulation and tested them in 11 experiments (N = 509). Participants engaged in situation selection towards conflict, but only when they were explicitly pointed to action-outcome contingencies (Experiments 1 to 3). I found support for a mechanism resembling situation modification, but no evidence for a role of affect (Experiments 4 to 10). Changing the evaluation of conflict had no impact on the extent of conflict adaptation (Experiment 11). Overall, there was evidence for an explicit aversiveness of cognitive conflict, but less evidence for implicit aversiveness, suggesting that conflict may trigger affect regulation processes, particularly when people explicitly have affect regulation goals in mind. KW - Affekt KW - Kognition KW - Emotionsregulation KW - Cognitive conflict KW - Affect regulation KW - Cognitive control KW - Experimentelle Psychologie Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-219897 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brych, Mareike A1 - Murali, Supriya A1 - Händel, Barbara T1 - The Role of Blinks, Microsaccades and their Retinal Consequences in Bistable Motion Perception JF - Frontiers in Psychology N2 - Eye-related movements such as blinks and microsaccades are modulated during bistable perceptual tasks. However, if they play an active role during internal perceptual switches is not known. We conducted two experiments involving an ambiguous plaid stimulus, wherein participants were asked to continuously report their percept, which could consist of either unidirectional coherent or bidirectional component movement. Our main results show that blinks and microsaccades did not facilitate perceptual switches. On the contrary, a reduction in eye movements preceded the perceptual switch. Blanks, on the other hand, thought to mimic the retinal consequences of a blink, consistently led to a switch. Through the timing of the blank-introduced perceptual change, we were able to estimate the delay between the internal switch and the response. This delay further allowed us to evaluate that the reduction in blink probability co-occurred with the internal perceptual switch. Additionally, our results indicate that distinct internal processes underlie the switch to coherent vs. component percept. Blanks exclusively facilitated a switch to the coherent percept, and only the switch to coherent percept was followed by an increase in blink rate. In a second study, we largely replicated the findings and included a microsaccade analysis. Microsaccades only showed a weak relation with perceptual switches, but their direction was correlated with the perceived motion direction. Nevertheless, our data suggests an interaction between microsaccades and blinks by showing that microsaccades were differently modulated around blinks compared with blanks. This study shows that a reduction in eye movements precedes internal perceptual switches indicating that the rate of blinks can set the stage for a reinterpretation of sensory input. While a perceptual switch based on changed sensory input usually leads to an increase in blink rate, such an increase was only present after the perceptual switch to coherent motion but absent after the switch to component percept. This provides evidence of different underlying mechanism or internal consequence of the two perceptual switches and suggests that blinks can uncover differences in internal percept-related processes that are not evident from the percept itself. KW - eye movements KW - spontaneous eye blink KW - microsaccade rate KW - microsaccade direction KW - bistable perception KW - ambiguous plaid 4 Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-235217 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 12 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Brych, Mareike A1 - Händel, Barbara F. A1 - Riechelmann, Eva A1 - Pieczykolan, Aleksandra A1 - Huestegge, Lynn T1 - Effects of vocal demands on pupil dilation JF - Psychophysiology N2 - Pupil dilation is known to be affected by a variety of factors, including physical (e.g., light) and cognitive sources of influence (e.g., mental load due to working memory demands, stimulus/response competition etc.). In the present experiment, we tested the extent to which vocal demands (speaking) can affect pupil dilation. Based on corresponding preliminary evidence found in a reanalysis of an existing data set from our lab, we setup a new experiment that systematically investigated vocal response‐related effects compared to mere jaw/lip movement and button press responses. Conditions changed on a trial‐by‐trial basis while participants were instructed to keep fixating a central cross on a screen throughout. In line with our prediction (and previous observation), speaking caused the pupils to dilate strongest, followed by nonvocal movements and finally a baseline condition without any vocal or muscular demands. An additional analysis of blink rates showed no difference in blink frequency between vocal and baseline conditions, but different blink dynamics. Finally, simultaneously recorded electromyographic activity showed that muscle activity may contribute to some (but not all) aspects of the observed effects on pupil size. The results are discussed in the context of other recent research indicating effects of perceived (instead of executed) vocal action on pupil dynamics. KW - blink rate KW - eye movements KW - movement interaction KW - pupil dilation KW - vocal responses Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-224425 VL - 58 IS - 2 ER - TY - THES A1 - Stegmann, Yannik T1 - Electrocortical mechanisms of sustained attention during the acquisition and interaction of conditioned fear and anxiety T1 - Elektrokortikale Mechanismen der Aufmerksamkeit während der Akquisition und Interaktion konditionierter Furcht und Angst N2 - Adapting defensive behavior to the characteristics of a threatening situation is a fundamental function of the brain. Particularly, threat imminence plays a major role for the organization of defensive responses. Acute threat prompts phasic physiological responses, which are usually associated with an intense feeling of fear. In contrast, diffuse and potentially threatening situations elicit a sustained state of anxious apprehension. Detection of the threatening stimulus defines the key event in this framework, initiating the transition from potential to acute threat. Consequently, attention to threat is crucial for supporting defensive behavior. The functions of attention are finely tuned to the characteristics of a threatening situation. Potential threat is associated with hypervigilance, in order to facilitate threat detection. Once a threatening stimulus has been identified, attention is selectively focused on the source of danger. Even though the concepts of selective attention and hypervigilance to threat are well established, evidence for their neural correlates remain scarce. Therefore, a major goal of this thesis is to elucidate the neural correlates of selective attention to acute threat and hypervigilance during potential threat. A second aim of this thesis is to provide a mechanistic account for the interaction of fear and anxiety. While contemporary models view fear and anxiety as mutually exclusive, recent findings for the neural networks of fear and anxiety suggest potential interactions. In four studies, aversive cue conditioning was used to induce acute threat, while context conditioning served as a laboratory model of potential threat. To quantify neural correlates of selective attention and hypervigilance, steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs) were measured as an index of visuocortical responding. Study 1 compared visuocortical responses to acute and potential threat for high versus low trait-anxious individuals. All individuals demonstrated enhanced electrocortical responses to the central cue in the acute threat condition, suggesting evidence for the neural correlate of selective attention. However, only low anxious individuals revealed facilitated processing of the contexts in the potential threat condition, reflecting a neural correlate of hypervigilance. High anxious individuals did not discriminate among contexts. These findings contribute to the notion of aberrational processing of potential threat for high anxious individuals. Study 2 and 3 realized orthogonal combinations of cue and context conditioning to investigate potential interactions of fear and anxiety. In contrast to Study 1 and 2, Study 3 used verbal instructions to induce potentially threatening contexts. Besides ssVEPs, threat ratings and skin conductance responses (SCRs) were recorded as efferent indices of defensive responding. None of these studies found further evidence for the neural correlates of hypervigilance and selective attention. However, results for ratings and SCRs revealed additive effects of fear and anxiety, suggesting that fear and anxiety are not mutually exclusive, but interact linearly to organize and facilitate defensive behavior. Study 4 tested ssVEPs to more ecologically valid forms of context conditioning, using flickering video stimuli of virtual offices to establish context representations. Contrary to expectations, results revealed decreased visuocortical responses during sustained presentations of anxiety compared to neutral contexts. A disruption of ssVEP signals eventually suggests interferences by continuously changing video streams which are enhanced as a function of motivational relevance. In summary, this thesis provided evidence for the neural correlates of attention only for isolated forms of fear and anxiety, but not for their interaction. In contrast, an additive interaction model of fear and anxiety for measures of defensive responding offers a new perspective on the topography of defensive behavior. N2 - ZusammenfassungDie Anpassung defensiver Verhaltensweisen an die Anforderungen bedrohlicher Sit-uationen ist eine fundamentale Funktion des Gehirns. Akute Bedrohung führt in der Regel zu kurz-anhaltenden, physiologischen Reaktionen, die mit einem Gefühlintensiver Furcht einhergehen, während Situationen potenzieller Bedrohung zu einem anhaltenden Zustand erhöhter Angst führen. Dabei spielt das Erkennen der Gefahr eine besondere Rolle, da sie den Übergang von potenzieller zu akuter Bedrohung initiiert. Demnach kommt der Aufmerksamkeit eine wichtige Funktion bei der Unterstützung defensiver Verhaltensweisen zu. Mechanismen der Aufmerksamkeit sind dabei präzise auf die jeweilige Situation abgestimmt. Potenzielle Bedrohung führt zu Hypervigilanz, um bedrohliche Reize schneller zu entdecken ... KW - Furcht KW - Angst KW - Aufmerksamkeit KW - ssVEP KW - EEG KW - Conditioning KW - Visuelle Aufmerksamkeit Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-237700 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 -