Refine
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (595)
Year of publication
Document Type
- Journal article (387)
- Doctoral Thesis (159)
- Book article / Book chapter (21)
- Conference Proceeding (12)
- Book (4)
- Review (4)
- Report (3)
- Other (2)
- Preprint (2)
- Master Thesis (1)
Keywords
- Psychologie (65)
- EEG (24)
- virtual reality (20)
- attention (17)
- Kognition (15)
- P300 (15)
- anxiety (13)
- emotion (13)
- Virtuelle Realität (12)
- psychology (12)
Institute
- Institut für Psychologie (595) (remove)
Sonstige beteiligte Institutionen
- Adam Opel AG (1)
- BMBF (1)
- Blindeninstitut, Ohmstr. 7, 97076, Wuerzburg, Germany (1)
- Deutsches Zentrum für Präventionsforschung Psychische Gesundheit (DZPP) (1)
- Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society (ESI) (1)
- Evangelisches Studienwerk e.V. (1)
- Forschungsverbund ForChange des Bayrischen Kultusministeriums (1)
- IFT Institut für Therapieforschung München (1)
- Klinik für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Universität Würzburg (1)
- Opel Automobile GmbH (1)
Phonologische Bewusstheit stellt die Kompetenz dar, Sprache in kleinere Einheiten wie einzelne Silben und Phoneme untergliedern zu können. Sie ist damit eine wichtige Vorläuferfertigkeit für den Schriftspracherwerb.
Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die Entwicklung der phonologischen Bewusstheit während des letzten Kindergartenjahres. Zum einen werden die faktorielle Struktur und die Messinvarianz der phonologischen Bewusstheit im Verlauf des letzten Kindergartenjahres analysiert. Als zweiter Aspekt werden die wechselseitigen Zusammenhänge der phonologischen Bewusstheit mit weiteren phonologischen, frühen schriftsprachlichen und sprachlichen Kompetenzen im Vorschulalter untersucht. Der dritte Aspekt bezieht sich auf die institutionelle Förderung phonologischer Bewusstheit bei Vorschulkindern im Kindergarten. Hier werden die Effekte einer expliziten Förderung durch das Trainingsprogramm „Hören, lauschen, lernen“ (Küspert & Schneider, 2018) und einer impliziten Förderung im Kindergartenalltag sowie inzidentelle Einflüsse durch Erwartungseffekte untersucht.
Zur Untersuchung der Fragestellungen wurde ein längsschnittliches Design mit zwei Messzeitpunkten zu Beginn und Ende des letzten Kindergartenjahres verwendet. Die Stichprobe umfasste 390 Vorschulkinder. Für die statistischen Analysen wurden im Wesentlichen Strukturgleichungsmodelle verwendet.
Die Ergebnisse zur Struktur der phonologischen Bewusstheit zeigten Schwierigkeiten bei der längsschnittlichen Abbildung des Konstrukts im Vorschulalter. Da die Tests zur Erfassung der phonologischen Bewusstheit im weiteren Sinne (auf Reim- und Silbenebene) Deckeneffekte aufwiesen und sich im Vorschulalter insbesondere die phonologische Bewusstheit im engeren Sinne (auf Phonemebene) entwickelt, wurde das latente Konstrukt der phonologischen Bewusstheit im Weiteren ausschließlich durch Messverfahren zur Erfassung der phonologischen Bewusstheit im engeren Sinne modelliert. Zudem ließ sich lediglich schwache Messinvarianz etablieren, sodass die Befunde auf einen qualitativen Wandel des Konstrukts während des letzten Kindergartenjahres hindeuten.
Die Befunde zu Zusammenhängen der phonologischen Bewusstheit mit weiteren phonologischen, frühen schriftsprachlichen und sprachlichen Kompetenzen ergaben komplexe wechselseitige Effekte. Die phonologische Bewusstheit sagte dabei die Entwicklung früher schriftsprachlicher Kompetenzen vorher, während sich die Entwicklung der phonologischen Bewusstheit selbst auch durch grammatikalische Kompetenzen erklären ließ.
Bei den Analysen zur Förderung der phonologischen Bewusstheit im Vorschulalter war insbesondere die explizite Förderung durch „Hören, lauschen, lernen“ (Küspert & Schneider, 2018) effektiv. Für die Effektivität des Programms waren zudem die Implementationsbedingungen im Kindergarten relevant. Hier erwies sich vor allem eine vorherige Schulung der Erzieher(innen) als positiv sowie auch eine Abweichung vom Manual in organisatorischer Hinsicht, sodass das Training nicht täglich, sondern mehrmals pro Woche in größeren Abschnitten stattfand. Auf die implizite Förderung der phonologischen Bewusstheit konnte lediglich indirekt über das Wissen der Erzieher(innen) über Sprach- und frühe Schriftsprachförderung geschlossen werden. Das Wissen der Erzieher(innen) über die Förderung phonologischer Bewusstheit war dabei nicht von Bedeutung für die Kompetenzentwicklung der Kinder. Stattdessen wirkte sich das Wissen über sprachliche Fördermaßnahmen, insbesondere bezüglich Maßnahmen bei Aussprachstörungen, günstig auf die Entwicklung der phonologischen Bewusstheit aus. Neben Effekten einer expliziten und impliziten Förderung der phonologischen Bewusstheit waren auch inzidentelle Effekte aufgrund der Urteile der Erzieher(innen) über die Kompetenzen der Kinder nachweisbar. Auch hier wirkten sich die Einschätzungen der sprachlichen Kompetenzen in den Bereichen Aussprache, Wortschatz und Grammatik auf die Entwicklung der phonologischen Bewusstheit aus, während die Einschätzung der phonologischen Bewusstheit selbst durch die Erzieher(innen) die weitere Entwicklung nicht vorhersagen konnte.
Insgesamt sprechen die Befunde für komplexe Zusammenhänge der phonologischen Bewusstheit mit weiteren phonologischen, frühen schriftsprachlichen und sprachlichen Kompetenzen, die auch bei der Konzeption von Fördermaßnahmen berücksichtigt werden sollten.
BACKGROUND:
Thigmotaxis refers to a specific behavior of animals (i.e., to stay close to walls when exploring an open space). Such behavior can be assessed with the open field test (OFT), which is a well-established indicator of animal fear. The detection of similar open field behavior in humans may verify the translational validity of this paradigm. Enhanced thigmotaxis related to anxiety may suggest the relevance of such behavior for anxiety disorders, especially agoraphobia.
METHODS:
A global positioning system was used to analyze the behavior of 16 patients with agoraphobia and 18 healthy individuals with a risk for agoraphobia (i.e., high anxiety sensitivity) during a human OFT and compare it with appropriate control groups (n = 16 and n = 19). We also tracked 17 patients with agoraphobia and 17 control participants during a city walk that involved walking through an open market square. RESULTS: Our human OFT triggered thigmotaxis in participants; patients with agoraphobia and participants with high anxiety sensitivity exhibited enhanced thigmotaxis. This behavior was evident in increased movement lengths along the wall of the natural open field and fewer entries into the center of the field despite normal movement speed and length. Furthermore, participants avoided passing through the market square during the city walk, indicating again that thigmotaxis is related to agoraphobia.
CONCLUSIONS:
This study is the first to our knowledge to verify the translational validity of the OFT and to reveal that thigmotaxis, an evolutionarily adaptive behavior shown by most species, is related to agoraphobia, a pathologic fear of open spaces, and anxiety sensitivity, a risk factor for agoraphobia.
Fear is elicited by imminent threat and leads to phasic fear responses with selective attention, whereas anxiety is characterized by a sustained state of heightened vigilance due to uncertain danger. In the present study, we investigated attention mechanisms in fear and anxiety by adapting the NPU-threat test to measure steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs). We investigated ssVEPs across no aversive events (N), predictable aversive events (P), and unpredictable aversive events (U), signaled by four-object arrays (30 s). In addition, central cues were presented during all conditions but predictably signaled imminent threat only during the P condition. Importantly, cues and context events were flickered at different frequencies (15 Hz vs. 20 Hz) in order to disentangle respective electrocortical responses. The onset of the context elicited larger electrocortical responses for U compared to P context. Conversely, P cues elicited larger electrocortical responses compared to N cues. Interestingly, during the presence of the P cue, visuocortical processing of the concurrent context was also enhanced. The results support the notion of enhanced initial hypervigilance to unpredictable compared to predictable threat contexts, while predictable cues show electrocortical enhancement of the cues themselves but additionally a boost of context processing.
Immersive virtual reality is a powerful method to modify the environment and thereby influence experience. The present study used a virtual hand illusion and context manipulation in immersive virtual reality to examine top-down modulation of pain. Participants received painful heat stimuli on their forearm and placed an embodied virtual hand (co-located with their real one) under a virtual water tap, which dispensed virtual water under different experimental conditions. We aimed to induce a temperature illusion by a red, blue or white light suggesting warm, cold or no virtual water. In addition, the sense of agency was manipulated by allowing participants to have high or low control over the virtual hand’s movements. Most participants experienced a thermal sensation in response to the virtual water and associated the blue and red light with cool/cold or warm/hot temperatures, respectively. Importantly, the blue light condition reduced and the red light condition increased pain intensity and unpleasantness, both compared to the control condition. The control manipulation influenced the sense of agency, but did not influence pain ratings. The large effects revealed in our study suggest that context effects within an embodied setting in an immersive virtual environment should be considered within VR based pain therapy.
Models of eye-movement control distinguish between different control levels, ranging from automatic (bottom-up, stimulus-driven selection) and automatized (based on well-learned routines) to voluntary (top-down, goal-driven selection, e.g., based on instructions). However, one type of voluntary control has yet only been examined in the manual and not in the oculomotor domain, namely free-choice selection among arbitrary targets, that is, targets that are of equal interest from both a bottom-up and top-down processing perspective. Here, we ask which features of targets (identity- or location-related) are used to determine such oculomotor free-choice behavior. In two experiments, participants executed a saccade to one of four peripheral targets in three different choice conditions: unconstrained free choice, constrained free choice based on target identity (color), and constrained free choice based on target location. The analysis of choice frequencies revealed that unconstrained free-choice selection closely resembled constrained choice based on target location. The results suggest that free-choice oculomotor control is mainly guided by spatial (location-based) target characteristics. We explain these results by assuming that participants tend to avoid less parsimonious recoding of target-identity representations into spatial codes, the latter being a necessary prerequisite to configure oculomotor commands.
Objectives
Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) is a promising treatment for patients with fear of driving. The present pilot study is the first one focusing on behavioral effects of VRET on patients with fear of driving as measured by a post-treatment driving test in real traffic.
Methods
The therapy followed a standardized manual including psychotherapeutic and medical examination, two preparative psychotherapy sessions, five virtual reality exposure sessions, a final behavioral avoidance test (BAT) in real traffic, a closing session, and two follow-up phone assessments after six and twelve weeks. VRE was conducted in a driving simulator with a fully equipped mockup. The exposure scenarios were individually tailored to the patients’ anxiety hierarchy. A total of 14 patients were treated. Parameters on the verbal, behavioral and physiological level were assessed.
Results
The treatment was helpful to overcome driving fear and avoidance. In the final BAT, all patients mastered driving tasks they had avoided before, 71% showed an adequate driving behavior as assessed by the driving instructor, and 93% could maintain their treatment success until the second follow-up phone call. Further analyses suggest that treatment reduces avoidance behavior as well as symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder as measured by standardized questionnaires (Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire: p < .10, PTSD Symptom Scale–Self Report: p < .05).
Conclusions
VRET in driving simulation is very promising to treat driving fear. Further research with randomized controlled trials is needed to verify efficacy. Moreover, simulators with lower configuration stages should be tested for a broad availability in psychotherapy.
Chronic alcohol use leads to specific neurobiological alterations in the dopaminergic brain reward system, which probably are leading to a reward deficiency syndrome in alcohol dependence. The purpose of our study was to examine the effects of such hypothesized neurobiological alterations on the behavioral level, and more precisely on the implicit and explicit reward learning. Alcohol users were classified as dependent drinkers (using the DSM-IV criteria), binge drinkers (using criteria of the USA National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism) or low-risk drinkers (following recommendations of the Scientific board of trustees of the German Health Ministry). The final sample (n = 94) consisted of 36 low-risk alcohol users, 37 binge drinkers and 21 abstinent alcohol dependent patients. Participants were administered a probabilistic implicit reward learning task and an explicit reward- and punishment-based trial-and-error-learning task. Alcohol dependent patients showed a lower performance in implicit and explicit reward learning than low risk drinkers. Binge drinkers learned less than low-risk drinkers in the implicit learning task. The results support the assumption that binge drinking and alcohol dependence are related to a chronic reward deficit. Binge drinking accompanied by implicit reward learning deficits could increase the risk for the development of an alcohol dependence.
The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behavior (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimensions are interactively related: positive valence and low arousal (PL) are associated with an implicit tendency to approach a stimulus, whereas negative valence and high arousal (NH) are associated with withdrawal. Hence, positive, high-arousal (PH) and negative, low-arousal (NL) stimuli elicit conflicting action tendencies. By extending previous research that used several tasks and methods, the present study investigated whether and how emotional valence and arousal affect subjective approach vs. withdrawal tendencies toward emotional words during two novel tasks. In Study 1, participants had to decide whether they would approach or withdraw from concepts expressed by written words. In Studies 2 and 3 participants had to respond to each word by pressing one of two keys labeled with an arrow pointing upward or downward. Across experiments, positive and negative words, high or low in arousal, were presented. In Study 1 (explicit task), in line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, PH and NL words were responded to more slowly than PL and NH words. In addition, participants decided to approach positive words more often than negative words. In Studies 2 and 3, participants responded faster to positive than negative words, irrespective of their level of arousal. Furthermore, positive words were significantly more often associated with “up” responses than negative words, thus supporting the existence of implicit associations between stimulus valence and response coding (positive is up and negative is down). Hence, in contexts in which participants' spontaneous responses are based on implicit associations between stimulus valence and response, there is no influence of arousal. In line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, arousal seems to affect participants' approach-withdrawal tendencies only when such tendencies are made explicit by the task, and a minimal degree of processing depth is required.
Embodiment (i.e., the involvement of a bodily representation) is thought to be relevant in emotional experiences. Virtual reality (VR) is a capable means of activating phobic fear in patients. The representation of the patient’s body (e.g., the right hand) in VR enhances immersion and increases presence, but its effect on phobic fear is still unknown. We analyzed the influence of the presentation of the participant’s hand in VR on presence and fear responses in 32 women with spider phobia and 32 matched controls. Participants sat in front of a table with an acrylic glass container within reaching distance. During the experiment this setup was concealed by a head-mounted display (HMD). The VR scenario presented via HMD showed the same setup, i.e., a table with an acrylic glass container. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups. In one group, fear responses were triggered by fear-relevant visual input in VR (virtual spider in the virtual acrylic glass container), while information about a real but unseen neutral control animal (living snake in the acrylic glass container) was given. The second group received fear-relevant information of the real but unseen situation (living spider in the acrylic glass container), but visual input was kept neutral VR (virtual snake in the virtual acrylic glass container). Participants were instructed to touch the acrylic glass container with their right hand in 20 consecutive trials. Visibility of the hand was varied randomly in a within-subjects design. We found for all participants that visibility of the participant’s hand increased presence independently of the fear trigger. However, in patients, the influence of the virtual hand on fear depended on the fear trigger. When fear was triggered perceptually, i.e., by a virtual spider, the virtual hand increased fear. When fear was triggered by information about a real spider, the virtual hand had no effect on fear. Our results shed light on the significance of different fear triggers (visual, conceptual) in interaction with body representations.
Are there emotional reactions towards social robots? Could you love a robot? Or, put the other way round: Could you mistreat a robot, tear it apart and sell it? Media reports people honoring military robots with funerals, mourning the “death” of a robotic dog, and granting the humanoid robot Sophia citizenship. But how profound are these reactions? Three experiments take a closer look on emotional reactions towards social robots by investigating the subjective experience of people as well as the motor expressive level. Contexts of varying degrees of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) sketch a nuanced picture of emotions towards social robots that encompass conscious as well as unconscious reactions. The findings advance the understanding of affective experiences in HRI. It also turns the initial question into: Can emotional reactions towards social robots even be avoided?