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One’s own name constitutes a unique part of conscious awareness – but does this also hold true for unconscious processing? The present study shows that the own name has the power to bias a person’s actions unconsciously even in conditions that render any other name ineffective. Participants judged whether a letter string on the screen was a name or a non-word while this target stimulus was preceded by a masked prime stimulus. Crucially, the participant’s own name was among these prime stimuli and facilitated reactions to following name targets whereas the name of another, yoked participant did not. Signal detection results confirmed that participants were not aware of any of the prime stimuli, including their own name. These results extend traditional findings on ‘‘breakthrough’’ phenomena of personally relevant stimuli to the domain of unconscious processing. Thus, the brain seems to possess adroit mechanisms to identify and process such stimuli even in the absence of conscious awareness.
The present research is concerned with the topic of socially induced affect. In previous research the focus was mainly on affective convergence. A prominent topic in that context was “emotional contagion” (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994). Affective divergence has been also been found. However, its influence on the theoretical debate remained weak. Besides research on emotions also social comparison research attended to the topic. In order to explain affective divergence and convergence an integrative model based on social comparison processes is proposed here. Based on the selective accessibility model (Mussweiler, 2003) it is assumed that affective convergence can be seen as assimilation to a comparison standard (the observed model). Therefore, the basic assumption is that a comparison between an observer and the model takes place. Affective divergence corresponds to an affective contrast from that standard. Which of these two phenomena occurs depends on the type of comparison processes that took place. Six experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1 it was shown that comparisons intensify the social induction of affect. The influence of the comparison focus was studied in Experiments 2 and 3. If the perceiver searches for similarities between the self and the model, affective convergence occurs. If differences are searched for, affective divergence is found. The latter is mainly found under special circumstances, e.g. if the model belongs to another social group (Experiment 3). In Experiment 1-3 it was shown comparisons influence the social induction of affect. In Experiment 4-6 the underlying processes were explored. The selective accessibility model (Mussweiler, 2003) attributes a central role to the selective activation of self-knowledge in order to explain judgmental assimilation and contrast. In Experiments 4 and 5 the role of the self was explored more thoroughly. Evidence for socially induced affect (affective convergence) has only been found when the self has been previously activated. When the self was not activated no such effect was found. The assumption that the activation of specific self-knowledge is the basis for socially induced affect was tested in Experiment 5. Results supported the assumption. The present experiments give rise to the assumption that social comparisons are a key element in the social induction of affect. Affective convergence and divergence are explained and processes for the affect induction are defined. The findings also have implications for research on automatic behaviour and especially to explain automatic contrast. In addition implications for social comparison research can be derived.
The effects of 19 meals of different caloric content on slides on palatability and hypothetical duration of consumption were investigated in 7 patients with anorexia nervosa, 17 patients with bulimia nervosa at the beginning and after 8 weeks of hospital treatment. Nine healthy females served as controls. At the beginning of treatment, palatability of low caloric food was significantly higher and hypothetical duration of consumption of high caloric food was significantly longer in patients when compared to controls. After 8 weeks, in the patients palatability of low caloric food had decreased. Dislike for high caloric food remained stable in anorexics.
In an experimental analog of verbal examinations, the call-up situation, the effects of two dosages of a tranquillizing agent (lopirazepam) are compared to placebo treatment. 72 male and female, healthy, young volunteers have been randomly assigned to 12 groups of 6 subjects each. Pulse frequency and performance were registered. The results indicated differential drug effects which were interpreted according to the hypotheses of "differential effects of social stressors". If a situation was highly challenging for a subject, the application of a tranquillizer in an adequately high dosage enabled him to perform well in spite of or because of strong increases in pulse frequency.
The present research examined whether children's awareness of phonological similarities between words with respect to rhyme and consonantal word onset is of the same importance for learning to read German as it was found to be for learning to read English. In two longitudinal studies differences in phonological sensitivity among children before learning to read (at age 6 to 7) were tested with versions of Bradley & Bryant's (1985) oddity detection task. Children's reading and spelling achievements were tested about one year later at the end of grade one, and again at around the age of 10. The main finding was a developmental change in the predictive relationship of rhyme and word-onset awareness. Rhyme awareness was only minimally predictive for reading and spelling achievement at the end of grade one, but gained substantially in predictive importance for reading and spelling achievement in grades three and four. No such predictive improvement was observed for word-onset awareness. It is proposed that rhyme awareness is initially of little importance, because in the first phase of learning to read German children rely heavily on indirect word recognition via grapheme--phoneme translation and blending. The gain in the predictive importance of rhyme awareness is explained by its helpful effect on the establishment of mental representations of written words. Such mental representations allow fast, direct word recognition and orthographically correct spellings. A wareness of larger phonological units is helpful for the efficient establishment of such representations, by allowing connections of recurring grapheme clusters in written words with phonology.
According to more recent studies on memory development in young children, preschoolers and kindergarteners are able to demonstrate surprisingly good memory skills in natural as weH as in laboratory-type settings. This finding is not consistent with the results of a study by Istomina (1975), conducted in 1948, leading to the concJusion that (a) preschoolers do not use voluntary remembering, and (b) children generally recall better in play situations than in typical experimental settings. In this study, two experiments were conducted to replicate Istomina's research. In the first, it was shown that Istomina's findings were replicable when methodological problems in the procedure were ignored. Experiment 2 improved methodologically upon Istomina's experimental methods and did not produce results to support her concJusions. Four- and 6-year-olds showed voluntary memory in play activities as weH as in laboratory-type settings, and remembered equally weB in both contexts. The results did not support the assumption that memory performance in young children can be substantially facilitated by motivating contexts.
A combined criterion involving the regression slopes of pretest-posttest achievement scores and achievement gain scores was used to classify similar types of classrooms. Mathematics achievement differences among 632 fifth graders were analysed in a longitudinal design and explained in a structural equation framework provided by LISREL, separately for four types of classrooms. The results replicated the findings of an earlier study (Schneider & Treiber, 1984) in that the local nature of achievement models could be demonstrated. That is, the structural components of the causal models could not be generalized across the four groups of classrooms. The inclusion of a second grouping criterion (i. e., achievement gainJ proved useful in that a better model fit was always obtained for classrooms with high achievement gains. As a global model test ignoring group and classroom membership did mask the differential validity of the achievement model in the various subgro.ups, the need for multilevel approaches was emphasized.
The maximum of the brain electrical field after NoGo stimuli is located more anteriorly than that after stimuli that tells participants to respond. The difference in topography was called NoGo-Anteriorization (NGA). Recently, there was a debate, whether the NGA is related to a central inhibitory process or not. However, experiments showed that the NGA is not the result of motor potentials during Go trials, the NGA does not represent higher response conflict and or higher mental effort in NoGo trials, and the NGA is not based on less cognitive response selection in NoGo trials. Therefore, the experiments support the assumption that the NGA is connected to an inhibitory mechanism in NoGo conditions.
The Influence of Anticipation and Warnings on Collision Avoidance Behavior of Attentive Drivers
(2012)
This thesis deals with collision avoidance. Focus is on the question of under which conditions collision avoidance works well for humans and if drivers can be supported by a Forward Collision Warning (FCW) System when they do not react appropriately. Forward Collision Warning systems work in a way that tries to focus the driver's attention in the direction of the hazard and evoke an avoidance reaction by some sort of alert (e.g., tone or light). Research on these warning systems generally focuses on inattention and distraction as the cause for crashes. If the driver is inattentive, the results of a crash are thought to be worse as the driver‘s reaction is belated or might not mitigate the crash at all. To ensure effectiveness in the worst case, most of the experiments studying FCW systems have been conducted with visually distracted drivers. Research on the cause and possible countermeasures for crashes of attentive drivers are hardly available, although crash databases and field operational test data show that 40-60% of the drivers look at the forward scene shortly before they crash. Hence, only a few studies elaborated on ideas about the reasons for crashes with attentive drivers. On the basis of the literature, it is worked out that one reason for delayed avoidance behavior can be an incorrect allocation of attention. It is further elaborated that high level attention processes are strongly influenced by interpretation of the situation and the anticipation of future status. Therefore, it is hypothesized that alert drivers react later when they can not foresee a potential threat or even when they misinterpret the situation. If the lack of threat anticipation or incorrect anticipation is a reason for crashes, a FCW system could be a great help, when the FCW is easily comprehensible. It is hypothesized that a FCW can compensate for missing threat anticipation in the driver. The results of the experiments show that the level of threat anticipation has the largest influence on driver behavior in an imminent crash situation. The results further suggest that FCW systems - especially warnings of audible or haptic modality - can help attentive drivers who do not anticipate a threat or misinterpret a situation. The negative influence of missing or mislead threat anticipation on objective measures was small when the threat appeared suddenly. This is thought to be due to the visual appearance of the introduced threat. It is assumed that this type of stimulus triggers a lower level attentional process, as opposed to a top-down attention process controlled by an anticipatory process. In the other scenario types such a lower level process may not be triggered. An important result of the second study is that (Forward) Collision Warnings have to be learned. Participants with warnings reacted slower than participants without any FCW in the first critical event. Participants with a visual warning reacted particularly slow. Later in the experiment, the probands with warnings were constantly faster than their counterparts without them. Hence, the results of this study suggest that a haptic or audible modality should be used as a primary warning to the driver. The characteristic of visual warnings to draw the visual attention is both a blessing and a curse. It is suggested to use the visual warning component for only a short period of time to attract the driver's attention to the forward scene, but then end the display to not further distract him. Car manufacturers try to avoid as many unnecessary alarms as possible. If driver monitoring would be available, it is often planned to suppress warnings when the driver is looking through the windshield. The results suggest not to do so. If a driver reaches a critical situation represented by a low Time-to-collision (TTC) or a high need to decelerate, he should always get a warning, unless he is already braking or steering. The most important arguments for this are: - Looking at the street does not mean that the driver has the correct situational awareness. - The driver has to learn the meaning of the warning. - The driver will not be annoyed by a warning when the situation is considered critical.
This paper reports on a longitudinal study dealing with the development of literacy in young children. A total of 163 children were first tested during their last year in kindergarten using a variety of tasks that tapped phonological processing, memory capacity, early literacy, and intelligence. Children's ward decoding, reading comprehension, and spelling skills were assessed in elementary school several years later. As a main result, all of the predictor domains had a significant impact on the acquisition of literacy in elementary school, although the contribution of each domain differed as a function of the criterion measure. An attempt to identify children-at-risk using a kindergarten screening test provided encouraging results. Nonetheless, it was shown that whereas group predictions of reading and spelling performance can be quite accurate, the individual prognosis of school problems is far from perfect.
This paper describes the influence of neuroleptic therapy on facial action in drug-naive schizophrenics. In a comparative study of medicated and unmedicated schizophrenic patients, the coordinates of 12 small light-reflecting points, attached to subjects' faces, were computer-recorded and analyzed automatically during a semistandardized clinical interview. In addition, facial activity in videotaped interviews was coded using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). Each sample group comprised of eight patients with the DSMIII- R diagnostic criteria "schizophrenia" or "schizophreniform disorder". Subjects were studied on two occasions, one shortly after admission to the hospital, the other three weeks later. Group I was unmedicated during the first session, whereas group2 was medicated throughout the study. Three weeks after the start of medication, at the second interview, both recording methods showed a reduction in facial activity and facial expression across all subjects in group 1. The facial action of patients in group2, however, remained unchanged.
The effects of age, study time, and importance of text units on strategy use and memory for texts
(1988)
This study investigated study behavior and recall of a narrative text as a function of the reader's age, study time, and importance level of text units. Fifth graders, seventh graders, young- and older adults were asked to read a fairy tale, and do anything they liked to prepare for verbatim recall. Half of the subjects in each age group were assigned to an immediate recall condition; half were given additional study time. Examination of recall data showed that all subjects showed higher recall of important units in the text than unimportant units. This effect was independent of age and study time condition. Study behaviors varied significantly across age groups and study conditions: while adults underlined or took notes with equal frequency, children preferred note-taking as a study strategy. With additional study time, fifth graders, seventh graders, and older adults increased their strategic behavior; young adults did not.
This volume brings together several authors from different areas of psychology and the neighbouring social sciences. Each one contributes their own perspective on the growing interest topic of subjective well-being. The aim of the volume is to present these divergent perspectives and to foster communication between the different areas. Split into three parts, this volume initially discusses the general perspectives of subjective well-being and addresses fundamental questions, secondly it discusses the dynamics of subjective well-being and more specific research issues to give a better understanding of the general phenomenon, and thirdly the book emphasizes the social context in which people experience and report their happiness and satisfaction. The book will be of great interest to social and clinical psychologists, students of psychology and sociology and health professionals.
The term "speech chronemics" is introduced to characterize a research strategy which extracts from the physical qualities of the speech signal only the pattern of ons ("speaking") and offs ("pausing"). The research in this field can be structured into the methodological dimension "unit of time", "number of speakers", and "quality of the prosodic measures". It is shown that a researcher's actual decision for one method largely determines the outcome of his study. Then, with the Logoport a new portable measurement device is presented. It enables the researcher to study speaking behavior over long periods of time (up to 24 hours) in the normal environment of his subjects. Two experiments are reported. The first shows the validity of articulation pauses for variations in the physiological state of the organism. The second study proves a new betablocking agent to have sociotropic effects: in a long-term trial socially high-strung subjects showed an improved interaction behavior (compared to placebo and socially easy-going persons) in their everyday life. Finally, the need for a comprehensive theoretical foundation and for standardization of measurement situations and methods is emphasized.
This project had two goals: (1) to examine the impact of strategy training on memory performance in German and American children, and (2) to search for environmental correlates of individual differences in cognitive processes. Following pretesting, 437 children were divided into training and control groups, with the former receiving training in clustering strategies. Trained children showed sizable strategy maintenance and transfer effects two weeks and six months later. Parents and teachers completed questionnaires about the teaching of strategies and their attributional beliefs about children's academic successes and failures. The differences in strategie behavior and attributions of German and American children were due, in part, to differences in strategy-enriched environments.
A substantial literature exists on the coordination of speaking and looking behaviour and their significance as indicators for the production and reception of social information. Within this framework, the temporal organisation of such behaviour has been 'shown to reflect both the coordination within the individual and between participants in a situation. In this paper, it is proposed that observed behavioural sequences may be formally described by rules of syntax, thus implying the likelihood of structural organisation as opposed to, for example, linear time dependence between behavioural states. This being the case, differing sets of rules and grammars respectively can be expected for various social situations. Clinical interviews and discu~sions between couples on a topic of marital conflict were analysed, the on-off patterns of speech and gaze being taken as data. The resulting behavioural repertoire was regarded, in the sense of a formal grammar, as the terminal vocabulary. A set of rewriting rules was determined and their associated probabilities inferred. The situational conditions were found to be reflectedin the syntactic features of the grammatical model - the terminal vocabulary, the production rules and the production probabilities.
A series of experiments was conducted in order to investigate motor contributions to learning highly skilled action sequences in contrast to sensory contributions. Experiments 1–4 made use of a bimanual-bisequential variant of the serial reaction time task: Presentation of imperative stimuli was arranged such that participants’ left-hand and right-hand responses followed different sequences independently of one another, thus establishing a compound sequence spanning both hands. At least partly independent learning of the two concurrently implemented hand-related sequences was demonstrated after extensive practice under condi-tions of both simultaneous (Experiments 1 & 2) and alternating (Experiments 3 & 4) stimulus presentation and responding. It persisted when there was only one imperative stimulus for presenting both hand-related sequences (Experiments 2–4) instead of two separate imperative stimuli (Experiments 1 & 2), one for each sequence, even when the hand-related sequences were correlated and massive integrated learning of the compound sequence occurred (Ex-periment 4). As for the nature of the independently acquired sequence representations, trans-ferable sequence knowledge was acquired only when there was a separate imperative stimulus for each sequence (Experiments 1 & 2) but not otherwise (Experiments 2–4). The most likely stimulus-based representations which allow for intermanual transfer can be regarded as sen-sory components of highly skilled action sequences, whereas motor components can be con-sidered as being reflected in effector-specific, non-transferable sequence knowledge. The same decomposition logic applies to transferable and non-transferable sequence knowledge observed under conditions of unimanual practice of a single sequence (Experiments 6 & 7). The advantage of practicing a key press sequence with fingers of one hand as opposed to practicing it with fingers of both hands (Experiment 5) also implicates a motor component as the two assignments were equivalent in all other respects. Moreover, Experiments 6 and 7 showed that hand-specific sequence knowledge can develop after relatively little practice (as little as approximately 120 sequence repetitions). Presumably, this occurs especially in tasks with particularly pronounced requirements for coarticulation between consecutive finger movements. In sum, the present series of experiments provides compelling evidence for an effector-specific component of sequence learning. Albeit relatively small in size, it emerged consistently under various conditions. By contributing to the refinement of sequential action execution it can play a role in attaining high levels of performance.
Recompense denotes a more or less complete undoing of a harm which may combine the tWO aspects: compensation for the victim and the apology of the harmdoer. The present empirical research on recompense started with an analysis of the judgmental structures of recompense in legal thought and law, as such analysis has been neglected in prior research. The obtained results on recompense as stimulus and response reinforce the general idea of the present approach of using the framework of law and legal history in the empirical research of cognitive science. Since the traditionahelationship of jurisprudence and psychology is reversed by that research strategy, law and psychology appear to interact mutually, and a more comprehensive concept of legal psychology is implemented.
Children's judgements of deserved punishment were studied as function of three moral variables. Subjects judged how much a child in a story should be punished for ruining another's stamps, given information about (a) how many stamps were damaged, (b) the culpa, or intent, of the harmful act, and (c) recompense, or the proportion of stamps paid back by the offender. In three experiments, recompense had substantially greater effects than the damage for which recompense was made. This pre-potency of recompense was greater at younger ages across a range from 4 years to college age. Damage and culpa were integrated by an additive rule in agreement with previous work. In contrast, the recompense-damage and recompense-culpa integration rules were both non-additive.
Internal characteristics such as depressed mood, anxiety and general negative emotions are accompanied, particularly during depressive illness, by changes in observable behaviour. Accordingly, the following questions may be examined: are intra-individual changes in speech and gaze behaviour related to changes in the internal psychopathological state? Further, do these changes occur synchronously to changes in the state of subjective well-being? A longitudinal study was made on depressed patients. Their behaviour was observed during standardised interviews and diagnostic-therapeutic discussions held at regu~ lar intervals. Various speech and gaze parameters were examined with respect to their coordination and their relationship to the subjective state of well-being. Considerable variation was found in the temporal relationship amongst these variables. The results are discussed with respect to the relevance of speech parameters and the coordination of verbal and nonverbal behaviour as indicators of the psychopathological condition.
In this study, the influence of partnership on depression and coping with Parkinson's disease has been investigated. Twentythree single female patients, 46 married patients (23 female, 23 male) with unimpaired partnership and 42 patients (21 female, 21 male) whose partnership had worsened since the onset of disease, were compared with regard to depression and self reported extent of psychosocial distress. Single female patients tended to have higher depression scores than patients in a stable partnership, especially in items concerning personal worthlessness and senselessness of life. Patients differed in the extent of distress concerning social behavior, psychological problems/anxiety and efficiency. Within the group of single female patients two subgroups emerged: (1) patients with low extent of distress in all aspects; (2) patients who were highly distressed by psychological problems and physical disability but weakly distressed from social interaction. Male and female patients living in a stable partnership reported only a generally low to moderate extent of distress. More than half of the male and female patients who reported an impairment of their relationship also had scores of moderate to severe depression. These patients also had the h~ghest extent of distress in each ofthe aspects assessed. The results are dicussed with regard to possible interactive effects ofthe disease, quality of the partnership and availability of coping strategies.
Nonverbal behavior, especially facial expression, appears as one of the most important means for communicating affective states. Studies on groups of psychiatric patients and control subjects are reported in which nonverbal behavior is analyzed from videotaped dialogues. Using a quantitative approach, results on facial behavior, speech, and gaze are described, which shed light on the expressive and communicative functions of nonverbal behavior. From longitudinal observations on depressed patients it emerged that individualspecific associations have to be taken into account for the relationship between expressive behavior and mood changes. The predominance of facial behavior in the speaker role of an individual found in patients and control groups points to the integrated communicative function of the verbal and nonverbal elements. However, recovered schizophrenic patients exhibited a dissociation of these elements. Implications for our understanding of nonverbal communications are discussed.
This paper presents an overview of the research on nonverbal communication that has appeared in the German-language literature during the past decade, and gives some treatment of its relationship to Ausdruckspsychologie. Empirical studies, recent theoretical issues, and methodological developments are discussed. - Although nonverbal communication often plays an essential role in diagnosis and treatment, it has been widely neglected in academic training for the past 20 years. This inconsistency may partly be due to the outright rejection of the classical Ausdruckspsychologie during the 1960's. In order to avoid the fate of Ausdruckspsychologie, it will be necessary to extend our knowledge of nonverbal communication by means of further methodological development and empirical investigation
Memory development
(1994)
This study addresses the longitudinal relationship among verbal ability, memory capacity, phonological awareness, and reading performance. Data from 92 German children were used to explore the exact relation among these variables. Indicators of verbal ability, memory capacity, and phonological awareness were assessed in kindergarten and again after the first grade. The interrelationships among these factors, and the subsequent influence they have on decoding speed and reading comprehension during the second grade were examined via structural equation modefing procedures. Overall, the results of the longitudinal analyses show that the relationship of memory capacity and phonological awareness remains stable over time, and that memory capacity predicts performance on phonological awareness tasks in both kindergarten and second grade. Phonological awareness proved to be a significant predictor of decoding speed, which in turn considerably influenced reading comprehension.
Participants trained aiming movements of the right hand to several targets with a prism-like virtual displacement of the location of one of the targets, receiving either terminal or continuous visual feedback. After training, the same targets were to be reached with the untrained left hand under manipulated feedback conditions. The right hand movements continuously adapted to the unnoticed visual displacement, significantly less with continuous than with terminal feedback. Under terminal but not under continuous feedback the adaptation to the manipulated target generalized to targets in the same horizontal direction but not to targets in the opposite direction. Finally, the movements of the untrained left hand showed the same qualitative changes to the targets as the movements of the trained right hand. The data are in line with the notion that the adaptation of the right hand movements is mainly based on a re-interpretation of target locations on which movement control of both hands draws.
Experimental research on memory development has typically focused on the description of universal development trends across the life span and the identification of major sources of development within this domain. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the preconditions and effects of interindividual variability within age groups across different memory tasks. Similarly, our knowledge about the stability of interindividual differences across the life span as well as the sources and the amount of intraindividual variability across memory tasks is scarce. In the present chapter, we concentrate on these neglected issues. First, theoretical assumptions concerning the interindividual and intraindividual variability of memory development are discussed. Next, empirical evidence is presented that seems suited to document the importance of these neglected issues. While we try to give a representative account of the literature, the emphasis is on more recent studies of memory development in children and elderly adults conducted in our laboratory. The results demonstrate that age-related changes and individual differences in the knowledge base are particularly important for describing and explaining individual differences in memory develoment. In comparison, the rote of stable individual differences in basic memory capacities in explaining variations in memory development is less clear given tbe conflicting empirical evidence. In the final section of the chapter consequences for future research are discussed.
In general, humans preferentially look at conspecifics in naturalistic images. However, such group-based effects might conceal systematic individual differences concerning the preference for social information. Here, we investigated to what degree fixations on social features occur consistently within observers and whether this preference generalizes to other measures of social prioritization in the laboratory as well as the real world. Participants carried out a free viewing task, a relevance taps task that required them to actively select image regions that are crucial for understanding a given scene, and they were asked to freely take photographs outside the laboratory that were later classified regarding their social content. We observed stable individual differences in the fixation and active selection of human heads and faces that were correlated across tasks and partly predicted the social content of self-taken photographs. Such relationship was not observed for human bodies indicating that different social elements need to be dissociated. These findings suggest that idiosyncrasies in the visual exploration and interpretation of social features exist and predict real-world behavior. Future studies should further characterize these preferences and elucidate how they shape perception and interpretation of social contexts in healthy participants and patients with mental disorders that affect social functioning.
The relation between hypochondriacal attitudes, thermal pain threshold, and attentional bias toward pain was examined in a non-clinical population (N = 28). Attentional bias was operationalized with a concentration-performance test, which subjects performed while connected to a pain stimulator. Subjects were informed that they would receive a painful stimulus during the second part of the test, while the first part was introduced as pain-free. The pain stimulus was never applied during the test phase. The expectancy of a forthcoming pain stimulus reduced the performance of high hypochondriacal subjects in both parts of the test. Low hypochondriacal subjects, on the other hand, displayed significantly better performance in the first, pain-free compared to the second, pain-related part of the test. Thermal pain thresholds were assessed at four measuring sites (thenar, neck, collar-bone, abdomen), but no relations with hypochondriasis sum scores and locus of pain stimulation were found. A stepwise multiple regression of pain threshold by individual Illness Attitude Scales (IAS) led to 66% of the variance being explained by the scales ‘concern about pain’, ‘worry about illness’, and ‘disease phobia’. Results are discussed in terms of amplifying somatic style, preoccupation with or attentional bias toward bodily symptoms, and experimental induction of a hypochondriacal state.