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No abstract available
Der Schwerpunkt empirisch-psychologischer Auseinandersetzung mit der Problematik von Schulzensuren lag bei der Prüfung ihrer Testgütekriterien. Diese Arbeit befaßt sich dagegcn mit dem subjektiven Wert von Schulnoten. Vorrangige Aufgabe war bislang die Erstellung eines Meßverfahrens für den subjektiven Wert der Schulnoten. Allgemeines Kennzeichen des hier benutzten Verfahrens ist seine entsehcidungstheoretische Grundlegung und die Zielsetzung, die Ab'stände der Zensurenwerte zu definieren. Untcr Verwendung dieser Methode liegen Arbeiten von BECKER und SIEGEL [1J, SCHMIDT [6J und SCHl\'IIDT u. a. [7J vor. Den Untersuchungen ist gemeinsam, daß als Ypn mindestens 17 Jahre alte Schüler oder Studenten mitwirkten. Auch in der methodisch anders ansetzenden Arbeit von MÜLLERFOHRBRODT und DANN [5J zu diesem Problembereich stammten die Vpn aus der umschriehenen Altcrsgruppe. Übergeordnetes Ziel dieser Arbeit ist deswegen die Prüfung der Durchführbarkeit einer entscheidungstheoretischen Skalierungsmethode hei Schülern jüngeren Alters.
Grundzüge des rechtswissenschaftlichen Gedankenguts zur Schadenswiedergutmachung werden psychologischen Ansätzen dazu gegenübergestellt. Das Ergebnis ist die Feststellung, daß die stimulusbezogene Urteilsrelevanz der Schadenswiedergutmachung nicht in der psychologischen Forschung berücksichtigt wurde. Ein diesbezüglicher Untersuchungsansatz sollte sechs Merkmale besitzen: multifaktoriell, multivariat, Stimulus-Response-vergleichend, quantitativ, ontogenetisch und individual-diagnostisch. Er bildet den Prototyp eines die Moral positiver und negativer Akte umfassenden Ansatzes zur moralischen Urteilsbildung, des ses erste Ergebnisse beschrieben werden.
No abstract available
Frühere Untersuchungen zum Entscheidungsverhalten von Kindern lassen zwei Interpretationen sogenannter lagebedingter Wahlen zu. Entscheidungen von 8- bis 14jährigen Schülern zeigten, daß sich lagebedingte Wahlen als orientiert am Erwartungsmaximum bezeichnen lassen. Die Beziehung zwischen Orientierung am Erwartungsmaximum und den Variablen Alter, Schulzugehörigkeit und Vorerfahrung erwies sich als positiv. Weiterhin konnte die Abhängigkeit der Wahlhäufigkeit des Erwartungsmaximums von der Hervorgehobenheit des Erwartungsmaximums nachgewiesen werden. Die Gültigkeit des objektiven Erwartungsmaximierungsmodells mußte aber wegen verschiedener Befunde eingeschränkt werden.
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.
This dissertation focuses on the construct and criterion validity of integrity tests and aims to enhance both. To accomplish this goal, three approaches were adopted: First, an overview and systematic comparison of integrity tests was conducted with reference to the construction and application of the tests. Second, the nomological network of integrity tests was expanded with reference to honesty-humility and organizational citizenship behavior at their factor and facet level. Third, two promising methods to reduce faking on integrity tests were tested: the double rating method (Hui, 2001) and the indirect questioning technique. In line with previous research, the results of the overview and comparison of integrity measures confirmed that integrity tests are multidimensional and heterogenous. A clear definition of integrity is urgently needed. The personality trait of honesty-humility and its facets of fairness, and modesty revealed the most significant relationships to integrity. Moreover, organizational citizenship behavior and its facets of altruism, conscientiousness, and sportsmanship were found to significantly relate to integrity. Furthermore, integrity tests were able not only to predict organizational citizenship behavior but also to incrementally predict job performance and organizational citizenship behavior beyond the factor and facet level of the personality traits of conscientiousness and honesty-humility. In contrast to the indirect questioning technique, the double rating method, which includes an other rating and a self rating, was shown to be able to significantly reduce faking on integrity tests in an anonymous survey setting. This dissertation makes an important contribution to better explain the construct and nomological network of integrity, provide a more detailed view on integrity tests and their protection against faking, and expand the predictive and incremental validity of these tests. The implications for future research and practice are further discussed.
The wardrobe malfunction—an unanticipated exposure of bodily parts in the public—has become a prevailing issue in concerts, shows and other celebrity events that is reliably reported by the media. The internet as the fastest source for celebrity gossip allows measuring the impact of such wardrobe malfunctions on the public in-terest in a celebrity. This measurement in turn allows conclusions about intention, motivation, and internet be-haviour of a wide variety of internet users. The present study exemplifies the use of an innovative non-reactive measure of active interest—the Search Volume Index—to assess the impact of a variety of internet-related phe-nomena, including wardrobe malfunctions. Results indicate that interest in a celebrity increases immediately af-ter such an event and stays at a high level for about three weeks (the wardrobe plateau). This special form of ce-lebrity gossip thus meets a constant interest of a substantial proportion of internet users.
Verhaltensmedizin
(1990)
No abstract available
No abstract available
143 9- and 10-year-oId children were classified into high- and Jow-IQ groups and given 4 different sort/recall lists (baseline, training, near [immediate] extension, far [l-week] extension) to assess training and extension of an organizational memory strategy. All children received categorized items of moderate typicality for Phases 1, 3, and 4. For Phase 2, children were assigned to either a training or control group, with half of the children in each group receiving category typical items and the others category atypical items. Levels of recall, sorting, and clustering were greater in Phase 2 for high-IQ children, for the typical lists, and for trained children. Both the high- and low-IQ children trained with typical items continued to show high levels of recall on the near extension phase. No group of subjects maintained high levels of recall after 1 week, although levels of sorting and/or clustering on the extension trials remained high for all groups of subjects except the low-IQ control children. This latter pattern (elevated sorting/clustering with low levels of recall) is an indication of a utilization deficiency, a phase in strategy development when children use a strategy but gain little or no benefit n performance. The results provide evidence for IQ, training, and material effects in the demonstration of a utilization deficiency.
In recent years, Ideomotor Theory has regained widespread attention and sparked the development of a number of theories on goal-directed behavior and learning. However, there are two issues with previous studies’ use of Ideomotor Theory. Although Ideomotor Theory is seen as very general, it is often studied in settings that are considerably more simplistic than most natural situations. Moreover, Ideomotor Theory’s claim that effect anticipations directly trigger actions and that action-effect learning is based on the formation of direct action-effect associations is hard to address empirically. We address these points from a computational perspective. A simple computational model of Ideomotor Theory was tested in tasks with different degrees of complexity.The model evaluation showed that Ideomotor Theory is a computationally feasible approach for understanding efficient action-effect learning for goal-directed behavior if the following preconditions are met: (1) The range of potential actions and effects has to be restricted. (2) Effects have to follow actions within a short time window. (3) Actions have to be simple and may not require sequencing. The first two preconditions also limit human performance and thus support Ideomotor Theory. The last precondition can be circumvented by extending the model with more complex, indirect action generation processes. In conclusion, we suggest that IdeomotorTheory offers a comprehensive framework to understand action-effect learning. However, we also suggest that additional processes may mediate the conversion of effect anticipations into actions in many situations.
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.
High- and low-IQ children in the first, third, and fifth grades performed two free-recall tasks: a sort-recall task with sets of categorically related pictures, and a class-recall task, with children recalling the current members of their school class. All children were deemed to be experts concerning the composition of their school class, but, unlike experts in other domains, had no special motivation associated with their expertise. Recall and clustering on both tasks were high. The high-IQ children performed better than low-IQ children only on the sort-recall task. IQ was significantly correlated with measures of performance on the sort-recall task but not on the class-recall task. The results reflect the fact that the memory benefits associated with being an expert (here, elimination of IQ effects) are related to the greater knowledge the expert possesses and not to factors of motivation.
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.
The present study investigated the relationshtp between developmental shifts in the organization of materials and developmental changes in deliberate strategy use. Second and fourth grade children were presented with clusterable sort/recall lists representing the factorial combinations of high and low interitem association, and high and low category relatedness. Strategy use in the task was rated by the experimenter and also assessed via self reports. General and task-related strategy knowledge tmetamemoryt was also examined. Second graders displayed more category clustering during recall for highly associated items than for weakly associated items. whereas older children’s recall organization (but not recall) was unaffected by this organizational dimension. Correlations among measures of metamemory and organizational behavior indicated that second graders in general were unaware of the importance of categorization strategies for facilitation of recall. On the other hand. sorting during study and task-related metamemory were the most important predictors of fourth graders’ recall performance, thus indicating that most fourth graders used categorization strategies deliberately.
In a study intended to replicate and extend the findings from a recent experiment by Schneider and Bjorklund (1992), the expert/novice paradigm was used with second- and fourth-grade children in a sort/recall task. Children were classified as experts or novices for their knowledge of baseball, then given two sort/recall tasks, with a list consisting of either baseball or nonbaseball terms. Experts recalled more than novices on the baseball list only. While both groups used organizational strategies at sorting on the nonbaseball list, experts were marginally more strategic than novices on the baseball list, and no differences were found between the groups on either list for clustering. Baseball experts used more adultlike categories, suggesting that their enhanced levels of recall were attributed in part to strategy use, although there was also evidence that most of the substantial recall difference between the groups was attributed to item-specific effects associated with a more elaborated knowledge base. A second experiment using fifth-grade children on a multitrial sort/recall task using the baseball list also found increased recall by experts, and also found evidence of strategic behavior at the sort phase for trials 3 and 4.
The Role of Attentional Control and Fear Acquisition and Generalization in Social Anxiety Disorder
(2020)
Although Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is one of the most prevalent mental disorders, still little is known about its development and maintenance. Cognitive models assume that deviations in attentional as well as associative learning processes play a role in the etiology of SAD. Amongst others, deficits in inhibitory attentional control as well as aberrations during fear generalization, which have already been observed in other anxiety disorders, are two candidate mechanisms that might contribute to the onset and retention of SAD. However, a review of the literature shows that there is a lack of research relating to these topics. Thus, the aim of the present thesis was to examine in which way individuals with SAD differ from healthy controls regarding attentional control and generalization of acquired fear during the processing of social stimuli.
Study 1 tested whether impairment in the inhibitory control of attention is a feature of SAD, and how it might be influenced by emotional expression and gaze direction of an interactional partner. For this purpose, individuals with SAD and healthy controls (HC) participated in an antisaccade task with faces displaying different emotional expressions (angry, neutral and happy) and gaze directions (direct and averted) serving as target stimuli. While the participants performed either pro- or antisaccades in response to the peripherally presented faces, their gaze behavior was recorded via eye-tracking, and ratings of valence and arousal were obtained. Results revealed that both groups showed prolonged latencies and increased error rates in trials with correct anti- compared to prosaccades. However, there were no differences between groups with regard to response latency or error rates, indicating that SAD patients did not exhibit impairment on inhibitory attentional control in comparison to HC during eye-tracking. Possible explanations for this finding could be that reduced inhibitory attentional control in SAD only occurs under certain circumstances, for example, when these individuals currently run the risk of being negatively evaluated by others and not in the mere presence of phobic stimuli, or when the cognitive load of a task is so high that it cannot be unwound by compensatory strategies, such as putting more effort into a task.
As not only deviations in attentional, but also associative learning processes might be pathogenic markers of SAD, these mechanisms were further addressed in the following experiments. Study 2 is the first that attempted to investigate the generalization of conditioned fear in patients with SAD. To this end, patients with SAD and HC were conditioned to two neutral female faces serving as conditioned stimuli (CS+: reinforced; CS-: non-reinforced) and a fearful face paired with a loud scream serving as unconditioned stimulus (US). Fear generalization was tested by presenting morphs of the two faces (GS: generalization stimuli), which varied in their similarity to the original faces. During the whole experiment, self-report ratings, heart rate (HR) and skin conductance responses (SCR) were recorded. Results demonstrated that SAD patients rated all stimuli as less pleasant and more arousing, and overestimated the occurrence of the US compared to HC, indicating a general hyperarousal in individuals with SAD. In addition, ratings and SCR indicated that both groups generalized their acquired fear from the CS+ to intermediate GSs as a function of their similarity to the CS+. However, except for the HR data, which indicated that only SAD patients but not HC displayed a generalization response in this measure, most of the results did not support the hypothesis that SAD is characterized by overgeneralization. A plausible reason for this finding could be that overgeneralization is just a key characteristic of some anxiety disorders and SAD is not one of them. Still, other factors, such as comorbidities in the individuals with SAD, could also have had an influence on the results, which is why overgeneralization was further examined in study 3.
The aim of study 3 was to investigate fear generalization on a neuronal level. Hence, high (HSA) and low socially anxious participants (LSA) underwent a conditioning paradigm, which was an adaption of the experimental design used study 2 for EEG. During the experiment, steady-state visually evoked potentials (ssVEPs) and ratings of valence and arousal were recorded. Analyses revealed significant generalization gradients in all ratings with highest fear responses to the CS+ and a progressive decline of these reactions with increasing similarity to the CS-. In contrast, the generalization gradient on a neuronal level showed highest amplitudes for the CS+ and a reduction in amplitude to the most proximal, but not distal GSs in the ssVEP signal, which might be interpreted as lateral inhibition in the visual cortex. The observed dissociation among explicit and implicit measures points to different functions of behavioral and sensory cortical processes during fear generalization: While the ratings might reflect an individual’s consciously increased readiness to react to threat, the lateral inhibition pattern in the occipital cortex might serve to maximize the contrast among stimuli with and without affective value and thereby improve adaptive behavior. As no group differences could be observed, the finding of study 2 that overgeneralization does not seem to be a marker of SAD is further consolidated.
In sum, the conducted experiments suggest that individuals with SAD are characterized by a general hyperarousal during the exposition to disorder-relevant stimuli as indicated by enhanced arousal and reduced valence ratings of the stimuli compared to HC. However, the hypotheses that reduced inhibitory attentional control and overgeneralization of conditioned fear are markers of SAD were mostly not confirmed. Further research is required to elucidate whether they only occur under certain circumstances, such as high cognitive load (e.g. handling two tasks simultaneously) or social stress (e.g. before giving a speech), or whether they are not characteristics of SAD at all. With the help of these findings, new interventions for the treatment of SAD can be developed, such as attentional bias modification or discrimination learning.
Both specific stimulus valence and unspecific processing dynamics can influence evaluative responses. Eight experiments investigated their respective influence on evaluative judgments in the domain of stereotyping. Valence of stereotypic information and consistency-driven fluency were manipulated in an impression formation paradigm. When information about the to-be-evaluated target person was strongly valenced, no effects of consistency-driven fluency were observed. Higher cognitive processes, valence of inconsistent attributes, processing priority of category information, and impression formation instructions were ruled out as possible factors responsible for the non-occurrence of fluency effects. However, consistency-driven fluency did influence the evaluative judgment, if the information about a target person was not strongly valenced. It is therefore concluded that both stimulus valence and consistency-driven processing fluency play a role in evaluative judgments in the domain of stereotyping. The respective impact of stimulus valence is much stronger than the impact of unspecific processing dynamics, however. Implications for fluency research and the applied field of stereotype change are discussed.
In a short-term longitudinal study, we investigated how domain-specific knowledge in soccer influences the amount of text recall and comprehension in elementary school and junior high school children of high and low overall aptitudes. Both level of soccer knowledge and overall aptitude were varied in a factorial design. Third, fifth, and seventh grade children were given several measures of text recall and comprehension and were retested on these measures about 1 year later. Performance was more a function of soccer knowledge than of aptitude level.
Utility is perhaps the most central concept in modern economic theorizing. However, the behaviorist reduction to Revealed Preference not only removed the psychological content of utility but experimental investigations also exposed numerous anomalies in this theory.
This program of research focused on the psychological processes by which utility judgments are generated. For this purpose, the standard assumption of a homogeneous concept is substituted by the Utilitarian Duality Hypothesis.
In particular, judgments concerning categorical utility (uCat) infer an object's category based on its attributes which may subsequently allow the transfer of evaluative information like feelings or attitudes. In contrast, comparative utility (uCom) depends on the distance to a reference value on a specific dimension of comparison. Importantly, dimensions of comparison are manifold and context dependent.
In a series of experiments, we show that the resulting Dual Utility Model is able to explain several known anomalies in a parsimonious fashion. Moreover, we identify central factors determining the relative weight assigned to both utility components.
Finally, we discuss the implications of the Utilitarian Duality for both, the experimental practice in economics as well as the consequences for economic theorizing. In sum, we propose that the Dual Utility Model can serve as an integrative framework for both the rational model and its anomalies.
A MODEL of good information processing is sketched, describing how metacognitive knowledge influences strategy selection and use. Three factors pose particular problems for learning disabled students as they attempt to acquire metacognitive knowledge and to use study strategies productively: neurological impairments; deficiencies in general world knowledge; and negative beliefs, attitudes, and styles that limit self-efficacy. Creating an educational atmosphere that explicitly builds conceptual (domain-specific) knowledge and teaches positive beliefs about learning potential is essential in promoting metacognitively-oriented instruction.
Previous research has shown German children to be more strategic on sort-recall memory tasks than their American age-mates, and to show fewer effort-related attributions. We conducted this study to determine if those differences are due to systematic differences in the strategy instruction and attributional beliefs of German and U.S. teachers, and to explore metacognitive instructional practices in the two countries. Teachers responded to a questionnaire that inquired about their use of strategy instructions, fostering of reflective thinking in pupils, sources of children’s learning problems, and modeling of metacognitive skills such as monitoring. The second part of the questionnaire asked about the reasons underlying children’s academic successes and failures. German teachers reported more instruction of task-specific strategies, while American teachers showed more effort-related attributions. The types of strategies instructed and types of learning problems most frequently described varied across the two countries, and also according to how many years the teachers had taught. Results were discussed regarding their implications for metacognitive developmental theory, particularly regarding culture and other environmental influences on the development of controlled processing.
This study explored the differential effects of strategy training on German and American elementaryschool children and assessed the role of parents in the development of their children's strategic behavior and metacognition. 184 German and 161 American children were pretested on memory and metamemory tasks. Children were then assigned to either an organizational strategy training condition or a control condition. All children were tested on the maintenance and far-transfer of the strategy and task-related metamemory 1 week following training. Parents completed questionnaires about strategy instruction in the home. Strategy maintenance and metacognition were reassessed 6 months following training. German children were more strategic than American children. Instructed children performed better than control children. German parents reported more instruction of strategies in the home. These data suggest that formal education is responsible for aspects of cognitive development that have sometimes been viewed as a function of age.
From simply ringing a bell to preparing a five-course menu, human behavior commonly causes changes in the environment. Such episodes where an agent acts, thereby causing changes in their environment constitute the sense of agency. In this thesis four series of experi-ments elucidate how the sense of agency is represented in complex action-event sequences, thereby bridging a gap between basic cognitive research and real-life practice. It builds upon extensive research on the sense of agency in unequivocal sequences consisting of single ac-tions and distinct, predominantly auditory, outcomes. Employing implicit as well as explicit measures, the scope is opened up to multi-step sequences.
The experiments show that it is worthwhile devoting more research to complex action-event sequences. With a newly introduced auditory measure (Chapter II), common phenomena such as temporal binding and a decrease in agency ratings following distorted feedback were replicated in multi-step sequences. However, diverging results between traditional implicit and explicit measures call for further inspection. Multisensory integration appears to gain more weight when multiple actions have to be performed to attain a goal leading to more accurate representations of the own actions (Chapter III). Additionally, freedom of choice (Chapter III) as well as early spatial ambiguity altered the perceived timing of outcomes, while late spatial ambi-guity (Chapter IV) and the outcome’s self-relevance did not (Chapter V). The data suggests that the cognitive system is capable of representing multi-step action-event sequences implicitly and explicitly. Actions and sensory events show a temporal attraction stemming from a bias in the perception of outcomes. Explicit knowledge about causing an event-sequence facilitates neither feelings of control nor taking authorship. The results corroborate current theorizing on the un-derpinnings of temporal binding and the divergence between traditional implicit and explicit measures of the sense of agency. Promising avenues for further research include structured analyses of how much inferred causality contributes to implicit and explicit measures of agency as well as finding alternative measures to capture conceptual as well as non-conceptual facets of the agency experience with one method.
Nonverbal communicative behaviours are associated with affective states in a way specific to the individual. This result emerged from longitudinal studies on depressed patients. From the analysis of various nonverbal behaviours it can be concluded that the depressed state is indicated by nonverbal elements in a logical "or-" rather than "and-connection" or in a hierarchical way. It is maintained that the relationship of psychological relevant states (mood) and nonverbal behaviour needs to be studied by intra-individual comparisons to reveal the specifically close relationships effective in everyday communication. With regard to the pragmatic aspect of communication, elements in the nonverbal signalling system seem to possess different levels of generality. However, from decoding studies it can be shown that even very subtle behavioural differences can be detected by an observer. Thus specific signals can become effective in interaction given a familiarity with the idiosyncratic usage.
Brain–computer interfaces (BCI) based on event-related potentials (ERP) allow for selection of characters from a visually presented character-matrix and thus provide a communica- tion channel for users with neurodegenerative disease. Although they have been topic of research for more than 20 years and were multiply proven to be a reliable communication method, BCIs are almost exclusively used in experimental settings, handled by qualified experts. This study investigates if ERP–BCIs can be handled independently by laymen without expert support, which is inevitable for establishing BCIs in end-user’s daily life situations. Furthermore we compared the classic character-by-character text entry against a predictive text entry (PTE) that directly incorporates predictive text into the character- matrix. N = 19 BCI novices handled a user-centered ERP–BCI application on their own without expert support. The software individually adjusted classifier weights and control parameters in the background, invisible to the user (auto-calibration). All participants were able to operate the software on their own and to twice correctly spell a sentence with the auto-calibrated classifier (once with PTE, once without). Our PTE increased spelling speed and, importantly, did not reduce accuracy. In sum, this study demonstrates feasi- bility of auto-calibrating ERP–BCI use, independently by laymen and the strong benefit of integrating predictive text directly into the character-matrix.
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.
Social attention is a ubiquitous, but also enigmatic and sometimes elusive phenomenon.
We direct our gaze at other human beings to see what they are doing
and to guess their intentions, but we may also absorb social events en passant as
they unfold in the corner of the eye. We use our gaze as a discrete communication
channel, sometimes conveying pieces of information which would be difficult
to explicate, but we may also find ourselves avoiding eye-contact with others in
moments when self-disclosure is fear-laden. We experience our gaze as the most
genuine expression of our will, but research also suggests considerable levels of
predictability and automaticity in our gaze behavior. The phenomenon’s complexity
has hindered researchers from developing a unified framework which can
conclusively accommodate all of its aspects, or from even agreeing on the most
promising research methodologies.
The present work follows a multi-methods approach, taking on several aspects
of the phenomenon from various directions. Participants in study 1 viewed dynamic
social scenes on a computer screen. Here, low-level physical saliency (i.e.
color, contrast, or motion) and human heads both attracted gaze to a similar extent,
providing a comparison of two vastly different classes of gaze predictors in
direct juxtaposition. In study 2, participants with varying degrees of social anxiety
walked in a public train station while their eye movements were tracked. With
increasing levels of social anxiety, participants showed a relative avoidance of gaze
at near compared to distant people. When replicating the experiment in a laboratory
situation with a matched participant group, social anxiety did not modulate
gaze behavior, fueling the debate around appropriate experimental designs in the
field. Study 3 employed virtual reality (VR) to investigate social gaze in a complex
and immersive, but still highly controlled situation. In this situation, participants
exhibited a gaze behavior which may be more typical for real-life compared to laboratory situations as they avoided gaze contact with a virtual conspecific unless
she gazed at them. This study provided important insights into gaze behavior in
virtual social situations, helping to better estimate the possible benefits of this
new research approach. Throughout all three experiments, participants showed
consistent inter-individual differences in their gaze behavior. However, the present
work could not resolve if these differences are linked to psychologically meaningful
traits or if they instead have an epiphenomenal character.
ln two experiments, male rats were observed in pairs under different environmental stimulations in an open field. ln Experiment 1, white noise of 85 dB(A) reduced social activities and increased defecation compared to 75 dB(A) and 65 dß(A). ln Experiment 2, the illumination of the open field was varied in addition to a variation of the noise intensity. Again, 85 dB(A) as compared to 50 dB(A) reduced social activities and increased defecation, but also led to changes in non-social behaviours such as sniffing, grooming, and rearing. ln contrast, 400 lx did not differ substantially in its effects from 40 lx in any of the observed behavioural categories. Altogether, the behaviour pattern under 85 dß(A) white noise cannot satisfactorily be explained only by increased anxiety or fear. Alternative explanations are discussed.
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.
In einer retrospektiven Untersuchung erinnerten 16 von 80 Müttern von chronisch Schizophrenen eine schwere Infektionserkrankung in der Schwangerschaft. Im zweiten Trimenon waren gehäuft Infektionen aufgetreten. Zehn von 80 Müttern von Kontrollpersonen erinnerten ebenfalls eine Infektion. Im Vergleich zu den Kontrollen halfen Mütter Schizophrener im 5. Schwangerschaftsmonat häufiger Infektionen als in den anderen Gestationsmonaten (p < 0,05). Bei "familiären" und "sporadischen" Schizophrenen gemäß DSM III-R kamen im Vergleich zu Kontrollen Infektionen in gleicher Häufigkeit vor. Wurden hingegen in der Diagnostik schizophrener Psychosen die Definitionen von Leonhard zugrunde gelegt, ergaben sich signifikante Unterschiede! Bei den systematischen Schizophrenen (denen nach Leonhard keine erbliche Disposition zugrunde liegt) waren Infektionen gehäuft im 2. Schwangerschaftsdrittel aufgetreten, sowohl im Vergleich zu Kontrollen (p < 0,01) als auch im Vergleich zu den unsystematischen Schizophrenen, die hauptsächlich genetisch bedingt zu sein scheinen (p < 0,001). Infektionserkrankungen im 5. Schwangerschaftsmonat waren ausschließlich bei den Müttern von systematischen Schizophrenen vorgekommen. Bei diesen Krankheitsformen scheinen Infektionen im 2. Schwangerschaftstrimenon und insbesondere im 5. Schwangerschaftsmonat wichtige ätiologische Faktoren zu sein und könnten mitursächlich sein für die beschriebenen zytoarchitektonischen Aberrationen im Zentralnervensystem von chronisch Schizophrenen.
Body image disturbances are core symptoms of eating disorders (EDs). Recent evidence suggests that changes in body image may occur prior to ED onset and are not restricted to in-vivo exposure (e.g. mirror image), but also evident during presentation of abstract cues such as body shape and weight-related words. In the present study startle modulation, heart rate and subjective evaluations were examined during reading of body words and neutral words in 41 student female volunteers screened for risk of EDs. The aim was to determine if responses to body words are attributable to a general negativity bias regardless of ED risk or if activated, ED relevant negative body schemas facilitate priming of defensive responses. Heart rate and word ratings differed between body words and neutral words in the whole female sample, supporting a general processing bias for body weight and shape-related concepts in young women regardless of ED risk. Startle modulation was specifically related to eating disorder symptoms, as was indicated by significant positive correlations with self-reported body dissatisfaction. These results emphasize the relevance of examining body schema representations as a function of ED risk across different levels of responding. Peripheral-physiological measures such as the startle reflex could possibly be used as predictors of females’ risk for developing EDs in the future.
This article describes a 2-systems model that explains social behavior as a joint function of reflective and impulsive processes. In particular, it is assumed that social behavior is controlled by 2 interacting systems that follow different operating principles. The reflective system generates behavioral decisions that are based on knowledge about facts and values, whereas the impulsive system elicits behavior through associative links and motivational orientations. The proposed model describes how the 2 systems interact at various stages of processing, and how their outputs may determine behavior in a synergistic or antagonistic fashion. It extends previous models by integrating motivational components that allow more precise predictions of behavior. The implications of this reflective–impulsive model are applied to various phenomena from social psychology and beyond. Extending previous dual-process accounts, this model is not limited to specific domains of mental functioning and attempts to integrate cognitive, motivational, and behavioral mechanisms.
Theoretische Analysen zum Problem des Recht-Schreibens weisen darauf hin, daß weniger Intelligenzmerkmale als vielmehr Gedächtnis'eistungen bei dem Erwerb der Schriftsprache von Bedeutung sind. Daraus folgt, daß für die Prüfwörter in normierten Rechtschreibtests zumindest hinreichende Vorkommensfrequenz gewährleistet sein sollte. Diese Frage wird in der vorliegenden Untersuchung am Beispiel des Allgemeinen Schulleistungstests überprüft: für die ausgewählten Klassenstufen kann gezeigt INerden, daß die Vorkommenshäufigkeit der PrüfWÖfter nicht ausreicht und damit wenig geeignet ist, um die tatsächliche Rechtschreibfertigkeit zu erfassen. Der Vergleich mit mehreren eng am Curriculum orientierten Diktatproben kann gleichzeitig die Schwierigkeiten verdeutlichen, die dann entstehen, wenn zuverlässige Bestimmungen der individuellen Rechtschreibkompetenz vorgenommen werden sollen.
An rechtsbezogenen empirischen Arbeiten zur Schadenswiedergutmachung kann die echte Wechselseitigkeit im Verhältnis von Recht und Psychologie im Einklang mit Hommers (1981) weiter belegt werden. Da die Psychologie somit nicht nur Hilfsfunktion für die Rechtspflege, sondern die rechtlichen Gedankengänge auch umgekehrt in gewissen Bereichen Hilfsfunktion für die psychologische Theorienbildung besitzen, wird eine hinreichende Gegenstandsdefinition der Rechtspsychologie erreicht, in der eine eigenständige Rechtspsychologie i.e.S. gegenpartnerisch neben der Vereinigung der hi7fswissenschaftlichen Kriminal- und Forensischen Psychologie existiert.
Thirty-two 4-year-olds and thirty-two 6-year-olds were tested for free and cued recall following either play-and-remember or sort-and-remember instructions and assessed for their metamemory of the efficacy of conceptual and perceptual sorting strategies. The younger children recalled significantly more items under sort-and-remember than under play-and-remember instructions, whereas no significant recall differences between instructional conditions were found for the older children. However, 6-year-olds showed higher levels of recall than 4-year-olds in both instructional conditions. Category cues were much more effective than color cues, regardless of age. In addition, clustering scores indicated that conceptual organization at both encoding and retrieval increased with age and with instruction. These results show that from 4 to 6 years of age children are learning to spontaneously employ memory strategies. In addition, they highlight the increasing importance of conceptual organization to retention of young children. Finally, the metamemory data suggest that there may be a lag between children’s articulated declarative knowledge about the usefulness of conceptual organization and their procedural use of it.
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.
Da organische Ursachen für die Non-Ulcer Dyspepsia nicht nachweisbar sind und außerdem bekannt ist, daß die Psyche einen wichtigen Einfluß auf die Magenfu nktion hat. werden häufig psychologische Faktoren als Ursache der NUD angesehen. Bisher liegen empirische Arbeiten über die Psychopathologie und Persönlichkeitsstruktur der NUD-Patienten. deren Krankheitsverhalten sowie über den Zusammenhang zwischen Streß und Magenbeschwerden vor. Eine kritische Sichtung dieser Arbeiten ergab, daß umer den psychologischen Variablen die Angst und das Krankheitsverhalten der NUD-Patienten eine besondere Rolle zu spielen scheinen. In zukünftigen Studien sollte außerdem mehr als bisher auf die Abgrenzung gegenüber anderen funktionellen Störungsbildern und auf eine bessere Differenzierung (u. a. hinsichtlich physiologischer Funktionsveränderungen) innerhalb der heterogenen Gruppe der NUD-Patienten geachtet werden. Lohnenswert erscheint es auch, die bisher noch gar nicht untersuchten Personen mit Magenbeschwerden, aber ohne Arztkomakt. genauer psychologisch zu untersuchen.
The present thesis examines embodiment—the body’s influence on psychological processes. Bodily states, perceptions, and actions influence cognitive processes; for example, a heavy backpack makes hills look steeper (Proffitt et al., 2003); and faint odors influence orderliness (Holland, Hendriks, & Aarts, 2005). In Chapter 2, embodiment phenomena are reviewed and classified according to three possible underlying mechanisms. Additionally, empirical tests for distinguishing between the workings of these mechanisms are discussed.
The empirical part of the thesis examines one specific embodiment in more detail, namely embodied cleansing. The basic idea in embodied cleansing is that physical cleansing reduces not only physical but also psychological remnants of the past. For example, Chapter 4 examines whether prosocial behavior after one’s own moral or immoral behavior is changed by embodied cleansing; and Chapter 5 examines how changes in optimism and self-esteem as a result of previous success or failure in an achievement test are reduced by embodied cleansing.
The present thesis examines psychological mechanisms that could explain embodied cleansing. For that, Chapter 3 derives and contrasts two possible explanations for embodied cleansing. Chapter 4 tests the effect of physical cleansing when both explanations make converging predictions (with morally negative memories) compared to when the two explanations make differing predictions (with morally positive memories). However, the results of embodied cleansing on prosocial behavior after (im)moral recall could not be examined as (im)moral recall, against expectations, did not influence prosocial behavior in the present paradigm.
Chapter 5 more closely examines one of the two explanations. For that, different aspects of the act of cleaning one’s hands are varied to examine necessary and sufficient criteria for embodied cleansing. The results show that deliberate cleaning is essential for embodied cleansing; additionally the cleaning action has to refer to one’s own body (and not to an object). Thus, a combination of inferential and automatic processes seem to play a role in embodied cleansing. Finally the results are discussed in relation to other embodiment effects and explanations.