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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.
The impact of stories in their ability to shape our view on the world has long been a central topic in communication science and media psychology. While reading a book or watching a movie, we are transported into story worlds and we identify with depicted protagonists. Several studies showed that high levels of transportation lead to greater story-consistent beliefs. Similar effects were found for identification. However, much less is known how and in which direction stories could affect the self. Five experimental studies were conducted and summarized in three manuscripts. Manuscript #1 explored the moderating role of transportation that could shift one’s self-perception towards traits of a depicted story character (assimilation) or away from him/her (contrast). Manuscript #2 focused on downward social comparisons with a protagonist and possible contrast effects on participants’ self-perception in relation to others, their motives and behavior. Thereby, the mediating role of transportation and identification were investigated. Finally, upward social comparison with a protagonist and related emotions (e.g., envy) that mediate possible effects on one’s self perception and behavioral intentions were investigated in manuscript #3.
This dissertation project contributes to the literature on stories and the self. Consistent with previous work, assimilation effects were found for highly transported recipients. However, stories might also elicit contrast effects on recipients’ selves and behavioral intentions that are opposite to a depicted character. Extending prior research, there were evidence that transportation and envy are important process variables explaining assimilation vs. contrast effects.
We examined whether movement costs as defined by movement magnitude have an impact on distance perception in near space. In Experiment 1, participants were given a numerical cue regarding the amplitude of a hand movement to be carried out. Before the movement execution, the length of a visual distance had to be judged. These visual distances were judged to be larger, the larger the amplitude of the concurrently prepared hand movement was. In Experiment 2, in which numerical cues were merely memorized without concurrent movement planning, this general increase of distance with cue size was not observed. The results of these experiments indicate that visual perception of near space is specifically affected by the costs of planned hand movements.
Flexible behavior is only possible if contingencies between own actions and following environmental effects are acquired as quickly as possible; and recent findings indeed point toward an immediate formation of action-effect bindings already after a single coupling of an action and its effect. The present study explored whether these short-term bindings occur for both, stimulus- and goal-driven actions (“forced-choice actions” vs. “free-choice actions”). Two experiments confirmed that immediate action-effect bindings are formed for both types of actions and affect upcoming behavior. These findings support the view that action-effect binding is a ubiquitous phenomenon which occurs for any type of action.
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.
Previous research using neuroimaging methods proposed a link between mechanisms controlling motor response inhibition and suppression of unwanted memories.The present study investigated this hypothesis behaviorally by combining the think/no-think paradigm (TNT) with a go/no-go motor inhibition task. Participants first learned unpleasant cue-target pairs. Cue words were then presented as go or no-go items in the TNT. Participants’ task was to respond to the cues and think of the target word aloud or to inhibit their response to the cue and the target word from coming to mind. Cued recall assessed immediately after the TNT revealed reduced recall performance for no-go targets compared to go targets or baseline cues not presented in the TNT. The results demonstrate that doing the no-think and no-go task concurrently leads to memory suppression of unpleasant items during later recall. Results are discussed in line with recent empirical research and theoretical positions.
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.
The present study investigated event-related brain potentials elicited by true and false negated statements to evaluate if discrimination of the truth value of negated information relies on conscious processing and requires higher-order cognitive processing in healthy subjects across different levels of stimulus complexity. The stimulus material consisted of true and false negated sentences (sentence level) and prime-target expressions (word level). Stimuli were presented acoustically and no overt behavioral response of the participants was required. Event-related brain potentials to target words preceded by true and false negated expressions were analyzed both within group and at the single subject level. Across the different processing conditions (word pairs and sentences), target words elicited a frontal negativity and a late positivity in the time window from 600–1000 msec post target word onset. Amplitudes of both brain potentials varied as a function of the truth value of the negated expressions. Results were confirmed at the single-subject level. In sum, our results support recent suggestions according to which evaluation of the truth value of a negated expression is a time- and cognitively demanding process that cannot be solved automatically, and thus requires conscious processing. Our paradigm provides insight into higher-order processing related to language comprehension and reasoning in healthy subjects. Future studies are needed to evaluate if our paradigm also proves sensitive for the detection of consciousness in non-responsive patients.
Costly signaling with mobile devices: An evolutionary psychological perspective on smartphones
(2016)
In the last decade, mobile device ownership has largely increased. In particular, smartphone ownership is constantly rising (A. Smith, 2015; Statista, 2016a), and there is a real hype for luxury brand smartphones (Griffin, 2015). These observations raise the question of which functions smartphones serve in addition to their original purposes of making and receiving calls, searching for information, and organizing. Beyond these obvious functions, studies suggest that smartphones express fashion, lifestyle, and one’s economic status (e.g., Bødker et al., 2009; Statista, 2016b; Vanden Abeele, Antheunis, & Schouten, 2014). Specifically, individuals seem to purchase and use conspicuous luxury brand smartphones to display and enhance status (D. Kim et al., 2014; Müller-Lietzkow et al., 2014; Suki, 2013). But how does owning a conspicuous, high-status smartphone contribute to status, and which benefits may these status boosts provide to their owners? From an evolutionary perspective, status carries a lot of advantages, particularly for males; high status grants them priority access to resources and correlates with their mating success (van Vugt & Tybur, 2016). In this sense, research suggests that men conspicuously display their cell phones to attract mates and to distinguish themselves from rivals (Lycett & Dunbar, 2000). In a similar vein, evolutionarily informed studies on conspicuous consumption indicate that the purchase and display of conspicuous luxuries (including mobile phones and smartphones) relate to a man’s interest in uncommitted sexual relationships and enhance his desirability as a short-term mate (Hennighausen & Schwab, 2014; Saad, 2013; Sundie et al., 2011). Drawing on these findings, this doctoral dissertation investigated how a man is perceived given that he is an owner of a high-status (vs. nonconspicuous, low-status) smartphone as a romantic partner and male rival. This was done in three experiments. In addition, it was examined how male conspicuous consumption of smartphones interacted with further traits that signal a man’s mate quality, namely facial attractiveness (Studies 1 and 2) and social dominance (Study 3). Study 1 revealed that men and women perceived a male owner of a conspicuous smartphone as a less desirable long-term mate and as more inclined toward short-term mating. Study 2 replicated these results and showed that men and women assigned traits that are associated with short-term mating (e.g., low loyalty, interest in flirts, availability of tangible resources) to a male owner of a conspicuous smartphone and perceived him as a stronger male rival and mate poacher, and less as a friend. The results of Study 2 further suggested that specifically more attractive men might benefit from owning a conspicuous smartphone in a short-term mating context and might be hence considered as stronger male rivals. Study 3 partially replicated the findings of Studies 1 and 2 pertaining to the effects of owning a conspicuous smartphone. Study 3 did not show different effects of conspicuous consumption of smartphones on perceptions of a man dependent on the level of his social dominance.
To conclude, the findings of this doctoral dissertation suggest that owning a conspicuous, high-status smartphone might not only serve proximate functions (e.g., making and receiving calls, organization) but also ultimate functions, which relate to mating and reproduction. The results indicate that owning a conspicuous smartphone might yield benefits for men in a short-term rather than in a long-term mating context. Furthermore, more attractive men appear to benefit more from owning a conspicuous smartphone than less attractive men. These findings provide further insights into the motivations that underlie men’s purchases and displays of conspicuous, high-status smartphones from luxury brands that reach beyond the proximate causes frequently described in media and consumer psychological research. By applying an evolutionary perspective, this doctoral dissertation demonstrates the power and utility of this research paradigm for media psychological research and shows how combining a proximate and ultimate perspective adds to a more profound understanding of smartphone phenomena.
Objective: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide a non-muscular communication channel for patients with late-stage motoneuron disease (e.g., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)) or otherwise motor impaired people and are also used for motor rehabilitation in chronic stroke. Differences in the ability to use a BCI vary from person to person and from session to session. A reliable predictor of aptitude would allow for the selection of suitable BCI paradigms. For this reason, we investigated whether P300 BCI aptitude could be predicted from a short experiment with a standard auditory oddball. Methods: Forty healthy participants performed an electroencephalography (EEG) based visual and auditory P300-BCI spelling task in a single session. In addition, prior to each session an auditory oddball was presented. Features extracted from the auditory oddball were analyzed with respect to predictive power for BCI aptitude. Results: Correlation between auditory oddball response and P300 BCI accuracy revealed a strong relationship between accuracy and N2 amplitude and the amplitude of a late ERP component between 400 and 600 ms. Interestingly, the P3 amplitude of the auditory oddball response was not correlated with accuracy. Conclusions: Event-related potentials recorded during a standard auditory oddball session moderately predict aptitude in an audiory and highly in a visual P300 BCI. The predictor will allow for faster paradigm selection. Significance: Our method will reduce strain on patients because unsuccessful training may be avoided, provided the results can be generalized to the patient population.
When a key press causes a stimulus, the key press is perceived later and the stimulus earlier than key presses and stimuli presented independently. This bias in time perception has been linked to the intention to produce the effect and thus been called intentional binding (IB). In recent studies it has been shown that the IB effect is stronger when participants believed that they caused the effect stimulus compared to when they believed that another person caused the effect (Desantis et al., 2011). In this experiment we ask whether causal beliefs influence the perceived time of an effect when the putative effect occurs temporally close to another stimulus that is also an effect. In our study two participants performed the same task on connected computers with separate screens. Each trial started synchro- nously on both computers. When a participant pressed a key, a red and a yellow stimulus appeared as action effects simultaneously or with a slight delay of up to 50 ms. The partic- ipants’ task was to judge the temporal order of these two effect stimuli. Participants were either told that one participant caused one of the two stimuli while the other participant seated at the other computer caused the other stimulus, or each participant was told that he/she caused both stimuli. The different causal beliefs changed the perceived time of the effects’ appearance relative to each other. When participants believed they each caused one effect, their “own” effect was perceived earlier than the other participant’s effect. When the participants believed each caused both effects, no difference in the perceived temporal order of the red and yellow effect was found. These results confirm that higher order causal beliefs change the perceived time of an action effect even in a setting in which the occurrence of the putative effect can be directly compared to a reference stimulus.
Several studies have investigated the neural responses triggered by emotional pictures, but the specificity of the involved structures such as the amygdala or the ventral striatum is still under debate. Furthermore, only few studies examined the association of stimuli’s valence and arousal and the underlying brain responses. Therefore, we investigated brain responses with functional magnetic resonance imaging of 17 healthy participants to pleasant and unpleasant affective pictures and afterwards assessed ratings of valence and arousal. As expected, unpleasant pictures strongly activated the right and left amygdala, the right hippocampus, and the medial occipital lobe, whereas pleasant pictures elicited significant activations in left occipital regions, and in parts of the medial temporal lobe. The direct comparison of unpleasant and pleasant pictures, which were comparable in arousal clearly indicated stronger amygdala activation in response to the unpleasant pictures. Most important, correlational analyses revealed on the one hand that the arousal of unpleasant pictures was significantly associated with activations in the right amygdala and the left caudate body. On the other hand, valence of pleasant pictures was significantly correlated with activations in the right caudate head, extending to the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These findings support the notion that the amygdala is primarily involved in processing of unpleasant stimuli, particularly to more arousing unpleasant stimuli. Reward-related structures like the caudate and NAcc primarily respond to pleasant stimuli, the stronger the more positive the valence of these stimuli is.
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.
A brain-computer interface (BCI) enables communication without movement based on brain signals measured with electroencephalography (EEG). BCIs usually rely on one of three types of signals: the P300 and other components of the event-related potential (ERP), steady state visual evoked potential (SSVEP), or event related desynchronization (ERD). Although P300 BCIs were introduced over twenty years ago, the past few years have seen a strong increase in P300 BCI research. This closed-loop BCI approach relies on the P300 and other components of the ERP, based on an oddball paradigm presented to the subject. In this paper, we overview the current status of P300 BCI technology, and then discuss new directions: paradigms for eliciting P300s; signal processing methods; applications; and hybrid BCIs. We conclude that P300 BCIs are quite promising, as several emerging directions have not yet been fully explored and could lead to improvements in bit rate, reliability, usability, and flexibility.
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 accordance with various other studies. the present longitudinal study gave no clues for specific personality variables or traits 01' drug addicts. Personality factors did not allow a valid prediction of the kind 01' th~apy termination. nor were there clear deviations from the norm. Analyzed as a group. the addicts showed only minor changes that appeared over the course of treatment. These results correspond to data reported on alcohol dependency (cf. Wanke 1987). A more differentiated picture is gained when stable and changeable components of personality and analyzed separately. Changeable components are of special relevance for treatment. From the current study these were characteristics of action regulation, that is, activation and impulse control, social interaction, and somatic reactions (sleep disorders, bodily reactions to drug deprivation). For relapse prevention, attention should be given to stable, persistent, problematic components. Persistent suicidal ideas turned out to be one such aspect. Like the differentiation between state and trait anxiety, stable and variable components could also be separated for other domains of personality when they are used to describe the course of treatment. How can personality concepts and instruments for assessment be utilized for treatment? The claim of therapists to predict the outcome of a treatment may be realized for only a delimited period of time. Especially at such critical points as shortly before relapse, a firm prediction might be possible only rarely (Wanke 1987). Lack of predictability could be a warning which, however, can be verified only afterward. According to the current results, one benefit of personality concepts could be to specify targets of change on an individual basis and thus clarify effects of therapeutic interventions. Personality concepts can help patients to better understand their problems and to recognize changes as weil as persistent areas of vulnerability.
This article gives an overview of possibilities for the assessment offacial behavior. With regard to validity, results from a longitudinal study of 36 depressed patients and nine controls as weil as often schizophrenic patients and their relatives will be referred to. These results are used to illustrate the following principles which have to be taken into account when studying facial behavior: a) communication strongly facilitates facial expression, b) activation of facial behavior follows the "principle of least effort", and c) the principle of individual specificity applies to the association of nonverbal behavior and mood states. Making allowance for these principles has, among others, consequences a) for situations or conditions under which to asses behavior (specifically conditions of communication), b) for data analysis (e.g., dealing with frequent and rare events), and c) for empirical or experimental strategies (e.g., aggregation of single-case longitudinal comparisons). From the results on facial behavior during depression it can be concluded that the nonverbal reaction tendencies of endogenous and neurotic depressed patients differ. Moreover, the differential behavioral pattems observed cast doubt on the assumption of a homogeneity of affects in depression. Taking into account the conditions which govern it, facial behavior has proved to be a valid and, especially, a differential indicator for pathoIogic affective states and their changes. Given the fact that a psychiatric illness generally incorporates emotional problems it is more than surprising that little attention has been paid to the systematic study of emotional behavior. Some of the reasons for this will be clarified in the following.
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.
Computer-aided video
(1983)
The recent developments in microprocessor electronics and time-code equipment have vastly improved the efficiency of working with video material so that through the combination of data processing and video recording equipment a substantial rationalization of both data acquisition procedures and functional control of the recording machines may be achieved. Such a system, in which video editing and time-code control equipment is interfaced to a process computer, has been developed for the analysis of human communicative behaviour. The system provides exact indexing of the recorded material, automatic search and edit routines for the videotape machines and synchronicity of registered data. In summary, it can be maintained that given a sound theoretical basis, modern video and computer technologies can substantially increase the efficiency and accuracy of behavioural observation and analysis.
The goal of the present study was to determine whether 4- and 5-year-old kindergarten children could be trained to maintain an organizational strategy over 2- and 8 week periods through an elaborate training program. A second goal was to assess the effects of the training program on strategy awareness. Twenty-eight kindergarten children were pretested on two sort-recall tasks and their awareness of the use of the clustering strategy was assessed through a protocol type procedure. Half the children received seven half-hour sessions of individual training in the clustering strategy and half the children participated in a control group. Both groups were post-tested on two sort-recall tasks 2 weeks following training and again 8 weeks following training. Strategy awareness, as measured by verbal protocol, was assessed at both post-test points. The elaborate strategy training program was successful in inducing short- and long-term strategy maintenance of the clustering strategy. Trained children’s clustering during sorting and clustering during recall was consistently related to the amount of items correctly recalled. No differences in strategy awareness were found. These findings demonstrate that the elaborate training procedure used in this study can be a very effective memory technique for young kindergarten children.
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.
Brain computer interfaces based on sensorimotor rhythms modulation (SMR-BCIs) allow people to emit commands to an interface by imagining right hand, left hand or feet movements. The neurophysiological activation associated with those specific mental imageries can be measured by electroencephalography and detected by machine learning algorithms. Improvements for SMR-BCI accuracy in the last 30 years seem to have reached a limit. The currrent main issue with SMR-BCIs is that between 15% to 30% cannot use the BCI, called the "BCI inefficiency" issue. Alternatively to hardware and software improvements, investigating the individual characteristics of the BCI users has became an interesting approach to overcome BCI inefficiency. In this dissertation, I reviewed existing literature concerning the individual sources of variation in SMR-BCI accuracy and identified generic individual characteristics. In the empirical investigation, attention and motor dexterity predictors for SMR-BCI performance were implemented into a trainings that would manipulate those predictors and lead to higher SMR-BCI accuracy. Those predictors were identified by Hammer et al. (2012) as the ability to concentrate (associated with relaxation levels) and "mean error duration" in a two-hand visuo-motor coordination task (VMC). Prior to a SMR-BCI session, a total of n=154 participants in two locations took part of 23 min sessions of either Jacobson’s Progressive Muscle Relaxation session (PMR), a VMC session, or a control group (CG). No effect of PMR or VMC manipulation was found, but the manipulation checks did not consistently confirm whether PMR had an effect of relaxation levels and VMC on "mean error duration". In this first study, correlations between relaxation levels or "mean error duration" and accuracy were found but not in both locations. A second study, involving n=39 participants intensified the training in four sessions on four consecutive days or either PMR, VMC or CG. The effect or manipulation was assessed for in terms of a causal relationship by using a PRE-POST study design. The manipulation checks of this second study validated the positive effect of training on both relaxation and "mean error duration". But the manipulation did not yield a specific effect on BCI accuracy. The predictors were not found again, displaying the instability of relaxation levels and "mean error duration" in being associated with BCI performance. An effect of time on BCI accuracy was found, and a correlation between State Mindfulness Scale and accuracy were reported. Results indicated that a short training of PMR or VMC were insufficient in increasing SMR-BCI accuracy. This study contrasted with studies succeeding in increasing SMR-BCI accuracy Tan et al. (2009, 2014), by the shortness of its training and the relaxation training that did not include mindfulness. It also contrasted by its manipulation checks and its comprehensive experimental approach that attempted to replicate existing predictors or correlates for SMR-BCI accuracy. The prediction of BCI accuracy by individual characteristics is receiving increased attention, but requires replication studies and a comprehensive approach, to contribute to the growing base of evidence of predictors for SMR-BCI accuracy. While short PMR and VMC trainings could not yield an effect on BCI performance, mindfulness meditation training might be beneficial for SMR-BCI accuracy. Moreover, it could be implemented for people in the locked-in-syndrome, allowing to reach the end-users that are the most in need for improvements in BCI performance.
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.
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.
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.
This dissertation contributes to deepen our understanding of constructs that play a key role in individuals’ vocational career construction. In this regard, many previous studies have focused exclusively on a specific phase of an individual’s career. Yet, modern societies
require continuous investments in one’s career to adapt to changing Environments throughout the life span. Consequently, this dissertation takes a broad approach to capture a wide spectrum of career construction processes.
According to Super’s (1990) developmental stage framework, individuals have to manage vocational developmental tasks corresponding to each of the developmental life stages in order to be career mature across the life span. As the two stages exploration and
maintenance set the stage for individuals’ future career pathways, they are especially important in individuals’ vocational career construction. Therefore, both of them are addressed in this dissertation.
By answering open research questions relevant to career choice in early career stages and to career development in later career stages, this dissertation contributes to the overarching goal of shedding more light on constructs relevant to individuals’ vocational career construction processes across the life span. Beyond the results presented within each study’s horizon, this dissertation aimed at offering practical guidance to career counselors,
trainees, and training and development (T&D) professionals. Career counselors and T&D professionals are involved in guiding vocational career construction processes of individuals across the life span. Thus, on the one hand, this dissertation supports career counselors’ work so that they can help deliberating individuals make optimal and effective career choices. On
the other hand, this dissertation facilitates T&D professionals’ work so that they can effectively design and evaluate e‐learning and classroom trainings in corporate educational settings. Identifying individuals’ vocational interests combined with cognitive abilities through adequate test measures and maximizing success of learning and success of transfer through fostering evidence‐based transfer support actions will help individuals adapt quickly to the changing nature of work environments in the 21st century and to continue to successfully construct careers across the life span.
To simplify a judgment, people often base it on easily accessible information. One cue that is usually readily available is processing fluency – a metacognitive feeling of ease of cognitive processing. Consequently, processing fluency is used as a cue for many different types of judgment, such as judgment of truth, confidence, and novelty. The present work describes results of three studies investigating various aspects of processing fluency effects on judgment.
Processing fluency has been sometimes equated with speed of a cognitive process. Therefore, response times have been used for evaluation of processing fluency. However, response times in experimental tasks often do not encompass only the time needed for a given process, but also the time needed for a decision based on the resulting information. The study described in Chapter II uses a novel experimental method that enables separation of reading and decision times. The results show that people make a decision about liking of pseudowords faster when the pseudowords are hard-to-pronounce (i.e., disfluent) than when they are moderate in pronounceability. This suggests that response times cannot be used as a proxy for processing fluency when they include the time needed to make a decision.
One of the studies of judgmental effects of processing fluency showed that food additives with easier pronounceable names are judged to be less harmful than those with hard-to-pronounce names. While people encounter food additives that are safe more often, this environmental association may be in the opposite direction for some categories of objects. For example, people are more likely to see names of especially dangerous criminals in the news. Chapter III describes a study which initially tested whether the fluency-safety association may be in the opposite direction for some categories of objects as a consequence of this selective exposure to especially dangerous exemplars. The results did not show support for this hypothesis. Furthermore, subsequent studies suggest that the previously found association between fluency and safety is replicable with the original stimuli used in the previous research, but not with newly constructed stimuli.
Chapter IV describes a study which applied a finding from the processing fluency literature to a positive psychology exercise in order to increase its effectiveness. Namely, the experiment manipulated the number of good things that participants listed daily for two weeks as part of the exercise. While listing more things was considered harder, the number of things listed each day had no effect on effectiveness of the exercise.
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.
The proceedings of the 8th Conference of the Media Psychology Division of the German Psychological Society hosted by the University of Wuerzburg from the 4th until the 6th of September 2013 contains the abstracts of the conference participants. Following the motto of the conference "Media Research: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" a large number of media-psychological topics was dealt with. Amongst others, participants presented their research on interactive learning, emotions, virtual agents and avatars, gaming, scientific communication, politics, motion pictures and entertainment, social media, methods, and persuasions.