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Readers use prior knowledge to evaluate the validity of statements and detect false information without effort and strategic control. The present study expands this research by exploring whether people also non-strategically detect information that threatens their social identity. Participants (N = 77) completed a task in which they had to respond to a “True” or “False” probe after reading true, false, identity-threatening, or non-threatening sentences. Replicating previous studies, participants reacted more slowly to a positive probe (“True”) after reading false (vs. true) sentences. Notably, participants also reacted more slowly to a positive probe after reading identity-threatening (vs. non-threatening) sentences. These results provide first evidence that identity-threatening information, just as false information, is detected at a very early stage of information processing and lends support to the notion of a routine, non-strategic identity-defense mechanism.
In most foreign language learning contexts, there are only rare chance for contact with native speakers of the target language. In such a situation, reading plays an important role in language acquisition as well as in gaining cultural information about the target language and its speakers.
Previous research indicated that reading in foreign language is a complex process, which is influenced by various linguistic, cognitive and affective factors. The aim of the present study was to test two structural models of the relationship between reading comprehension in native language (L1), English language (L2) reading motivation, metacognitive awareness of L2 reading strategies, and reading comprehension of English as a foreign language among the two samples. Furthermore, the current study aimed to examine the differences between Egyptian and German students in their perceived usage of reading strategies during reading English texts, as well as to explore the pattern of their motivation toward reading English texts. For this purpose, 401 students were recruited from Germany (n=200) and Egypt (n=201) to participate in the current study. In order to have information about metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, a self-report questionnaire (SORS) developed by Moktari and Sheory (2002) was used. While the L2 reading motivation variable, was measured by a reading motivation survey (L2RMQ) which was based on reviewed reading motivation research. In addition, two reading tests were administrated one to measure reading comprehension for native language (German/Arabic) and the other to measure English reading comprehension.
To analyze the collected data, descriptive statistics and independent t-tests were performed. In addition, further analysis using structural equation modeling was applied to test the strength of relationships between the variables under study.
The results from the current research revealed that L1 reading comprehension, whether in a German or Arabic language, had the strongest relationship with L2 reading comprehension. However, the relationship between L2 intrinsic reading motivation was not proven to be significant in either the German or Egyptian models. On the other hand, the relationship between L2 extrinsic reading motivation, metacognitive awareness of reading strategies, and L2 reading comprehension was only proven significant in the German sample. The discussion of these results along with their pedagogical implications for education and practice will be illustrated in the following study.
Langfristige Prognosen sportmotorischer Leistungen sowie die Kenntnis relevanter Einflussfaktoren auf die motorische Entwicklung gewinnen angesichts des veränderten Bewegungsverhaltens und der Zunahme motorischer Defizite von Kindern und Jugendlichen immer stärker an Bedeutung. Der bisherige Forschungsstand zur Stabilität und Vorhersage sportlicher Leistungsfähigkeit beschränkt sich bisher jedoch fast ausschließlich auf retrospektive Studien oder aber auf Längsschnittstudien, die nur einen begrenzten Lebensabschnitt erfassen. Im Vordergrund der vorliegenden multivariaten Längsschnittstudie steht die empirische Analyse potentieller personinterner und personexterner Einflussfaktoren auf die Entwicklung motorischer – insbesondere koordinativer - Fähigkeiten vom Vorschul- bis ins frühe Erwachsenenalter. Außerdem sollte versucht werden, die Ausprägung sportlicher Aktivität und motorischer Fähigkeiten im frühen Erwachsenenalter möglichst gut durch potentielle Prädiktoren aus der Kindheit vorherzusagen. Als theoretischer Rahmen wurde ausgehend von einem fähigkeitsorientierten Ansatz das transaktionale Handlungsmodell von Baur (1989, 1994) ausgewählt, das sowohl endogene als auch exogene Einflussfaktoren auf die motorische Entwicklung berücksichtigt. Die Daten zur motorischen, somatischen und psychischen Entwicklung wurden im Rahmen der Münchner Längsschnittstudie zur Genese individueller Kompetenzen (LOGIK) an 152 Mädchen und Jungen im Alter von 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12 und 23 Jahren erhoben. Es zeigen sich bereits im Vorschulalter substantielle Stabilitätskoeffizienten zu den motorischen Leistungen im frühen Erwachsenenalter, die ab dem Grundschulalter auf mittelhohe Werte ansteigen. Als bedeutsame Einflussfaktoren auf die motorische Entwicklung erweisen sich neben der sportlichen Aktivität und dem BMI auch die nonverbale Intelligenz und das athletische Selbstkonzept. In Abhängigkeit von der Schullaufbahn, dem sozioökonomischen Status sowie der Sportvereinszugehörigkeit können Unterschiede im motorischen Entwicklungsverlauf nur zum Teil nachgewiesen werden. Einen nachhaltigen Einfluss auf die motorische Entwicklung bis ins frühe Erwachsenenalter besitzt dagegen das frühe sportive Anregungsniveau im Elternhaus. Mittels schrittweiser Regression können unter Einbezug motorischer, somatischer, kognitiver, persönlichkeitsbezogener und soziodemographischer Merkmale im Vorschulalter bereits bis zu 31%, ab dem Grundschulalter bis zu 46% der Varianz motorischer Leistungen mit 23 J. aufgeklärt werden. Für eine befriedigende Prognose späterer motorischer Leistungen sollten deshalb neben den motorischen Leistungskomponenten auch somatische, kognitive, persönlichkeitsbezogene und sozialisationsbedingte Einflüsse berücksichtigt werden. Die relativ hohe Stabilität motorischer Fähigkeiten ab dem Grundschulalter deutet darauf hin, dass bereits in der Kindheit die Grundlagen für die weitere motorische Entwicklung gelegt werden. Ein effizienter Ansatzpunkt zur Intervention scheint hier vor allem die Förderung von sportlicher Aktivität und Sportinteresse im Elternhaus zu sein.
Research on the deployment and use of technology to assist learning has seen a significant
rise over the last decades (Aparicio et al., 2017). The focus on course quality, technology,
learning outcome and learner satisfaction in e-learning has led to insufficient attention by
researchers to individual characteristics of learners (Cidral et al., 2017 ; Hsu et al., 2013). The current work aims to bridge this gap by investigating characteristics identified by previous works and backed by theory as influential individual differences in e-learning. These learner characteristics have been suggested as motivational factors (Edmunds et al., 2012) in decisions by learners to interact and exchange information (Luo et al., 2017).
In this work e-learning is defined as interaction dependent information seeking and sharing enabled by technology. This is primarily approached from a media psychology perspective. The role of learner characteristics namely, beliefs about the source of knowledge (Schommer, 1990), learning styles (Felder & Silverman, 1988), need for affect (Maio & Esses, 2001), need for cognition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) and power distance (Hofstede, 1980) on interactions to seek and share information in e-learning are investigated. These investigations were shaped by theory and empirical lessons as briefly mentioned in the next paragraphs. Theoretical support for investigations is derived from the technology acceptance model(TAM) by psychologist Davis (1989) and the hyper-personal model by communication scientist Walther (1996). The TAM was used to describe the influence of learner characteristics on decisions to use e-learning systems (Stantchev et al., 2014). The hyper-personal model described why computer-mediated communication thrives in e-learning (Kaye et al., 2016) and how learners interpret messages exchanged online (Hansen et al., 2015). This theoretical framework was followed by empirical reviews which justified the use of interaction and information seeking-sharing as key components of e-learning as well as the selection of learner characteristics. The reviews provided suggestions for the measurement of variables (Kühl et al., 2014) and the investigation design (Dascalau et al., 2015). Investigations were designed and implemented through surveys and quasi experiments which were used for three preliminary studies and two main studies. Samples were selected from Germany and Ghana with same variables tested in both countries. Hypotheses were tested with interaction and information seeking-sharing as dependent variables while beliefs about the source of knowledge, learning styles, need for affect, need for cognition and power distance were independent variables. Firstly, using analyses of variance, the influence of beliefs about the source of knowledge on interaction choices of learners was supported. Secondly, the role of need for cognition on interaction choices of learners was supported by results from a logistic regression. Thirdly, results from multiple linear regressions backed the influence of need for cognition and power distance on information seeking-sharing behaviour of learners. Fourthly, the relationship between need for affect and need for cognition
was supported. The findings may have implications for media psychology research, theories used in this work, research on e-learning, measurement of learner characteristics and the design of e-learning platforms. The findings suggest that, the beliefs learners have about the source of knowledge, their need for cognition and their power distance can influence decisions to interact and seek or share information. The outlook from reviews and findings in this work predicts more research on learner characteristics and a corresponding intensity in the use of e-learning by individuals. It is suggested that future studies investigate the relationship between learner autonomy and power distance. Studies on inter-cultural similarities amongst e-learners in different populations are also
suggested.
It has been proposed that different features of a face provide a source of information for separate perceptual and cognitive processes. Properties of a face that remain rather stable over time, so called invariant facial features, yield information about a face’s identity, and changeable aspects of faces transmit information underlying social communication such as emotional expressions and speech movements. While processing of these different face properties was initially claimed to be independent, a growing body of evidence suggests that these sources of information can interact when people recognize faces with whom they are familiar. This is the case because the way a face moves can contain patterns that are characteristic for that specific person, so called idiosyncratic movements. As a face becomes familiar these idiosyncratic movements are learned and hence also provide information serving face identification. While an abundance of experiments has addressed the independence of invariant and variable facial features in face recognition, little is known about the exact nature of the impact idiosyncratic facial movements have on face recognition. Gaining knowledge about the way facial motion contributes to face recognition is, however, important for a deeper understanding of the way the brain processes and recognizes faces. In the following dissertation three experiments are reported that investigate the impact familiarity of changeable facial features has on processes of face recognition. Temporal aspects of the processing of familiar idiosyncratic facial motion were addressed in the first experiment via EEG by investigating the influence familiar facial movement exerts on event-related potentials associated to face processing and face recognition. After being familiarized with a face and its idiosyncratic movement, participants viewed familiar or unfamiliar faces with familiar or unfamiliar facial movement while their brain potentials were recorded. Results showed that familiarity of facial motion influenced later event-related potentials linked to memory processes involved in face recognition. The second experiment used fMRI to investigate the brain areas involved in processing familiar facial movement. Participants’ BOLD-signal was registered while they viewed familiar and unfamiliar faces with familiar or unfamiliar idiosyncratic movement. It was found that activity of brain regions, such as the fusiform gyrus, that underlie the processing of face identity, was modulated by familiar facial movement. Together these two experiments provide valuable information about the nature of the involvement of idiosyncratic facial movement in face recognition and have important implications for cognitive and neural models of face perception and recognition. The third experiment addressed the question whether idiosyncratic facial movement could increase individuation in perceiving faces from a different ethnic group and hence reduce impaired recognition of these other-race faces compared to own-race faces, a phenomenon named the own-race bias. European participants viewed European and African faces that were each animated with an idiosyncratic smile while their attention was either directed to the form or the motion of the face. Subsequently recognition memory for these faces was tested. Results showed that the own-race bias was equally present in both attention conditions indicating that idiosyncratic facial movement was not able to reduce or diminish the own-race bias. In combination the here presented experiments provide further insight into the involvement of idiosyncratic facial motion in face recognition. It is necessary to consider the dynamic component of faces when investigating face recognition because static facial images are not able to provide the full range of information that leads to recognition of a face. In order to reflect the full process of face recognition, cognitive and neural models of face perception and recognition need to integrate dynamic facial features as a source of information which contributes to the recognition of a face.
In order to survive, organisms avoid threats and seek rewards. Classical conditioning is a simple model to explain how animals and humans learn associations between events that allow them to predict threats and rewards efficiently. In the classical conditioning paradigm, a neutral stimulus is paired with a biologically significant event (the unconditioned stimulus – US). In virtue of this association, the neutral stimulus acquires affective motivational properties, and becomes a conditioned stimulus (CS+). Defensive responses emerge for pairings with an aversive US (e.g., pain), and appetitive responses emerge for pairing with an appetitive event (e.g., reward). It has been observed that animals avoid a CS+ when it precedes an aversive US during a training phase (CS+ US; forward conditioning); whereas they approach a CS+ when it follows an aversive US during the training phase (US CS+; backward conditioning). These findings indicate that the CS+ acquires aversive properties after a forward conditioning, whereas acquires appetitive properties after a backward conditioning. It is thus of interest whether event timing also modulates conditioned responses in such an opponent fashion in humans, who are capable of explicit cognition about the associations. For this purpose, four experiments were conducted in which a discriminative conditioning was applied in groups of participants that only differed in the temporal sequence between CS+ onset and US onset (i.e., the interstimulus interval – ISI). During the acquisition phase (conditioning), two simple geometrical shapes were presented as conditioned stimuli. One shape (CS+) was always associated with a mild painful electric shock (i.e., the aversive US) and the other one (CS-) was never associated with the shock. In a between-subjects design, participants underwent either forward or backward conditioning. During the test phase (extinction), emotional responses to CS+ and CS- were tested and the US was never presented. Additionally, a novel neutral shape (NEW) was presented as control stimulus. To assess cognitive components, participants had to rate both the valence (the degree of unpleasantness or pleasantness) and the arousal (the degree of calmness or excitation) associated with the shapes before and after conditioning. In the first study, startle responses, an ancestral defensive reflex consisting of a fast twitch of facial and body muscles evoked by sudden and intense stimuli, was measured as an index of stimulus implicit valence. Startle amplitude was potentiated in the presence of the forward CS+ whilst attenuated in the presence of the backward CS+. Respectively, the former response indicates an implicit negative valence of the CS+ and an activation of the defensive system; the latter indicated an implicit positive valence of the CS+ and an activation of the appetitive system. In the second study, the blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response was measured by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate neural responses after event learning. Stronger amygdala activation in response to forward CS+ and stronger striatum activation in response to backward CS+ were found in comparison to CS-. These results support the notion that the defensive motivational system is activated after forward conditioning since the amygdala plays a crucial role in fear acquisition and expression. Whilst the appetitive motivational system is activated after backward conditioning since the striatum plays a crucial role in reward processing. In the third study, attentional processes underlying event learning were observed by means of steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs). This study showed that both forward and backward CS+ caught attentional resources. More specifically, ssVEP amplitude was higher during the last seconds of forward CS+ that is just before the US, but during the first seconds of backward CS+ that is just after the US. Supposedly, attentional processes were located at the most informative part of CS+ in respect to the US. Participants of all three studies rated both forward and backward CS+ more negative and arousing compared to the CS-. This indicated that event timing did not influence verbal reports similarly as the neural and behavioral responses indicating a dissociation between the explicit and implicit responses. Accordingly, dual process theories propose that human behavior is determined by the output of two systems: (1) an impulsive implicit system that works on associative principles, and (2) a reflective explicit system that functions on the basis of knowledge about facts and values. Most importantly, these two systems can operate in a synergic or antagonistic fashion. Hence, the three studies of this thesis congruently suggest that the impulsive and the reflective systems act after backward association in an antagonistic fashion. In sum, event timing may turn punishment into reward in humans even though they subjectively rate the stimulus associated with aversive events as being aversive. This dissociation might contribute to understand psychiatric disorders, like anxiety disorders or drug addiction.
In classical conditioning, an initially neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) becomes associated with a biologically salient event (unconditioned stimulus, US), which might be pain (aversive conditioning) or food (appetitive conditioning). After a few associations, the CS is able to initiate either defensive or consummatory responses, respectively. Contrary to aversive conditioning, appetitive conditioning is rarely investigated in humans, although its importance for normal and pathological behaviors (e.g., obesity, addiction) is undeniable. The present study intents to translate animal findings on appetitive conditioning to humans using food as an US. Thirty-three participants were investigated between 8 and 10 am without breakfast in order to assure that they felt hungry. During two acquisition phases, one geometrical shape (avCS+) predicted an aversive US (painful electric shock), another shape (appCS+) predicted an appetitive US (chocolate or salty pretzel according to the participants' preference), and a third shape (CS) predicted neither US. In a extinction phase, these three shapes plus a novel shape (NEW) were presented again without US delivery. Valence and arousal ratings as well as startle and skin conductance (SCR) responses were collected as learning indices. We found successful aversive and appetitive conditioning. On the one hand, the avCS+ was rated as more negative and more arousing than the CS and induced startle potentiation and enhanced SCR. On the other hand, the appCS+ was rated more positive than the CS and induced startle attenuation and larger SCR. In summary, we successfully confirmed animal findings in (hungry) humans by demonstrating appetitive learning and normal aversive learning.
A stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) associated with an appetitive unconditioned stimulus (US) acquires positive properties and elicits appetitive conditioned responses (CR). Such associative learning has been examined extensively in animals with food as the US, and results are used to explain psychopathologies (e.g., substance-related disorders or obesity). Human studies on appetitive conditioning exist, too, but we still know little about generalization processes. Understanding these processes may explain why stimuli not associated with a drug, for instance, can elicit craving. Forty-seven hungry participants underwent an appetitive conditioning protocol during which one of two circles with different diameters (CS+) became associated with an appetitive US (chocolate or salty pretzel, according to participants’ preference) but never the other circle (CS−). During generalization, US were delivered twice and the two CS were presented again plus four circles (generalization stimuli, GS) with gradually increasing diameters from CS− to CS+. We found successful appetitive conditioning as reflected in appetitive subjective ratings (positive valence, higher contingency) and physiological responses (startle attenuation and larger skin conductance responses) to CS+ versus CS−, and, importantly, both measures confirmed generalization as indicated by generalization gradients. Small changes in CS-US contingency during generalization may have weakened generalization processes on the physiological level. Considering that appetitive conditioned responses can be generalized to non-US-associated stimuli, a next important step would be to investigate risk factors that mediate overgeneralization.
Social robots are becoming increasingly prevalent in everyday life and sex robots are a sub-category of especially high public interest and controversy. Starting from the concept of the otaku, a term from Japanese youth culture that describes secluded persons with a high affinity for fictional manga characters, we examine individual differences behind sex robot appeal (anime and manga fandom, interest in Japanese culture, preference for indoor activities, shyness). In an online-experiment, 261 participants read one out of three randomly assigned descriptions of future technologies (sex robot, nursing robot, genetically modified organism) and reported on their overall evaluation, eeriness, and contact/purchase intentions. Higher anime and manga fandom was associated with higher appeal for all three future technologies. For our male subsample, sex robots and GMOs stood out as shyness yielded a particularly strong relationship to contact/purchase intentions for these new technologies.
Teil 1: Aus früheren Arbeiten geht hervor, dass Fibomyalgiepatienten über eine höhere Schmerzstärke in bezug auf ihren klinischen Schmerz nach negativem emotionalen Priming verglichen mit positivem Priming berichten als Patienten mit muskuloskelettalem Schmerz. Um die affektive Modulation von Druckschmerz bei Fibromyalgiepatienten (n = 30) unter kontrollierten Bedingungen im Vergleich mit Gesunden und Schmerzerkrankungen geklärter Genese (d.h. organisch oder psychisch) beschreiben zu können, wurde Schmerz experimentell induziert. Neben 30 Gesunden (schmerzfreien Personen) dienten 30 Rückenschmerzpatienten, bei denen eine organische Schmerzgenese vermutet wurde, und 30 somatoforme Schmerzpatienten als Vergleichsgruppen. Für die letzte Gruppe, bei der eine psychische Schmerzgenese angenommen wurde, wurde die gleiche Schmerzmodulation wie für die Fibromyalgiepatienten vermutet. Als Primes dienten positive, neutrale, negative und schmerzbezogene Bilder des International Affective Picture Systems. Schmerz wurde über einen konstanten tonischen Druckreiz ausgelöst; als abhängige Variable wurde die empfundene Schmerzstärke erfasst. Über alle Versuchspersonen hinweg modulierte die Bildervalenz die Schmerzstärke: nach schmerzbezogenen Bildern war die Schmerzstärke höher als nach negativen und nach negativen Bildern war sie höher als nach neutralen. Die Schmerzstärken nach neutralen im Vergleich zu positiven Bildern unterschieden sich jedoch nicht signifikant. Somatoforme Schmerzpatienten berichteten über höhere Schmerzstärken als Rückenschmerzpatienten und Gesunde. Die Fibromyalgiepatienten zeigten ähnlich hohe Schmerzstärken wie die somatoforme Schmerzgruppe, doch unterschieden sie sich weder von den Gesunden noch von den Rückenschmerzpatienten. Zwischen Priming und Gruppe gab es keine Interaktion: Die affektive Schmerzmodulation war bei den Fibromyalgie- und den somatoformen Schmerzpatienten nicht spezifisch verändert, doch die somatoformen Schmerzpatienten zeigten eine erhöhte Druckschmerzsensibilität als Gesunde und Rückenschmerzpatienten. Teil 2: Es wurde oft vermutet, dass sich Fibromyalgiepatienten hinsichtlich soziodemographischer Daten und psychologischer Merkmale von Schmerzpatienten unterscheiden, deren Schmerz organischer Genese ist wie bei Patienten mit (rheumatoider) Arthritis. Ob sie sich diesbezüglich von Patienten mit somatoformer Schmerzstörung unterscheiden, wurde bis jetzt noch nicht geklärt. Um das psychologische Profil von Fibromyalgiepatienten zu spezifizieren, wurden 25 Fibromyalgie- mit 29 somatoformen Schmerz-, 27 Rückenschmerzpatienten und 30 gesunden (schmerfreien) Kontrollpersonen (alle Versuchspersonen hatten am Teil 1 der Studie teil genommen) in bezug auf Unterschiede in soziodemographischen Merkmalen, klinischer Schmerzstärke, schmerzbezogene Selbstinstruktionen, Partnerreaktionen, Stressbewältigungsstrategien und Selbstwirksamkeits- und externale Kontrollüberzeugungen verglichen. Alle drei Schmerzgruppen berichteten über eine stärkere Depression, größere Trait-Angt und größere affektive Verstimmung als die Gesunden. Fibromyalgie- und somatoforme Schmerzpatienten zeigten außerdem eine niedrigere Lebenskontrolle, weniger Aktivitäten außer Haus und vermehrt negative Stressbewältigungsstrategien als die Gesunden. Die Fibromalgiepatienten berichteten zudem über eine stärkere Somatisierung und größere affektive und sensorische Schmerzstärken als die Rückenschmerzpatienten, aber unterschieden sich nicht von den somatoformen Schmerzpatienten. Des weiteren gaben die Fibromyalgiepatienten mehr Schmerzen an verschiedenen Körperstellen an als die Rückenschmerzpatienten. Ein unerwartetes Ergebnis war, dass die somatoformen Schmerzpatienten eine größere Ausprägung im Merkmal Bestrafung (i. s. einer Partnerreaktion) als die Fibromyalgiepatienten (und die Gesunden) zeigten.
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.
According to the Selective Accessibility Model of anchoring, the comparison question in the standard anchoring paradigm activates information that is congruent with an anchor. As a consequence, this information will be more likely to become the basis for the absolute judgment which will therefore be assimilated toward the anchor. However, if the activated information overlaps with information that is elicited by the absolute judgment itself, the preceding comparative judgment should not exert an incremental effect and should fail to result in an anchoring effect. The present studies find this result when the comparative judgment refers to a general category and the absolute judgment refers to a subset of the general category that was activated by the anchor value. For example, participants comparing the average annual temperature in New York City to a high 102 °F judged the average winter, but not summer temperature to be higher than participants making no comparison. On the other hand, participants comparing the annual temperature to a low –4 °F judged the average summer, but not winter temperature to be lower than control participants. This pattern of results was shown also in another content domain. It is consistent with the Selective Accessibility Model but difficult to reconcile with other main explanations of the anchoring effect.
Names of, for instance, children or companies are often chosen very carefully. They should sound and feel good. Therefore, many companies try to choose artificially created names that can easily be pronounced in various languages. A wide range of psychological research has demonstrated that easy processing (high processing fluency) is intrinsically experienced as positive. Due to this positive feeling, easy processing can have profound influences on preferences for names.
Topolinski, Maschmann, Pecher, and Winkielman (2014) have introduced a different mechanism that influences the perception of words. Across several experiments they found that words featuring consonantal inward wanderings (inward words) were preferred over words featuring consonantal outward wanderings (outward words). They argued that this was due to the fact that approach and avoidance motivations are activated by articulating inward and outward words, because the pronunciation resembles approach and avoidance behaviors of swallowing and spitting, respectively. They suggested this close link as an underlying mechanism for the so-called in-out effect, but did not test this assumption directly.
In the current work, I tested an alternative fluency account of the in-out effect. Specifically, I hypothesized that processing fluency might play a critical role instead of motivational states of approach and avoidance being necessarily activated.
In Chapter 1, I introduce the general topic of my dissertation, followed by a detailed introduction of the research area of approach and avoidance motivations in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, I narrow the topic down to orally induced approach and avoidance motivations, which is the main topic of my dissertation. In Chapter 4, I introduce the research area of ecological influences on psychological processes. This chapter builds the base for the idea that human language might serve as a source of processing fluency in the in-out effect. In the following Chapter 5, I elaborate the research area of processing fluency, for which I examined whether it plays a role in the in-out effect.
After an overview of my empirical work in Chapter 6, the empirical part starts with Study 1a and Study 1b (Chapter 7) that aimed to show that two languages (Eng. & Ger.) in which the in-out effect has originally been found might feature a source of higher processing fluency for inward over outward words. The results showed that higher frequencies of inward dynamics compared to outward dynamics were found in both languages. This can lead to higher pronunciation fluency for inward compared to outward words which might in turn lay the ground for higher preferences found for inward over outward words.
In Chapter 8, the assumption that inward compared to outward dynamics might be more efficient to process was tested directly in experiments that examined objective as well as subjective processing fluency of artificially constructed non-words featuring pure inward or outward dynamics. Studies 2a-4b found an objective as well as subjective processing advantage for inward over outward words.
In Chapter 9, the causal role of objective and subjective pronunciation fluency in the in-out effect was examined. In Study 5 mediational analyses on item-level and across studies were conducted using objective and subjective fluency as possible mediating variables. In Study 6 mediation analyses were conducted with data on subject- and trial-level from a within-subject design. Overall, the data of the item-based, subject-based and trial-based mediation analyses provide rather mixed results. Therefore, an experimental manipulation of fluency was implemented in the last two studies.
In Chapter 10, Study 7 and Study 8 demonstrate that manipulating fluency experimentally does indeed modulate the attitudinal impact of consonantal articulation direction. Articulation ease was induced by letting participants train inward or outward kinematics before the actual evaluation phase. Additionally, the simulation training was intensified in Study 8 in order to examine whether a stronger modulation of the in-out effect could be found. Training outward words led to an attenuation and, after more extensive training, even to a reversal of the in-out effect, whereas training inward words led to an enhancement of the in-out effect. This hints at my overall hypothesis that the explicit preferences of inward and outward words are, at least partially, driven by processing fluency.
Almost all studies of my dissertation, except for one analysis of the item-based mediation study, speak in favor of the hypothesis that inward words compared to outward words are objectively and subjectively easier to articulate. This possibly contributes partially to a higher preference of inward over outward words. The results are discussed in Chapter 11 with respect to processing fluency and to the role of language as an ecological factor. Finally, future research ideas are elaborated.
Bei der Entstehung und Aufrechterhaltung von Furcht und Angsterkrankungen stellt, neben der Furchtkonditionierung, die Generalisierung der konditionierten Furcht einen wesentlichen Mechanismus dar. Die der Generalisierung zugrunde liegenden psychologischen und biologischen Prozesse sind jedoch beim Menschen bisher nur wenig untersucht.
Ziel dieser Arbeit war, anhand eines neu entwickelten experimentellen Paradigmas den Einfluss eines psychometrisch bestimmbaren angstspezifischen Faktors sowie der mit Furcht und Angst assoziierten Genotypen Stathmin1, COMT Val158Met und BDNF Val66Met auf die Furchtkonditionierung und Generalisierung konditionierter Furcht zu untersuchen und somit mögliche Risikofaktoren für die Entstehung von Angsterkrankungen zu bestimmen. Hierfür wurden N = 126 gesunde Versuchspersonen (n = 69 weiblich; mittleres Alter M = 23.05, SD = 3.82) für die genannten Polymorphismen genotypisiert und zu ängstlichen und affektiven Symptomen befragt. In einer Akquisitionsphase wurden den Probanden zwei neutrale weibliche Gesichter präsentiert (CS), von denen eines mit einem Schrei sowie einem ängstlichen Gesichtsausdruck (UCS) gepaart wurde. Der sich anschließende Generalisierungstest erfolgte anhand von vier Gesichtern, die in der Ähnlichkeit zwischen den beiden CS schrittweise übergingen. Die Furchtreaktion wurde über die Bewertung von Valenz, Arousal und Kontingenzerwartung sowie über die Hautleitfähigkeitsreaktion (SCR) erfasst.
Die Analyse der Fragebögen anhand einer Hauptachsenanalyse und anhand von Strukturgleichungsmodellen erbrachte eine zweifaktorielle Lösung, die die Konstrukte Depression und Angst abbildete. Nur der Faktor Angst war mit einer veränderten Furchtkonditionierung und Furchtgeneralisierung assoziiert: Hoch Ängstliche zeigten eine stärkere konditionierte Furchtreaktion (Arousal) und wiesen eine stärkere Generalisierung der Valenzeinschätzung und Kontingenzerwartung auf. Für den Stathmin1 Genotyp ergaben sich geschlechtsspezifische Effekte. Bei den männlichen Versuchspersonen zeigte sich in Folge der Akquisition ein stärkerer Abfall der Valenz für den CS+ in der Gruppe der Stathmin1 T Allelträger, die ebenfalls eine stärkere Generalisierung der Furchtreaktion, abgebildet in allen verbalen Maßen, aufwiesen. Ein gegenteiliger Befund ergab sich für die Gruppe der Frauen, insofern eine mit dem Stathmin1 C Allel assoziierte höhere Generalisierung der Valenz, des Arousals und der Kontingenzerwartung festgestellt werden konnte. Für den COMT Val158Met Genotyp ergaben sich keine Einflüsse auf die Akquisition der konditionierten Furcht. Für Träger des COMT 158Val Allels zeigte sich jedoch eine stärkere Generalisierung der Valenz und der Kontingenzerwartung. Auch für den BDNF Val66Met Genotyp konnte keine Veränderung der Furchtakquisition beobachtet werden. Es ergaben sich jedoch Hinweise auf eine erhöhte Generalisierung der Kontingenzerwartung in der Gruppe der BDNF 66Val Homozygoten. Für keinen der beschriebenen Faktoren konnte ein Einfluss auf die Furchtkonditionierung oder deren Generalisierung anhand der SCR abgebildet werden.
Unsere Ergebnisse weisen auf einen psychometrisch erfassbaren Faktor und genetische Einflüsse hin, die über den Prozess einer stärkeren Generalisierung der konditionierten Furcht das Risiko für die Entstehung von Angsterkrankungen erhöhen können. Jedoch sollten die Befunde in größeren Stichproben repliziert werden. Neben der frühzeitigen Identifikation von Risikofaktoren sollten in zukünftigen Studien darüber hinaus wirksame Maßnahmen zur Prävention und Intervention entwickelt werden, um diesem Risiko entgegen zu wirken.
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.
Background
Performance anxiety is the most frequently reported anxiety disorder among professional musicians. Typical symptoms are - on a physical level - the consequences of an increase in sympathetic tone with cardiac stress, such as acceleration of heartbeat, increase in blood pressure, increased respiratory rate and tremor up to nausea or flush reactions. These symptoms can cause emotional distress, a reduced musical and artistical performance up to an impaired functioning. While anxiety disorders are preferably treated using cognitive-behavioral therapy with exposure, this approach is rather difficult for treating music performance anxiety since the presence of a public or professional jury is required and not easily available. The use of virtual reality (VR) could therefore display an alternative. So far, no therapy studies on music performance anxiety applying virtual reality exposure therapy have investigated the therapy outcome including cardiovascular changes as outcome parameters.
Methods
This mono-center, prospective, randomized and controlled clinical trial has a pre-post design with a follow-up period of 6 months. 46 professional and semi-professional musicians will be recruited and allocated randomly to an VR exposure group or a control group receiving progressive muscle relaxation training. Both groups will be treated over 4 single sessions. Music performance anxiety will be diagnosed based on a clinical interview using ICD-10 and DSM-5 criteria for specific phobia or social anxiety. A behavioral assessment test is conducted three times (pre, post, follow-up) in VR through an audition in a concert hall. Primary outcomes are the changes in music performance anxiety measured by the German Bühnenangstfragebogen and the cardiovascular reactivity reflected by heart rate variability (HRV). Secondary outcomes are changes in blood pressure, stress parameters such as cortisol in the blood and saliva, neuropeptides, and DNA-methylation.
Discussion
The trial investigates the effect of VR exposure in musicians with performance anxiety compared to a relaxation technique on anxiety symptoms and corresponding cardiovascular parameters. We expect a reduction of anxiety but also a consecutive improvement of HRV with cardiovascular protective effects.
Trial registration
This study was registered on clinicaltrials.gov. (ClinicalTrials.gov Number: NCT05735860)
In general, humans preferentially look at conspecifics in naturalistic images. However, such group-based effects might conceal systematic individual differences concerning the preference for social information. Here, we investigated to what degree fixations on social features occur consistently within observers and whether this preference generalizes to other measures of social prioritization in the laboratory as well as the real world. Participants carried out a free viewing task, a relevance taps task that required them to actively select image regions that are crucial for understanding a given scene, and they were asked to freely take photographs outside the laboratory that were later classified regarding their social content. We observed stable individual differences in the fixation and active selection of human heads and faces that were correlated across tasks and partly predicted the social content of self-taken photographs. Such relationship was not observed for human bodies indicating that different social elements need to be dissociated. These findings suggest that idiosyncrasies in the visual exploration and interpretation of social features exist and predict real-world behavior. Future studies should further characterize these preferences and elucidate how they shape perception and interpretation of social contexts in healthy participants and patients with mental disorders that affect social functioning.
A series of experiments was conducted in order to investigate motor contributions to learning highly skilled action sequences in contrast to sensory contributions. Experiments 1–4 made use of a bimanual-bisequential variant of the serial reaction time task: Presentation of imperative stimuli was arranged such that participants’ left-hand and right-hand responses followed different sequences independently of one another, thus establishing a compound sequence spanning both hands. At least partly independent learning of the two concurrently implemented hand-related sequences was demonstrated after extensive practice under condi-tions of both simultaneous (Experiments 1 & 2) and alternating (Experiments 3 & 4) stimulus presentation and responding. It persisted when there was only one imperative stimulus for presenting both hand-related sequences (Experiments 2–4) instead of two separate imperative stimuli (Experiments 1 & 2), one for each sequence, even when the hand-related sequences were correlated and massive integrated learning of the compound sequence occurred (Ex-periment 4). As for the nature of the independently acquired sequence representations, trans-ferable sequence knowledge was acquired only when there was a separate imperative stimulus for each sequence (Experiments 1 & 2) but not otherwise (Experiments 2–4). The most likely stimulus-based representations which allow for intermanual transfer can be regarded as sen-sory components of highly skilled action sequences, whereas motor components can be con-sidered as being reflected in effector-specific, non-transferable sequence knowledge. The same decomposition logic applies to transferable and non-transferable sequence knowledge observed under conditions of unimanual practice of a single sequence (Experiments 6 & 7). The advantage of practicing a key press sequence with fingers of one hand as opposed to practicing it with fingers of both hands (Experiment 5) also implicates a motor component as the two assignments were equivalent in all other respects. Moreover, Experiments 6 and 7 showed that hand-specific sequence knowledge can develop after relatively little practice (as little as approximately 120 sequence repetitions). Presumably, this occurs especially in tasks with particularly pronounced requirements for coarticulation between consecutive finger movements. In sum, the present series of experiments provides compelling evidence for an effector-specific component of sequence learning. Albeit relatively small in size, it emerged consistently under various conditions. By contributing to the refinement of sequential action execution it can play a role in attaining high levels of performance.
Automatic orienting to unexpected changes in the environment is a pre-requisite for adaptive behavior. One prominent mechanism of automatic attentional control is the Orienting Response (OR). Despite the fundamental significance of the OR in everyday life, only little is known about how the OR is affected by healthy aging. We tested this question in two age groups (19–38 and 55–72 years) and measured skin-conductance responses (SCRs) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to novels (i.e., short environmental sounds presented only once in the experiment; 10% of the trials) compared to standard sounds (600 Hz sinusoidal tones with 200 ms duration; 90% of the trials). Novel and standard stimuli were presented in four conditions differing in the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) with a mean ISI of either 10, 3, 1, or 0.5 s (blocked presentation). In both age groups, pronounced SCRs were elicited by novels in the 10 s ISI condition, suggesting the elicitation of stable ORs. These effects were accompanied by pronounced N1 and frontal P3 amplitudes in the ERP, suggesting that automatic novelty processing and orientation of attention are effective in both age groups. Furthermore, the SCR and ERP effects declined with decreasing ISI length. In addition, differences between the two groups were observable with the fastest presentation rates (i.e., 1 and 0.5 s ISI length). The most prominent difference was a shift of the peak of the frontal positivity from around 300 to 200 ms in the 19–38 years group while in the 55–72 years group the amplitude of the frontal P3 decreased linearly with decreasing ISI length. Taken together, this pattern of results does not suggest a general decline in processing efficacy with healthy aging. At least with very rare changes (here, the novels in the 10 s ISI condition) the OR is as effective in healthy older adults as in younger adults. With faster presentation rates, however, the efficacy of the OR decreases. This seems to result in a switch from novelty to deviant processing in younger adults, but less so in the group of older adults.
In this study, we aimed to understand how restaurants can contribute to climate change mitigation via menu design. We investigated two types of interventions: changing the configuration of menu entries with variable side dishes so that the most climate-friendly option is set as the default and indicating the greenhouse gas emission of each dish via carbon labels. In an online simulation experiment, 265 participants were shown the menus of nine different restaurants and had to choose exactly one dish per menu. In six menus, the main dishes were presented with different default options: the side dish was associated either with the highest or with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions. The other three menus consisted of unitary dishes for which the default rules did not apply. All menus were presented either with or without carbon labels for each dish option. The results indicated that more climate-friendly dish choices resulting in lower greenhouse gas emissions were made with the low-emission than the high-emission default condition, and when carbon labels were present rather than absent. The effects of both interventions interacted, which indicates that the interventions partly overlap with regard to cognitive predecessors of choice behavior, such as attentional focus and social norms. The results suggest that the design of restaurant menus has a considerable effect on the carbon footprint of dining.
Risk Stratification for Bipolar Disorder Using Polygenic Risk Scores Among Young High-Risk Adults
(2020)
Objective:
Identifying high-risk groups with an increased genetic liability for bipolar disorder (BD) will provide insights into the etiology of BD and contribute to early detection of BD. We used the BD polygenic risk score (PRS) derived from BD genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to explore how such genetic risk manifests in young, high-risk adults. We postulated that BD-PRS would be associated with risk factors for BD.
Methods:
A final sample of 185 young, high-risk German adults (aged 18–35 years) were grouped into three risk groups and compared to a healthy control group (n = 1,100). The risk groups comprised 117 cases with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 45 with major depressive disorder (MDD), and 23 help-seeking adults with early recognition symptoms [ER: positive family history for BD, (sub)threshold affective symptomatology and/or mood swings, sleeping disorder]. BD-PRS was computed for each participant. Logistic regression models (controlling for sex, age, and the first five ancestry principal components) were used to assess associations of BD-PRS and the high-risk phenotypes.
Results:
We observed an association between BD-PRS and combined risk group status (OR = 1.48, p < 0.001), ADHD diagnosis (OR = 1.32, p = 0.009), MDD diagnosis (OR = 1.96, p < 0.001), and ER group status (OR = 1.7, p = 0.025; not significant after correction for multiple testing) compared to healthy controls.
Conclusions:
In the present study, increased genetic risk for BD was a significant predictor for MDD and ADHD status, but not for ER. These findings support an underlying shared risk for both MDD and BD as well as ADHD and BD. Improving our understanding of the underlying genetic architecture of these phenotypes may aid in early identification and risk stratification.
Our object recognition abilities, a direct product of our experience with objects, are fine-tuned to perfection. Left temporal and lateral areas along the dorsal, action related stream, as well as left infero-temporal areas along the ventral, object related stream are engaged in object recognition. Here we show that expertise modulates the activity of dorsal areas in the recognition of man-made objects with clearly specified functions. Expert chess players were faster than chess novices in identifying chess objects and their functional relations. Experts’ advantage was domain-specific as there were no differences between groups in a control task featuring geometrical shapes. The pattern of eye movements supported the notion that experts’ extensive knowledge about domain objects and their functions enabled superior recognition even when experts were not directly fixating the objects of interest. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) related exclusively the areas along the dorsal stream to chess specific object recognition. Besides the commonly involved left temporal and parietal lateral brain areas, we found that only in experts homologous areas on the right hemisphere were also engaged in chess specific object recognition. Based on these results, we discuss whether skilled object recognition does not only involve a more efficient version of the processes found in non-skilled recognition, but also qualitatively different cognitive processes which engage additional brain areas
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.
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.
Our current environment is characterized by the omnipresence of food cues. The sight and smell of real foods, but also graphically depictions of appetizing foods, can guide our eating behavior, for example, by eliciting food craving and influencing food choice. The relevance of visual food cues on human information processing has been demonstrated by a growing body of studies employing food images across the disciplines of psychology, medicine, and neuroscience. However, currently used food image sets vary considerably across laboratories and image characteristics (contrast, brightness, etc.) and food composition (calories, macronutrients, etc.) are often unspecified. These factors might have contributed to some of the inconsistencies of this research. To remedy this, we developed food-pics, a picture database comprising 568 food images and 315 non-food images along with detailed meta-data. A total of N = 1988 individuals with large variance in age and weight from German speaking countries and North America provided normative ratings of valence, arousal, palatability, desire to eat, recognizability and visual complexity. Furthermore, data on macronutrients (g), energy density (kcal), and physical image characteristics (color composition, contrast, brightness, size, complexity) are provided. The food-pics image database is freely available under the creative commons license with the hope that the set will facilitate standardization and comparability across studies and advance experimental research on the determinants of eating behavior. Read F
Hintergrund: Depressionen zählen zu den häufigsten psychischen Erkrankungen. Depressive Symptome umfassen beeinträchtigte kognitive Funktionen, vegetative Beschwerden und ein verändertes emotionales Erleben. Die defizitäre Wahrnehmung interner körperlicher Signale wird sowohl mit der Pathogenese der Depression als auch mit Angststörungen in Verbindung gebracht. Interozeptive Genauigkeit (IAc) beschreibt dabei die Fähigkeit, körperliche Empfindungen wie den eigenen Herzschlag akkurat wahrzunehmen und wird mit einer Herzwahrnehmungsaufgabe erfasst. In bildgebenden Verfahren wie der funktionellen Magnetresonanztomografie (fMRT) war eine niedrigere IAc mit einer verringerten Inselaktivität assoziiert. Während der Ruhezustandsmessung des Gehirns (resting-state fMRT) kann in Abwesenheit einer Aufgabe die intrinsische Aktivität des Gehirns gemessen werden. Dies ermöglicht die Identifizierung von kortikalen Netzwerken. Depressive Patienten weisen eine veränderte funktionelle Konnektivität innerhalb und zwischen einzelnen Netzwerken wie dem Salience Network (SN), welchem die Insel zugerechnet wird, und dem Default Mode Network (DMN) auf. Bisherige Studien, in denen überwiegend jüngere depressive Patienten untersucht wurden, kamen jedoch hinsichtlich der IAc und den kortikalen Netzwerken zu inkonsistenten Ergebnissen. Insbesondere ist unklar, inwieweit sich die IAc nach einem Therapieansprechen verändert, von der Herzratenvariabilität (HRV) moduliert wird und welche Auswirkungen dies auf die funktionelle Konnektivität kortikaler Netzwerke hat.
Ziele: Eine veränderte IAc und HRV wie auch funktionelle Konnektivitätsunterschiede im DMN und SN könnten Biomarker der Depression darstellen. Im Rahmen einer Längsschnittuntersuchung wurde getestet, ob ältere depressive Patienten über eine verringerte IAc, eine geringere HRV und über eine veränderte funktionelle Konnektivität im SN sowie DMN verfügen. Darüber hinaus sollte erforscht werden, in welchem Ausmaß sich Patienten, die auf die Behandlung ansprachen (Responder), von sogenannten Non-Respondern in Bezug auf die IAc, die HRV, das SN und das DMN unterschieden.
Methoden: In Studie 1 (Baseline) wurden 30 größtenteils medizierte, schwer depressive Patienten (> 50 Jahre) und 30 gesunde Kontrollprobanden untersucht. Die IAc wurde in einer Herzwahrnehmungsaufgabe ermittelt und die HRV bestimmt. Zusätzlich wurde eine resting-state fMRT durchgeführt. Eine funktionelle Konnektivitätsanalyse für Saatregionen im SN und DMN wurde mit einem saatbasierten Ansatz (seed-to-voxel) durchgeführt. Für eine Subgruppenanalyse wurde die Patientengruppe in ängstlich-depressive und nicht-ängstlich depressive Patienten unterteilt.
In Studie 2 (sechs Monate Follow-up) wurde die Studienkohorte nochmals untersucht. Es nahmen 21 Personen der Patientengruppe und 28 Probanden der Kontrollgruppe teil. Wiederum wurden die IAc und die HRV bestimmt. Außerdem fand eine resting-state fMRT-Messung statt. Die Patientengruppe wurde unterteilt in depressive Responder und Non-Responder.
Ergebnisse: In Studie 1 zeigten depressive Patienten eine funktionelle Hypokonnektivität zwischen einzelnen Saatregionen der Insel (SN) und Teilen des superioren frontalen Gyrus, des supplementärmotorischen Cortex, des lateralen okzipitalen Cortex sowie des Okzipitalpols. Zudem wiesen depressive Patienten zwischen der Saatregion im anterioren Teil des DMN und der Insel sowie dem Operculum eine erhöhte funktionelle Konnektivität auf. Die Gruppen unterschieden sich nicht in der IAc und der HRV. Ängstlich-depressive Patienten zeigten eine höhere funktionelle Konnektivität innerhalb der Insel als nicht-ängstlich depressive Patienten, jedoch zeigten sich keine Unterschiede in der IAc und der HRV.
In Studie 2 wiesen depressive Non-Responder im Vergleich zu Respondern eine Hyperkonnektivität zwischen dem posterioren DMN und dem Frontalpol sowie zwischen dem posterioren DMN und temporalen Arealen im SN auf. Keine funktionellen Konnektivitätsunterschiede zeigten sich für die Saatregionen im SN. Depressive Responder, Non-Responder und die Kontrollprobanden unterschieden sich in ihrer IAc und HRV nicht.
Schlussfolgerungen: Die Ergebnisse der Studien unterstreichen, dass bei depressiven Patienten, Respondern und Non-Respondern Unterschiede in der intrinsischen Gehirnaktivität funktioneller Netzwerke bestehen, jedoch nicht in der akkuraten Wahrnehmung des eigenen Herzschlages und der HRV. Therapeutische Interventionen, die auf eine Verbesserung der IAc abzielen, könnten insbesondere für Non-Responder dennoch eine zusätzliche Behandlungsmöglichkeit darstellen. Für eine personalisierte Medizin könnte die weitere Erforschung von kortikalen Netzwerken einen wesentlichen Beitrag leisten, um ein individuelles Therapieansprechen zu prädizieren.
Disorder-relevant but task-unrelated stimuli impair cognitive performance in social anxiety disorder (SAD); however, time course and neural correlates of emotional interference are unknown. The present study investigated time course and neural basis of emotional interference in SAD using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Patients with SAD and healthy controls performed an emotional stroop task which allowed examining interference effects on the current and the succeeding trial. Reaction time data showed an emotional interference effect in the current trial, but not the succeeding trial, specifically in SAD. FMRI data showed greater activation in the left amygdala, bilateral insula, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and left opercular part of the inferior frontal gyrus during emotional interference of the current trial in SAD patients. Furthermore, we found a positive correlation between patients' interference scores and activation in the mPFC, dorsal ACC and left angular/supramarginal gyrus. Taken together, results indicate a network of brain regions comprising amygdala, insula, mPFC, ACC, and areas strongly involved in language processing during the processing of task-unrelated threat in SAD. However, specifically the activation in mPFC, dorsal ACC, and left angular/supramarginal gyrus is associated with the strength of the interference effect, suggesting a cognitive network model of attentional bias in SAD. This probably comprises exceeded allocation of attentional resources to disorder-related information of the presented stimuli and increased self-referential and semantic processing of threat words in SAD.
Previous studies of social phobia have reported an increased vigilance to social threat cues but also an avoidance of socially relevant stimuli such as eye gaze. The primary aim of this study was to examine attentional mechanisms relevant for perceiving social cues by means of abnormalities in scanning of facial features in patients with social phobia. In two novel experimental paradigms, patients with social phobia and healthy controls matched on age, gender and education were compared regarding their gazing behavior towards facial cues. The first experiment was an emotion classification paradigm which allowed for differentiating reflexive attentional shifts from sustained attention towards diagnostically relevant facial features. In the second experiment, attentional orienting by gaze direction was assessed in a gaze-cueing paradigm in which non-predictive gaze cues shifted attention towards or away from subsequently presented targets. We found that patients as compared to controls reflexively oriented their attention more frequently towards the eyes of emotional faces in the emotion classification paradigm. This initial hypervigilance for the eye region was observed at very early attentional stages when faces were presented for 150 ms, and persisted when facial stimuli were shown for 3 s. Moreover, a delayed attentional orienting into the direction of eye gaze was observed in individuals with social phobia suggesting a differential time course of eye gaze processing in patients and controls. Our findings suggest that basic mechanisms of early attentional exploration of social cues are biased in social phobia and might contribute to the development and maintenance of the disorder.
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.
Conflicts between avoiding feared stimuli versus approaching them for competing rewards are essential for functional behavior and anxious psychopathology. Yet, little is known about the underlying decision process. We examined approach-avoidance decisions and their temporal dynamics when avoiding Pavlovian fear stimuli conflicted with gaining rewards. First, a formerly neutral stimulus (CS+) was repeatedly paired with an aversive stimulus (US) to establish Pavlovian fear. Another stimulus (CS−) was never paired with the US. A control group received neutral tones instead of aversive USs. Next, in each of 324 trials, participants chose between a CS−/low reward and a CS+/high reward option. For the latter, probability of CS+ presentation (Pavlovian fear information) and reward magnitude (reward information) varied. Computer mouse movements were tracked to capture the decision dynamics. Although no more USs occurred, pronounced and persistent costly avoidance of the Pavlovian fear CS+ was found. Time-continuous multiple regression of movement trajectories revealed a stronger and faster impact of Pavlovian fear compared to reward information during decision-making. The impact of fear information, but not reward information, modestly decreased across trials. These findings suggest a persistently stronger weighting of fear compared to reward information during approach-avoidance decisions, which may facilitate the development of pathological avoidance.
The effects of 19 meals of different caloric content on slides on palatability and hypothetical duration of consumption were investigated in 7 patients with anorexia nervosa, 17 patients with bulimia nervosa at the beginning and after 8 weeks of hospital treatment. Nine healthy females served as controls. At the beginning of treatment, palatability of low caloric food was significantly higher and hypothetical duration of consumption of high caloric food was significantly longer in patients when compared to controls. After 8 weeks, in the patients palatability of low caloric food had decreased. Dislike for high caloric food remained stable in anorexics.
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.
Ziele. Die Zielsetzung der vorliegenden Arbeit war eine Bewertung der Versorgungslage von Personen mit glücksspielbezogenen Problemen in Deutschland. Dabei wurden 1) der Zugang zum Versorgungssystem, nämlich 1.1) Problembewusstsein bzgl. glücksspielbezogener Probleme und Erreichbarkeit von Glücksspielern über das Internet und 1.2) Faktoren der Inanspruchnahme von Hilfsangeboten untersucht sowie 1.3) eine Charakterisierung der Klientel in ambulanten Suchthilfeeinrichtungen und deren Zugang zum Hilfesystem vorgenommen. Zudem wurden in ambulanten Suchthilfeeinrichtungen 2) die erbrachten Leistungen für Personen mit glücksspielbezogenen Problemen und Einflussfaktoren auf die Versorgungsnutzung bzw. den Behandlungsverlauf sowie 3) das Behandlungsergebnis einer Analyse unterzogen.
Methodik. Die Arbeit basiert auf drei Studien: einer Onlinestudie (OS), einer Versorgungsstudie (VS) und einer Bevölkerungsstudie (BS). In der OS wurde eine Gelegenheitsstichprobe von Personen, die einen im Internet bereitgestellten Selbsttest zu pathologischem Glücksspielen (PG) vollständig ausfüllten (n=277) und bei Erfüllen der Einschlusskriterien anschließend an einer vertiefenden Studie teilnahmen (n=52), hinsichtlich soziodemographischer Charakteristika, Spielverhalten und spielbezogener Motive, PG inklusive Folgen, Beratungserfahrungen sowie psychopathologischen Variablen untersucht. In den anderen Studien wurden weitestgehend dieselben Instrumente verwendet. Die VS war eine Verlaufsstudie (Messzeitpunkte: Behandlungsbeginn und -ende), bei der konsekutiv Klienten aus n=36 ambulanten Suchthilfeeinrichtungen in Bayern aufgenommen wurden, die sich zwischen April 2009 und August 2010 vorstellten (n=461). Für die BS wurden Daten aus dem Epidemiologi-schen Suchtsurvey 2006 und 2009 herangezogen, einer Deutschland weiten repräsentativen Querschnittbefragung 18- bis 64-Jähriger Erwachsener (2006: n=7.810; 2009: n=8.002).
Ergebnisse. Zum Zugang zur Versorgung sind 1.1) über das Internet erreichbare Glücksspieler hauptsächlich junge, ledige Männer, von denen ungefähr die Hälfte die Diagnose PG erfüllen. Anhand der Spielmotive lassen sich drei Spielerklassen abbilden, die sich hinsichtlich ihres Schweregrads von PG unterschieden. Die Bereitschaft zur Teilnahme an einem Online-Präventionsprogramm hängt hauptsächlich mit der Anzahl erfüllter DSM-IV-Kriterien für PG zusammen. Im Gegensatz zur VS sind die online erreichten Glücksspieler jünger und zu einem höheren Anteil subklinisch pathologische Glücksspieler (SPG, ein bis vier erfüllte DSM-IV-Kriterien für PG). 1.2) Hinsichtlich der Faktoren der Inanspruchnahme bestätigen sich systematische Unterschiede zwischen Glücksspielern in Behandlung und nicht in Behandlung. Ebenso zeigen sich Unterschiede zwischen SPGr und pathologischen Glücksspielern (PGr). Dabei ist die Anzahl erfüllter DSM-IV-Kriterien für PG der wichtigste Prädiktor für einen positiven Behandlungsstatus. Auch soziodemographische Merkmale, insbesondere Alter und Staatsangehörigkeit, spielen eine Rolle. 1.3) Die Mehrheit der Klienten in ambulanten Suchthilfeeinrichtungen ist männlich, durchschnittlich 37 Jahre alt, ledig und kinderlos und hat häufig eine ausländische Staatsbürgerschaft. Die am häufigsten gespielte und bevorzugte Spielform ist das Spielen an Geldspielautomaten. Viele der Klienten haben bereits im Vorfeld Hilfe in Anspruch genommen und Gründe für die Vorstellung in der Beratungsstelle waren in ungefähr drei Viertel der Fällen finanzielle Probleme und bei ungefähr der Hälfte Probleme in der Partnerschaft. In der ambulanten Suchthilfe sind 2) Prädiktoren für eine längere Kontaktdauer u.a. der Einbezug der Familie und Gruppengespräche. Behandlungsabbrüche werden u.a. durch eine nicht-deutsche Staatsbürgerschaft und höhere Spielfrequenz vorhergesagt. 3) Reguläre Beendigung und höhere Kontaktzahl sind u.a. Prädiktoren für eine Verbesserung der Glücksspielsymptomatik.
Schlussfolgerungen. Vor dem Hintergrund der Ergebnisse werden Implikationen für die Weiterentwicklung des Versorgungssystems zum einen im Sinne einer Erweiterung und Anpassung der Versorgungsstrukturen abgeleitet, wobei auf Information und Aufklärung, Früherkennung und Frühintervention mit einem Fokus auf Online-Angeboten sowie zielgruppen-spezifische Angebote unter anderem für Angehörige eingegangen wird. Auch die Wichtigkeit der Vernetzung verschiedener an der Beratung/Behandlung von PGr beteiligten Einrichtungen wird herausgestellt. Zum anderen beziehen sich die diskutierten möglichen Weiterentwicklungen auf das Versorgungsangebot und Behandlungsmerkmale, was Therapieumfeld/-voraussetzungen, Therapieplanung sowie therapeutische Maßnahmen beinhaltet.
Purpose of Review
This article provides an overview of current findings on Theory of Mind (ToM) in human children and adults and highlights the relationship between task specifications and their outcome in socio-cognitive research.
Recent Findings
ToM, the capacity to reason about and infer others’ mental states, develops progressively throughout childhood—the exact time course is still a matter of debate. Neuroimaging studies indicate the involvement of a widespread neuronal network during mentalizing, suggesting that ToM is a multifaceted process. Accordingly, the tasks and trainings that currently exist to investigate and enhance ToM are heterogeneous, and the outcomes largely depend on the paradigm that was used.
Summary
We argue for the implementation of multiple-task batteries in the assessment of socio-cognitive abilities. Decisions for a particular paradigm need to be carefully considered and justified. We want to emphasize the importance of targeted research on the relationship between task specifications and outcomes.
Human attention is strongly attracted by direct gaze and sudden onset motion. The sudden direct-gaze effect refers to the processing advantage for targets appearing on peripheral faces that suddenly establish eye contact. Here, we investigate the necessity of social information for attention capture by (sudden onset) ostensive cues. Six experiments involving 204 participants applied (1) naturalistic faces, (2) arrows, (3) schematic eyes, (4) naturalistic eyes, or schematic facial configurations (5) without or (6) with head turn to an attention-capture paradigm. Trials started with two stimuli oriented towards the observer and two stimuli pointing into the periphery. Simultaneous to target presentation, one direct stimulus changed to averted and one averted stimulus changed to direct, yielding a 2 × 2 factorial design with direction and motion cues being absent or present. We replicated the (sudden) direct-gaze effect for photographic faces, but found no corresponding effects in Experiments 2-6. Hence, a holistic and socially meaningful facial context seems vital for attention capture by direct gaze. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: The present study highlights the significance of context information for social attention. Our findings demonstrate that the direct-gaze effect, that is, the prioritization of direct gaze over averted gaze, critically relies on the presentation of a meaningful holistic and naturalistic facial context. This pattern of results is evidence in favor of early effects of surrounding social information on attention capture by direct gaze.
Empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM) are two core components of social understanding. The EmpaToM is a validated social video task that allows for independent manipulation and assessment of the two capacities. First applications revealed that empathy and ToM are dissociable constructs on a neuronal as well as on a behavioral level. As the EmpaToM has been designed for the assessment of social understanding in adults, it has a high degree of complexity and comprises topics that are inadequate for minors. For this reason, we designed a new version of the EmpaToM that is especially suited to measure empathy and ToM in youths. In experiment 1, we successfully validated the EmpaToM-Y on the original EmpaToM in an adult sample (N = 61), revealing a similar pattern of results across tasks and strong correlations of all constructs. As intended, the performance measure for ToM and the control condition of the EmpaToM-Y showed reduced difficulty. In experiment 2, we tested the feasibility of the EmpaToM-Y in a group of teenagers (N = 36). Results indicate a reliable empathy induction and higher demands of ToM questions for adolescents. We provide a promising task for future research targeting inter-individual variability of socio-cognitive and socio-affective capacities as well as their precursors and outcomes in healthy minors and clinical populations.
At present, there is a lack of longitudinal studies on the psychological adjustment of both children and adolescents with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) and their primary caregivers. To fill this gap, we performed a four-year follow-up study. Mothers filled out the Child Behavior Checklist 4–18, the Social Orientation of Parents with Handicapped Children questionnaire to assess maternal stress and coping strategies, and the Freiburger Personality Inventory-Revised — subscales strain and life satisfaction. Fifty-five subjects with 22q11.2DS (26 males and 29 females; age: M = 10.79 years, SD = 3.56 years) and their biological mothers (age: M = 40.84 years, SD = 4.68 years) were included in this study. Significantly higher levels of behavior problems than in the general population and an increase in these problems, especially internalizing ones, over time could be found. In contrast, maternal stress did not change significantly over time, but mothers demonstrated increased levels of strain and reduced life satisfaction at T2. Thus, careful monitoring as well as early and adequate interventions, if indicated, should be offered to families with a child with 22q11.2DS, not only for somatic complaints but also for problems with psychological adjustment.
Spatial presence is a state in which media users temporarily overlook the mediated nature of their experience.
This study discusses stimulus-dependent structure in spontaneous eye-blink behavior as analternative to presence selfreport measures. To this end, theories and empirical evidence on presence, spontaneous eye-blink behavior, and existing approaches for presence assessment are used to link antecedent processes of presence, especially attention, to presence and structure in blinking behavior.
Three experiments in different media environments relate three different methods for quantification of stimulus-dependent structure to an established presence scale. The results are not conclusive, but raise questions on presence and its measurement, and advance the understanding of stimulus-dependent structure in spontaneous eye-blink behavior.
Due to the complexityof research objects, theoretical concepts, and stimuli in media research, researchers in psychology and communications presumably need sophisticated measures beyond self-report scales to answer research questions on media use processes. The present study evaluates stimulus-dependent structure in spontaneous eye-blink behavior as an objective, corroborative measure for the media use phenomenon of spatial presence. To this end, a mixed methods approach is used in an experimental setting to collect, combine, analyze, and interpret data from standardized participant self-report, observation of participant behavior, and content analysis of the media stimulus. T-pattern detection is used to analyze stimulus-dependent blinking behavior, and this structural data is then contrasted with self-report data. The combined results show that behavioral indicators yield the predicted results, while self-report data shows unpredicted results that are not predicted by the underlying theory. The use of a mixed methods approach offered insights that support further theory development and theory testing beyond a traditional, mono-method experimental approach.
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‚Social Buffering‘ beschreibt den positiven Einfluss eines Artgenossen auf die Verarbeitung aversiver Reize. In Tierexperimenten zeigte sich, dass Tiere mit geringeren Anspannungsreaktionen reagieren, wenn ein weiteres Tier während der Präsentation von Angstreizen anwesend ist. Eine Untersuchung an einer weiblichen Stichprobe replizierte den Effekt am Menschen. Allerdings gibt es Hinweise auf mögliche Geschlechtsunterschiede. Da vergleichbare Experimente bei Männern fehlen, will sich diese Studie der Frage nähern, ob die reine Anwesenheit einer fremden männlichen Person im Stande ist, autonome Angstreaktionen bei Männern abzumildern.
Dafür wurden 72 männliche, psychisch gesunde Probanden auf zwei Gruppen aufgeteilt, welche eine identische Stimulation mit angstinduzierenden und neutralen Tönen erhielten. Die Männer der Alleinbedingung wurden allein getestet (n allein = 36), die der Sozialbedingung zusammen mit einer fremden männlichen Person (n sozial = 36). Bei allen Probanden wurden die Hautleitfähigkeitsreaktionen (skin conductance response; SCR) während der Antizipation und der Darbietung der Töne erfasst. Außerdem wurden die Probanden nach ihrem Gefühlszustand befragt (Rating). Als relevante Persönlichkeitsdimensionen wurden anhand von Fragebögen die Angstsensitivität (ASI-3), die Ängstlichkeit als Trait (STAI trait), die Ängstlichkeit als State (STAI state) und der Eindruck des Probanden von der anwesenden männlichen Person erhoben.
Die Ergebnisse zeigten keine signifikanten Unterschiede in den SCRs und Ratings bezüglich des angstinduzierenden Tones. Dieses Ergebnis legt nahe, dass bei der männlichen Stichprobe kein ‚Social Buffering‘-Effekt vorlag. Weiterhin waren die autonomen Reaktionen auf die Angstreize höher, je ähnlicher der Mann die fremde Person zu sich bewertete. Die möglichen Ursachen des fehlenden ‚Social-Buffering‘-Effekts werden unter Berücksichtigung von Geschlechtsunterschieden im Umgang mit Angst und sozialer Unterstützung diskutiert.
Sensory input as well as cognitive factors can drive the modulation of blinking. Our aim was to dissociate sensory driven bottom-up from cognitive top-down influences on blinking behavior and compare these influences between the auditory and the visual domain.
Using an oddball paradigm, we found a significant pre-stimulus decrease in blink probability for visual input compared to auditory input. Sensory input further led to an early post-stimulus blink increase in both modalities if a task demanded attention to the input. Only visual input caused a pronounced early increase without a task. In case of a target or the omission of a stimulus (as compared to standard input), an additional late increase in blink rate was found in the auditory and visual domain. This suggests that blink modulation must be based on the interpretation of the input, but does not need any sensory input at all to occur.
Our results show a complex modulation of blinking based on top-down factors such as prediction and attention in addition to sensory-based influences. The magnitude of the modulation is mainly influenced by general attentional demands, while the latency of this modulation allows to dissociate general from specific top-down influences that are independent of the sensory domain.
Pupil dilation is known to be affected by a variety of factors, including physical (e.g., light) and cognitive sources of influence (e.g., mental load due to working memory demands, stimulus/response competition etc.). In the present experiment, we tested the extent to which vocal demands (speaking) can affect pupil dilation. Based on corresponding preliminary evidence found in a reanalysis of an existing data set from our lab, we setup a new experiment that systematically investigated vocal response‐related effects compared to mere jaw/lip movement and button press responses. Conditions changed on a trial‐by‐trial basis while participants were instructed to keep fixating a central cross on a screen throughout. In line with our prediction (and previous observation), speaking caused the pupils to dilate strongest, followed by nonvocal movements and finally a baseline condition without any vocal or muscular demands. An additional analysis of blink rates showed no difference in blink frequency between vocal and baseline conditions, but different blink dynamics. Finally, simultaneously recorded electromyographic activity showed that muscle activity may contribute to some (but not all) aspects of the observed effects on pupil size. The results are discussed in the context of other recent research indicating effects of perceived (instead of executed) vocal action on pupil dynamics.
During natural behavior, cognitive processes constantly coincide with body movements such as head or eye movements or blinks. However, during experimental investigations of cognitive processes, movements are often highly restricted which is rather unnatural. In order to improve our understanding of natural behavior, this thesis investigates the interaction between cognition and movements by focusing on spontaneous blinks, which naturally interact with other body movements.
Spontaneous blinks are inevitably connected to vision as they shut out incoming visual information. Both sensory-based and cognitive factors, for example, stimulus occurrence and evaluation, were reported to influence blink behavior. Our first study investigated if such influences are comparable for visual and non-visual input. The chosen experimental design allowed dissociating sensory-driven and cognitive influences, which then could be compared between the visual and auditory domain. Our results show that blinks are more strongly modulated during passive observation of visual input compared to auditory input. This modulation is however enhanced for both input modalities by an increased attentional demand. In addition, the cognitively defined meaning of a stimulus changes blink latency independent of the sensory domain. Overall, our findings show that spontaneous blinks and cognitive processes are linked beyond vision. Moreover, the underlying cognitive processes that influence blinks are largely the same across different sensory input indicating that blinks are profoundly integrated into our system.
When investigating natural behavior, it is important to consider that movements rarely occur in isolation, but are executed side by side. As these movements interact and have a link to cognitive processes, the complexity of our system increases. In order to take this complexity into account, the second part of the experimental research focused on movement interactions, more specifically on the interactions between blinks, pupil size and speaking. Our results reveal that speech-related motor activity increases blink rate and pupil size as well as modulates blink timing. This is in line with previous research that described a relation between different body and eye movements. Importantly, each bodily-induced change in eye movements affects visual information intake. Therefore, different movements can be tightly linked to perceptual processes through complex interactions.
Altogether, the work of this thesis provides rich evidence that movements and cognitive processes are deeply intertwined. Therefore, movements should be seen as an integral part of our system. Taking the relevance of movements and their interactions into account during experimental investigations is necessary in order to reveal a more realistic and complete picture of human natural behavior.
The Role of Blinks, Microsaccades and their Retinal Consequences in Bistable Motion Perception
(2021)
Eye-related movements such as blinks and microsaccades are modulated during bistable perceptual tasks. However, if they play an active role during internal perceptual switches is not known. We conducted two experiments involving an ambiguous plaid stimulus, wherein participants were asked to continuously report their percept, which could consist of either unidirectional coherent or bidirectional component movement. Our main results show that blinks and microsaccades did not facilitate perceptual switches. On the contrary, a reduction in eye movements preceded the perceptual switch. Blanks, on the other hand, thought to mimic the retinal consequences of a blink, consistently led to a switch. Through the timing of the blank-introduced perceptual change, we were able to estimate the delay between the internal switch and the response. This delay further allowed us to evaluate that the reduction in blink probability co-occurred with the internal perceptual switch. Additionally, our results indicate that distinct internal processes underlie the switch to coherent vs. component percept. Blanks exclusively facilitated a switch to the coherent percept, and only the switch to coherent percept was followed by an increase in blink rate. In a second study, we largely replicated the findings and included a microsaccade analysis. Microsaccades only showed a weak relation with perceptual switches, but their direction was correlated with the perceived motion direction. Nevertheless, our data suggests an interaction between microsaccades and blinks by showing that microsaccades were differently modulated around blinks compared with blanks. This study shows that a reduction in eye movements precedes internal perceptual switches indicating that the rate of blinks can set the stage for a reinterpretation of sensory input. While a perceptual switch based on changed sensory input usually leads to an increase in blink rate, such an increase was only present after the perceptual switch to coherent motion but absent after the switch to component percept. This provides evidence of different underlying mechanism or internal consequence of the two perceptual switches and suggests that blinks can uncover differences in internal percept-related processes that are not evident from the percept itself.
In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde untersucht, inwiefern die Angstaktivierung Einfluss auf den Therapieprozess und den Therapieerfolg bei der Behandlung spezifischer Phobien hat. Obwohl expositionsbasierte Therapieverfahren nachweislich effektiv sind und vor allem bei der Behandlung spezifischer Phobien als die Methode der Wahl gelten, sind deren genauen Wirkmechanismen doch noch nicht völlig geklärt. In zwei empirischen Studien wurde hier die von Foa und Kozak (1986, 1991) in der „Emotional Processing Theory“ als notwendig postulierte Rolle der Angstaktivierung während der Exposition untersucht. In der ersten Studie wurde auf Grundlage tier- und humanexperimenteller Befunde untersucht, ob durch eine Reaktivierung der Angst und darauffolgende Exposition innerhalb eines bestimmten Zeitfensters (= Rekonsolidierungsfenster) die Rückkehr der Angst verhindert werden kann. Ziel dieser Untersuchung war die Übertragung bisheriger Ergebnisse aus Konditionierungsstudien auf eine klinische Stichprobe. Die spinnenphobischen Untersuchungsteilnehmer (N = 36) wurden randomisiert entweder der Reaktivierungsgruppe (RG) oder einer Standardexpositionsgruppe (SEG) zugewiesen. Die RG bekam vor der Exposition in virtueller Realität (VRET) fünf Sekunden lang einen Reaktivierungsstimulus - eine virtuelle Spinne - dargeboten, woraufhin zehn Minuten standardisierte Wartezeit folgte. In der SEG wurde die Angst vor der Exposition nicht reaktiviert. 24 Stunden nach der VRET wurde in einem Test die spontane Rückkehr der Angst erfasst. Entgegen der Annahmen führte die Reaktivierung vor der VRET nicht zu einer geringeren Rückkehr der Angst in der Testsitzung 24 Stunden später. Die Angst kehrte in keiner der beiden Versuchsgruppen zurück, was sich bezüglich subjektiver Angstratings, für Verhaltensdaten und auch für physiologische Maße zeigte. Auch zeigte sich ein grundsätzlich positiver Effekt der Behandlung, bei der im Anschluss noch eine Exposition in vivo stattfand. Ein Follow-Up nach sechs Monaten ergab eine weitere Reduktion der Spinnenangst. Die Ergebnisse legen nahe, dass sich die experimentellen Befunde zu Rekonsolidierungsprozessen aus Konditionierungsstudien nicht einfach auf ein Therapiesetting und die Behandlung spezifischer Phobien übertragen lassen. Die zweite Studie befasste sich mit der Frage, ob Koffein die initiale Angstaktivierung erhöhen kann und ob sich dies positiv auf den Therapieerfolg auswirkt. Die spinnenphobischen Studienteilnehmer (N = 35) wurden in einem doppelblinden Versuchsdesign entweder der Koffeingruppe (KOFG) oder der Placebogruppe (PG) zugeordnet. Die KOFG erhielt eine Stunde vor Beginn der VRET eine Koffeintablette mit 200 mg Koffein, die PG erhielt als Äquivalent zur gleichen Zeit eine Placebotablette. Eine Analyse der Speichelproben der Probanden ergab, dass sich die Koffeinkonzentration durch die Koffeintablette signifikant erhöhte. Dies führte jedoch nicht, wie erwartet, zu einer höheren Angstaktivierung während der VRET, weshalb unter anderem diskutiert wird, ob evtl. die Koffeinkonzentration zu niedrig war, um anxiogen zu wirken. Dennoch profitierten die Teilnehmer beider Versuchsgruppen von unserem Behandlungsangebot. Die Spinnenangst reduzierte sich signifikant über vier Sitzungen hinweg. Diese Reduktion blieb stabil bis zum Follow-Up drei Monate nach Studienende. Zusammengefasst lässt sich zur optimalen Höhe der Angstaktivierung aufgrund der hier durchgeführten beiden Studien keine exakte Aussage machen, da sich die Versuchsgruppen in beiden Studien hinsichtlich der Höhe der Angstaktivierung zu Beginn (und auch während) der Exposition nicht unterschieden. Es lässt sich aber festhalten, dass die VRET und auch die in vivo Exposition in beiden Studien effektiv Angst auslösten und dass sich die Angst in beiden Gruppen signifikant bis zu den Follow-Ups (sechs bzw. drei Monate nach Studienende) signifikant reduzierte. Die Behandlung kann also als erfolgreich angesehen werden. Mögliche andere Wirkfaktoren der Expositionstherapie, wie z.B. die Rolle der wahrgenommenen Kontrolle werden neben der Höhe der Angstaktivierung diskutiert.
Lesen ist keine passive Rezeption schriftlichen Materials, sondern eine aktive, wechselseitige Beeinflussung von Text und Leser. Der Erwerb von Lesekompetenz ist daher ein komplexer und langwieriger Prozess, der nicht mit der Alphabetisierung in der Grundschule endet, sondern bis ins Erwachsenenalter hinein andauert.
In nationalen und internationalen Studien zeigten deutsche Jugendliche zum Teil gravierende Defizite im Hinblick auf die Lesekompetenz. Inzwischen wurden zwar zahlreiche Einflussfaktoren und Ansatzpunkte für Fördermaßnahmen identifizifiziert und Interventionen konzipiert. Um diese Maßnahmen jedoch gezielt und gewinnbringend einsetzen und evaluieren zu können, ist es erforderlich, den Leistungsstand der Schüler umfassend zu erheben. Bislang fehlten hierfür geeignete Diagnoseinstrumente für die mittleren und höheren Klassenstufen. Daher wurden im Projekt "LESEN - Lesen ermöglicht Sinnentnahme" zwei Lesetests für die Sekundarstufe entwickelt: LESEN 6-7 für die Klassenstufen sechs und sieben sowie LESEN 8-9 für die Klassenstufen acht und neun.
LESEN 6-7 und LESEN 8-9 sind zwei analog aufgebaute Lesetests, die vor allem auf die kognitiven Aspekte der Lesekompetenz, also das Leseverständnis, fokussieren. Beide Tests enthalten jeweils zwei Subtests: Basale Lesekompetenz (BLK) und Textverständnis (TV). Der Subtest BLK besteht aus einer Satzleseaufgabe und erfasst die Lesegeschwindigkeit und das Verständnis einfacher, kurzer Sätze. Der Subtest TV enthält einen expositorischen und einen narrativen Text mit geschlossenen Verständnisfragen, die die inhaltliche Verarbeitung prüfen. Damit orientiert sich der Aufbau der Tests am aktuellen Forschungsstand, demzufolge Leseverständnis sich aus basalen Prozessen und hierarchiehöheren Verständnisleistungen zusammensetzt. Bezüglich des Verständnisses werden in der Literatur verschiedene Verarbeitungsebenen beschrieben, die bei der Konstruktion des Subtests TV explizit Berücksichtigung fanden.
Methodisch orientierte sich die Konstruktion von LESEN 6-7 und LESEN 8-9 zunächst an der Klassischen Testtheorie (KTT). Während für den Subtest BLK darüber hinaus kein Testmodell nötig war, da die Anzahl der in der vorgegebenen Zeit gelesenen Sätze bereits eine metrische Variable darstellt, wurde dem Subtest TV das dichotome Rasch-Modell zugrunde gelegt. Bei Letzterem wurden daher zusätzlich entsprechende Rasch-Kennwerte für die Itemselektion herangezogen. Beide Tests wurden an einer großen Stichprobe, die jeweils Schüler mehrerer deutscher Bundesländer und verschiedener Schularten einschloss, normiert. Zudem wurden jeweils beide Subtests eingehend auf Reliabilität und Validität sowie weitere gängige Testgütekriterien geprüft. Der Subtest TV wurde darüber hinaus auf Rasch-Modell-Konformität untersucht.
Die Ergebnisse der empirischen Erprobung der beiden Tests fallen sehr zufriedenstellend aus. Die Normstichprobe umfasst 1.644 Schüler für LESEN 6-7 und 945 Schüler für LESEN 8-9. Sowohl die KTT- als auch die Rasch-Kennwerte für die Reliabilität liegen im mittelhohen bis hohen Bereich. Die inhaltliche Validität ergibt sich aus den stringent aus der Theorie abgeleiteten Iteminhalten. Die Konstruktvalidität wird durch größtenteils hohe bis sehr hohe Korrelationen mit konstruktnahen Skalen gestützt. Im Sinne konvergenter Validität korrelieren die Ergebniswerte von LESEN 6-7 und LESEN 8-9 außerdem höher mit konstruktnahen Außenkriterien (Lehrerurteil zur Lesekompetenz, Deutschnote) als mit konstruktfernen Außenkriterien (Gesamtnotenschnitt, Mathematiknote). Die niedrige bis nicht vorhandene Korrelation mit konstruktfernen Außenkriterien weist auf diskriminante Validität der Tests hin. Weiter sprechen die größtenteils erwartungskonformen Ergebnisse im Hinblick auf verschiedene aus der Theorie und empirischen Vorbefunden abgeleitete Hypothesen u. a. in Bezug auf Klassenstufen- und Schulartunterschiede für die Validität von LESEN 6-7 und LESEN 8-9. Die Ergebnisse der Rasch-Modell-Konformitätsprüfung für den Subtest TV sprechen für das Vorliegen von Itemhomogenität in beiden Tests, jedoch eher gegen das Vorliegen von Personenhomogenität.
Insgesamt erfüllen LESEN 6-7 und LESEN 8-9 gängige Testgütekriterien in zufriedenstellendem
Maße. Sie ermöglichen sowohl auf Gruppen- als auch auf Individualebene eine umfassende Erfassung des Leseverständnisses von Sekundarschülern sowie in allen vier Klassenstufen eine Differenzierung im gesamten Leistungsspektrum.
Stranger, Lover, Friend?
(2021)
Social exclusion, even from minimal game-based interactions, induces negative consequences. We investigated whether the nature of the relationship with the excluder modulates the effects of ostracism. Participants played a virtual ball-tossing game with a stranger and a friend (friend condition) or a stranger and their romantic partner (partner condition) while being fully included, fully excluded, excluded only by the stranger, or excluded only by their close other. Replicating previous findings, full exclusion impaired participants’ basic-need satisfaction and relationship evaluation most severely. While the degree of exclusion mattered, the relationship to the excluder did not: Classic null hypothesis testing and Bayesian statistics showed no modulation of ostracism effects depending on whether participants were excluded by a stranger, a friend, or their partner.
Universal prevention for non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents is scarce - A systematic review
(2023)
Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) during adolescence is a high-risk marker for the development and persistence of mental health problems and has been recognized as a significant public health problem. Whereas targeted prevention has indeed shown to be effective in reducing NSSI and improve mental health problems, access to such programs is limited. By face validity, universal prevention of NSSI seems an ideal starting point for a stepped-care model to circumvent a lack of resources in the medical care system. However, it is yet unclear how effective such approaches are. Here, we provide a summary of existing work on universal prevention of NSSI in adolescents younger than 21 years based on a systematic literature search. We found that only seven studies are available. None of the programs evaluated was found to be effective in reducing the incidence or frequency of NSSI. After providing a comprehensive summary of the existing work, we evaluate the fact that existing work primarily focusses on selected/targeted prevention and on psychoeducational methods. We derive implications for future directions in the field of universal prevention of NSSI.
Experiments in animal models have shown that running increases neuronal activity in early visual areas in light as well as in darkness. This suggests that visual processing is influenced by locomotion independent of visual input. Combining mobile electroencephalography, motion- and eye-tracking, we investigated the influence of overground free walking on cortical alpha activity (~10 Hz) and eye movements in healthy humans. Alpha activity has been considered a valuable marker of inhibition of sensory processing and shown to negatively correlate with neuronal firing rates. We found that walking led to a decrease in alpha activity over occipital cortex compared to standing. This decrease was present during walking in darkness as well as during light. Importantly, eye movements could not explain the change in alpha activity. Nevertheless, we found that walking and eye related movements were linked. While the blink rate increased with increasing walking speed independent of light or darkness, saccade rate was only significantly linked to walking speed in the light. Pupil size, on the other hand, was larger during darkness than during light, but only showed a modulation by walking in darkness. Analyzing the effect of walking with respect to the stride cycle, we further found that blinks and saccades preferentially occurred during the double support phase of walking. Alpha power, as shown previously, was lower during the swing phase than during the double support phase. We however could exclude the possibility that the alpha modulation was introduced by a walking movement induced change in electrode impedance. Overall, our work indicates that the human visual system is influenced by the current locomotion state of the body. This influence affects eye movement pattern as well as neuronal activity in sensory areas and might form part of an implicit strategy to optimally extract sensory information during locomotion.
Action binding is the effect that the perceived time of an action is shifted towards the action related feedback. A much larger action binding effect in schizophrenia compared to normal controls has been shown, which might be due to positive symptoms like delusions. Here we investigated the relationship between delusional thinking and action binding in healthy individuals, predicting a positive correlation between them. The action binding effect was evaluated by comparing the perceived time of a keypress between an operant (keypress triggering a sound) and a baseline condition (keypress alone), with a novel testing method that massively improved the precision of the subjective timing measurement. A positive correlation was found between the tendency of delusional thinking (measured by the 21-item Peters et al. delusions inventory) and action binding across participants after controlling for the effect of testing order between operant and baseline conditions. The results indicate that delusional thinking in particular influences action time perception and support the notion of a continuous distribution of schizotypal traits with normal controls at one end and clinical patients at the other end.
Action binding refers to the observation that the perceived time of an action (e.g., a keypress) is shifted towards the distal sensory feedback (usually a sound) triggered by that action. Surprisingly, the role of somatosensory feedback for this phe-nomenon has been largely ignored. We fill this gap by showing that the somatosensory feedback, indexed by keypress peak force, is functional in judging keypress time. Specifically, the strength of somatosensory feedback is positively correlated with reported keypress time when the keypress is not associated with an auditory feedback and negatively correlated when the keypress triggers an auditory feedback. The result is consistent with the view that the reported keypress time is shaped by sensory information from different modalities. Moreover, individual differences in action binding can be explained by a sensory information weighting between somatosensory and auditory feedback. At the group level, increasing the strength of somatosensory feedback can decrease action binding to a level not being detected statistically. Therefore, a multisensory information integration account (between somatosensory and auditory inputs) explains action binding at both a group level and an individual level.
Introduction
Modern digital devices, such as conversational agents, simulate human–human interactions to an increasing extent. However, their outward appearance remains distinctly technological. While research revealed that mental representations of technology shape users' expectations and experiences, research on technology sending ambiguous cues is rare.
Methods
To bridge this gap, this study analyzes drawings of the outward appearance participants associate with voice assistants (Amazon Echo or Google Home).
Results
Human beings and (humanoid) robots were the most frequent associations, which were rated to be rather trustworthy, conscientious, agreeable, and intelligent. Drawings of the Amazon Echos and Google Homes differed marginally, but “human,” “robotic,” and “other” associations differed with respect to the ascribed humanness, consciousness, intellect, affinity to technology, and innovation ability.
Discussion
This study aims to further elaborate on the rather unconscious cognitive and emotional processes elicited by technology and discusses the implications of this perspective for developers, users, and researchers.
Conversational agents and smart speakers have grown in popularity offering a variety of options for use, which are available through intuitive speech operation. In contrast to the standard dyad of a single user and a device, voice-controlled operations can be observed by further attendees resulting in new, more social usage scenarios. Referring to the concept of ‘media equation’ and to research on the idea of ‘computers as social actors,’ which describes the potential of technology to trigger emotional reactions in users, this paper asks for the capacity of smart speakers to elicit empathy in observers of interactions. In a 2 × 2 online experiment, 140 participants watched a video of a man talking to an Amazon Echo either rudely or neutrally (factor 1), addressing it as ‘Alexa’ or ‘Computer’ (factor 2). Controlling for participants’ trait empathy, the rude treatment results in participants’ significantly higher ratings of empathy with the device, compared to the neutral treatment. The form of address had no significant effect. Results were independent of the participants’ gender and usage experience indicating a rather universal effect, which confirms the basic idea of the media equation. Implications for users, developers and researchers were discussed in the light of (future) omnipresent voice-based technology interaction scenarios.
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.
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.
The main prediction of the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis (UVH) is that observation of humanlike characters that are difficult to distinguish from the human counterpart will evoke a state of negative affect. Well-established electrophysiological [late positive potential (LPP) and facial electromyography (EMG)] and self-report [Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM)] indices of valence and arousal, i.e., the primary orthogonal dimensions of affective experience, were used to test this prediction by examining affective experience in response to categorically ambiguous compared with unambiguous avatar and human faces (N = 30). LPP and EMG provided direct psychophysiological indices of affective state during passive observation and the SAM provided self-reported indices of affective state during explicit cognitive evaluation of static facial stimuli. The faces were drawn from well-controlled morph continua representing the UVH' dimension of human likeness (DHL). The results provide no support for the notion that category ambiguity along the DHL is specifically associated with enhanced experience of negative affect. On the contrary, the LPP and SAM-based measures of arousal and valence indicated a general increase in negative affective state (i.e., enhanced arousal and negative valence) with greater morph distance from the human end of the DHL. A second sample (N = 30) produced the same finding, using an ad hoc self-rating scale of feelings of familiarity, i.e., an oft-used measure of affective experience along the UVH' familiarity dimension. In conclusion, this multi-method approach using well-validated psychophysiological and self-rating indices of arousal and valence rejects for passive observation and for explicit affective evaluation of static faces the main prediction of the UVH.
Humans actively interact with the world through a wide range of body movements. To understand human cognition in its natural state, we need to incorporate ecologically relevant body movement into our account. One fundamental body movement during daily life is natural walking. Despite its ubiquity, the impact of natural walking on brain activity and cognition has remained a realm underexplored.
In electrophysiology, previous studies have shown a robust reduction of ongoing alpha power in the parieto-occipital cortex during body movements. However, what causes the reduction of ongoing alpha, namely whether this is due to body movement or prevalent sensory input changes, was unknown. To clarify this, study 1 was performed to test if the alpha reduction is dependent on visual input. I compared the resting state alpha power during natural walking and standing, in both light and darkness. The results showed that natural walking led to decreased alpha activity over the occipital cortex compared to standing, regardless of the lighting condition. This suggests that the movement-induced modulation of occipital alpha activity is not driven by visual input changes during walking. I argue that the observed alpha power reduction reflects a change in the state of the subject based on disinhibition induced by walking. Accordingly, natural walking might enhance visual processing and other cognitive processes that involve occipital cortical activity.
I first tested this hypothesis in vision. Study 2 was performed to examine the possible effects of natural walking across visual processing stages by assessing various neural markers during different movement states. The findings revealed an amplified early visual response, while a later visual response remain unaffected. A follow-up study 3 replicated the walking-induced enhancement of the early visual evoked potential and showed that the enhancement was dependent on specific stimulus-related parameters (eccentricity, laterality, distractor presence). Importantly, the results provided evidence that the enhanced early visual responses are indeed linked to the modulation of ongoing occipital alpha power. Walking also modulated the stimulus-induced alpha power. Specifically, it showed that when the target appeared in the fovea area without a distractor, walking exhibited a significantly reduced modulation of alpha power, and showed the largest difference to standing condition. This effect of eccentricity indicates that during later visual processing stages, the visual input in the fovea area is less processed than in peripheral areas while walking.
The two visual studies showed that walking leads to an enhancement in temporally early visual processes which can be predicted by the walking-induced change in ongoing alpha oscillation likely marking disinhibition. However, while walking affects neural markers of early sensory processes, it does not necessarily lead to a change in the behavioural outcome of a sensory task. The two visual studies suggested that the behavioural outcome seems to be mainly based on later processing stages.
To test the effects of walking outside the visual domain, I turned to audition in study 4. I investigated the influence of walking in a particular path vs. simply stepping on auditory processing. Specifically, the study tested whether enhanced processing due to natural walking can be found in primary auditory brain activity and whether the processing preferences are dependent on the walking path. In addition, I tested whether the changed spatial processing that was reported in previous visual studies can be seen in the auditory domain. The results showed enhanced sensory processing due to walking in the auditory domain, which was again linked to the modulation of occipital alpha oscillation. The auditory processing was further dependent on the walking path. Additionally, enhanced peripheral sensory processing, as found in vision, was also present in audition.
The findings outside vision supported the idea of natural walking affecting cognition in a rather general way. Therefore in my study 5, I examined the effect of natural walking on higher cognitive processing, namely divergent thinking, and its correlation with the modulation of ongoing alpha oscillation. I analyzed alpha oscillations and behavioural performance during restricted and unrestricted movement conditions while subjects completed a Guilford's alternate uses test. The results showed that natural walking, as well as missing body restriction, reduces the occipital alpha ongoing power independent of the task phase which goes along with higher test scores. The occipital alpha power reduction can therefore be an indicator of a changed state that allows improved higher cognitive processes.
In summary, the research presented in this thesis highlights that natural walking can change different processes in the visual and auditory domain as well as higher cognitive processes. The effect can be attributed to the movement of natural walking itself rather than to changes in sensory input during walking. The results further indicate that the walking-induced modulation of ongoing occipital alpha oscillations drives the cognitive effects. We therefore suggest that walking changes the inhibitory state which can influence awareness and attention. Such a mechanism could facilitate an adaptive enhancement in cognitive processes and thereby optimize movement-related behaviour such as navigation.
Hintergrund: Das Spielen von Computerspielen ist ein viel diskutiertes Thema. Auf der Suche nach Auswirkungen des Spielens lassen sich einige Studien finden, die Veränderungen im Erleben und Verhalten zeigen [6-8]. Bei der Frage nach der Ursache hierfür, müssen Aspekte wie Persönlichkeit, Hirnphysiologie, neuronale Grundlagen und Genetik untersucht und diskutiert werden. Der bekannte Persönlichkeitsforscher J. Alan Gray beschreibt in seiner Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) drei verschiedene Hirnsysteme, die das Annäherungs- und Vermeidungsverhalten regulieren. Eines dieser Systeme, das Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) wird ganz besonders häufig beim Spielen von sogenannten Ego-Shooter Spielen aktiviert.
Ziel: Ziel der Untersuchung war es, herauszufinden, ob das Spielen dieser Computerspiele einen Trainingseffekt auf neurophysiologische Grundlagen der Persönlichkeit, genauer des BIS nach Gray, hat. Wenn es einen erlernten Effekt gibt, müsste ein signifikanter Unterschied zwischen den BIS scores der Spieler und Nicht-Spieler erkennbar sein. Sollte es keinen signifikanten Unterschied geben, kann es dennoch sein, dass sich das neuronale Substrat (also die physiologische Grundlage) des BIS durch das Training verändert, auch wenn dies dann nicht zu einem anderem Verhalten führt.
Methoden: Es wurden die Ergebnisse von jeweils 17 Ego-Shooter-Spielern und Nicht-Spielern aus dem Fragebogen SPSRQ bezüglich Unterschieden in den Mittelwerten der BIS scores mithilfe eines t-Tests miteinander verglichen. Außerdem wurde von allen Probanden fMRT - Datenmaterial gewonnen und zunächst eine zweifaktorielle ANOVA durchgeführt: die Faktoren waren Spieler (Ja/Nein) und BIS score und gemessen wurde die neuronale Aktivität in Amygdala und Hippocampus im resting state. Um den bekannten Störfaktor Genetik miteinzubeziehen, erfolgte anschließend eine dreifaktorielle ANOVA mit der Kovariate TPH2. Für die Bestimmung dieser Kovariate wurde jedem Probanden ein Röhrchen Blut entnommen und eine Genotypisierung durchgeführt.
Ergebnisse: Der Vergleich der BIS scores mittels t-Test liefert keinen signifikanten Unterschied zwischen Spielern und Nicht-Spielern. In der zweifaktoriellen Varianzanalyse zeigen sich signifikante Unterschiede und eine unterschiedliche Richtung der Korrelation. Während die Korrelation von neuronaler Aktivität und BIS score bei den Spielern positiv ist, ist sie bei den Nicht-Spielern negativ. Der Unterschied verliert in der dreifaktoriellen ANOVA mit der Kovariate TPH2 seine Signifikanz.
Schlussfolgerung: Die Ergebnisse der Arbeit führen zu der entscheidenden Frage, wie unterschiedliche neuronale Aktivitäten entstehen. Zwei sehr kontroverse Ansätze stehen sich dabei gegenüber: 1. Der Genotyp hat einen Einfluss auf die neuronale Plastizität während der Entwicklung. Die vorliegende Arbeit, wie auch frühere Studien -wie die von Hahn et al. [58] - geben Hinweise darauf, dass der Genotyp diesen Einfluss besitzt. Die Tendenz, die bei der Genotypisierung zu sehen ist, lässt die Spekulation zu, dass Personen mit einem bestimmten Genotyp eher zu Spielern werden, als Personen mit einer anderen Ausprägung. Um diese Frage zu klären, sind Untersuchungen mit einem größeren Stichprobenumfang notwendig. 2. Die Unterschiede sind das Ergebnis eines sogenannten Trainingseffektes, entstehen also durch Einfluss von außen und hängen ab von den jeweiligen Erlebnissen, die im Laufe eines Lebens gemacht werden. Trotz der Ergebnisse, die den starken Einfluss des Genotyps aufzeigen, bleibt eine Restwahrscheinlichkeit für den Trainingseffekt und der Anreiz für weitere Studien mit dieser Fragestellung.
The affective dimensions of emotional valence and emotional arousal affect processing of verbal and pictorial stimuli. Traditional emotional theories assume a linear relationship between these dimensions, with valence determining the direction of a behavior (approach vs. withdrawal) and arousal its intensity or strength. In contrast, according to the valence-arousal conflict theory, both dimensions are interactively related: positive valence and low arousal (PL) are associated with an implicit tendency to approach a stimulus, whereas negative valence and high arousal (NH) are associated with withdrawal. Hence, positive, high-arousal (PH) and negative, low-arousal (NL) stimuli elicit conflicting action tendencies. By extending previous research that used several tasks and methods, the present study investigated whether and how emotional valence and arousal affect subjective approach vs. withdrawal tendencies toward emotional words during two novel tasks. In Study 1, participants had to decide whether they would approach or withdraw from concepts expressed by written words. In Studies 2 and 3 participants had to respond to each word by pressing one of two keys labeled with an arrow pointing upward or downward. Across experiments, positive and negative words, high or low in arousal, were presented. In Study 1 (explicit task), in line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, PH and NL words were responded to more slowly than PL and NH words. In addition, participants decided to approach positive words more often than negative words. In Studies 2 and 3, participants responded faster to positive than negative words, irrespective of their level of arousal. Furthermore, positive words were significantly more often associated with “up” responses than negative words, thus supporting the existence of implicit associations between stimulus valence and response coding (positive is up and negative is down). Hence, in contexts in which participants' spontaneous responses are based on implicit associations between stimulus valence and response, there is no influence of arousal. In line with the valence-arousal conflict theory, arousal seems to affect participants' approach-withdrawal tendencies only when such tendencies are made explicit by the task, and a minimal degree of processing depth is required.
No abstract available
No abstract available
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.
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.
Der vorliegende Beitrag behandelt inhaltliche und methodische Probleme einer Längsschnittstudie, die derzeit am MPI für Psychiatrie in München an depressiven Patienten durchgeführt wird. Diese Untersuchung hat einen diagnostischen und einen kommunikationstheoretischen Aspekt. Von diagnostischem Interesse sind die depressionsspezifischen Veränderungen des kommunikativen Verhaltens. Kommunikationstheoretisch gewendet lautet die Frage, wie sich der interne Zustand einer Person in ihrem Verhalten reflektiert. In diesem Beitrag wird die Fragestellung konzentriert auf tonische Eigenschaften des Blickverhaltens im Interaktionsprozeß und deren Stabilität im Krankheitsverlauf. Zunächst wird die theoretische Grundlage referiert, die wir für das Blickverhalten entwickelt haben. Im zweiten Abschnitt wird auf Datenerhebung und Reliabilitätskontrolle eingegangen. Die Struktur der Daten bestimmt die Auswertungsmethoden. Einige der Methoden, mit denen wir derzeit arbeiten, werden im Zusammenhang mit umschriebenen Problemstellungen erläutert: Deskription und Interpretation des tonischen Blickverhaltens depressiver Patienten im Krankheitsverlauf (Abschnitt 3). Zusammenhang der individuellen Blickniveaus von Interaktionspartnern (Abschnitt 4) Deskription eines Dialogs (Interviews) als Sequenz von distinkten Zuständen. In den Zuständen werden Sprech- und Blickverhalten beider Interaktionspartner miteinander kombiniert (Abschnitt 5) Analyse der intraindividuellen Wechselwirkung zwischen Blick- und Sprechverhalten (Abschnitt 6). Die Abschnitte 3 mit 6 werden durch vorläufige Ergebnisse illustriert.
Die Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit-/Hyperaktivitätsstörung (ADHS) zeichnet sich durch eine starke klinische Heterogenität aus, deren Ursachen bislang noch nicht völlig geklärt sind. Als erfolgversprechendes Erklärungsmodell hat sich das Endophänotypenkonzept herausgestellt, das davon ausgeht, dass unterschiedliche Dysfunktionen den vielfältigen klinischen Phänotypen der ADHS zugrunde liegen. Emotional-motivationalen Defiziten wird hierbei eine große Bedeutung beigemessen, allerdings wurden diese bislang kaum untersucht. Die wenigen vorliegenden Studien bezogen sich auf subjektive Daten und differenzierten nicht nach klinischen Subgruppen, wodurch sich heterogene Ergebnisse ergaben. Die vorliegende Arbeit hatte somit zum Ziel, einen emotional-motivationalen Endophänotyp der ADHS bei unterschiedlichen klinischen Subgruppen von ADHS-Patienten mit subjektiven und objektiven psychophysiologischen Daten zu untersuchen. Dies wurde mithilfe eines emotionalen Bilderparadigmas untersucht, bei dem neben subjektiven Bildbewertungen die affektmodulierte Startlereaktion als Valenzindikator und die elektrodermale Aktivität als Arousalindikator emotional-motivationaler Reaktivität gemessen wurden. Studie 1 (N = 325) konzentrierte sich auf die klinischen Subtypen der ADHS bei erwachsenen Patienten. Diese Studie konnte aufzeigen, dass ADHS-Patienten in Abhängigkeit vom ADHS-Subtypus Defizite in der emotional-motivationalen Reaktivität aufwiesen. Der Mischtypus und der hyperaktiv-impulsive Typus zeichneten sich durch eine verminderte Reaktivität auf positive Stimuli aus, was sich in einer reduzierten Startleinhibition widerspiegelte. Der hyperaktiv-impulsive Typus reagierte zudem vermindert auf negative Stimuli, was sich in einer verringerten Startlepotenzierung zeigte. Im Gegensatz dazu reagierte der unaufmerksame Typus vergleichbar zu Kontrollpersonen mit einer leicht geringeren Startleinhibition bei positiven Stimuli. Die besonders beeinträchtigte emotionale Reaktivität des hyperaktiv-impulsiven Typus spiegelte sich auch in einem Bias zu positiveren Bewertungen aller Bilder und einer verminderten Arousaleinschätzung negativer Stimuli bei Männern dieses Typus wider. Die ADHS-Patienten zeigten keine elektrodermalen Arousaldysfunktionen, wobei auch hier der hyperaktiv-impulsive Typus deskriptiv auffallend abgeflachte Werte in der Reaktivität auf emotionale Stimuli aufwies. Die gefundenen Dysfunktionen könnten zu hyperaktiv-impulsivem Verhalten und Sensation Seeking durch die Suche nach Verstärkern führen. Gleichzeitig könnten die Ergebnisse die starken sozialen Dysfunktionen und antisoziales Verhalten von ADHS-Patienten mit hyperaktiv-impulsiven Symptomen erklären. Zur Berücksichtigung von Entwicklungsaspekten im Endophänotypenmodell und Untersuchung des emotional-motivationalen Endophänotyps bei Kindern mit ADHS konzentrierte sich Studie 2 (N = 102) auf Jungen mit ADHS, die mit und ohne Methylphenidat untersucht wurden. Durch die zusätzliche Methylphenidatgruppe sollten die klinische Relevanz emotional-motivationaler Dysfunktionen belegt und Erkenntnisse zur Wirkweise von Methylphenidat gewonnen werden. Diese Studie konnte aufzeigen, dass sich ADHS-Kinder ohne Methylphenidat durch Hypoarousal auszeichneten, was sich in verminderten Hautleitfähigkeitsreaktionen auf die Bilder und Startletöne sowie einem verminderten tonischen Hautleitfähigkeitsniveau widerspiegelte. Diese Dysfunktionen wurden durch Methylphenidat normalisiert. Die Startledaten konnten aus methodischen Gründen die affektive Modulation bei den Kindern nicht abbilden. Diese Daten lieferten jedoch Hinweise, dass Methylphenidat die emotional-motivationale Reaktivität steigerte, da die ADHS-Kinder mit Methylphenidat eine verstärkte Startlereaktivität während der Bildbetrachtung aufwiesen. Das gefundene Hypoarousal auf Stimuli könnte dazu führen, dass vermindert auf Umweltreize und auch auf Belohnung und Bestrafung reagiert wird. Dies könnte soziale Dysfunktionen und externalisierendes Verhalten nach sich ziehen. Hyperaktiv-impulsives Verhalten und Sensation Seeking könnten kompensatorisch zur Anhebung des Arousals resultieren. Unaufmerksamkeit könnte durch einen suboptimalen Aktiviertheitsgrad bedingt sein. Methylphenidat könnte durch eine Steigerung des Arousals und die Verstärkung der emotionalen Reaktivität diesen Symptomen entgegenwirken. Die vorliegende Arbeit konnte somit als erste einen emotional-motivationalen Endophänotyp der ADHS unter Berücksichtigung valenz- und arousalbezogener Maße bei unterschiedlichen klinischen Subgruppen mit objektiven psychophysiologischen Parametern aufzeigen. Die Normalisierung des Hypoarousals von der Kindheit zum Erwachsenenalter könnte mit der Veränderung der ADHS-Symptome über die Entwicklung zusammenhängen. Die weitere Erforschung des Endophänotypenmodells der ADHS ist eine wichtige Aufgabe für die Zukunft. Die vorliegende Arbeit versuchte, hierzu einen Beitrag zu leisten.
Rationale
The endocannabinoid (eCB) system is implicated in several psychiatric disorders. Investigating emotional–motivational dysfunctions as underlying mechanisms, a study in humans revealed that in the C385A polymorphism of the fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH), the degrading enzyme of the eCB anandamide (AEA), A carriers, who are characterized by increased signaling of AEA as compared to C/C carriers, exhibited reduced brain reactivity towards unpleasant faces and enhanced reactivity towards reward. However, the association of eCB system with emotional–motivational reactivity is complex and bidirectional due to upcoming compensatory processes.
Objectives
Therefore, we further investigated the relationship of the FAAH polymorphism and emotional–motivational reactivity in humans.
Methods
We assessed the affect-modulated startle, and ratings of valence and arousal in response to higher arousing pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures in 67 FAAH C385A C/C carriers and 45 A carriers.
Results
Contrarily to the previous functional MRI study, A carriers compared to C/C carriers exhibited an increased startle potentiation and therefore emotional responsiveness towards unpleasant picture stimuli and reduced startle inhibition indicating reduced emotional reactivity in response to pleasant pictures, while both groups did not differ in ratings of arousal and valence.
Conclusions
Our findings emphasize the bidirectionality and thorough examination of the eCB system’s impact on emotional reactivity as a central endophenotype underlying various psychiatric disorders.
Virtual humans (VHs) hold immense potential for collaboration in social virtual reality (VR). As VR technology advances, it's vital to assess the psychological effects on VH trust and user privacy to build meaningful social interactions in VR. In social VR, users must be able to trust the VHs they interact with as they navigate through socio-cultural activities. The evaluation of trustworthiness in VHs profoundly impacts interaction quality and user willingness to engage. Conversely, untrustworthy VHs can harm user experiences, privacy, and VR engagement. To address this, we conducted immersive VR studies, exploring how psychological factors influence user's VH trust evaluation under various psychological conditions. This research is pivotal for developing strategies to enhance user privacy, establish secure VR environments, and create a foundation of trust that supports immersive socio-cultural experiences in VR.
To date, there are no established interpersonal trust measurement tools specifically for VHs in VR. In study 1 (the familiarity study) of the current thesis the VR-adjusted version of the social conditioned place preference paradigm (SCPP) by Kiser et al., (2022) was identified as a potential trust measurement tool. We tested whether the familiarity of a VH influenced trust as measured with the SCPP paradigm and other self-defined outcome measures, in a Computer Augmented Virtual Environment (CAVE). The CAVE is a VR system that combines immersive VR with real-world elements. It consists of a room-sized space where the walls are used as projection screens to display virtual scenes and objects. In this within - subject design (n = 20), half of the participants were familiarized with one VH and tasked to explore and interact in a realistic looking virtual art museum environment. The participant’s evaluation of the VH’s trustworthiness was measured as well as their subsequent trust behaviours. Results revealed no significant differences in the evaluation of the VH’s trustworthiness nor any behavioural differences between conditions. The findings of the impact of a VH’s familiarity on trust is inconclusive due to the major limitations of the paradigm. We concluded that the SCPP paradigm needs further validation and the proposed proxies of trust need to be re-evaluated. The findings were considered in the following study.
The virtual maze paradigm design of Hale, (2018) was identified as a potential trust measurement tool, however several limitations are associated with its use to measure trust in VR. In study 2 (a validation study), improvements were made to the virtual maze paradigm of Hale, (2018) and a variant of this paradigm was implemented. We conducted a validation study with 70 participants in a between-subject design with VH trustworthiness as the between-subject factor. Participants wore a head-mounted display (HMD), to deliver an immersive VR experience. In our version of the virtual maze, it was the task of the users (the trustors) to navigate through a maze in VR, where they could interact with a VH (the trustee). They could choose to ask for advice and follow the advice from the VH if they wanted to. The number of times participants asked and followed advice and the time it took to respond to the given advice served as behavioural proxies/measures of trust. The two conditions (trustworthy vs. untrustworthy) did not differ in the content of the advice but in the appearance, tone of voice and engagement of the trustees (allegedly an avatar controlled by other participants). Results indicated that the experimental manipulation was successful, as participants rated the VH as more trustworthy in the trustworthy condition compared with the VH in the untrustworthy condition. Importantly, this manipulation affected the trust behaviour of participants, who, in the trustworthy condition, asked for advice and followed advice more often, indicating that the paradigm is sensitive to differences in VH’s trustworthiness. Thus, our paradigm can be used to measure differences in interpersonal trust towards VHs and may serve as a valuable research tool for researchers who study trust in VR. Therefore, study 2 fills the gap in the literature, for an interpersonal trust measurement tool specifically for VHs in VR.
Two experimental studies, with a sample size of 50 participants each, utilized the virtual maze paradigm where participants entered 12 rooms under different conditions. We examined the influence of cognitive load (CL) on trust towards VH in VR in study 3 (Cognitive load study), and the influence of emotional affect (Emotional affect study) on trust towards VH in VR in study 4 (EA study). In both studies, we assessed participant’s evaluation of a VH’s trustworthiness, along with three behavioural indicators of trust in the maze task: 1) frequency of advice asked, 2) frequency of advice followed, and 3) the time taken by participants to execute the received advice. In study 3, the CL was manipulated with the auditory 1-back task in the high cognitive load condition (HCL). In study 4, the Autobiographical Emotional Memory Task (AEMT) was used to manipulate the EA of participants in the negative emotional affect (NEA) condition. As an additional manipulation, while participants were immersed in VR, they were exposed to 12 negative pictures and sounds that was presented simultaneously to strengthen the initial manipulation. The manipulation of the within-subject factors (CL and EA) was successful in both studies, as significant differences between conditions were observed in both studies (higher CL in the HCL condition and a more negative EA in the NEA condition). However, only CL influenced participant’s evaluation of the VH’s trustworthiness. The VH were evaluated as significantly more trustworthy after the HCL condition. Despite the difference in trust evaluation, there was no difference in advice asking or following. Participants in study 4 asked and followed advice due to their trust in the VH and asked and followed advice equally often in both conditions. Importantly, significant differences were observed in the participants response times in both studies. In study 3 during the HCL condition participants followed advice quicker. The order in which the conditions were presented influenced the experience of CL. Participants experienced higher levels of CL and responded to advice significantly faster when low cognitive load (LCL) was presented as the first condition compared with LCL as the second condition. In study 4 participants in the NEA condition followed advice slower similar to the findings of study 3. The order in which the conditions were presented had a significant effect on the EA. Participants asked and followed advice less when the NEA condition was presented first compared with when it is presented second. Possible explanations for the findings are discussed in the thesis.
Overall, this thesis offers a novel tool for trust measurement (the virtual maze paradigm) and contributes to understanding the role of psychological factors in trust towards virtual humans in virtual reality.
Background:
This study investigated the relation between social desirability and self-reported physical activity in web-based research.
Findings:
A longitudinal study (N = 5,495, 54% women) was conducted on a representative sample of the Dutch population using the Marlowe-Crowne Scale as social desirability measure and the short form of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire. Social desirability was not associated with self-reported physical activity (in MET-minutes/week), nor with its sub-behaviors (i.e., walking, moderate-intensity activity, vigorous-intensity activity, and sedentary behavior). Socio-demographics (i.e., age, sex, income, and education) did not moderate the effect of social desirability on self-reported physical activity and its sub-behaviors.
Conclusions:
This study does not throw doubt on the usefulness of the Internet as a medium to collect self-reports on physical activity.
Hintergrund: Der implantierbare Kardioverter-Defibrillator (ICD) stellt bei der Prävention von lebensbedrohlichen Herzrhythmusstörungen die Therapie der Wahl dar. ICD-Patienten berichten jedoch überdurchschnittlich häufig von Ängsten und einer eingeschränkten Lebensqualität. Ziel: In dieser Studie wurde ein speziell für ICD-Patienten entwickeltes Präventionsprogramm gegen Ängste evaluiert. Dieses beinhaltet zum einen gedruckte Informationen darüber, wie Ängste frühzeitig erkannt werden können und welche Hilfsmöglichkeiten es gibt. Zum anderen bietet es Patienten die Möglichkeit, einem telefonischen Ansprechpartner (Dipl.-Psych.) Fragen zum ICD zu stellen und über psychische Belastungen und Möglichkeiten zu deren Linderung zu sprechen. Gleichzeitig wurde in dieser Studie die Möglichkeit untersucht, die Ängste der Patienten, die nach der Anpassungsphase entstehen, vorherzusagen. Methoden: 119 ICD-Patienten füllten zu zwei Zeitpunkten (30 Tage nach der Implantation und 6 Monate später) psychometrische Fragebögen zur Erfassung von Ängsten aus (z.B. Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). Nach der ersten Messung wurden die Patienten teilrandomisiert (Schichtung nach Indikation, Alter und Geschlecht) zwei Gruppen zugewiesen. Eine Gruppe nahm zwischen den beiden Messzeitpunkten zusätzlich zur medizinischen Betreuung am beschriebenen Präventionsprogramm teil, die andere Gruppe erhielt keine zusätzliche Betreuung. Zur Prädiktion der späteren Angstwerte wurden Regressionsanalysen durchgeführt. Als Prädiktoren dienten die Charakteristiken der Patienten, die zum ersten Messzeitpunkt erhoben worden waren. Kriterium war die Angst der Patienten zum zweiten Messzeitpunkt. Ergebnisse: Das Präventionsprogramm wurde von allen ICD-Patienten gut angenommen und von vielen Patienten (75%) als hilfreich beurteilt. Entgegen der Erwartungen unterschieden sich die beiden Gruppen hinsichtlich der Angstentwicklung jedoch nicht voneinander. Die differenzierte Analyse zeigte, dass die Wirkung des Präventionsprogramms auf die Angst der Patienten von deren Alter abhing (p = 0,01). Bei den jüngeren ICD-Patienten (30-64 Jahre) ließ sich durch das Programm ein Anstieg der Ängste im Halbjahr nach der Implantation verhindern. Die subjektiv berichteten Ängste der behandelten Gruppe der älteren Patienten (65-75 Jahre) entwickelten sich jedoch ungünstiger als die der Kontrollgruppe. Jüngere Patienten berichteten nach der Implantation generell über mehr Einschränkungen durch den ICD und fühlten sich weniger gut durch ihn geschützt als ältere Patienten. In der Kontrollgruppe war die Vorhersage der Angst zum zweiten Messzeitpunkt am Besten durch die Einstellung der Patienten zum ICD möglich. In der Experimentalgruppe war die Angstsensitivität der Patienten der beste Prädiktor. Schlussfolgerung: Jüngere Patienten profitierten vom auf Informationen und Gesprächen basierenden Präventionsprogramm. Ältere Patienten dagegen berichteten subjektiv über mehr Ängste, obwohl sie das Präventionsprogramm auch als hilfreich erachteten. Für diese Patientengruppe müssen somit andere Möglichkeiten der notwendigen psychosozialen Unterstützung gefunden werden.
No abstract available
The present work investigated the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive inhibition/thought suppression in Anderson’s and Green’s Think/No-Think paradigm (TNT), as well as different variables influencing these mechanisms at the cognitive, the neurophysiological, the electrophysiological and the molecular level. Neurophysiological data collected with fNIRS and fMRI have added up to the existing evidence of a fronto-hippocampal network interacting during the inhibition of unwanted thoughts. Some evidence has been presented suggesting that by means of external stimulation of the right dlPFC through iTBS thought suppression might be improved, providing further evidence for an implication of this region in the TNT. A combination of fNIRS with ERP has delivered evidence of a dissociation of early condition-independent attentional and later suppression-specific processes within the dlPFC, both contributing to suppression performance. Due to inconsistencies in the previous literature it was considered how stimulus valence would influence thought suppression by manipulating the emotional content of the to-be-suppressed stimuli. Findings of the current work regarding the ability to suppress negative word or picture stimuli have, however, been inconclusive as well. It has been hypothesized that performance in the TNT might depend on the combination of valence conditions included in the paradigm. Alternatively, it has been suggested that inconsistent findings regarding the suppression of negative stimuli or suppression at all might be due to certain personality traits and/or genetic variables, found in the present work to contribute to thought inhibition in the TNT. Rumination has been shown to be a valid predictor of thought suppression performance. Increased ruminative tendencies led to worse suppression performance which, in the present work, has been linked to less effective recruitment of the dlPFC and in turn less effective down-regulation of hippocampal activity during suppression trials. Trait anxiety has also been shown to interrupt thought suppression despite higher, however, inefficient recruitment of the dlPFC. Complementing the findings regarding ruminative tendencies and decreased thought inhibition a functional polymorphism in the KCNJ6 gene, encompassing a G-to-A transition, has been shown to disrupt thought suppression despite increased activation of the dlPFC. Through the investigation of thought suppression at different levels, the current work adds further evidence to the idea that the TNT reflects an executive control mechanism, which is sensitive to alterations in stimulus valence to some extent, neurophysiological functioning as indicated by its sensitivity to iTBS, functional modulations at the molecular level and personality traits, such as rumination and trait anxiety.
Virtual reality (VR) has made its way into mainstream psychological research in the last two decades. This technology, with its unique ability to simulate complex, real situations and contexts, offers researchers unprecedented opportunities to investigate human behavior in well controlled designs in the laboratory. One important application of VR is the investigation of pathological processes in mental disorders, especially anxiety disorders. Research on the processes underlying threat perception, fear, and exposure therapy has shed light on more general aspects of the relation between perception and emotion. Being by its nature virtual, i.e., simulation of reality, VR strongly relies on the adequate selection of specific perceptual cues to activate emotions. Emotional experiences in turn are related to presence, another important concept in VR, which describes the user's sense of being in a VR environment. This paper summarizes current research into perception of fear cues, emotion, and presence, aiming at the identification of the most relevant aspects of emotional experience in VR and their mutual relations. A special focus lies on a series of recent experiments designed to test the relative contribution of perception and conceptual information on fear in VR. This strand of research capitalizes on the dissociation between perception (bottom up input) and conceptual information (top-down input) that is possible in VR. Further, we review the factors that have so far been recognized to influence presence, with emotions (e.g., fear) being the most relevant in the context of clinical psychology. Recent research has highlighted the mutual influence of presence and fear in VR, but has also traced the limits of our current understanding of this relationship. In this paper, the crucial role of perception on eliciting emotional reactions is highlighted, and the role of arousal as a basic dimension of emotional experience is discussed. An interoceptive attribution model of presence is suggested as a first step toward an integrative framework for emotion research in VR. Gaps in the current literature and future directions are outlined.
Onkologische Patienten mit Läsionen an der Zunge zeigen bei einem Mere-Exposure-Versuch mit verbalen Stimuli einen stabilen Mere-Exposure-Effekt. Dies hibt Hinweise daruaf, dass stimulusspezifische-sensomotorische Simulationen im wesentlichen unabhängig von der körperlichen Peripherie sind und sich vor allem in zentralen Strukturen abspielen (Gehirn).
Hintergrund: Die Panikstörung ist eine die Lebensqualität beeinträchtigende psychische Störung, die unbehandelt einen chronischen Verlauf zeigt, jedoch sowohl durch Psychotherapie als auch Psychopharmakotherapie erfolgreich behandelt werden kann. Die der Panikstörung zugrundeliegenden neuronalen Schaltkreise werden in der von Gorman et al. (1989, 2000) veröffentlichten neuroanatomischen Hypothese beschrieben. In der stark an der Tierforschung angelehnten revidierten Version (2000) wird die Amygdala als Zentrum eines komplexen Furchtnetzwerks angesehen, deren Aktivität durch höhere kortikale Areale im präfrontalen Kortex moduliert wird. Trotz der Popularität der Hypothese sind deren Annahmen bislang kaum explizit überprüft worden. Ziel: Ziel der Untersuchung war es, die neuronale Verarbeitung emotionaler Reize in empirischen Experimenten genauer zu untersuchen, da die Datenlage in diesem Bereich noch gering und inkonsistent ist und Replikationsstudien fehlen. Außerdem sollte ein Überblick über die bereits veröffentlichten empirischen Studien gegeben werden, welche mit bildgebenden Verfahren Aussagen über die Beteiligung bestimmter neuronaler Strukturen bei der Panikstörung erlauben. Methoden: An den Standorten Würzburg und Hamburg wurden Patienten mit Panikstörung (n = 18/20) und gesunde Kontrollen (n = 27/23) mit zwei Paradigmen zur Verarbeitung emotionaler Reize (emotionaler Stroop-Test und Gesichterverarbeitung) mit der funktionellen Magnetresonanztomographie untersucht. Hierbei sollten insbesondere die in der neuroanatomischen Hypothese wichtigen Strukturen Amygdala und präfrontaler Kortex betrachtet werden. Bildgebende Studien, die Patienten mit Panikstörung untersuchten, wurden über eine Literaturrecherche ermittelt, in Untergruppen von Studien eingeteilt und bewertet. Ergebnisse: In beiden untersuchten Stichproben zeigten die Patienten im Vergleich zu den Kontrollen auf Reaktionszeitebene einen signifikanten emotionalen Stroop-Effekt mit verlängerten Antwortlatenzen für panikrelevante Wörter. In den funktionellen Daten zeigten sich keine Unterschiede in der Amygdalaaktivierung, jedoch zeigten die Patienten für den Kontrast ‚panikrelevante vs. neutrale Wörter‘ im Gruppenvergleich eine erhöhte Aktivierung in präfrontalen Arealen. Bei der Verarbeitung emotionaler Gesichter gab es kaum Unterschiede zwischen den Gruppen, ängstliche Gesichter lösten im Vergleich zu neutralen Gesichtern keine erhöhte Amygdalaaktivierung aus. Hinweise auf eine generelle Hypofrontalität ließen sich bei den Patienten – zumindest bei der Verarbeitung emotionaler Reize – in den angewandten Paradigmen nicht finden. Schlussfolgerung: Die Ergebnisse der experimentellen Untersuchung und des Literaturüberblicks zeigen, dass – trotz durchaus mit der neuroanatomischen Hypothese in Einklang stehender Befunde – Inkonsistenzen zu finden sind, die mit der aktuellen Hypothese nicht erklärt werden können. Die Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Untersuchung im emotionalen Stroop-Test konnten bisher gefundene präfrontale Aktivierungsmuster replizieren, für die Amygdala gilt das nicht. Eine Erweiterung der Hypothese durch die Berücksichtigung neuer Aspekte könnte helfen, diese Befunde besser zu erklären und zu einem umfassenderen Bild der neuronalen Grundlagen der Störung beitragen. Modifikationen werden vorgeschlagen, die der Weiterentwicklung der Hypothese dienen könnten und bei der Planung zukünftiger Studien berücksichtigt werden sollten. Die vermutete prominente Rolle der Amygdala bei der Panikstörung ist nach wie vor nicht hinreichend untersucht und der modulierende Einfluss präfrontaler Strukturen sollte zukünftig insbesondere im direkten Zusammenspiel mit der Amygdala, z. B. im Rahmen psychotherapeutischer Interventionen, genauer analysiert werden.
Behavior Change Techniques in Wrist-Worn Wearables to Promote Physical Activity: Content Analysis
(2020)
Background:
Decreasing levels of physical activity (PA) increase the incidences of noncommunicable diseases, obesity, and mortality. To counteract these developments, interventions aiming to increase PA are urgently needed. Mobile health (mHealth) solutions such as wearable sensors (wearables) may assist with an improvement in PA.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to examine which behavior change techniques (BCTs) are incorporated in currently available commercial high-end wearables that target users’ PA behavior.
Methods:
The BCTs incorporated in 5 different high-end wearables (Apple Watch Series 3, Garmin Vívoactive 3, Fitbit Versa, Xiaomi Amazfit Stratos 2, and Polar M600) were assessed by 2 researchers using the BCT Taxonomy version 1 (BCTTv1). Effectiveness of the incorporated BCTs in promoting PA behavior was assessed by a content analysis of the existing literature.
Results:
The most common BCTs were goal setting (behavior), action planning, review behavior goal(s), discrepancy between current behavior and goal, feedback on behavior, self-monitoring of behavior, and biofeedback. Fitbit Versa, Garmin Vívoactive 3, Apple Watch Series 3, Polar M600, and Xiaomi Amazfit Stratos 2 incorporated 17, 16, 12, 11, and 11 BCTs, respectively, which are proven to effectively promote PA.
Conclusions:
Wearables employ different numbers and combinations of BCTs, which might impact their effectiveness in improving PA. To promote PA by employing wearables, we encourage researchers to develop a taxonomy specifically designed to assess BCTs incorporated in wearables. We also encourage manufacturers to customize BCTs based on the targeted populations.
Neurophänomenologie ist der Versuch des Neurobiologen Francisco J. Varela seine eigene Disziplin mit der Phänomenologie zu verknüpfen. Anhand einer kritischen, vergleichenden Textanalyse wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit die Legitimität Varelas Rückbeziehung auf Husserl überprüft. Als Prüfsteine dienen die Begriffe "Leib", "phänomenologische Reduktion" und Zeitbewusstsein".
Evidence from multisensory body illusions suggests that body representations may be malleable, for instance, by embodying external objects. However, adjusting body representations to current task demands also implies that external objects become disembodied from the body representation if they are no longer required. In the current web-based study, we induced the embodiment of a two-dimensional (2D) virtual hand that could be controlled by active movements of a computer mouse or on a touchpad. Following initial embodiment, we probed for disembodiment by comparing two conditions: Participants either continued moving the virtual hand or they stopped moving and kept the hand still. Based on theoretical accounts that conceptualize body representations as a set of multisensory bindings, we expected gradual disembodiment of the virtual hand if the body representations are no longer updated through correlated visuomotor signals. In contrast to our prediction, the virtual hand was instantly disembodied as soon as participants stopped moving it. This result was replicated in two follow-up experiments. The observed instantaneous disembodiment might suggest that humans are sensitive to the rapid changes that characterize action and body in virtual environments, and hence adjust corresponding body representations particularly swiftly.
Previous research showed that priming effects in the affective misattribution procedure (AMP) are unaffected by direct warnings to avoid an influence of the primes. The present research examined whether a priming influence is diminished by task procedures that encourage accurate judgments of the targets. Participants were motivated to categorize the affective meaning of nonsense targets accurately by being made to believe that a true word was presented in each trial and by providing feedback on (allegedly) incorrect responses. This condition produced robust priming effects. Priming was however reduced and less reliable relative to more typical AMP conditions in which participants guessed the meaning of openly presented nonsense targets. Affective judgments of nonsense targets were not affected by advance knowledge of the response mapping during the priming phase, which argues against a response-priming explanation of AMP effects. These findings show that affective primes influence evaluative judgments even in conditions in which the motivation to provide accurate responses is high and a priming of motor responses is not possible. Priming effects were however weaker with high accuracy motivation, suggesting that a focus on accurate judgments is an effective strategy to control for an unwanted priming influence in the AMP.
A hallmark of habitual actions is that, once they are established, they become insensitive to changes in the values of action outcomes. In this article, we review empirical research that examined effects of posttraining changes in outcome values in outcome-selective Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) tasks. This review suggests that cue-instigated action tendencies in these tasks are not affected by weak and/or incomplete revaluation procedures (e.g., selective satiety) and substantially disrupted by a strong and complete devaluation of reinforcers. In a second part, we discuss two alternative models of a motivational control of habitual action: a default-interventionist framework and expected value of control theory. It is argued that the default-interventionist framework cannot solve the problem of an infinite regress (i.e., what controls the controller?). In contrast, expected value of control can explain control of habitual actions with local computations and feedback loops without (implicit) references to control homunculi. It is argued that insensitivity to changes in action outcomes is not an intrinsic design feature of habits but, rather, a function of the cognitive system that controls habitual action tendencies.
Previous research suggested that people prefer to administer unpleasant electric shocks to themselves rather than being left alone with their thoughts because engagement in thinking is an unpleasant activity. The present research examined this negative reinforcement hypothesis by giving participants a choice of distracting themselves with the generation of electric shock causing no to intense pain. Four experiments (N = 254) replicated the result that a large proportion of participants opted to administer painful shocks to themselves during the thinking period. However, they administered strong electric shocks to themselves even when an innocuous response option generating no or a mild shock was available. Furthermore, participants inflicted pain to themselves when they were assisted in the generation of pleasant thoughts during the waiting period, with no difference between pleasant versus unpleasant thought conditions. Overall, these results question that the primary motivation for the self-administration of painful shocks is avoidance of thinking. Instead, it seems that the self-infliction of pain was attractive for many participants, because they were curious about the shocks, their intensities, and the effects they would have on them.
What reaction stops revenge taking? Four experiments (total N = 191) examined this question where the victim of an interpersonal transgression could observe the offender's reaction (anger, sadness, pain, or calm) to a retributive noise punishment. We compared the punishment intensity selected by the participant before and after seeing the offender's reaction. Seeing the opponent in pain reduced subsequent punishment most strongly, while displays of sadness and verbal indications of suffering had no appeasing effect. Expression of anger about a retributive punishment did not increase revenge seeking relative to a calm reaction, even when the anger response was disambiguated as being angry with the punisher. It is concluded that the expression of pain is the most effective emotional display for the reduction of retaliatory aggression. The findings are discussed in light of recent research on reactive aggression and retributive justice.
We examined whether a voluntary response becomes associated with the (affective) meaning of intended response effects. Four experiments revealed that coupling a keypress with positive or negative consequences produces affective compatibility effects when the keypress has to be executed in response to positively or negatively evaluated stimulus categories. In Experiment 1, positive words were evaluated faster with a keypress that turned the words ON (versus OFF), whereas negative words were evaluated faster with a keypress that turned the words OFF (versus ON). Experiment 2 showed that this compatibility effect is reversed if an aversive tone is turned ON and OFF with keypresses. Experiment 3 revealed that keypresses acquire an affective meaning even when the association between the responses and their effects is variable and intentionally reconfigured before each trial. Experiment 4 used affective response effects to assess implicit ingroup favoritism, showing that the measure is sensitive to the valence of categories and not to the valence of exemplars. Results support the hypothesis that behavioral reactions become associated with the affective meaning of the intended response goal, which has important implications for the understanding and construction of implicit attitude measures.
This paper addresses the question of how the brain maintains a probabilistic body state estimate over time from a modeling perspective. The neural Modular Modality Frame (nMMF) model simulates such a body state estimation process by continuously integrating redundant, multimodal body state information sources. The body state estimate itself is distributed over separate, but bidirectionally interacting modules. nMMF compares the incoming sensory and present body state information across the interacting modules and fuses the information sources accordingly. At the same time, nMMF enforces body state estimation consistency across the modules. nMMF is able to detect conflicting sensory information and to consequently decrease the influence of implausible sensor sources on the fly. In contrast to the previously published Modular Modality Frame (MMF) model, nMMF offers a biologically plausible neural implementation based on distributed, probabilistic population codes. Besides its neural plausibility, the neural encoding has the advantage of enabling (a) additional probabilistic information flow across the separate body state estimation modules and (b) the representation of arbitrary probability distributions of a body state. The results show that the neural estimates can detect and decrease the impact of false sensory information, can propagate conflicting information across modules, and can improve overall estimation accuracy due to additional module interactions. Even bodily illusions, such as the rubber hand illusion, can be simulated with nMMF. We conclude with an outlook on the potential of modeling human data and of invoking goal-directed behavioral control.
Brain–computer interfaces (BCI) often rely on visual stimulation and feedback. Potential end-users with impaired vision, however, cannot use these BCIs efficiently and require a non-visual alternative. Both auditory and tactile paradigms have been developed but are often not sufficiently fast or accurate. Thus, it is particularly relevant to investigate if and how users can train and improve performance. We report data from 29 healthy participants who trained with a 4-choice tactile P300-BCI during five sessions. To identify potential training factors, we pre-post assessed the robustness of the BCI performance against increased workload in a dual task condition and determined the participants’ somatosensory sensitivity thresholds with a forced-choice intensity discrimination task. Accuracy (M = 79.2% to 92.0%) and tactually evoked P300 amplitudes increased significantly, confirming successful training. Pre-post somatosensory sensitivity increased, and workload decreased significantly, but results of the dual task condition remained inconclusive. The present study confirmed the previously reported feasibility and trainability of our tactile BCI paradigm within a multi-session design. Importantly, we provide first evidence of improvement in the somatosensory system as a potential mediator for the observed training effects.
Tactile stimulation is less frequently used than visual for brain-computer interface (BCI) control, partly because of limitations in speed and accuracy. Non-visual BCI paradigms, however, may be required for patients who struggle with vision dependent BCIs because of a loss of gaze control. With the present study, we attempted to replicate earlier results by Herweg et al. (2016), with several minor adjustments and a focus on training effects and usability. We invited 16 healthy participants and trained them with a 4-class tactile P300-based BCI in five sessions. Their main task was to navigate a virtual wheelchair through a 3D apartment using the BCI. We found significant training effects on information transfer rate (ITR), which increased from a mean of 3.10–9.50 bits/min. Further, both online and offline accuracies significantly increased with training from 65% to 86% and 70% to 95%, respectively. We found only a descriptive increase of P300 amplitudes at Fz and Cz with training. Furthermore, we report subjective data from questionnaires, which indicated a relatively high workload and moderate to high satisfaction. Although our participants have not achieved the same high performance as in the Herweg et al. (2016) study, we provide evidence for training effects on performance with a tactile BCI and confirm the feasibility of the paradigm.
Assessment of emotional detachment in psychopathy via self-report and an emotion detection task
(2008)
The personality construct of psychopathy is subject of growing research, but data on psychopathy in female incarcerated and in non-institutionalized samples are rare. In this thesis emotional detachment as one factor of psychopathy is investigated in general population, in patients and in incarcerated samples. After verifying the validity of the Psychopathy Personality Inventory Revised (PPI-R) measuring emotional detachment, the sensitivity of the questionnaire concerning emotional detachment has been proven. Additionally it has been shown that symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder can be distinguished from psychopathic traits by emotional detachment. In addition, these results confirm the core role of the feature emotional detachment for psychopathy. Furthermore, two emotion recognition tasks have been conducted in a criminal female inpatients sample. Compared to the low psychopathic patients, the high psychopathic patients showed deficits in categorization only in shortly presented sad facial expressions, but rated emotional facial expressions as less arousing. These results point to emotional detachment as a core characteristic of psychopathy, and is specific even in non-incarcerated and female incarcerated samples. It can be measured with the PPI-R as well as with emotion detection tasks.
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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.
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Anhand eines geschichtlichen Rückblicks und einer Zusammenfassung jüngerer Emotionstheorien wird die Bedeutung der Emotionen für die Verhaltenstherapie abgeleitet. Die Ursprünge in der verhaltenstherapeutischen Angstbehandlung zeigen, daß für die Verhaltenstherapie seit ihrem Beginn die Veränderung von emotionalen Störungen eine zentrale Aufgabe war. Aus jüngeren Theorien zu diskreten Emotionen und deren Komponenten lassen sich diagnostische und therapeutische Zielrichtungen spezifizieren. Als Komponenten der Emotionen werden die Bewertung der Situation, physiologische Aktivierung, Motivierung, Handlungsvorbereitung, Signal zum Organismus und Signal zur Umgebung erläutert. Von den verschiedenen Funktionen der Emotionen sind die Funktion des Antriebs für unser Verhalten, die Funktion der Koppelung zwischen Reizen und Reaktionen und die verhaltenssteuernde Funktion für die Therapie besonders bedeutsam. Beispiele von verschiedenen Ansätzen auf der somatisch-physiologischen Ebene, der kognitiven Ebene und der Verhaltens-Ebene geben einen Einblick in die Möglichkeiten der Verhaltenstherapiefür die Veränderung negativer emotionaler Zustände. Nach der kognitiven Wende scheint die emotionale Wende in der Verhaltenstherapie angezeigt.
Kommunikation
(1983)
No abstract available