This doctoral dissertation aims at elucidating the development of hot and cool executive functions in middle childhood and at gaining insight about their role in childhood overweight. The dissertation is based on three empirical studies which have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Data from a large 3-year longitudinal study (the “PIER-study”) was used. The findings presented in the dissertation demonstrated that both hot and cool EF abilities increase during middle childhood. They also supported the notion that hot and cool EF facets are distinguishable from each other in middle childhood, that they have distinct developmental trajectories, and different predictors. Evidence was found for associations of hot and cool EF with body weight in middle childhood, which is in line with the notion that they might play a role in the self-regulation of eating and the multifactorial etiology of childhood overweight.

Objective: Childhood overweight is related to higher sensitivity for external food cues and less responsiveness towards internal satiety signals. Thus, cognitive psychological models assume an enhanced food attention bias underlying overeating behavior. Nevertheless, this question has only been sparsely investigated so far in younger children and it remains open whether restrained eating behavior plays a correlative role. Methods: The present study investigated this specific information processing bias for food relevant stimuli in 34 overweight children between 6 and 10 years and 34 normal weight children matched for age, sex and socioeconomic status. Children completed a computerized Food Picture Interference task that assessed reaction time interference effects towards high and low calorie food pictures. Level of hunger and restrained eating were assessed via self-report. Results: Results indicated that while finding no group difference in general processing speed or hunger level before the task, overweight children showed a higher attentional bias to food pictures than normal weight children. No effect of caloric density was found. However, surprisingly, the interference effect was negatively related to restrained eating in the overweight group only. Conclusion: The found hypersensitivity for food cues independent of calorie content in overweight children appears to be related to dysfunctional eating, so that future research should consider strategies for attentional retraining.

The present study investigated the attribution of responsibility to victims and perpetrators in rape compared to robbery cases in Turkey. Each participant read three short case scenarios (vignettes) and completed items pertaining to the female victim and male perpetrator. The vignettes were systematically varied with regard to the type of crime that was committed (rape or robbery), the perpetrator’s coercive strategy (physical force or exploiting the victim’s alcohol-induced defenselessness), and the victim-perpetrator relationship prior to the incident (stranger, acquaintance, or ex-partner). Furthermore, participant gender and acceptance of rape myths (beliefs that justify or trivialize sexual violence) were taken into account. One half of the participants completed the rape myth acceptance (RMA) scales first and then received the vignettes, while the other half were given the vignettes first and then completed the RMA scales. As expected, more blame was attributed to victims of rape than to victims of robbery. Conversely, perpetrators of rape were blamed less than perpetrators of robbery. The more participants endorsed rape myths, the more blame was attributed to the victim and the less blame was attributed to the perpetrators. Increasing levels of RMA were associated with an increase in victim blame (VB) in both rape and robbery cases, but the increase in rape VB was significantly more pronounced than in robbery VB. Increasing RMA was associated with an attenuation of perpetrator blame (PB) that was more pronounced for rape than for robbery cases, but the difference was not significant. As expected, victims of rape were blamed more when the perpetrator exploited their defenselessness due to alcohol intoxication than when they were overpowered by physical force. Contrary to the hypothesis, this was also true for robbery victims. Rape victims who knew their attacker (ex-partner or acquaintance) were blamed more than victims who were assaulted by strangers. Contrary to the hypothesis, robbery victims who were assaulted by an ex-partner were blamed more than acquaintance or stranger robbery victims. As predicted, the closer the relationship between victim and perpetrator, the less blame was attributed to perpetrators of rape while this factor had no effect on PB in robbery cases. Men compared to women attributed more blame to the victims and less blame to the perpetrators. As expected, these gender differences in blame attributions were partially mediated by gender differences in RMA: After RMA was taken into account, the gender differences disappeared nearly completely for VB and were significantly reduced in PB. The order of presentation of the vignettes and the RMA measures was systematically varied to test the causal influence of RMA on rape blame attributions. The hypothesis that RMA causes VB and PB in rape cases (as opposed to the other way around or both are caused by a third variable) was not supported. Possible reasons for this failed manipulation and its implications for the mediation model are discussed. With regard to blame attribution in rape cases, the present results match what was expected from previous studies which were mainly conducted in “Western” countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, or Germany. The present results support the notion that the victim-perpetrator relationship and the victim’s alcohol consumption are cross-culturally stable factors for blame attribution in rape cases. It was expected that blame attribution in robbery cases would be unaffected by the perpetrator’s coercive strategy and the victim-perpetrator relationship, but the results were inconsistent. One unexpected effect is particularly noteworthy: When the perpetrator used physical force, more blame was attributed to rape than to robbery victims, but intoxicated victims were blamed more and almost equally so for both types of crime. Perpetrators who exploited drunk victims were blamed less in both rape and robbery cases. These results contradict German results collected with the German version of the same instruments (Bieneck & Krahé, 2011). Turkey is a Muslim country and alcohol is surrounded by a certain taboo. Possibly, the results reflect a cultural difference in that intoxicated victims are generally blamed more for their victimization and this factor is not limited to rape cases.