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Mental health problems are highly prevalent worldwide. Fortunately, psychotherapy has proven highly effective in the treatment of a number of mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety disorders. In contrast, psychotherapy training as is practised currently cannot be considered evidence-based. Thus, there is much room for improvement. The integration of simulated patients (SPs) into psychotherapy training and research is on the rise. SPs originate from the medical education and have, in a number of studies, been demonstrated to contribute to effective learning environments. Nevertheless, there has been voiced criticism regarding the authenticity of SP portrayals, but few studies have examined this to date.
Based on these considerations, this dissertation explores SPs’ authenticity while portraying a mental disorder, depression. Altogether, the present cumulative dissertation consists of three empirical papers. At the time of printing, Paper I and Paper III have been accepted for publication, and Paper II is under review after a minor revision.
First, Paper I develops and validates an observer-based rating-scale to assess SP authenticity in psychotherapeutic contexts. Based on the preliminary findings, it can be concluded that the Authenticity of Patient Demonstrations scale is a reliable and valid tool that can be used for recruiting, training, and evaluating the authenticity of SPs.
Second, Paper II tests whether student SPs are perceived as more authentic after they receive an in-depth role-script compared to those SPs who only receive basic information on the patient case. To test this assumption, a randomised controlled study design was implemented and the hypothesis could be confirmed. As a consequence, when engaging SPs, an in-depth role-script with details, e.g. on nonverbal behaviour and feelings of the patient, should be provided.
Third, Paper III demonstrates that psychotherapy trainees cannot distinguish between trained SPs and real patients and therefore suggests that, with proper training, SPs are a promising training method for psychotherapy.
Altogether, the dissertation shows that SPs can be trained to portray a depressive patient authentically and thus delivers promising evidence for the further dissemination of SPs.
Early numeracy is one of the strongest predictors for later success in school mathematics (e.g., Duncan et al., 2007). The main goal of first grade mathematics teachers should therefore be to provide learning opportunities that enable all students to develop sound early numeracy skills. Developmental models, or learning progressions, can describe how early numerical understanding typically develops. Assessments that are aligned to empirically validated learning progressions can support teachers to understand their students learning better and target instruction accordingly. To date, there have been no progression-based instruments made available for German teachers to monitor their students’ progress in the domain of early numeracy. This dissertation contributes to the design of such an instrument. The first study analysed the suitability of early numeracy assessments currently used in German primary schools at school entry to identify students’ individual starting points for subsequent progress monitoring. The second study described the development of progression-based items and investigated the items in regards to main test quality criteria, such as reliability, validity, and test fairness, to find a suitable item pool to build targeted tests. The third study described the construction of the progress monitoring measure, referred to as the learning progress assessment (LPA). The study investigated the extent to which the LPA was able to monitor students’ individual learning progress in early numeracy over time. The results of the first study indicated that current school entry assessments were not able to provide meaningful information about the students’ initial learning status. Thus, the MARKO-D test (Ricken, Fritz, & Balzer, 2013) was used to determine the students’ initial numerical understanding in the other two studies, because it has been shown to be an effective measure of conceptual numerical understanding (Fritz, Ehlert, & Leutner, 2018). Both studies provided promising evidence for the quality of the LPA and its ability to detect changes in numerical understanding over the course of first grade. The studies of this dissertation can be considered an important step in the process of designing an empirically validated instrument that supports teachers to monitor their students’ early numeracy development and to adjust their teaching accordingly to enhance school achievement.
Eye movements serve as a window into ongoing visual-cognitive processes and can thus be used to investigate how people perceive real-world scenes. A key issue for understanding eye-movement control during scene viewing is the roles of central and peripheral vision, which process information differently and are therefore specialized for different tasks (object identification and peripheral target selection respectively). Yet, rather little is known about the contributions of central and peripheral processing to gaze control and how they are coordinated within a fixation during scene viewing. Additionally, the factors determining fixation durations have long been neglected, as scene perception research has mainly been focused on the factors determining fixation locations. The present thesis aimed at increasing the knowledge on how central and peripheral vision contribute to spatial and, in particular, to temporal aspects of eye-movement control during scene viewing. In a series of five experiments, we varied processing difficulty in the central or the peripheral visual field by attenuating selective parts of the spatial-frequency spectrum within these regions. Furthermore, we developed a computational model on how foveal and peripheral processing might be coordinated for the control of fixation duration. The thesis provides three main findings. First, the experiments indicate that increasing processing demands in central or peripheral vision do not necessarily prolong fixation durations; instead, stimulus-independent timing is adapted when processing becomes too difficult. Second, peripheral vision seems to play a prominent role in the control of fixation durations, a notion also implemented in the computational model. The model assumes that foveal and peripheral processing proceed largely in parallel and independently during fixation, but can interact to modulate fixation duration. Thus, we propose that the variation in fixation durations can in part be accounted for by the interaction between central and peripheral processing. Third, the experiments indicate that saccadic behavior largely adapts to processing demands, with a bias of avoiding spatial-frequency filtered scene regions as saccade targets. We demonstrate that the observed saccade amplitude patterns reflect corresponding modulations of visual attention. The present work highlights the individual contributions and the interplay of central and peripheral vision for gaze control during scene viewing, particularly for the control of fixation duration. Our results entail new implications for computational models and for experimental research on scene perception.
Most reading theories assume that readers aim at word centers for optimal information processing. During reading, saccade targeting turns out to be imprecise: Saccades’ initial landing positions often miss the word centers and have high variance, with an additional systematic error that is modulated by the distance from the launch site to the center of the target word. The performance of the oculomotor system, as reflected in the statistics of within-word landing positions, turns out to be very robust and mostly affected by the spatial information during reading. Hence, it is assumed that the saccade generation is highly automated.
The main goal of this thesis is to explore the performance of the oculomotor system under various reading conditions where orthographic information and the reading direction were manipulated. Additionally, the challenges in understanding the eye movement data to represent the oculomotor process during reading are addressed.
Two experimental studies and one simulation study were conducted for this thesis, which resulted in the following main findings:
(i) Reading texts with orthographic manipulations leads to specific changes in the eye movement patterns, both in temporal and spatial measures. The findings indicate that the oculomotor control of eye movements during reading is dependent on reading conditions (Chapter 2 & 3).
(ii) Saccades’ accuracy and precision can be simultaneously modulated under reversed reading condition, supporting the assumption that the random and systematic oculomotor errors are not independent. By assuming that readers increase the precision of sensory observation while maintaining the learned prior knowledge when reading direction was reversed, a process-oriented Bayesian model for saccade targeting can account for the simultaneous reduction of oculomotor errors (Chapter 2).
(iii) Plausible parameter values serving as proxies for the intended within-word landing positions can be estimated by using the maximum a posteriori estimator from Bayesian inference. Using the mean value of all observations as proxies is insufficient for studies focusing on the launch-site effect because the method exhibits the strongest bias when estimating the size of the effect. Mislocated fixations remain a challenge for the currently known estimation methods, especially when the systematic oculomotor error is large (Chapter 4).
The results reported in this thesis highlight the role of the oculomotor system, together with underlying cognitive processes, in eye movements during reading. The modulation of oculomotor control can be captured through a precise analysis of landing positions.
Despite the increased attention devoted to sexual aggression among young people in the international scientific literature, Brazil has little research on the subject exclusively among this group. There is evidence that sexual aggression and victimization may start early. Identifying the magnitude and factors that increase the chance for the onset and persistence of sexual victimization are the first steps for prevention efforts among this group. Using both cross-sectional and prospective analyses, this study examined the prevalence of, and vulnerability factors for sexual aggression and victimization in female and male college students (N = 742; M = 20.1 years) in Brazil, of whom a subgroup (n = 354) took part in two measurements six months apart. At Time 1, a Portuguese version of the Short Form of the Sexual Experiences Survey (Koss et al., 2007) was administered to collect information from men and women as both victims and perpetrators of sexual aggression since the age of 14. The students were also asked to provide information on their cognitive representations (sexual scripts) of a consensual sexual encounter, their actual sexual behavior, use of pornography, and experiences of child abuse. At Time 2, the same items from the SES were presented again to assess the incidence of sexual aggression in the 6-month period since T1. The overall prevalence rate of victimization was 27% among men and 29% among women. In contrast, perpetration rates were significantly higher among men (33.7%) than among women (3%). Confirming the hypotheses, cognitive (i.e., risky sexual scripts, normative beliefs), behavioral (i.e., pornography use, sexual behavior patterns) and biographical (i.e., childhood abuse) risk factors were linked to male sexual aggression and to male and female victimization both cross-sectionally and longitudinally with the path models analyses demonstrating good fit with the data. The results supported: a) the role of the sexual script for a first consensual sexual encounter as an underlying factor of real sexual behavior and sexual victimization or perpetration; b) the role of pornography as “inputs” for sexual scripts, increasing indirectly the risk for victimization, and directly and indirectly the risk for perpetration; c) the direct and indirect link between childhood experiences of (sexual) abuse and male sexual aggression and victimization mediated by sexual behavior; and d) the direct link between child sexual abuse and sexual victimization among women. Few gender differences were found in the victimization model. The findings challenge societal beliefs that sexual aggression is restricted to groups with low socio-economic status and that men are unlikely to be sexually coerced. The disparity between male victimization and female perpetration rates is discussed based on traditional gender roles in Brazil. This study is also the first prospective investigation of risk factors for sexual aggression and victimization in Brazil, demonstrating the role of behavioral, cognitive and biographical factors that increase the vulnerability among college students.
We live in an aging society. The change in demographic structures poses a number of challenges, including an increase in age-associated diseases. Delirium, dementia, and depression are considered to be of particular interest in the field of aging and mental health. A common theory regarding healthy aging and mental health is that the highest satisfaction and best performance is achieved when a person's abilities match the demands of their environment. In this context, the person's environment includes both the physical and the social environment. Based on this assumption, this dissertation focuses on the investigation of non-pharmacological interventions that modify environmental factors in order to facilitate the prevention and treatment of mental disorders in older patients and their caregivers. The first part of this dissertation consists of two publications and deals with the prevention of postoperative delirium in elderly patients. The PAWEL study investigated the use of a multimodal, non-pharmacological intervention in the routine care of patients aged 70 years or older undergoing elective surgery. The intervention included an interdepartmental delirium prevention team, daily use of seven manualized “best practice” procedures, structured staff training on delirium, and the adaptation of the hospital environment to the patients’ needs. The second part of the dissertation used a meta-analysis to investigate whether technology-based interventions are a suitable form of support for informal caregivers of people with dementia. Subgroup analyses were conducted to examine the effect of different types of technology on caregiver burden and depressive symptoms. The following main results were found: The PAWEL study showed that the use of a multimodal, non-pharmacological intervention resulted in a significantly lower incidence rate of postoperative delirium and reduced days with delirium in the intervention group compared to the control group. However, this difference could not be observed in the group of patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery. The results of the meta-analysis showed that technology-based interventions offer a promising alternative to traditional “face-to-face” services. Significant effect sizes could be found in relation to both the burden and the depressive symptoms of caregiving relatives. These results provide further important information on the significant impact of non-pharmacological interventions that modify environmental factors on mental health, and support the consideration of such interventions in the prevention and treatment of mental disorders in both older patients and their caregivers.
In an experimental study the attempt was made to examine the effects of the Reciprocal Teaching method on measures of metacognition and try to identify the effective features of this method that are necessary for the learning gains to occur. Reciprocal Teaching, originally developed by Palincsar and Brown (1984), is a very successful training program which was designed to improve student's reading comprehension skills by teaching them reading strategies. In the present study the tasks and responsibilities assumed by 5thgrade elementary students (N = 55) participating in a 16-session reading strategy training were varied systematically. Not only the students who participated in the training program in one of the three experimental conditions were compared with respect to knowledge and performance measures, but there was also a comparison to their control classmates who did not participate in strategy training (N = 86). Detailed analyses of video-taped sessions provided additional information. The strategy training was most beneficial for measures of knowledge and performance more closely related to the content of the training program, namely knowledge about specific reading strategies taught in training and application of those strategies. No significant effects were observed for more distal measures (general strategy knowledge, reading comprehension). As for the features of the program, it could be shown that students of the two experimental conditions where the students were responsible for giving each other feedback on performance (with respect to both content and strategy application) and guiding the correction of the answer outperformed both the experimental condition in which the trainer was responsible for those tasks and the control group. It is concluded that it is not merely the application of strategies, but the combination of strategy application with concurrent teaching and learning of metacognitive acquisition procedures (analysis, monitoring, evaluation, and regulation) in an inter-individual way as the precedent of these processes occurring intra-individually that seems to be an efficient way of acquiring metacognitive knowledge and skills. It was also shown that strategy training does not necessarily have to include the precise kind of interaction that characterizes the Reciprocal Teaching method. Instead, the tasks of monitoring, evaluating, and regulating other children's learning processes - i.e., tasks associated with the "teacher role" - are the ones that promote the acquisition of metacognitive knowledge and skills. Generally, any strategy training program that not only provides children with plentiful opportunities for practice, but also prompts them to engage in these kinds of metacognitive processes, may help children to acquire metacognitive knowledge and skills.
Many children struggle with reading for comprehension. Reading is a complex cognitive task depending on various sub-tasks, such as word decoding and building connections across sentences. The task of connecting sentences is guided by referential expressions. References, such as anaphoric noun phrases (Minky/the cat) or pronouns (Minky/she), signal to the reader how the protagonists of adjacent sentences are connected. Readers construct a coherent mental model of the text by resolving these references. Personal pronouns (he/she) in particular need to be resolved towards an appropriate antecedent before they can be fully understood. Pronoun resolution therefore is vital for successful text comprehension. The present thesis investigated children’s resolution of personal pronouns during natural reading as a possible source of reading comprehension difficulty. Three eye tracking studies investigated whether children aged 8-9 (Grade 3-4) resolve pronouns online during reading and how the varying information around the pronoun region influences children’s eye movement behavior.
The first study investigated whether children prefer a pronoun over a noun phrase when the antecedent is highly accessible. Children read three-sentence stories that introduced a protagonist (Mia) in the first sentence and a reference to this protagonist in one of the following sentences using either a repeated name (Mia) or a pronoun (she). For proficient readers, it was repeatedly shown that there is a preference for a pronoun over the name in these contexts, i.e., when the antecedent is salient. The first study tested the repeated name penalty effect in children using eye tracking. It was hypothesized that in contrast to proficient readers, the fluency of children’s reading processing profits from an overlapping word form (i.e., the repeated noun phrase) compared to a pronoun. This is because overlapping word forms allow for direct mapping, whereas pronouns have to be resolved towards their antecedent first.
The second study investigated children’s online processing of pronominal gender in a mismatch paradigm. Children read sentences in which the pronoun either was a gender-match to the antecedent or a gender-mismatch. Reading skill and reading fluency were also tested and related to children’s ability to detect a mismatching pronoun during reading.
The third study investigated the online processing of gender information on the pronoun and whether disambiguating gender information improves the accuracy of pronoun comprehension. Offline comprehension accuracy, that is the comprehension of the pronoun, was related to children’s online eye movement behavior. This study was conducted in a semi-longitudinal paradigm: 70 children were tested in Grade 3 (age 8) and again in Grade 4 (age 9) to investigate effects of age and reading skill on pronoun processing and comprehension.
The results of this thesis clearly show that children aged 8-9, when they are in the second half of primary school, struggle with the comprehension of pronouns in reading tasks. The responses to pronoun comprehension questions revealed that children have difficulties with the comprehension of a pronoun in the absence of a disambiguating gender cue, that is when they have to apply context information. When there is a gender cue to disambiguate the pronoun, children’s accuracy improves significantly. This is true for children in Grade 3, but also in Grade 4, albeit their overall resolution accuracy slightly improves with age.
The results from the analyses of eye movements suggest that the discourse accessibility of an antecedent does play a role in children’s processing of pronouns and repeated names. The repetition of a name does not facilitate children’s reading processing like it was anticipated. Similar to adults, children showed a penalty effect for the repeated name where a pronoun is expected. However, this does not mean that children’s processing of pronouns is always adult-like. The results from eye movement analyses in the pronoun region during sentence reading revealed significant individual differences related to children’s individual reading skill and reading fluency.
The results from the mismatch study revealed that reading fluency is associated with children’s detection of incongruent pronouns. All children had longer gaze durations at mismatching than matching pronouns, but only fluent readers among the children followed this up with a regression out of the pronoun region. This was interpreted as an attempt to gain processing time and “repair” the inconsistency. Reading fluency was therefore associated with detection of the mismatch, while less fluent readers did not see any mismatch between pronoun and antecedent. The eye movement pattern of the “detectors” is more adult-like and was interpreted as reflecting successful monitoring and attempted pronoun resolution.
Children differ considerably in their reading comprehension skill. The results of this thesis show that only skilled readers among the children use gender information online for pronoun resolution. They took more time to read the pronoun when there was disambiguating gender information that was useful to resolve the pronoun, in contrast to the less skilled readers. Age was a less important factor in pronoun resolution processes and comprehension than were reading skill and reading fluency. Taken together, this suggests that the good readers direct cognitive resources towards pronoun resolution when the pronoun can be resolved, which is a successful comprehension strategy. Moreover, there was evidence that reading skill is a relevant factor in this task but not age.
The contribution of the present thesis is a depiction of the specific eye movement patterns that are related to successful and unsuccessful attempts at pronoun resolution in children. Eye movement behavior in the pronoun area is related to children’s reading skill and fluency. The results of this thesis suggest that many children do not resolve pronouns spontaneously during sentence reading, which is likely detrimental to their reading comprehension in more complex reading materials. The present thesis informs our understanding of the challenge that pronoun resolution poses for beginning readers, and gives new impulses for the study of higher-order reading processes in children’s natural reading.
Background: The concept self-compassion (SC), a special way of being compassionate with oneself while dealing with stressful life circumstances, has attracted increasing attention in research over the past two decades. Research has already shown that SC has beneficial effects on affective well-being and other mental health outcomes. However, little is known in which ways SC might facilitate our affective well-being in stressful situations. Hence, a central concern of this dissertation was to focus on the question which underlying processes might influence the link between SC and affective well-being. Two established components in stress processing, which might also play an important role in this context, could be the amount of experienced stress and the way of coping with a stressor. Thus, using a multi-method approach, this dissertation aimed at finding to which extent SC might help to alleviate the experienced stress and promotes the use of more salutary coping, while dealing with stressful circumstances. These processes might ultimately help improve one’s affective well-being. Derived from that, it was hypothesized that more SC is linked to less perceived stress and intensified use of salutary coping responses. Additionally, it was suggested that perceived stress and coping mediate the relation between SC and affective well-being.
Method: The research questions were targeted in three single studies and one meta-study. To test my assumptions about the relations of SC and coping in particular, a systematic literature search was conducted resulting in k = 136 samples with an overall sample size of N = 38,913. To integrate the z-transformed Pearson correlation coefficients, random-effects models were calculated. All hypotheses were tested with a three-wave cross-lagged design in two short-term longitudinal online studies assessing SC, perceived stress and coping responses in all waves. The first study explored the assumptions in a student sample (N = 684) with a mean age of 27.91 years over a six-week period, whereas the measurements were implemented in the GESIS Panel (N = 2934) with a mean age of 52.76 years analyzing the hypotheses in a populationbased sample across eight weeks. Finally, an ambulatory assessment study was designed to expand the findings of the longitudinal studies to the intraindividual level. Thus, a sample of 213 participants completed questionnaires of momentary SC, perceived stress, engagement and disengagement coping, and affective well-being on their smartphones three times per day over seven consecutive days. The data was processed using 1-1-1 multilevel mediation analyses.
Results: Results of the meta-analysis indicated that higher SC is significantly associated with more use of engagement coping and less use of disengagement coping. Considering the relations between SC and stress processing variables in all three single studies, cross-lagged paths from the longitudinal data, as well as multilevel modeling paths from the ambulatory assessment data indicated a notable relation between all relevant stress variables. As expected, results showed a significant negative relation between SC and perceived stress and disengagement coping, as well as a positive connection with engagement coping responses at the dispositional and intra-individual level. However, considering the mediational hypothesis, the most promising pathway in the link between SC and affective well-being turned out to be perceived stress in all three studies, while effects of the mediational pathways through coping responses were less robust.
Conclusion: Thus, a more self-compassionate attitude and higher momentary SC, when needed in specific situations, can help to engage in effective stress processing. Considering the underlying mechanisms in the link between SC and affective well-being, stress perception in particular seemed to be the most promising candidate for enhancing affective well-being at the dispositional and at the intraindividual level. Future research should explore the pathways between SC and affective well-being in specific contexts and samples, and also take into account additional influential factors.
Traditionally, mental disorders have been identified based on specific symptoms and standardized diagnostic systems such as the DSM-5 and ICD-10. However, these symptom-based definitions may only partially represent neurobiological and behavioral research findings, which could impede the development of targeted treatments. A transdiagnostic approach to mental health research, such as the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach, maps resilience and broader aspects of mental health to associated components. By investigating mental disorders in a transnosological way, we can better understand disease patterns and their distinguishing and common factors, leading to more precise prevention and treatment options.
Therefore, this dissertation focuses on (1) the latent domain structure of the RDoC approach in a transnosological sample including healthy controls, (2) its domain associations to disease severity in patients with anxiety and depressive disorders, and (3) an overview of the scientific results found regarding Positive (PVS) and Negative Valence Systems (NVS) associated with mood and anxiety disorders.
The following main results were found: First, the latent RDoC domain structure for PVS and NVS, Cognitive Systems (CS), and Social Processes (SP) could be validated using self-report and behavioral measures in a transnosological sample. Second, we found transdiagnostic and disease-specific associations between those four domains and disease severity in patients with depressive and anxiety disorders. Third, the scoping review showed a sizable amount of RDoC research conducted on PVS and NVS in mood and anxiety disorders, with research gaps for both domains and specific conditions.
In conclusion, the research presented in this dissertation highlights the potential of the transnosological RDoC framework approach in improving our understanding of mental disorders. By exploring the latent RDoC structure and associations with disease severity and disease-specific and transnosological associations for anxiety and depressive disorders, this research provides valuable insights into the full spectrum of psychological functioning. Additionally, this dissertation highlights the need for further research in this area, identifying both RDoC indicators and research gaps. Overall, this dissertation represents an important contribution to the ongoing efforts to improve our understanding and the treatment of mental disorders, particularly within the commonly comorbid disease spectrum of mood and anxiety disorders.
Numerous recent publications on the psychological meaning of “if” have proposed a probabilistic interpretation of conditional sentences. According to the proponents of probabilistic approaches, sentences like “If the weather is nice, I will be at the beach tomorrow” (or “If p, then q” in the abstract version) express a high probability of the consequent (being at the beach), given the antecedent (nice weather). When people evaluate conditional sentences, they assumingly do so by deriving the conditional probability P(q|p) using a procedure called the Ramsey test. This is a contradicting view to the hitherto dominant Mental Model Theory (MMT, Johnson-Laird, 1983), that proposes conditional sentences refer to possibilities in the world that are represented in form of mental models. Whereas probabilistic approaches gained a lot of momentum in explaining the interpretation of conditionals, there is still no conclusive probabilistic account of conditional reasoning. This thesis investigates the potential of a comprehensive probabilistic account on conditionals that covers the interpretation of conditionals as well as conclusion drawn from these conditionals when used as a premise in an inference task. The first empirical chapter of this thesis, Chapter 2, implements a further investigation of the interpretation of conditionals. A plain version of the Ramsey test as proposed by Evans and Over (2004) was tested against a similarity sensitive version of the Ramsey test (Oberauer, 2006) in two experiments using variants of the probabilistic truth table task (Experiments 2.1 and 2.2). When it comes to decide whether an instance is relevant for the evaluation of a conditional, similarity seems to play a minor role. Once the decision about relevance is made, believability judgments of the conditional seem to be unaffected by the similarity manipulation and judgments are based on frequency of instances, in the way predicted by the plain Ramsey test. In Chapter 3 contradicting predictions of the probabilistic approaches on conditional reasoning of Verschueren et al (2005), Evans and Over (2004) and Oaksford & Chater (2001) are tested against each other. Results from the probabilistic truth table task modified for inference tasks supports the account of Oaksford and Chater (Experiment 3.1). A learning version of the task and a design with every day conditionals yielded results unpredicted by any of the theories (Experiments 3.2-3.4). Based on these results, a new probabilistic 2-stage model of conditional reasoning is proposed. To preclude claims that the use of the probabilistic truth table task (or variants thereof) favors judgments reflecting conditional probabilities, Chapter 4 combines methodologies used by proponents of the MMT with the probabilistic truth table task. In three Experiments (4.1 -4.3) it could be shown for believability judgments of the conditional and inferences drawn from it, that causal information about counterexamples only prevails, when no frequencies of exceptional cases are present. Experiment 4.4 extends these findings to every day conditionals. A probabilistic estimation process based on frequency information is used to explain results on all tasks. The findings confirm with a probabilistic approach on conditionals and moreover constitute an explanatory challenge for the MMT. In conclusion of all the evidence gathered in this dissertation it seems justified to draw the picture of a comprehensive probabilistic view on conditionals quite optimistically. Probability estimates not only explain the believability people assign to a conditional sentence, they also explain to what extend people are willing to draw conclusions from those sentences.
The primary focus on the present study was to identify early risk factors for infant aggression in a sample of high risk, low-income teenager mothers and their infants. Despite the amount of research on externalizing behavior, relatively little is known about its development in early childhood. Because chronically aggressive school-age children tend to be those who first display symptoms during preschool years, an examination of the early manifestations of aggressive behavior and the development of measurements for infants is needed. The present study explored a model of infant aggression development that emphasized infant aggression developing largely through the interaction of infant′s dispositional characteristics with their caregiving environment. The study addressed the following relations: (1) Maternal psychosocial functioning with reported and observed infant aggression and negative emotionality, (2) reported measurements of infant aggression and negative emotionality with observed infant measurements of infant aggression and negative emotionality, (3) infant negative emotionality and infant aggression, (4) infant emotion regulation with infant aggression and negative emotionality, (5) the interaction between emotion regulation and negative emotionality in relation to infant aggression, and (6) attachment classification with infant aggression and negative emotionality. Finally, the question of whether these six relations would differ by gender was also addressed. Maternal psychosocial functioning was assessed with self-reported measurements. Infant aggression, negative emotionality and emotion regulation were measured during two standardized assessments, the Strange Situation and the Bayley Scales of Infant Development Assessment and maternal reported with the Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment. Several interesting findings emerged. One of the main findings concerned maternal attribution and its possible role as a risk factor for later externalizing behaviors. That is, mothers, especially depressed and stressed mothers, tended to report higher levels of infant aggression and negative emotionality than was noted by more objective observers. This tendency was particularly evident in mothers with girl infants. Another important finding concerned emotion regulation. Even at this early age, clear differences in emotion regulation could be seen. Interestingly, infants with high negative emotionality and low emotion regulation were observed to be the most aggressive. Also significant relations emerged for infant negative emotionality and aggression and vise versa. Thus, for purposes of treatment and scientific study, the three constructs (emotion regulation, negative emotionality, and aggression) should be considered in combination. Investigating each alone may not prove fruitful in future examinations. Additionally, different emotion regulation behaviors were observed for girl and boy infants. Aggressive girls looked more at the environment, their toys and their mother, whereas aggressive boys looked less at the environment and their mother and explored their toys more, although looked at the toys less. Although difficult to interpret at this point, it is nonetheless interesting that gender differences exist at this young age in emotion regulatory behaviors. In conclusion, although preliminary, findings from the present study provide intriguing directions for future research. More studies need to conducted focusing on infant aggression, as well as longitudinal studies following the infants over time.
Trying to do two things at once decreases performance of one or both tasks in many cases compared to the situation when one performs each task by itself. The present thesis deals with the question why and in which cases these dual-task costs emerge and moreover, whether there are cases in which people are able to process two cognitive tasks at the same time without costs. In four experiments the influence of stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility, S-R modality pairings, interindividual differences, and practice on parallel processing ability of two tasks are examined. Results show that parallel processing is possible. Nevertheless, dual-task costs emerge when: the personal processing strategy is serial, the two tasks have not been practiced together, S-R compatibility of both tasks is low (e.g. when a left target has to be responded with a right key press and in the other task an auditorily presented “A” has to be responded by saying “B”), and modality pairings of both tasks are Non Standard (i.e., visual-spatial stimuli are responded vocally whereas auditory-verbal stimuli are responded manually). Results are explained with respect to executive-based (S-R compatibility) and content-based crosstalk (S-R modality pairings) between tasks. Finally, an alternative information processing account with respect to the central stage of response selection (i.e., the translation of the stimulus to the response) is presented.
Meter and syntax have overlapping elements in music and speech domains, and individual differences have been documented in both meter perception and syntactic comprehension paradigms. Previous evidence insinuated but never fully explored the relationship that metrical structure has to syntactic comprehension, the comparability of these processes across music and language domains, and the respective role of individual differences. This dissertation aimed to investigate neurocognitive entrainment to meter in music and language, the impact that neurocognitive entrainment had on syntactic comprehension, and whether individual differences in musical expertise, temporal perception and working memory played a role during these processes.
A theoretical framework was developed, which linked neural entrainment, cognitive entrainment, and syntactic comprehension while detailing previously documented effects of individual differences on meter perception and syntactic comprehension. The framework was developed in both music and language domains and was tested using behavioral and EEG methods across three studies (seven experiments). In order to satisfy empirical evaluation of neurocognitive entrainment and syntactic aspects of the framework, original melodies and sentences were composed. Each item had four permutations: regular and irregular metricality, based on the hierarchical organization of strong and weak notes and syllables, and preferred and non-preferred syntax, based on structurally alternate endings. The framework predicted — for both music and language domains — greater neurocognitive entrainment in regular compared to irregular metricality conditions, and accordingly, better syntactic integration in regular compared to irregular metricality conditions. Individual differences among participants were expected for both entrainment and syntactic processes.
Altogether, the dissertation was able to support a holistic account of neurocognitive entrainment to musical meter and its subsequent influence on syntactic integration of melodies, with musician participants. The theoretical predictions were not upheld in the language domain with musician participants, but initial behavioral evidence in combination with previous EEG evidence suggest that perhaps non-musician language EEG data would support the framework’s predictions. Musicians’ deviation from hypothesized results in the language domain were suspected to reflect heightened perception of acoustic features stemming from musical training, which caused current ‘overly’ regular stimuli to distract the cognitive system. The individual-differences approach was vindicated by the surfacing of two factors scores, Verbal Working Memory and Time and Pitch Discrimination, which in turn correlated with multiple experimental data across the three studies.
An exploration of activity and therapist preferences and their predictors in German-speaking samples
(2023)
According to current definitions of evidence-based practice, patients’ preferences play an important role for the psychotherapeutic process and outcomes. However, whereas a significant body of research investigated preferences regarding specific treatments, research on preferred activities or therapist characteristics is rare, investigated heterogeneous aspects with inconclusive results, lacked validated assessment tools, and neglected relevant preferences, their predictors as well as the perspective of mental health professionals. Therefore, the three studies of this dissertation aimed to address the most fundamental drawbacks in current preference research by providing a validated questionnaire, focus efforts on activity and therapist preferences and add preferences of psychotherapy trainees. To this end, Paper I reports the translation and validation of the 18-item Cooper-Norcross Inventory of Preference (C-NIP) in a broad, heterogeneous sample of N = 969 laypeople, resulting in good to acceptable reliabilities and first evidence of validity. However, the original factor structure was not replicated. Paper II assesses activity preferences of psychotherapists in training using the C-NIP and compares them with the initial laypeople sample. There were significant differences between both samples, with trainees preferring a more patient-directed, emotionally intense and confrontational approach than laypeople. CBT trainees preferred a more therapist-directed, present-focused, challenging and less emotional intense approach than psychodynamic or -analytic trainees. Paper III explores therapist preferences and tests predictors for specific preference choices. For most characteristics, more than half of the participants did not have specific preferences. Results pointed towards congruency effects (i.e., preference for similar characteristics), especially for members of marginalized groups. The dissertation provides both researchers and practitioners with a validated questionnaire, shows potentially obstructive differences between patients and therapists and underlines the importance of therapist characteristics for marginalized groups, thereby laying the foundation for future applications and implementations in research and practice.
Teacher self-efficacy is highly relevant for effective teaching, student academic development, and teachers’ wellbeing, as theoretical work (Bandura, 1997; Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998) and empirical studies (i.e., Burić & Kim, 2020; Klassen & Chiu, 2010; van Uden et al., 2013) have shown associations with effective classroom management, student support, student motivation, and teachers’ job satisfaction. Given the importance of teacher self-efficacy for teaching and learning, it is interesting to note that existing research is limited in several aspects – first, longitudinal studies on the relations between teacher self-efficacy and student academic outcomes are widely missing; second, empirical studies often assess teacher self-efficacy as a one-dimensional construct, neglecting its multidimensional character; third, studies often only focus on either the students’ or the teachers’ perspective on teaching and thus do not include simultaneously multiple sources of information on teaching practices as a consequence of teacher self-efficacy; fourth, research often does not systematically consider the effects of teacher self-efficacy on students’ academic outcomes at both the group and individual level. Against this backdrop, this dissertation presents three longitudinal studies that aim to contribute to a more detailed perspective on teacher self-efficacy by examining systematically and longitudinally the relations between multiple dimensions of teacher self-efficacy and theoretically aligned teaching quality facets as perceived by teachers and students, as well as their relations to students’ motivational-affective outcomes – more concretely, their relations to students’ interest, enjoyment, and self-efficacy in a multi-level analysis approach. Study 1 examines the longitudinal relations between teacher self-efficacy for classroom management and student-perceived monitoring and social relatedness, and investigates whether the two student-reported teaching dimensions explain the relations between teacher self-efficacy for classroom management and student enjoyment using multi-level analyses. Study 2 examines longitudinally how teacher self-efficacy for student engagement relates to student interest through student- and teacher-perceived emotional support. Also, including student and teacher perspectives on teaching, Study 3 examines the longitudinal relations between specific facets of teacher self-efficacy for classroom management and classroom discipline, teacher self-efficacy for instructional strategies and cognitive activation, teacher self-efficacy for student engagement and competence support, teacher self-efficacy for emotional support and social relatedness, as well as teacher self-efficacy for student-oriented teaching and learning goal-oriented instruction with students’ enjoyment and self-efficacy. Furthermore, in Studies 2 and 3 the cross-level mediation effects of longitudinal relations with teacher self-efficacy on student motivational-affective characteristics via teaching practices are examined in order to address the lack of empirical studies disentangling the relations for specifically individual- vs. group-level effects. The limitations and implications are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical relevance for school practice, teacher education, and teacher training.
Value education of youth
(2002)
The value priorities of students and teachers were measured at eight different schools at the beginning and the end of the school year 2000/2001. This study once again confirmed the theoretical model of a universal structure of human values (Schwartz, 1992). At both measurement times, similar gender differences, as well as positive correlations between religiosity and school commitment were found. The students from the non-religious schools determined Hedonism as their highest, and Tradition as their lowest value priority. In the religious schools, Benevolence and Self-Direction were the highest values, whereas Power was found to be the lowest value priority. The change of the values Conformity, Hedonism, and Universalism was predicted both through the students′ religiosity and their type of school. The change of the values Power, Tradition, Benevolence, and Achievement, however, was mainly predicted through their religiosity. In three out of four schools the student-teacher similarity correlated positively with the school commitment of the students. Across all schools student-teacher similarity correlated positively with academic achievement.
When we read a text, we obtain information at different levels of representation from abstract symbols. A reader’s ultimate aim is the extraction of the meaning of the words and the text. The reserach of eye movements in reading covers a broad range of psychological systems, ranging from low-level perceptual and motor processes to high-level cognition. Reading of skilled readers proceeds highly automatic, but is a complex phenomenon of interacting subprocesses at the same time. The study of eye movements during reading offers the possibility to investigate cognition via behavioral measures during the excercise of an everyday task. The process of reading is not limited to the directly fixated (or foveal) word but also extends to surrounding (or parafoveal) words, particularly the word to the right of the gaze position. This process may be unconscious, but parafoveal information is necessary for efficient reading. There is an ongoing debate on whether processing of the upcoming word encompasses word meaning (or semantics) or only superficial features. To increase the knowledge about how the meaning of one word helps processing another word, seven experiments were conducted. In these studies, words were exachanged during reading. The degree of relatedness between the word to the right of the currently fixated one and the word subsequently fixated was experimentally manipulated. Furthermore, the time course of the parafoveal extraction of meaning was investigated with two different approaches, an experimental one and a statistical one. As a major finding, fixation times were consistently lower if a semantically related word was presented compared to the presence of an unrelated word. Introducing an experimental technique that allows controlling the duration for which words are available, the time course of processing and integrating meaning was evaluated. Results indicated both facilitation and inhibition due to relatedness between the meanings of words. In a more natural reading situation, the effectiveness of the processing of parafoveal words was sometimes time-dependent and substantially increased with shorter distances between the gaze position and the word. Findings are discussed with respect to theories of eye-movement control. In summary, the results are more compatible with models of distributed word processing. The discussions moreover extend to language differences and technical issues of reading research.
In this thesis, deficits in theory of mind (ToM) and executive function (EF) were examined in tandem and separately as risk factors for conduct problems, including different forms and functions of aggressive behavior. All three reported studies and the additional analyses were based on a large community sample of N = 1,657 children, including three waves of a longitudinal study covering middle childhood and the transition to early adolescence (range 6 to 13 years) over a total of about three years. All data were analyzed with structural equation modeling.
Altogether, the results of all the conducted studies in this thesis extend previous research and confirm the propositions of the SIP model (Crick & Dodge, 1994) and of the amygdala theory of violent behavior (e.g., Blair et al., 2014) besides other accounts. Considering the three main research questions, the results of the thesis suggest first that deficits in ToM are a risk factor for relational and physical aggression from a mean age of 8 to 11 years under the control of stable between-person differences in aggression. In addition, earlier relationally aggressive behavior predicts later deficits in ToM in this age range, which confirms transactional relations between deficits in ToM and aggressive behavior in children (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Further, deficits in ToM seem to be a risk factor for parent-rated conduct problems cross-sectionally in an age range from 9 to 13 years. Second, deficits in cool EF are a risk factor for later physical, relational, and reactive aggression but not for proactive aggression over a course of three years from middle childhood to early adolescence. Habitual anger seems to mediate the relation between cool EF and physical, and as a trend also relational, aggression. Deficits in emotional and inhibitory control and planning have a direct effect on the individual level of conduct problems under the control of interindividual differences in conduct problems at a mean age of 8 years, but not on the trajectory of conduct problems over the course from age 8 to 11. Third, when deficits in cool EF and ToM are studied in tandem cross-sectionally at the transition from middle childhood to early adolescence, deficits in cool EF seem to play only an indirect role through deficits in ToM as a risk factor for conduct problems. Finally, all results hold equal for females and males in the conducted studies.
The results of this thesis emphasize the need to intervene in the transactional processes between deficits in ToM and in EF and conduct problems, including different forms and functions of aggression, particularly in the socially sensible period from middle and late childhood to early adolescence.
Background: Aggression is a severe behavioral problem that interferes with many developmental challenges individuals face in middle childhood and adolescence. Particularly in the peer and in the academic domain, aggression inhibits the individual from making important learning experiences that are predictive for a healthy transition into adulthood. Furthermore, the resulting developmental deficits have the propensity to feedback and to promote aggression at later developmental stages. The aim of the present PhD thesis was to investigate pathways and processes involved in the etiology of aggression by examining the interrelation between multiple developmental problems in the peer and in the academic domain. More specifically, the relevance of affiliation with deviant peers as a driving mechanism for the development of aggression, factors promoting the affiliation with deviant peers (social rejection; academic failure), and mechanisms by which affiliation with deviant peers leads to aggression (external locus of control) were investigated.
Method: The research questions were addressed by three studies. Three data waves were available for the first study, the second and third study were based on two data waves. The first study specified pathways to antisocial behavior by investigating the temporal interrelation between social rejection, academic failure, and affiliation with deviant peers in a sample of 1,657 male and female children and adolescents aged between 6 and 15 years. The second study examined the role of external control beliefs as a potential mediator in the link between affiliation with deviant peers and aggression in a sample of 1,466 children and adolescents in the age of 9 to 19 years, employing a half-longitudinal design. The third study aimed to expand the findings of Study 1 and Study 2 by examining the differential predictivity of combinations of developmental risks for different functions of aggression, using a sample of 1,479 participants in the age between 9 and 19 years. First, profiles of social rejection, academic failure, and affiliation with deviant peers were identified, using latent profile analysis. Second, prospective pathways between risk-profiles and reactive and proactive aggression were investigated, using latent path analysis.
Results: The first study revealed that antisocial behavior at T1 was associated with social rejection and academic failure at T2. Both mechanisms promoted affiliation with deviant peers at the same data wave, which predicted deviancy at T3. Furthermore, both an indirect pathway via social rejection and affiliation with deviant peers and an indirect pathway via academic failure and affiliation with deviant peers significantly mediated the link between antisocial behavior at the first and the third data wave. Additionally, the proposed pathways generalized across genders and different age groups. The second study yielded that external control beliefs significantly mediated the link between affiliation with deviant peers and aggression, with affiliation with deviant peers at T1 predicting external control beliefs at T2 and external control beliefs at T1 predicting aggressive behavior at T2. Again, the analyses provided no evidence for gender and age specific variations in the proposed pathways. In the third study, three distinct risk groups were identified, made up of a large non-risk group, with low scores on all risk measures, a group characterized by high scores on social rejection (SR group), and a group with the highest scores on measures of affiliation with deviant peers and academic failure (APAF group). Importantly, risk group membership was differentially associated with reactive and proactive aggression. Only membership in the SR group at T1 was associated with the development of reactive aggression at T2 and only membership in the APAF group at T1 predicted proactive aggression at T2. Additionally, proactive aggression at T1 predicted membership in the APAF group at T2, indicating a reciprocal relationship between both constructs.
Conclusion: The results demonstrated that aggression causes severe behavioral deficits in social and academic domains which promote future aggression by increasing individuals’ tendency to affiliate with deviant peers. The stimulation of external control beliefs provides an explanation for deviant peers’ effect on the progression and intensification of aggression. Finally, multiple developmental risks were shown to co-occur within individuals and to be differentially predictive of reactive and proactive aggression. The findings of this doctoral dissertation have possible implications for the conceptualization of prevention and intervention programs aimed to reduce aggression in middle childhood and adolescence.
BACKGROUND: Aggressive behavior at an early age is linked to a broad range of psychosocial problems in later life. That is why risk factors of the occurrence and the development of aggression have been examined for a long time in psychological science. The present doctoral dissertation aims to expand this research by investigating risk factors in three intrapersonal domains using the prominent social-information processing approach by Crick and Dodge (1994) as a framework model. Anger regulation was examined as an affective, theory of mind as a cognitive, and physical attractiveness as an appearance-related developmental factor of aggression in middle childhood. An additional goal of this work was to develop and validate a behavioral observation assessment of anger regulation as past research lacked in ecologically valid measures of anger regulation that are applicable for longitudinal studies.
METHODS: Three empirical studies address the aforementioned intrapersonal risk factors. In each study, data from the PIER-project were used, a three-wave-longitudinal study covering three years with a total sample size of 1,657 children in the age between 6 and 11 years (at the first measurement point). The central constructs were assessed via teacher-reports (aggression), behavioral observation (anger regulation), computer tests (theory of mind), and independent ratings (physical attractiveness). The predictive value of each proposed risk factor for the development of aggressive behavior was examined via structural equation modeling.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The newly developed behavioral observation measure was found to be a reliable and valid tool to assess anger regulation in middle childhood, but limited in capturing a full range of relevant regulation strategies. That might be the reason, why maladaptive anger regulation was not found to function as a risk factor of subsequent aggressive behavior. However, children’s deficits in theory of mind and a low level in physical attractiveness significantly predicted later aggression. Problematic peer relationships were identified as underlying the link between low attractiveness and aggression. Thus, fostering children’s skills in theory of mind and their ability to call existing beliefs about the nature of more versus less attractive individuals into question may be important starting points for the prevention of aggressive behavior in middle childhood.
Reading is a complex cognitive task based on the analyses of visual stimuli. Due to the physiology of the eye, only a small number of letters around the fixation position can be extracted with high visual acuity, while the visibility of words and letters outside this so-called foveal region quickly drops with increasing eccentricity. As a consequence, saccadic eye movements are needed to repeatedly shift the fovea to new words for visual word identification during reading. Moreover, even within a foveated word fixation positions near the word center are superior to other fixation positions for efficient word recognition (O’Regan, 1981; Brysbaert, Vitu, and Schroyens, 1996). Thus, most reading theories assume that readers aim specifically at word centers during reading (for a review see Reichle, Rayner, & Pollatsek, 2003). However, saccades’ landing positions within words during reading are in fact systematically modulated by the distance of the launch site from the word center (McConkie, Kerr, Reddix, & Zola, 1988). In general, it is largely unknown how readers identify the center of upcoming target words and there is no computational model of the sensorimotor translation of the decision for a target word into spatial word center coordinates. Here we present a series of three studies which aim at advancing the current knowledge about the computation of saccade target coordinates during saccade planning in reading. Based on a large corpus analyses, we firstly identified word skipping as a further factor beyond the launch-site distance with a likewise systematic and surprisingly large effect on within-word landing positions. Most importantly, we found that the end points of saccades after skipped word are shifted two and more letters to the left as compared to one-step saccades (i.e., from word N to word N+1) with equal launch-site distances. Then we present evidence from a single saccade experiment suggesting that the word-skipping effect results from highly automatic low-level perceptual processes, which are essentially based on the localization of blank spaces between words. Finally, in the third part, we present a Bayesian model of the computation of the word center from primary sensory measurements of inter-word spaces. We demonstrate that the model simultaneously accounts for launch-site and saccade-type contingent modulations of within-word landing positions in reading. Our results show that the spatial saccade target during reading is the result of complex estimations of the word center based on incomplete sensory information, which also leads to specific systematic deviations of saccades’ landing positions from the word center. Our results have important implications for current reading models and experimental reading research.
The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the developmental dynamics between interest, motivation, and learning strategy use during physics learning. The target population was lower secondary school students from a developing country, given that there is hardly in research that studies the above domain-specific concepts in the context of developing countries. The aim was addressed in four parts.
The first part of the study was guided by three objectives: (a) to adapt and validate the Science Motivation Questionnaire (SMQ-II) for the Ugandan context; (b) to examine whether there are significant differences in motivation for learning Physics with respect to students’ gender; and (c) to establish the extent to which students’ interest predicts their motivation to learn Physics. Being a pilot study, the sample comprised 374 randomly selected students from five schools in central Uganda who responded to anonymous questionnaires that included scales from the SMQ-II and the Individual Interest Questionnaire. Data were analysed using confirmatory factor analyses, t-tests and structural equation modelling in SPSS-25 and Mplus-8. The five-factor model solution of the SMQ-II fitted adequately with the study data, with deletion of one item. The modified SMQ-II exhibited invariant factor loadings and intercepts (i.e., strong measurement invariance) when administered to boys and girls. Furthermore, on assessing whether motivation for learning Physics varied with gender, no significant differences were noted. On assessing the predictive effects of individual interest on students’ motivation, individual interest significantly predicted all motivational constructs, with stronger predictive strength on students’ self-efficacy and self-determination in learning Physics.
In the second part whilst using comprised 934 Grade 9 students from eight secondary schools in Uganda, Latent profile analysis (LPA) - a person-centred approach was used to investigate motivation patterns that exist in lower secondary school students during physics learning. A three-step approach to LPA was used to answer three research questions: RQ1, which profiles of secondary school students exist with regards to their motivation for Physics learning; RQ2, are there differences in students’ cognitive learning strategies in the identified profiles; and RQ3, does students’ gender, attitudes, and individual interest predict membership in these profiles? Six motivational profiles were identified: (i) low-quantity motivation profile (101 students; 10.8%); (ii) moderate-quantity motivation profile (246 students; 26.3%); (iii) high-quantity motivation profile (365 students; 39.1%); (iv) primarily intrinsically motivated profile (60 students,6.4%); (v) mostly extrinsically motivated profile (88 students, 9.4%); and (vi) grade-introjected profile (74 students, 7.9%). Low-quantity and grade introjected motivated students mostly used surface learning strategies whilst the high-quantity and primarily intrinsically motivated students used deep learning strategies. On examining the predictive effect of gender, individual interest, and students’ attitudes on the profile membership, unlike gender, individual interest and students’ attitudes towards Physics learning strongly predicted profile membership.
In the third part of the study, the occurrence of different secondary school learner profiles depending on their various combinations of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategy use, as well as their differences in perceived autonomy support, intrinsic motivation, and gender was examined. Data were collected from 576 9th grade student. Four learner profiles were identified: competent strategy user, struggling user, surface-level learner, and deep-level learner profiles. Gender differences were noted in students’ use of elaboration and organization strategies to learn Physics, in favour of girls. In terms of profile memberships, significant differences in gender, intrinsic motivation and perceived autonomy support were also noted. Girls were 2.4 - 2.7 times more likely than boys to be members of the competent strategy user and surface-level learner profiles. Additionally, higher levels of intrinsic motivation predicted an increased likelihood membership into the deep-level learner profile, whilst higher levels of perceived teacher autonomy predicted an increased likelihood membership into the competent strategy user profile as compared to other profiles.
Lastly, in the fourth part, changes in secondary school students’ physics motivation and cognitive learning strategies use during physics learning across time were examined. Two waves of data were collected from initially 954 9th students through to their 10th grade. A three-step approach to Latent transition analysis was used. Generally, students’ motivation decreased from 9th to 10th grade. Qualitative students’ motivation profiles indicated strong with-in person stability whilst the quantitative profiles were relatively less stable. Mostly, students moved from the high quantity motivation profile to the extrinsically motivated profiles. On the other hand, the cognitive learning strategies use profiles were moderately stable; with higher with-in person stability in the deep-level learner profile. None of the struggling users and surface-level learners transitioned into the deep-level learners’ profile. Additionally, students who perceived increased support for autonomy from their teachers had higher membership likelihood into the competent users’ profiles whilst those with an increase in individual interest score had higher membership likelihood into the deep-level learner profile.
The age-by-complexity effect is the dominant empirical pattern in cognitive aging. The current report investigates whether a specific high-level mechanism---an age-related decrease in the reliability of episodic accumulators---can account for the age-by-complexity-effect, which is commonly assumed to be caused by an unspecific, low-level deficit. Groups of younger and older adults are compared in six reaction time experiments, using orthogonal manipulations of early cognitive difficulty (e.g., Stroop condition) and episodic demands (e.g., stimulus-response mapping). The predicted three-way interaction of age and the two factors was observed fairly consistently across experiments. A modified Brinley analysis shows that different regression slopes in old-young-space are required for conditions with low and high episodic difficulty. As a methodological contribution, a Brinley regression model following from certain simple processing assumptions is developed. It is shown that in contrast to a standard Brinley meta-analysis, the regression slopes in this model are not influenced by theoretically un-interesting between-experiment variance.
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.
Intuitively, it is clear that neural processes and eye movements in reading are closely connected, but only few studies have investigated both signals simultaneously. Instead, the usual approach is to record them in separate experiments and to subsequently consolidate the results. However, studies using this approach have shown that it is feasible to coregister eye movements and EEG in natural reading and contributed greatly to the understanding of oculomotor processes in reading. The present thesis builds upon that work, assessing to what extent coregistration can be helpful for sentence processing research.
In the first study, we explore how well coregistration is suited to study subtle effects common to psycholinguistic experiments by investigating the effect of distance on dependency resolution. The results demonstrate that researchers must improve the signal-to-noise ratio to uncover more subdued effects in coregistration. In the second study, we compare oscillatory responses in different presentation modes. Using robust effects from world knowledge violations, we show that the generation and retrieval of memory traces may differ between natural reading and word-by-word presentation. In the third study, we bridge the gap between our knowledge of behavioral and neural responses to integration difficulties in reading by analyzing the EEG in the context of regressive saccades. We find the P600, a neural indicator of recovery processes, when readers make a regressive saccade in response to integration difficulties.
The results in the present thesis demonstrate that coregistration can be a useful tool for the study of sentence processing. However, they also show that it may not be suitable for some questions, especially if they involve subtle effects.
On being and belonging
(2019)
Workplace-related anxieties and workplace phobia : a concept of domain-specific mental disorders
(2008)
Background: Anxiety in the workplace is a special problem as workplaces are especially prone to provoke anxiety: There are social hierarchies, rivalries between colleagues, sanctioning through superiors, danger of accidents, failure, and worries of job security. Workplace phobia is a phobic anxiety reaction with symptoms of panic occurring when thinking of or approaching the workplace, and with clear tendency of avoidance. Objectives: What characterizes workplace-related anxieties and workplace phobia as domain-specific mental disorders in contrast to conventional anxiety disorders? Method: 230 patients from an inpatient psychosomatic rehabilitation center were interviewed with the (semi-)structured Mini-Work-Anxiety-Interview and the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview, concerning workplace-related anxieties and conventional mental disorders. Additionally, the patients filled in the self-rating questionnaires Job-Anxiety-Scale (JAS) and the Symptom Checklist (SCL-90-R)measuring job-related and general psychosomatic symptom load. Results: Workplace-related anxieties occurred together with conventional anxiety disorders in 35% of the patients, but also alone in others (23%). Workplace phobia could be found in 17% of the interviewed, any diagnosis of workplace-related anxiety was stated in 58%. Workplace phobic patients had significantly higher scores in job-anxiety than patients without workplace phobia. Patients with workplace phobia were significantly longer on sick leave in the past 12 months (23,5 weeks) than patients without workplace phobia (13,4 weeks). Different qualities of workplace-related anxieties lead with different frequencies to work participation disorders. Conclusion: Workplace phobia cannot be described by only assessing the general level of psychosomatic symptom load and conventional mental disorders. Workplace-related anxieties and workplace phobia have an own clinical value which is mainly defined by specific workplace-related symptom load and work-participation disorders. They require special therapeutic attention and treatment instead of a “sick leave” certification by the general health physician. Workplace phobia should be named with a proper diagnosis according to ICD-10 chapter V, F 40.8: “workplace phobia”.
The present thesis deals with the mental representation of numbers in space. Generally it is assumed that numbers are mentally represented on a mental number line along which they ordered in a continuous and analogical manner. Dehaene, Bossini and Giraux (1993) found that the mental number line is spatially oriented from left-to-right. Using a parity-judgment task they observed faster left-hand responses for smaller numbers and faster right-hand responses for larger numbers. This effect has been labelled as Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect. The first study of the present thesis deals with the question whether the spatial orientation of the mental number line derives from the writing system participants are adapted to. According to a strong ontogenetic interpretation the SNARC effect should only obtain for effectors closely related to the comprehension and production of written language (hands and eyes). We asked participants to indicate the parity status of digits by pressing a pedal with their left or right foot. In contrast to the strong ontogenetic view we observed a pedal SNARC effect which did not differ from the manual SNARC effect. In the second study we evaluated whether the SNARC effect reflects an association of numbers and extracorporal space or an association of numbers and hands. To do so we varied the spatial arrangement of the response buttons (vertical vs. horizontal) and the instruction (handrelated vs. button-related). For vertically arranged buttons and a buttonrelated instruction we found a button-related SNARC effect. In contrast, for a hand-related instruction we obtained a hand-related SNARC effect. For horizontally arranged buttons and a handrelated instruction, however, we found a buttonrelated SNARC effect. The results of the first to studies were interpreted in terms of weak ontogenetic view. In the third study we aimed to examine the functional locus of the SNARC effect. We used the psychological refractory period paradigm. In the first experiment participants first indicated the pitch of a tone and then the parity status of a digit (locus-of-slack paradigma). In a second experiment the order of stimulus presentation and thus tasks changed (effect-propagation paradigm). The results led us conclude that the SNARC effect arises while the response is centrally selected. In our fourth study we test for an association of numbers and time. We asked participants to compare two serially presented digits. Participants were faster to compare ascending digit pairs (e.g., 2-3) than descending pairs (e.g., 3-2). The pattern of our results was interpreted in terms of forwardassociations (“1-2-3”) as formed by our ubiquitous cognitive routines to count of objects or events.
To investigate eye-movement control in reading, the present thesis examined three phenomena related to the eyes’ landing position within words, (1) the optimal viewing position (OVP), (2) the preferred viewing location (PVL), and (3) the Fixation-Duration Inverted-Optimal Viewing Position (IOVP) Effect. Based on a corpus-analytical approach (Exp. 1), the influence of variables word length, launch site distance, and word frequency was systematically explored. In addition, five experimental manipulations were conducted. First, word center was identified as the OVP, that is the position within a word where refixation probability is minimal. With increasing launch site distance, however, the OVP was found to move towards the word beginning. Several possible causes of refixations were discussed. The issue of refixation saccade programming was extensively investigated, suggesting that pre-planned and directly controlled refixation saccades coexist. Second, PVL curves, that is landing position distributions, show that the eyes are systematically deviated from the OVP, due to visuomotor constraints. By far the largest influence on mean and standard deviation of the Gaussian PVL curve was exhibited by launch site distance. Third, it was investigated how fixation durations vary as a function of landing position. The IOVP effect was replicated: Fixations located at word center are longer than those falling near the edges of a word. The effect of word frequency and/or launch site distance on the IOVP function mainly consisted in a vertical displacement of the curve. The Fixation-Duration IOVP effect is intriguing because word center (the OVP) would appear to be the best place to fixate and process a word. A critical part of the current work was devoted to investigate the origin of the effect. It was suggested that the IOVP effect arises as a consequence of mislocated fixations, i.e. fixations on unintended words, which are caused by saccadic errors. An algorithm for estimating the proportion of mislocated fixations from empirical data was developed, based on extrapolations of landing position distributions beyond word boundaries. As a new central theoretical claim it was suggested that a new saccade program is started immediately if the intended target word is missed. On average, this will lead to decreased durations for mislocated fixations. Because mislocated fixations were shown to be most prevalent at the beginning and end of words, the proposed mechanism generated the inverted U-shape for fixation durations when computed as a function of landing position. The proposed mechanism for generating the effect is generally compatible with both oculomotor and cognitive models of eye-movement control in reading.
Small eye movements during fixation : the case of postsaccadic fixation and preparatory influences
(2013)
Describing human eye movement behavior as an alternating sequence of saccades and fixations turns out to be an oversimplification because the eyes continue to move during fixation. Small-amplitude saccades (e.g., microsaccades) are typically observed 1-2 times per second during fixation. Research on microsaccades came in two waves. Early studies on microsaccades were dominated by the question whether microsaccades affect visual perception, and by studies on the role of microsaccades in the process of fixation control. The lack of evidence for a unique role of microsaccades led to a very critical view on the importance of microsaccades. Over the last years, microsaccades moved into focus again, revealing many interactions with perception, oculomotor control and cognition, as well as intriguing new insights into the neurophysiological implementation of microsaccades. In contrast to early studies on microsaccades, recent findings on microsaccades were accompanied by the development of models of microsaccade generation. While the exact generating mechanisms vary between the models, they still share the assumption that microsaccades are generated in a topographically organized saccade motor map that includes a representation for small-amplitude saccades in the center of the map (with its neurophysiological implementation in the rostral pole of the superior colliculus). In the present thesis I criticize that models of microsaccade generation are exclusively based on results obtained during prolonged presaccadic fixation. I argue that microsaccades should also be studied in a more natural situation, namely the fixation following large saccadic eye movements. Studying postsaccadic fixation offers a new window to falsify models that aim to account for the generation of small eye movements. I demonstrate that error signals (visual and extra-retinal), as well as non-error signals like target eccentricity influence the characteristics of small-amplitude eye movements. These findings require a modification of a model introduced by Rolfs, Kliegl and Engbert (2008) in order to account for the generation of small-amplitude saccades during postsaccadic fixation. Moreover, I present a promising type of survival analysis that allowed me to examine time-dependent influences on postsaccadic eye movements. In addition, I examined the interplay of postsaccadic eye movements and postsaccadic location judgments, highlighting the need to include postsaccadic eye movements as covariate in the analyses of location judgments in the presented paradigm. In a second goal, I tested model predictions concerning preparatory influences on microsaccade generation during presaccadic fixation. The observation, that the preparatory set significantly influenced microsaccade rate, supports the critical model assumption that increased fixation-related activity results in a larger number of microsaccades. In the present thesis I present important influences on the generation of small-amplitude saccades during fixation. These eye movements constitute a rich oculomotor behavior which still poses many research questions. Certainly, small-amplitude saccades represent an interesting source of information and will continue to influence future studies on perception and cognition.
The PhD thesis entitled “Actions through the lens of communicative cues. The influence of verbal cues and emotional cues on action processing and action selection in the second year of life” is based on four studies, which examined the cognitive integration of another person’s communicative cues (i.e., verbal cues, emotional cues) with behavioral cues in 18- and 24-month-olds. In the context of social learning of instrumental actions, it was investigated how the intention-related coherence of either a verbally announced action intention or an emotionally signaled action evaluation with an action demonstration influenced infants’ neuro-cognitive processing (Study I) and selection (Studies II, III, IV) of a novel object-directed action. Developmental research has shown that infants benefit from another’s behavioral cues (e.g., action effect, persistency, selectivity) to infer the underlying goal or intention, respectively, of an observed action (e.g., Cannon & Woodward, 2012; Woodward, 1998). Particularly action effects support infants in distinguishing perceptual action features (e.g., target object identity, movement trajectory, final target object state) from conceptual action features such as goals and intentions. However, less is known about infants’ ability to cognitively integrate another’s behavioral cues with additional action-related communicative cues. There is some evidence showing that in the second year of life, infants selectively imitate a novel action that is verbally (“There!”) or emotionally (positive expression) marked as aligning with the model’s action intention over an action that is verbally (“Whoops!”) or emotionally (negative expression) marked as unintentional (Carpenter, Akhtar, & Tomasello, 1998; Olineck & Poulin-Dubois, 2005, 2009; Repacholi, 2009; Repacholi, Meltzoff, Toub, & Ruba, 2016). Yet, it is currently unclear which role the specific intention-related coherence of a communicative cue with a behavioral cue plays in infants’ action processing and action selection that is, whether the communicative cue confirms, contrasts, clarifies, or is unrelated to the behavioral cue. Notably, by using both verbal cues and emotional cues, we examined not only two domains of communicative cues but also two qualitatively distinct relations between behavioral cues on the one hand and communicative cues on the other hand. More specifically, a verbal cue has the potential to communicate an action intention in the absence of an action demonstration and thus a prior-intention (Searle, 1983), whereas an emotional cue evaluates an ongoing or past action demonstration and thus signals an intention-in-action (Searle, 1983). In a first research focus, this thesis examined infants’ capacity to cognitively integrate another’s intention-related communicative cues and behavioral cues, and also focused on the role of the social cues’ coherence in infants’ action processing and action selection. In a second research focus, and to gain more elaborate insights into how the sub-processes of social learning (attention, encoding, response; cf. Bandura, 1977) are involved in this coherence-sensitive integrative processing, we employed a multi-measures approach. More specifically, we used Electroencephalography (EEG) and looking times to examine how the cues’ coherence influenced the compound of attention and encoding, and imitation (including latencies to first-touch and first-action) to address the compound of encoding and response. Based on the action-reconstruction account (Csibra, 2007), we predicted that infants use extra-motor information (i.e., communicative cues) together with behavioral cues to reconstruct another’s action intention. Accordingly, we expected infants to possess a flexibly organized internal action hierarchy, which they adapt according to the cues’ coherence that is, according to what they inferred to be the overarching action goal. More specifically, in a social-learning situation that comprised an adult model, who demonstrated an action on a novel object that offered two actions, we expected the demonstrated action to lead infants’ action hierarchy when the communicative (i.e., verbal, emotional) cue conveyed similar (confirming coherence) or no additional (un-related coherence) intention-related information relative to the behavioral cue. In terms of action selection, this action hierarchy should become evident in a selective imitation of the demonstrated action. However, when the communicative cue questioned (contrasting coherence) the behaviorally implied action goal or was the only cue conveying meaningful intention-related information (clarifying coherence), the verbally/emotionally intended action should ascend infants’ action hierarchy. Consequently, infants’ action selection should align with the verbally/emotionally intended action (goal emulation). Notably, these predictions oppose the direct-matching perspective (Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004), according to which the observation of another’s action directly resonates with the observer’s motor repertoire, with this motor resonance enabling the identification of the underlying action goal. Importantly, the direct-matching perspective predicts a rather inflexible action hierarchy inasmuch as the process of goal identification should solely rely on the behavioral cue, irrespective of the behavioral cue’s coherence with extra-motor intention-related information, as it may be conveyed via communicative cues. As to the role of verbal cues, Study I used EEG to examine the influence of a confirming (Congruent) versus contrasting (Incongruent) coherence of a verbal action intention with the same action demonstration on 18-month-olds’ conceptual action processing (as measured via mid-latency mean negative ERP amplitude) and motor activation (as measured via central mu-frequency band power). The action was demonstrated on a novel object that offered two action alternatives from a neutral position. We expected mid-latency ERP negativity to be enhanced in Incongruent compared to Congruent, because past EEG research has demonstrated enhanced conceptual processing for stimuli that mismatched rather than matched the semantic context (Friedrich & Friederici, 2010; Kaduk et al., 2016). Regarding motor activation, Csibra (2007) posited that the identification of a clear action goal constitutes a crucial basis for motor activation to occur. We therefore predicted reduced mu power (indicating enhanced motor activation) for Congruent than Incongruent, because in Congruent, the cues’ match provides unequivocal information about the model’s action goal, whereas in Incongruent, the conflict may render the model’s action goal more unclear. Unexpectedly, in the entire sample, 18-month-olds’ mid-latency ERP negativity during the observation of the same action demonstration did not differ significantly depending on whether this action was congruent or incongruent with the model’s verbal action intention. Yet, post hoc analyses revealed the presence of two subgroups of infants, each of which exhibited significantly different mid-latency ERP negativity for Congruent versus Incongruent, but in opposing directions. The subgroups differed in their productive action-related language skills, with the linguistically more advanced infants exhibiting the expected response pattern of enhanced ERP mean negativity in Incongruent than Congruent, indicating enhanced conceptual processing of an action demonstration that was contrasted rather than confirmed by the verbal action context. As expected, central mu power in the entire sample was reduced in Congruent relative to Incongruent, indicating enhanced motor activation when the action demonstration was preceded by a confirming relative to a contrasting verbal action intention. This finding may indicate the covert preparation for a preferential imitation of the congruent relative to the incongruent action (Filippi et al., 2016; Frey & Gerry, 2006). Overall, these findings are in line with the action-reconstruction account (Csibra, 2007), because they suggest a coherence-sensitive attention to and encoding of the same perceptual features of another’s behavior and thus a cognitive integration of intention-related verbal cues and behavioral cues. Yet, because the subgroup constellation in infants’ ERPs was only discovered post hoc, future research is clearly required to substantiate this finding. Also, future research should validate our interpretation that enhanced motor activation may reflect an electrophysiological marker of subsequent imitation by employing EEG and imitation in a within-subjects design. Study II built on Study I by investigating the impact of coherence of a verbal cue and a behavioral cue on 18- and 24-month-olds’ action selection in an imitation study. When infants of both age groups observed a confirming (Congruent) or unrelated (Pseudo-word: action demonstration was associated with novel verb-like cue) coherence, they selectively imitated the demonstrated action over the not demonstrated, alternative action, with no difference between these two conditions. These findings suggest that, as expected, infants’ action hierarchy was led by the demonstrated action when the verbal cue provided similar (Congruent) or no additional (Pseudo-word) intention-related information relative to a meaningful behavioral cue. These findings support the above-mentioned interpretation that enhanced motor activation during action observation may reflect a covert preparation for imitation (Study I). Interestingly, infants did not seem to benefit from the intention-highlighting effect of the verbal cue in Congruent, suggesting that the verbal cue had an unspecific (e.g., attention-guiding) effect on infants’ action selection. Contrary, when infants observed a contrasting (Incongruent) or clarifying (Failed-attempt: model failed to manipulate the object but verbally announced a certain action intention) coherence, their action selection varied with age and also varied across the course of the experiment (block 1 vs. block 2). More specifically, the 24-month-olds made stronger use of the verbal cue for their action selection in block 1 than did the 18-month-olds. However, while the 18-month-olds’ use of the verbal cue increased across blocks, particularly in Incongruent, the 24-month-olds’ use of the verbal cue decreased across blocks. Overall, these results suggest that, as expected, infants’ action hierarchy in Incongruent (both age groups) and Failed-attempt (only 24-month-olds) drew on the verbal action intention, because in both age groups, infants emulated the verbal intention about as often as they imitated the demonstrated action or even emulated the verbal action intention preferentially. Yet, these findings were confined to certain blocks. It may be argued that the younger age group had a harder time inferring and emulating the intended, yet never observed action, because this requirement is more demanding in cognitive and motor terms. These demands may explain why the 18-month-olds needed some time to take account of the verbal action intention. Contrary, it seems that the 24-month-olds, although demonstrating their principle capacity to take account of the verbal cue in block 1, lost trust in the model’s verbal cue, maybe because the verbal cue did not have predictive value for the model’s actual behavior. Supporting this interpretation, research on selective trust has demonstrated that already infants evaluate another’s reliability or competence, respectively, based on how that model handles familiar objects (behavioral reliability) or labels familiar objects (verbal reliability; for reviews, see Mills, 2013; Poulin-Dubois & Brosseau-Liard, 2016). Relatedly, imitation research has demonstrated that the interpersonal aspects of a social-learning situation gain increasing relevance for infants during the second year of life (Gellén & Buttelmann, 2019; Matheson, Moore, & Akhtar, 2013; Uzgiris, 1981). It may thus be argued that when the 24-month-olds were repeatedly faced with a verbally unreliable model, they de-evaluated the verbal cue as signaling the model’s action intention and instead relied more heavily on alternative cues such as the behavioral cue (Incongruent) or the action context (e.g., object affordances, salience; Failed-attempt). Infants’ first-action latencies were higher in Incongruent and Failed-attempt than in both Congruent and Pseudo-word, and were also higher in Failed-attempt than in Incongruent. These latency-findings thus indicate that situations involving a meaningful verbal cue that deviated from the behavioral cue are cognitively more demanding, resulting in a delayed initiation of a behavioral response. In sum, the findings of Study II suggest that both age groups were highly flexible in their integration of a verbal cue and behavioral cue. Moreover, our results do not indicate a general superiority of either cue. Instead, it seems to depend on the informational gain conveyed by the verbal cue whether it exerts a specific, intention-highlighting effect (Incongruent, Failed-attempt) or an unspecific (e.g., attention-guiding) effect (Congruent, Pseudo-word). Studies III and IV investigated the impact of another’s action-related emotional cues on 18-month-olds’ action selection. In Study III, infants observed a model, who demonstrated two actions on a novel object in direct succession, and who combined one of the two actions with a positive (happy) emotional expression and the other action with a negative (sad) emotional expression. As expected, infants imitated the positively emoted (PE) action more often than the negatively emoted (NE) action. This preference arose from an increase in infants’ readiness to perform the PE action from the baseline period (prior to the action demonstrations) to the test period (following the action demonstrations), rather than from a decrease in readiness to the perform the NE action. The positive cue thus had a stronger behavior-regulating effect than the negative cue. Notably, infants’ more general object-directed behavior in terms of first-touch latencies remained unaffected by the emotional cues’ valence, indicating that infants had linked the emotional cues specifically to the corresponding action and not the object as a whole (Repacholi, 2009). Also, infants’ looking times during the action demonstration did not differ significantly as a function of emotional valence and were characterized by a predominant attentional focus to the action/object rather than to the model’s face. Together with the findings on infants’ first-touch latencies, these results indicate a sensitivity for the notion that emotions can have very specific referents (referential specificity; Martin, Maza, McGrath, & Phelps, 2014). Together, Study III provided evidence for selective imitation based on another’s intention-related (particularly positive) emotional cues in an action-selection task, and thus indicates that infants’ action hierarchy flexibly responds to another’s emotional evaluation of observed actions. According to Repacholi (2009), we suggest that infants used the model’s emotional evaluation to re-appraise the corresponding action (effect), for instance in terms of desirability. Study IV followed up on Study III by investigating the role of the negative emotional cue for infants’ action selection in more detail. Specifically, we investigated whether a contrasting (negative) emotional cue alone would be sufficient to differentially rank the two actions along infants’ action hierarchy or whether instead infants require direct information about the model’s action intention (in the form of a confirming action-emotion pair) to align their action selection with the emotional cues. Also, we examined whether the absence of a direct behavior-regulating effect of the negative cue in Study III was due to the negative cue itself or to the concurrently available positive cue masking the negative cue’s potential effect. To this end, we split the demonstration of the two action-emotion pairs across two trials. In each trial, one action was thus demonstrated and emoted (PE, NE action), and one action was not demonstrated and un-emoted (UE action). For trial 1, we predicted that infants, who observed a PE action demonstration, would selectively imitate the PE action, whereas infants, who observed a NE action demonstration would selectively emulate the UE action. As to trial 2, we expected the complementary action-emotion pair to provide additional clarifying information as the model’s emotional evaluation of both actions, which should either lead to adaptive perseveration (if infants’ action selection in trial 1 had already drawn on the emotional cue) or adaptive change (if infants’ action selection in trial 1 signaled a disregard of the emotional cue). As to trial 1, our findings revealed that, as expected, infants imitated the PE action more often than they emulated the UE action. Like in Study III, this selectivity arose from an increase in infants’ propensity to perform the PE action from baseline to trial 1. Also like in Study III, infants performed the NE action about equally often in baseline and trial 1, which speaks against a direct behavior-regulating effect of the negative cue also when presented in isolation. However, after a NE action demonstration, infants emulated the UE action more often in trial 1 than in baseline, suggesting an indirect behavior-regulating effect of the negative cue. Yet, this indirect effect did not yield a selective emulation of the UE action, because infants performed both action alternatives about equally often in trial 1. Unexpectedly, infants’ action selection in trial 2 was unaffected by the emotional cue. Instead, infants perseverated their action selection of trial 1 in trial 2, irrespective of whether it was adaptive or non-adaptive with respect to the model’s emotional evaluation of the action. It seems that infants changed their strategy across trials, from an initial adherence to the emotional (particularly positive) cue, towards bringing about a salient action effect (Marcovich & Zelazo, 2009). In sum, Studies III and IV indicate a dynamic interplay of different action-selection strategies, depending on valence and presentation order. Apparently, at least in infancy, action reconstruction as one basis for selective action performance reaches its limits when infants can only draw on indirect intention-related information (i.e., which action should be avoided). Overall, our findings favor the action-reconstruction account (Csibra, 2007), according to which actions are flexibly organized along a hierarchy, depending on inferential processes based on extra-motor intention-related information. At the same time, the findings question the direct-matching hypothesis (Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004), according to which the identification (and pursuit) of action goals hinges on a direct simulation of another’s behavioral cues. Based on the studies’ findings, a preliminary working model is introduced, which seeks to integrate the two theoretical accounts by conceptualizing the routes that activation induced by social cues may take to eventually influence an infant’s action selection. Our findings indicate that it is useful to strive a differentiated conceptualization of communicative cues, because they seem to operate at different places within the process of cue integration, depending on their potential to convey direct intention-related information. Moreover, we suggest that there is bidirectional exchange within each compound of adjacent sub-processes (i.e., between attention and encoding, and encoding and response), and between the compounds. Hence, our findings highlight the benefits of a multi-measures approach when studying the development of infants’ social-cognitive abilities, because it provides a more comprehensive picture how the concerted use of social cues from different domains influences infants’ processing and selection of instrumental actions. Finally, this thesis points to potential future directions to substantiate our current interpretation of the findings.. Moreover, an extension to additional kinds of coherence is suggested to get closer to infants’ everyday-world of experience.
In modern times of evolving globalization and continuous technological developments, organizations are required to respond to ever-changing demands. Therefore, to be successful in today’s highly uncertain environments, organizations need employees to actively search for opportunities, anticipate challenges, and act ahead. In other words, employee proactivity in the workplace represents a highly valuable resource in nowadays organizations. Empirical studies conducted as part of this thesis advance the research on the outcomes of proactivity from the individual perspective. The main contribution of this thesis pertains to revealing several important individual and contextual conditions under which engaging in proactivity will have negative and positive effects on employees’ well-being and their consequent behaviours, as well as shedding light on the unique psychological mechanisms through which these effects unfold. From a practical standpoint, this research underscores the importance of creating work environments that support employees’ autonomous motivation for proactivity and urge organizations and managers to be mindful about the pressures they place on employees to be proactive at work. Besides, this thesis stimulates research efforts aimed at further extending our knowledge of when and how individual proactive behaviours at work will do more good than harm for those who enact them.
Recognizing, understanding, and responding to quantities are considerable skills for human beings. We can easily communicate quantities, and we are extremely efficient in adapting our behavior to numerical related tasks. One usual task is to compare quantities. We also use symbols like digits in numerical-related tasks. To solve tasks including digits, we must to rely on our previously learned internal number representations.
This thesis elaborates on the process of number comparison with the use of noisy mental representations of numbers, the interaction of number and size representations and how we use mental number representations strategically. For this, three studies were carried out.
In the first study, participants had to decide which of two presented digits was numerically larger. They had to respond with a saccade in the direction of the anticipated answer. Using only a small set of meaningfully interpretable parameters, a variant of random walk models is described that accounts for response time, error rate, and variance of response time for the full matrix of 72 digit pairs. In addition, the used random walk model predicts a numerical distance effect even for error response times and this effect clearly occurs in the observed data. In relation to corresponding correct answers error responses were systematically faster. However, different from standard assumptions often made in random walk models, this account required that the distributions of step sizes of the induced random walks be asymmetric to account for this asymmetry between correct and incorrect responses.
Furthermore, the presented model provides a well-defined framework to investigate the nature and scale (e.g., linear vs. logarithmic) of the mapping of numerical magnitude onto its internal representation. In comparison of the fits of proposed models with linear and logarithmic mapping, the logarithmic mapping is suggested to be prioritized.
Finally, we discuss how our findings can help interpret complex findings (e.g., conflicting speed vs. accuracy trends) in applied studies that use number comparison as a well-established diagnostic tool. Furthermore, a novel oculomotoric effect is reported, namely the saccadic overschoot effect. The participants responded by saccadic eye movements and the amplitude of these saccadic responses decreases with numerical distance.
For the second study, an experimental design was developed that allows us to apply the signal detection theory to a task where participants had to decide whether a presented digit was physically smaller or larger. A remaining question is, whether the benefit in (numerical magnitude – physical size) congruent conditions is related to a better perception than in incongruent conditions. Alternatively, the number-size congruency effect is mediated by response biases due to numbers magnitude. The signal detection theory is a perfect tool to distinguish between these two alternatives. It describes two parameters, namely sensitivity and response bias. Changes in the sensitivity are related to the actual task performance due to real differences in perception processes whereas changes in the response bias simply reflect strategic implications as a stronger preparation (activation) of an anticipated answer. Our results clearly demonstrate that the number-size congruency effect cannot be reduced to mere response bias effects, and that genuine sensitivity gains for congruent number-size pairings contribute to the number-size congruency effect.
Third, participants had to perform a SNARC task – deciding whether a presented digit was odd or even. Local transition probability of irrelevant attributes (magnitude) was varied while local transition probability of relevant attributes (parity) and global probability occurrence of each stimulus were kept constantly. Participants were quite sensitive in recognizing the underlying local transition probability of irrelevant attributes. A gain in performance was observed for actual repetitions of the irrelevant attribute in relation to changes of the irrelevant attribute in high repetition conditions compared to low repetition conditions. One interpretation of these findings is that information about the irrelevant attribute (magnitude) in the previous trial is used as an informative precue, so that participants can prepare early processing stages in the current trial, with the corresponding benefits and costs typical of standard cueing studies.
Finally, the results reported in this thesis are discussed in relation to recent studies in numerical cognition.
Learning to read in German
(2021)
In the present dissertation, the development of eye movement behavior and the perceptual span of German beginning readers was investigated in Grades 1 to 3 (Study 1) and longitudinally within a one-year time interval (Study 2), as well as in relation to intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation (Study 3). The presented results are intended to fill the gap of only sparse information on young readers’ eye movements and completely missing information on German young readers’ perceptual span and its development. On the other hand, reading motivation data have been scrutinized with respect to reciprocal effects on reading comprehension but not with respect to more immediate, basic cognitive processing (e.g., word decoding) that is indicated by different eye movement measures. Based on a longitudinal study design, children in Grades 1–3 participated in a moving window reading experiment with eye movement recordings in two successive years. All children were participants of a larger longitudinal study on intrapersonal developmental risk factors in childhood and adolescence (PIER study). Motivation data and other psychometric reading data were collected during individual inquiries and tests at school. Data analyses were realized in three separate studies that focused on different but related aspects of reading and perceptual span development. Study 1 presents the first cross-sectional report on the perceptual span of beginning German readers. The focus was on reading rate changes in Grades 1 to 3 and on the issue of the onset of the perceptual span development and its dependence on basic foveal reading processes. Study 2 presents a successor of Study 1 providing first longitudinal data of the perceptual span in elementary school children. It also includes information on the stability of observed and predicted reading rates and perceptual span sizes and introduces a new measure of the perceptual span based on nonlinear mixed-effects models. Another issue addressed in this study is the longitudinal between-group comparison of slower and faster readers which refers to the detection of developmental patterns. Study 3 includes longitudinal reading motivation data and investigates the relation between different eye movement measures including perceptual span and intrinsic as well as extrinsic reading motivation. In Study 1, a decelerated increase in reading rate was observed between Grades 1 to 3. Grade effects were also reported for saccade length, refixation probability, and different fixation duration measures. With higher grade, mean saccade length increased, whereas refixation probability, first-fixation duration, gaze duration, and total reading time decreased. Perceptual span development was indicated by an increase in window size effects with grade level. Grade level differences with respect to window size effects were stronger between Grades 2 and 3 than between Grades 1 and 2. These results were replicated longitudinally in Study 2. Again, perceptual span size significantly changed between Grades 2 and 3, but not between Grades 1 and 2 or Grades 3 and 4. Observed and predicted reading rates were found to be highly stable after first grade, whereas stability of perceptual span was only moderate for all grade levels. Group differences between slower and faster readers in Year 1 remained observable in Year 2 showing a pattern of stable achievement differences rather than a compensatory pattern. Between Grades 2 and 3, between-group differences in reading rate even increased resulting in a Matthew effect. A similar effect was observed for perceptual span development between Grades 3 and 4. Finally, in Study 3, significant relations between beginning readers’ eye movements and their reading motivation were observed. In both years of measurement, higher intrinsic reading motivation was related to more skilled eye movement patterns as indicated by short fixations, longer saccades, and higher reading rates. In Year 2, intrinsic reading motivation was also significantly and negatively correlated with refixation probability. These correlational patterns were confirmed in cross-sectional linear models controlling for grade level and reading amount and including both reading motivation measures, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. While there were significant positive relations between intrinsic reading motivation and word decoding as indicated by the above stated eye movement measures, extrinsic reading motivation only predicted variance in eye movements in Year 2 (significant for fixation durations and reading rate), with a consistently opposite pattern of effects as compared to intrinsic reading motivation. Finally, longitudinal effects of Year 1 intrinsic reading motivation on Year 2 word decoding were observed for gaze duration, total reading time, refixation probability, and perceptual span within cross-lagged panel models. These effects were reciprocal because all eye movement measures significantly predicted variance in intrinsic reading motivation. Extrinsic reading motivation in Year 1 did not affect any eye movement measure in Year 2, and vice versa, except for a significant, negative relation with perceptual span. Concluding, the present dissertation demonstrates that largest gains in reading development in terms of eye movement changes are observable between Grades 1 and 2. Together with the observed pattern of stable differences between slower and faster readers and a widening achievement gap between Grades 2 and 3 for reading rate, these results underline the importance of the first year(s) of formal reading instruction. The development of the perceptual span lags behind as it is most apparent between Grades 2 and 3. This suggests that efficient parafoveal processing presupposes a certain degree of foveal reading proficiency (e.g., word decoding). Finally, this dissertation demonstrates that intrinsic reading motivation—but not extrinsic motivation—effectively supports the development of skilled reading.
Cognitive psychology is traditionally interested in the interaction of perception, cognition, and behavioral control. Investigating eye movements in reading constitutes a field of research in which the processes and interactions of these subsystems can be studied in a well-defined environment. Thereby, the following questions are pursued: How much information is visually perceived during a fixation, how is processing achieved and temporally coordinated from visual letter encoding to final sentence comprehension, and how do such processes reflect on behavior such as the control of the eyes’ movements during reading. Various theoretical models have been proposed to account for the specific eye-movement behavior in reading (for a review see Reichle, Rayner, & Pollatsek, 2003). Some models are based on the idea of shifting attention serially from one word to the next within the sentence whereas others propose distributed attention allocating processing resources to more than one word at a time. As attention is assumed to drive word recognition processes one major difference between these models is that word processing must either occur in strict serial order, or that word processing is achieved in parallel. In spite of this crucial difference in the time course of word processing, both model classes perform well on explaining many of the benchmark effects in reading. In fact, there seems to be not much empirical evidence that challenges the models to a point at which their basic assumptions could be falsified. One issue often perceived as being decisive in the debate on serial and parallel word processing is how not-yet-fixated words to the right of fixation affect eye movements. Specifically, evidence is discussed as to what spatial extent such parafoveal words are previewed and how this influences current and subsequent word processing. Four experiments investigated parafoveal processing close to the spatial limits of the perceptual span. The present work aims to go beyond mere existence proofs of previewing words at such spatial distances. Introducing a manipulation that dissociates the sources of long-range preview effects, benefits and costs of parafoveal processing can be investigated in a single analysis and the differing impact is tracked across a three-word target region. In addition, the same manipulation evaluates the role of oculomotor error as the cause of non-local distributed effects. In this respect, the results contribute to a better understanding of the time course of word processing inside the perceptual span and attention allocation during reading.
Inhibition, attentional control, and causes of forgetting in working memory: a formal approach
(2013)
In many cognitive activities, the temporary maintenance and manipulation of mental objects is a necessary step in order to reach a cognitive goal. Working memory has been regarded as the process responsible for those cognitive activities. This thesis addresses the question: what limits working-memory capacity (WMC)? A question that still remains controversial (Barrouillet & Camos, 2009; Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Brown, 2009). This study attempted to answer this question by proposing that the dynamics between the causes of forgetting and the processes helping the maintenance, and the manipulation of the memoranda are the key aspects in understanding the limits of WMC.
Chapter 1 introduced key constructs and the strategy to examine the dynamics between inhibition, attentional control, and the causes of forgetting in working memory.
The study in Chapter 2 tested the performance of children, young adults, and old adults in a working-memory updating-task with two conditions: one condition included go steps and the other condition included go, and no-go steps. The interference model (IM; Oberauer & Kliegl, 2006), a model proposing interference-related mechanisms as the main cause of forgetting was used to simultaneously fit the data of these age groups. In addition to the interference-related parameters reflecting interference by feature overwriting and interference by confusion, and in addition to the parameters reflecting the speed of processing, the study included a new parameter that captured the time for switching between go steps and no-go steps. The study indicated that children and young adults were less susceptible than old adults to interference by feature overwriting; children were the most susceptible to interference by confusion, followed by old adults and then by young adults; young adults presented the higher rate of processing, followed by children and then by old adults; and young adults were the fastest group switching from go steps to no-go steps.
Chapter 3 examined the dynamics between causes of forgetting and the inhibition of a prepotent response in the context of three formal models of the limits of WMC: A resources model, a decay-based model, and three versions of the IM. The resources model was built on the assumption that a limited and shared source of activation for the maintenance and manipulation of the objects underlies the limits of WMC. The decay model assumes that memory traces of the working-memory objects decay over time if they are not reactivated via different mechanisms of maintenance. The IM, already described, proposes that interference-related mechanisms explain the limits of WMC. In two experiments and in a reanalysis of data of the second experiment, one version of the IM received more statistical support from the data. This version of the IM proposes that interference by feature overwriting and interference by confusion are the main factors underlying the limits of WMC. In addition, the model suggests that experimental conditions involving the inhibition of a prepotent response reduce the speed of processing and promotes the involuntary activation of irrelevant information in working memory.
Chapter 4 summed up Chapter 2 and 3 and discussed their findings and presented how this thesis has provided evidence of interference-related mechanisms as the main cause of forgetting, and it has attempted to clarify the role of inhibition and attentional control in working memory. With the implementation of formal models and experimental manipulations in the framework of nonlinear mixed models the data offered explanations of causes of forgetting and the role of inhibition in WMC at different levels: developmental effects, aging effects, effects related to experimental manipulations and individual differences in these effects. Thus, the present approach afforded a comprehensive view of a large number of factors limiting WMC.
Background: The engagement in aggressive behavior in middle childhood is linked to the development of severe problems in later life. Thus, identifying factors and processes that con-tribute to the continuity and increase of aggression in middle childhood is essential in order to facilitate the development of intervention programs. The present PhD thesis aimed at expand-ing the understanding of the development of aggression in middle childhood by examining risk factors in the intrapersonal and interpersonal domains as well as the interplay between these factors: Maladaptive anger regulation was examined as an intrapersonal risk factor; processes that occur in the peer context (social rejection and peer socialization) were included as interpersonal risk factors. In addition, in order to facilitate the in situ assessment of anger regulation strategies, an observational measure of anger regulation was developed and validated.
Method: The research aims were addressed within the scope of four articles. Data from two measurement time points about ten months apart were available for the analyses. Participants were elementary school children aged from 6 to 10 years at T1 and 7 to 11 years at T2. The first article was based on cross-sectional analyses including only the first time point; in the remaining three articles longitudinal associations across the two time points were analyzed. The first two articles were concerned with the development and cross-sectional as well as longitudinal validation of observational measure of anger regulation in middle childhood in a sample of 599 children. Using the same sample, the third article investigated the longitudinal link between maladaptive anger regulation and aggression considering social rejection as a mediating variable. The frequency as well as different functions of aggression (reactive and proactive) were included as outcomes measures. The fourth article examined the influence of class-level aggression on the development of different forms of aggression (relational and physical) over time under consideration of differences in initial individual aggression in a sample of 1,284 children. In addition, it was analyzed if the path from aggression to social rejection varies as a function of class-level aggression.
Results: The first two articles revealed that the observational measure of anger regulation developed for the purpose of this research was cross-sectionally related to anger reactivity, aggression and social rejection as well as longitudinally related to self-reported anger regula-tion. In the third article it was found that T1 maladaptive anger regulation showed no direct link to T2 aggression, but an indirect link through T1 social rejection. This indirect link was found for the frequency of aggression as well as for reactive and proactive aggression. The fourth article revealed that with regard to relational aggression, a high level of classroom ag-gression predicted an increase of individual aggression only among children with initially low levels of aggression. For physical aggression, it was found that the overall level of aggression in the class affected all children equally. In addition, physical aggression increased the likelihood of social rejection irrespective of the class-level of aggression whereas relational aggression caused social rejection only in classes with a generally low level of relational aggression. The analyses of gender-specific effects showed that children were mainly influenced by their same-gender peers and that the effect on the opposite gender was higher if children engaged in gender-atypical forms of aggressive behavior.
Conclusion: The results provided evidence for the construct and criterion validity of the observational measure of maladaptive anger regulation that was developed within the scope of this research. Furthermore, the findings indicated that maladaptive anger regulation constitutes an important risk factor of aggression through the influence of social rejection. Finally, the results demonstrated that the level of aggression among classmates is relevant for the development of individual aggression over time and that the children´s evaluation of relationally aggressive behavior varies as a function of the normativity of relational aggression in the class. The study findings have implications for the measurement of anger regulation in middle childhood as well as for the prevention of aggression and social rejection.
Microsaccades are an important component of the small eye movements that constitute fixation, the basis of visual perception. The specific function of microsaccades has been a long-standing research problem. Only recently, conclusive evidence emerged, showing that microsaccades aid both visual perception and oculomotor control. The main goal of this thesis was to improve our understanding of the implementation of microsaccade generation within the circuitry of saccade control, an unsolved issue in oculomotor research. We make a case for a model according to which microsaccades and saccades result from mutually dependent motor plans, competing for expression. The model consists of an activation field, coding for fixation at its center and for saccades at peripheral locations; saccade amplitude increases with eccentricity. Activity during fixation spreads to slightly peripheral locations in the field and, thus, may result in the generation of microsaccades. Inhibition of remote and excitation of neighbouring locations govern the dynamics of the field, resulting in a strong competition between fixation and saccade generation. We propose that this common-field model of microsaccade and saccade generation finds a neurophysiological counterpart in the motor map of the superior colliculus (SC), a key brainstem structure involved in the generation of saccades. In a series of five behavioral experiments, we tested implications of the model. Predictions were derived concerning (1) the behavior of microsaccades in a given task (microsaccade rate, amplitude, and direction), (2) the interactions of microsaccades and subsequent saccades, and (3) the relationship between microsaccadic behavior and neurophysiological processes at the level of the SC. The results yielded strong support for the model at all three levels of analysis, suggesting that microsaccade statistics are indicative of the state of the fixation-related part of the SC motor map.
Rhythm is a temporal and systematic organization of acoustic events in terms of prominence, timing and grouping, helping to structure our most basic experiences, such as body movement, music and speech. In speech, rhythm groups auditory events, e.g., sounds and pauses, together into words, making their boundaries acoustically prominent and aiding word segmentation and recognition by the hearer. After word recognition, the hearer is able to retrieve word meaning form his mental lexicon, integrating it with information from other linguistic domains, such as semantics, syntax and pragmatics, until comprehension is achieved. The importance of speech rhythm, however, is not restricted to word segmentation and recognition only. Beyond the word level rhythm continues to operate as an organization device, interacting with different linguistic domains, such as syntax and semantics, and grouping words into larger prosodic constituents, organized in a prosodic hierarchy. This dissertation investigates the function of speech rhythm as a sentence segmentation device during syntactic ambiguity processing, possible limitations on its use, i.e., in the context of second language processing, and its transferability as cognitive skill to the music domain.
Understanding how humans move their eyes is an important part for understanding the functioning of the visual system. Analyzing eye movements from observations of natural scenes on a computer screen is a step to understand human visual behavior in the real world. When analyzing eye-movement data from scene-viewing experiments, the impor- tant questions are where (fixation locations), how long (fixation durations) and when (ordering of fixations) participants fixate on an image. By answering these questions, computational models can be developed which predict human scanpaths. Models serve as a tool to understand the underlying cognitive processes while observing an image, especially the allocation of visual attention.
The goal of this thesis is to provide new contributions to characterize and model human scanpaths on natural scenes. The results from this thesis will help to understand and describe certain systematic eye-movement tendencies, which are mostly independent of the image. One eye-movement tendency I focus on throughout this thesis is the tendency to fixate more in the center of an image than on the outer parts, called the central fixation bias. Another tendency, which I will investigate thoroughly, is the characteristic distribution of angles between successive eye movements.
The results serve to evaluate and improve a previously published model of scanpath generation from our laboratory, the SceneWalk model. Overall, six experiments were conducted for this thesis which led to the following five core results:
i) A spatial inhibition of return can be found in scene-viewing data. This means that locations which have already been fixated are afterwards avoided for a certain time interval (Chapter 2).
ii) The initial fixation position when observing an image has a long-lasting influence of up to five seconds on further scanpath progression (Chapter 2 & 3).
iii) The often described central fixation bias on images depends strongly on the duration of the initial fixation. Long-lasting initial fixations lead to a weaker central fixation bias than short fixations (Chapter 2 & 3).
iv) Human observers adjust their basic eye-movement parameters, like fixation dura- tions and saccade amplitudes, to the visual properties of a target they look for in visual search (Chapter 4).
v) The angle between two adjacent saccades is an indicator for the selectivity of the upcoming saccade target (Chapter 4).
All results emphasize the importance of systematic behavioral eye-movement tenden- cies and dynamic aspects of human scanpaths in scene viewing.
It sometimes happens that we finish reading a passage of text just to realize that we have no idea what we just read. During these episodes of mindless reading our mind is elsewhere yet the eyes still move across the text. The phenomenon of mindless reading is common and seems to be widely recognized in lay psychology. However, the scientific investigation of mindless reading has long been underdeveloped. Recent progress in research on mindless reading has been based on self-report measures and on treating it as an all-or-none phenomenon (dichotomy-hypothesis). Here, we introduce the levels-of-inattention hypothesis proposing that mindless reading is graded and occurs at different levels of cognitive processing. Moreover, we introduce two new behavioral paradigms to study mindless reading at different levels in the eye-tracking laboratory. First (Chapter 2), we introduce shuffled text reading as a paradigm to approximate states of weak mindless reading experimentally and compare it to reading of normal text. Results from statistical analyses of eye movements that subjects perform in this task qualitatively support the ‘mindless’ hypothesis that cognitive influences on eye movements are reduced and the ‘foveal load’ hypothesis that the response of the zoom lens of attention to local text difficulty is enhanced when reading shuffled text. We introduce and validate an advanced version of the SWIFT model (SWIFT 3) incorporating the zoom lens of attention (Chapter 3) and use it to explain eye movements during shuffled text reading. Simulations of the SWIFT 3 model provide fully quantitative support for the ‘mindless’ and the ‘foveal load’ hypothesis. They moreover demonstrate that the zoom lens is an important concept to explain eye movements across reading and mindless reading tasks. Second (Chapter 4), we introduce the sustained attention to stimulus task (SAST) to catch episodes when external attention spontaneously lapses (i.e., attentional decoupling or mind wandering) via the overlooking of errors in the text and via signal detection analyses of error detection. Analyses of eye movements in the SAST revealed reduced influences from cognitive text processing during mindless reading. Based on these findings, we demonstrate that it is possible to predict states of mindless reading from eye movement recordings online. That cognition is not always needed to move the eyes supports autonomous mechanisms for saccade initiation. Results from analyses of error detection and eye movements provide support to our levels-of-inattention hypothesis that errors at different levels of the text assess different levels of decoupling. Analyses of pupil size in the SAST (Chapter 5) provide further support to the levels of inattention hypothesis and to the decoupling hypothesis that off-line thought is a distinct mode of cognitive functioning that demands cognitive resources and is associated with deep levels of decoupling. The present work demonstrates that the elusive phenomenon of mindless reading can be vigorously investigated in the cognitive laboratory and further incorporated in the theoretical framework of cognitive science.
Even though the majority of individuals know that exercising is healthy, a high percentage struggle to achieve the recommended amount of exercise. The (social-cognitive) theories that are commonly applied to explain exercise motivation refer to the assumption that people base their decisions mainly on rational reasoning. However, behavior is not only bound to reflection. In recent years, the role of automaticity and affect for exercise motivation has been increasingly discussed. In this dissertation, central assumptions of the affective–reflective theory of physical inactivity and exercise (ART; Brand & Ekkekakis, 2018), an exercise-specific dual-process theory that emphasizes the role of a momentary automatic affective reaction for exercise-decisions, were examined. The central aim of this dissertation was to investigate exercisers and non-exercisers automatic affective reactions to exercise-related stimuli (i.e., type-1 process). In particular, the two components of the ART’s type-1 process, that are, automatic associations with exercise and the automatic affective valuation to exercise, were under study.
In the first publication (Schinkoeth & Antoniewicz, 2017), research on automatic (evaluative) associations with exercise was summarized and evaluated in a systematic review. The results indicated that automatic associations with exercise appeared to be relevant predictors for exercise behavior and other exercise-related variables, providing evidence for a central assumption of the ART’s type-1 process. Furthermore, indirect methods seem to be suitable to assess automatic associations. The aim of the second publication (Schinkoeth, Weymar, & Brand, 2019) was to approach the somato-affective core of the automatic valuation of exercise using analysis of reactivity in vagal HRV while viewing exercise-related pictures. Results revealed that differences in exercise volume could be regressed on HRV reactivity. In light of the ART, these findings were interpreted as evidence of an inter-individual affective reaction elicited at the thought of exercise and triggered by exercise-stimuli. In the third publication (Schinkoeth & Brand, 2019, subm.), it was sought to disentangle and relate to each other the ART’s type-1 process components—automatic associations and the affective valuation of exercise. Automatic associations to exercise were assessed with a recoding-free variant of an implicit association test (IAT). Analysis of HRV reactivity was applied to approach a somatic component of the affective valuation, and facial reactions in a facial expression (FE) task served as indicators of the automatic affective reaction’s valence. Exercise behavior was assessed via self-report. The measurement of the affective valuation’s valence with the FE task did not work well in this study. HRV reactivity was predicted by the IAT score and did also statistically predict exercise behavior. These results thus confirm and expand upon the results of publication two and provide empirical evidence for the type-1 process, as defined in the ART. This dissertation advances the field of exercise psychology concerning the influence of automaticity and affect on exercise motivation. Moreover, both methodical implications and theoretical extensions for the ART can be derived from the results.
Detecting and categorizing particular entities in the environment are important visual tasks that humans have had to solve at various points in our evolutionary time. The question arises whether characteristics of entities that were of ecological significance for humans play a particular role during the development of visual categorization.
The current project addressed this question by investigating the effects of developing visual abilities, visual properties and ecological significance on categorization early in life. Our stimuli were monochromatic photographs of structure-like assemblies and surfaces taken from three categories: vegetation, non-living natural elements, and artifacts. A set of computational and rated visual properties were assessed for these stimuli. Three empirical studies applied coherent research concepts and methods in young children and adults, comprising (a) two card-sorting tasks with preschool children (age: 4.1-6.1 years) and adults (age: 18-50 years) which assessed classification and similarity judgments, (b) a gaze contingent eye-tracking search task which investigated the impact of visual properties and category membership on 8-month-olds' ability to segregate visual structure. Because eye-tracking with infants still provides challenges, a methodological study (c) assessed the effect of infant eye-tracking procedures on data quality with 8- to 12-month-old infants and adults.
In the categorization tasks we found that category membership and visual properties impacted the performance of all participant groups. Sensitivity to the respective categories varied between tasks and over the age groups. For example, artifact images hindered infants' visual search but were classified best by adults, whereas sensitivity to vegetation was highest during similarity judgments. Overall, preschool children relied less on visual properties than adults, but some properties (e.g., rated depth, shading) were drawn upon similarly strong. In children and infants, depth predicted task performance stronger than shape-related properties. Moreover, children and infants were sensitive to variations in the complexity of low-level visual statistics. These results suggest that classification of visual structures, and attention to particular visual properties is affected by the functional or ecological significance these categories and properties may have for each of the respective age groups.
Based on this, the project highlights the importance of further developmental research on visual categorization with naturalistic, structure-like stimuli. As intended with the current work, this would allow important links between developmental and adult research.
Prevalence and Predictors of Sexual Aggression Victimization and Perpetration in Chile and Turkey
(2017)
Background: Although sexual aggression is recognized as a serious issue worldwide, the current knowledge base is primarily built on evidence from Western countries, particularly the U.S. For the present doctoral research, Chile and Turkey were selected based on theoretical considerations to examine the prevalence as well as predictors of sexual aggression victimization and perpetration. The first aim of this research project was to systematically review the available evidence provided by past studies on this topic within each country. The second aim was to empirically study the prevalence of experiencing and engaging in sexual aggression since the age of consent among college students in Chile and Turkey. The third aim was to conduct cross-cultural analyses examining pathways to victimization and perpetration based on a two-wave longitudinal design.
Methods: This research adopted a gender-inclusive approach by considering men and women in both victim and perpetrator roles. For the systematic reviews, multiple-stage literature searches were performed, and based on a predefined set of eligibility criteria, 28 studies in Chile and 56 studies in Turkey were identified for inclusion. A two-wave longitudinal study was conducted to examine the prevalence and predictors of sexual aggression among male and female college students in Chile and Turkey. Self-reports of victimization and perpetration were assessed with a Chilean Spanish or Turkish version of the Sexual Aggression and Victimization Scale. Two path models were conceptualized in which participants’ risky sexual scripts for consensual sex, risky sexual behavior, sexual self-esteem, sexual assertiveness, and religiosity were assessed at T1 and used as predictors of sexual aggression victimization and perpetration at T2 in the following 12 months, mediated through past victimization or perpetration, respectively. The models differed in that sexual assertiveness was expected to serve different functions for victimization (refusal assertiveness negatively linked to victimization) and perpetration (initiation assertiveness positively linked to perpetration).
Results: Both systematic reviews revealed that victimization was addressed by all included studies, but data on perpetration was severely limited. A great heterogeneity not only in victimization rates but also in predictors was found, which may be attributed to a lack of conceptual and methodological consistency across studies. The empirical analysis of the prevalence of sexual aggression in Chile revealed a victimization rate of 51.9% for women and 48.0% for men, and a perpetration rate of 26.8% for men and 16.5% for women. In the Turkish original data, victimization was reported by 77.6% of women and 65.5% of men, whereas, again, lower rates were found for perpetration, with 28.9% of men and 14.2% of women reporting at least one incident. The cross-cultural analyses showed, as expected, that risky sexual scripts informed risky sexual behavior, and thereby indirectly increased the likelihood of victimization and perpetration at T2 in both samples. More risky sexual scripts were also linked to lower levels of refusal assertiveness in both samples, indirectly increasing the vulnerability to victimization at T2. High sexual self-esteem decreased the probability of victimization at T2 through higher refusal assertiveness as well as through less risky sexual behavior also in both samples, whereas it increased the odds of perpetration at T2 via higher initiation assertiveness in the Turkish sample only. Furthermore, high religiosity decreased the odds of perpetration and victimization at T2 through less risky sexual scripts and less risky sexual behavior in both samples. It reduced the vulnerability to victimization through less risky sexual scripts and higher refusal assertiveness in the Chilean sample only. In the Turkish sample only, it increased the odds of perpetration and victimization through lower sexual self-esteem.
Conclusions: The findings showed that sexual aggression is a widespread problem in both Chile and Turkey, contributing cross-cultural evidence to the international knowledge base and indicating the clear need for implementing policy measures and prevention strategies in each country. Based on the results of the prospective analyses, concrete implications for intervention efforts are discussed.