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ResultsUnder conditions of elevated prenatal maternal stress, children carrying one or two DRD4 7r alleles were at increased risk of a diagnosis of CD/ODD. Moreover, homozygous carriers of the DRD4 7r allele displayed more externalizing behavior following exposure to higher levels of prenatal maternal stress, while homozygous carriers of the DRD4 4r allele turned out to be insensitive to the effects of prenatal stress.
ConclusionsThis study is the first to report a gene-environment interaction related to DRD4 and prenatal maternal stress using data from a prospective study, which extends earlier findings on the impact of prenatal maternal stress with respect to childhood antisocial behavior.
Wer wird Vater und wann?
(2014)
It is generally accepted that low-level features (e.g., inter-word spaces) are responsible for saccade-target selection in eye-movement control during reading. In two experiments using Uighur script known for its rich suffixes, we demonstrate that, in addition to word length and launch site, the number of suffixes influences initial landing positions. We also demonstrate an influence of word frequency. These results are difficult to explain purely by low-level guidance of eye movements and indicate that due to properties specific to Uighur script low-level visual information and high-level information such as morphological structure of parafoveal words jointly influence saccade programming. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The current study examined effects of syllable articulation on eye movements during the silent reading of Chinese sentences, which contained two types of two-character target words whose second characters were subject to dialect-specific variation. In one condition the second syllable was articulated with a neutral tone for northern-dialect Chinese speakers and with a full tone for southern-dialect Chinese speakers (neutral-tone target words) and in the other condition the second syllable was articulated with a full tone irrespective of readers' dialect type (full-tone target words). Native speakers of northern and southern Chinese dialects were recruited in Experiment 1 to examine the effect of dialect-specific articulation on silent reading. Recordings of their eye movements revealed shorter viewing durations for neutral- than for full-tone target words only for speakers of northern but not for southern dialects, indicating that dialect-specific articulation of syllabic tone influenced visual word recognition. Experiment 2 replicated the syllabic tone effect for speakers of northern dialects, and the use of gaze-contingent display changes further revealed that these readers processed an upcoming parafoveal word less effectively when a neutral- than when a full-tone target was fixated. Shorter viewing duration for neutral-tone words thus cannot be attributed to their easier lexical processing; instead, tonal effects appear to reflect Chinese readers' simulated articulation of to-be-recognized words during silent reading. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Spatial interferences in mental arithmetic: Evidence from the motion-arithmetic compatibility effect
(2014)
Recent research on spatial number representations suggests that the number space is not necessarily horizontally organized and might also be affected by acquired associations between magnitude and sensory experiences in vertical space. Evidence for this claim is, however, controversial. The present study now aims to compare vertical and horizontal spatial associations in mental arithmetic. In Experiment 1, participants solved addition and subtraction problems and indicated the result verbally while moving their outstretched right arm continuously left-, right-, up-, or downwards. The analysis of the problem-solving performances revealed a motion-arithmetic compatibility effect for spatial actions along both the horizontal and the vertical axes. Performances in additions was impaired while making downward compared to upward movements as well as when moving left compared to right and vice versa in subtractions. In Experiment 2, instead of being instructed to perform active body movements, participants calculated while the problems moved in one of the four relative directions on the screen. For visual motions, only the motion-arithmetic compatibility effect for the vertical dimension could be replicated. Taken together, our findings provide first evidence for an impact of spatial processing on mental arithmetic. Moreover, the stronger effect of the vertical dimension supports the idea that mental calculations operate on representations of numerical magnitude that are grounded in a vertically organized mental number space.
The mental chronometry of the human brain's processing of sounds to be categorized as targets has intensively been studied in cognitive neuroscience. According to current theories, a series of successive stages consisting of the registration, identification, and categorization of the sound has to be completed before participants are able to report the sound as a target by button press after similar to 300-500 ms. Here we use miniature eye movements as a tool to study the categorization of a sound as a target or nontarget, indicating that an initial categorization is present already after 80-100 ms. During visual fixation, the rate of microsaccades, the fastest components of miniature eye movements, is transiently modulated after auditory stimulation. In two experiments, we measured microsaccade rates in human participants in an auditory three-tone oddball paradigm (including rare nontarget sounds) and observed a difference in the microsaccade rates between targets and nontargets as early as 142 ms after sound onset. This finding was replicated in a third experiment with directed saccades measured in a paradigm in which tones had to be matched to score-like visual symbols. Considering the delays introduced by (motor) signal transmission and data analysis constraints, the brain must have differentiated target from nontarget sounds as fast as 80-100 ms after sound onset in both paradigms. We suggest that predictive information processing for expected input makes higher cognitive attributes, such as a sound's identity and category, available already during early sensory processing. The measurement of eye movements is thus a promising approach to investigate hearing.
Background: Functional abdominal pain (FAP) is not only a highly prevalent disease but also poses a considerable burden on children and their families. Untreated, FAP is highly persistent until adulthood, also leading to an increased risk of psychiatric disorders. Intervention studies underscore the efficacy of cognitive behavioral treatment approaches but are limited in terms of sample size, long-term follow-up data, controls and inclusion of psychosocial outcome data.
Methods/Design: In a multicenter randomized controlled trial, 112 children aged 7 to 12 years who fulfill the Rome III criteria for FAP will be allocated to an established cognitive behavioral training program for children with FAP (n = 56) or to an active control group (focusing on age-appropriate information delivery; n = 56). Randomization occurs centrally, blockwise and is stratified by center. This study is performed in five pediatric gastroenterology outpatient departments. Observer-blind assessments of outcome variables take place four times: pre-, post-, 3- and 12-months post-treatment. Primary outcome is the course of pain intensity and frequency. Secondary endpoints are health-related quality of life, pain-related coping and cognitions, as well as selfefficacy.
Discussion: This confirmatory randomized controlled clinical trial evaluates the efficacy of a cognitive behavioral intervention for children with FAP. By applying an active control group, time and attention processes can be controlled, and long-term follow-up data over the course of one year can be explored.
In the present study, we manipulated different types of information available in the parafovea during the reading of Chinese sentences and examined how native Korean readers who learned Chinese as a second language make use of the parafoveal information. Results clearly indicate that, only identical and orthographically similar previews facilitated processing of the target words when they were subsequently fixated. More critically, more parafoveal information was obtained by subjects with higher reading proficiency. These results suggest that, mainly low-level features of the parafoveal words are obtained by the non-native Chinese readers and less attentional resources are available for the readers with lower reading proficiency, thereby causing a reduction of the perceptual span.
A co-actor's intentionality has been suggested to be a key modulating factor for joint action effects like the joint Simon effect (JSE). However, in previous studies intentionality has often been confounded with agency defined as perceiving the initiator of an action as being the causal source of the action. The aim of the present study was to disentangle the role of agency and intentionality as modulating factors of the JSE. In Experiment 1, participants performed a joint go/nogo Simon task next to a co-actor who either intentionally controlled a response button with own finger movements (agency+/intentionality+) or who passively placed the hand on a response button that moved up and down on its own as triggered by computer signals (agency-/intentionality-). In Experiment 2, we included a condition in which participants believed that the co-actor intentionally controlled the response button with a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) while placing the response finger clearly besides the response button, so that the causal relationship between agent and action effect was perceptually disrupted (agency-/intentionality+). As a control condition, the response button was computer controlled while the co-actor placed the response finger besides the response button (agency-/intentionality-). Experiment 1 showed that the JSE is present with an intentional co-actor and causality between co-actor and action effect, but absent with an unintentional co-actor and a lack of causality between co-actor and action effect. Experiment 2 showed that the JSE is absent with an intentional co-actor, but no causality between co-actor and action effect. Our findings indicate an important role of the co-actor's agency for the JSE. They also suggest that the attribution of agency has a strong perceptual basis.
Removing spatial responses reveals spatial concepts even in a culture with mixed reading habits
(2014)
Background: Human and animal work suggests a shift from goal-directed to habitual decision-making in addiction. However, the evidence for this in human alcohol dependence is as yet inconclusive. Methods: Twenty-six healthy controls and 26 recently detoxified alcohol-dependent patients underwent behavioral testing with a 2-step task designed to disentangle goal-directed and habitual response patterns. Results: Alcohol-dependent patients showed less evidence of goal-directed choices than healthy controls, particularly after losses. There was no difference in the strength of the habitual component. The group differences did not survive controlling for performance on the Digit Symbol Substitution Task. Conclusion: Chronic alcohol use appears to selectively impair goal-directed function, rather than promoting habitual responding. It appears to do so particularly after nonrewards, and this may be mediated by the effects of alcohol on more general cognitive functions subserved by the prefrontal cortex.
Many perceptual and cognitive tasks permit or require the integrated cooperation of specialized sensory channels, detectors, or other functionally separate units. In compound detection or discrimination tasks, 1 prominent general mechanism to model the combination of the output of different processing channels is probability summation. The classical example is the binocular summation model of Pirenne (1943), according to which a weak visual stimulus is detected if at least 1 of the 2 eyes detects this stimulus; as we review briefly, exactly the same reasoning is applied in numerous other fields. It is generally accepted that this mechanism necessarily predicts performance based on 2 (or more) channels to be superior to single channel performance, because 2 separate channels provide "2 chances" to succeed with the task. We argue that this reasoning is misleading because it neglects the increased opportunity with 2 channels not just for hits but also for false alarms and that there may well be no redundancy gain at all when performance is measured in terms of receiver operating characteristic curves. We illustrate and support these arguments with a visual detection experiment involving different spatial uncertainty conditions. Our arguments and findings have important implications for all models that, in one way or another, rest on, or incorporate, the notion of probability summation for the analysis of detection tasks, 2-alternative forced-choice tasks, and psychometric functions.
This study examined the relationship between ethnic identity, orientation toward the White mainstream culture, and psychological well-being among American Indians. In the light of the unique history of American Indians, we investigated the relationship between identification with the American Indian ingroup, orientation toward the dominant White American culture ( in terms of showing behavior typical for White mainstream culture as well as positive attitudes and feelings of belonging to White American culture), and self-efficacy and learned helplessness as indicators of psychological well-being. Structural equation analyses with an adolescent and an adult sample revealed a positive relationship between ethnic identity and self-efficacy but no link with learned helplessness. The tendency to show behavior typical for White mainstream culture was associated with higher self-efficacy in both samples and with lower helplessness in the adult subsample. White American orientation in the form of positive attitudes and sense of belonging were associated with higher helplessness in both samples and with lower self-efficacy among adults. The findings are discussed in terms of the role of both ethnic identity and the orientation toward the mainstream culture for well-being among American Indians, focusing on the distinct relations of White American behavior versus White American affiliation with well-being in American Indians.
Numerous studies have demonstrated effects of word frequency on eye movements during reading, but the precise timing of this influence has remained unclear. The fast priming paradigm was previously used to study influences of related versus unrelated primes on the target word. Here, we use this procedure to investigate whether the frequency of the prime word has a direct influence on eye movements during reading when the prime-target relation is not manipulated. We found that with average prime intervals of 32 ms readers made longer single fixation durations on the target word in the low than in the high frequency prime condition. Distributional analyses demonstrated that the effect of prime frequency on single fixation durations occurred very early, supporting theories of immediate cognitive control of eye movements. Finding prime frequency effects only 207 ms after visibility of the prime and for prime durations of 32 ms yields new time constraints for cognitive processes controlling eye movements during reading. Our variant of the fast priming paradigm provides a new approach to test early influences of word processing on eye movement control during reading.
Theories of decision-making and its neural substrates have long assumed the existence of two distinct and competing valuation systems, variously described as goal-directed vs. habitual, or, more recently and based on statistical arguments, as model-free vs. model-based reinforcement-learning. Though both have been shown to control choices, the cognitive abilities associated with these systems are under ongoing investigation. Here we examine the link to cognitive abilities, and find that individual differences in processing speed covary with a shift from model-free to model-based choice control in the presence of above-average working memory function. This suggests shared cognitive and neural processes; provides a bridge between literatures on intelligence and valuation; and may guide the development of process models of different valuation components. Furthermore, it provides a rationale for individual differences in the tendency to deploy valuation systems, which may be important for understanding the manifold neuropsychiatric diseases associated with malfunctions of valuation.
Many studies have shown that previewing the next word n + 1 during reading leads to substantial processing benefit (e.g., shorter word viewing times) when this word is eventually fixated. However, evidence of such preprocessing in fixations on the preceding word n when in fact the information about the preview is acquired is far less consistent. A recent study suggested that such effects may be delayed into fixations on the next word n + 1 (Risse & Kliegl, 2012). To investigate the time course of parafoveal information-acquisition on the control of eye movements during reading, we conducted 2 gaze-contingent display-change experiments and orthogonally manipulated the processing difficulty (i.e., word frequency) of an n + 1 preview word and its validity relative to the target word. Preview difficulty did not affect fixation durations on the pretarget word n but on the target word n + 1. In fact, the delayed preview-difficulty effect was almost of the same size as the preview benefit associated with the n + 1 preview validity. Based on additional results from quantile-regression analyses on the time course of the 2 preview effects, we discuss consequences as to the integration of foveal and parafoveal information and potential implications for computational models of eye guidance in reading.
Eye-movement experiments suggest that the perceptual span during reading is larger than the fixated word, asymmetric around the fixation position, and shrinks in size contingent on the foveal processing load. We used the SWIFT model of eye-movement control during reading to test these hypotheses and their implications under the assumption of graded parallel processing of all words inside the perceptual span. Specifically, we simulated reading in the boundary paradigm and analysed the effects of denying the model to have valid preview of a parafoveal word n + 2 two words to the right of fixation. Optimizing the model parameters for the valid preview condition only, we obtained span parameters with remarkably realistic estimates conforming to the empirical findings on the size of the perceptual span. More importantly, the SWIFT model generated parafoveal processing up to word n + 2 without fitting the model to such preview effects. Our results suggest that asymmetry and dynamic modulation are plausible properties of the perceptual span in a parallel word-processing model such as SWIFT. Moreover, they seem to guide the flexible distribution of processing resources during reading between foveal and parafoveal words.
Despite recent growth of research on the effects of prosocial media, processes underlying these effects are not well understood. Two studies explored theoretically relevant mediators and moderators of the effects of prosocial media on helping. Study 1 examined associations among prosocial- and violent-media use, empathy, and helping in samples from seven countries. Prosocial-media use was positively associated with helping. This effect was mediated by empathy and was similar across cultures. Study 2 explored longitudinal relations among prosocial-video-game use, violent-video-game use, empathy, and helping in a large sample of Singaporean children and adolescents measured three times across 2 years. Path analyses showed significant longitudinal effects of prosocial- and violent-video-game use on prosocial behavior through empathy. Latent-growth-curve modeling for the 2-year period revealed that change in video-game use significantly affected change in helping, and that this relationship was mediated by change in empathy.
The perception of time is a fundamental part of human experience. Recent research suggests that the experience of time emerges from emotional and interoceptive (bodily) states as processed in the insular cortex. Whether there is an interaction between the conscious awareness of interoceptive states and time distortions induced by emotions has rarely been investigated so far. We aimed to address this question by the use of a retrospective time estimation task comparing two groups of participants. One group had a focus on interoceptive states and one had a focus on exteroceptive information while watching film clips depicting fear, amusement and neutral content. Main results were that attention to interoceptive processes significantly affected subjective time experience. Fear was accompanied with subjective time dilation that was more pronounced in the group with interoceptive focus, while amusement led to a quicker passage of time which was also increased by interoceptive focus. We conclude that retrospective temporal distortions are directly influenced by attention to bodily responses. These effects might crucially interact with arousal levels. Sympathetic nervous system activation affecting memory build-up might be the decisive factor influencing retrospective time judgments. Our data substantially extend former research findings underscoring the relevance of interoception for the effects of emotional states on subjective time experience.
Mental arithmetic shows systematic spatial biases. The association between numbers and space is well documented, but it is unknown whether arithmetic operation signs also have spatial associations and whether or not they contribute to spatial biases found in arithmetic. Adult participants classified plus and minus signs with left and right button presses under two counterbalanced response rules. Results from two experiments showed that spatially congruent responses (i.e., right-side responses for the plus sign and left-side responses for the minus sign) were responded to faster than spatially incongruent ones (i.e., left-side responses for the plus sign and right-side responses for the minus sign). We also report correlations between this novel operation sign spatial association (OSSA) effect and other spatial biases in number processing. In a control experiment with no explicit processing requirements for the operation signs there were no sign-related spatial biases. Overall, the results suggest that (a) arithmetic operation signs can evoke spatial associations (OSSA), (b) experience with arithmetic operations probably underlies the OSSA, and (c) the OSSA only partially contributes to spatial biases in arithmetic.
Background: The appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin is a fundamental regulator of human energy metabolism. A series of studies support the notion that long-term appetite and weight regulation may be already programmed in early life and it could be demonstrated that the intrauterine environment affects the ghrelin system of the offspring. Animal studies have also shown that intrauterine programming of orexigenic systems persists even until adolescence/adulthood. Methods: We hypothesized that plasma ghrelin concentrations in adulthood may be associated with the intrauterine exposure to cigarette smoke. We examined this hypothesis in a sample of 19-year-olds followed up since birth in the framework of the Mannheim Study of Children at Risk, an ongoing epidemiological cohort study of the long-term outcome of early risk factors. Results: As a main finding, we found that ghrelin plasma concentrations in young adults who had been exposed to cigarette smoke in utero were significantly higher than in those without prenatal smoke exposure. Moreover, individuals with intrauterine nicotine exposure showed a significantly higher prevalence of own smoking habits and lower educational status compared to those in the group without exposure. Conclusion: Smoking during pregnancy may be considered as an adverse intrauterine influence that may alter the endocrine-metabolic status of the offspring even until early adulthood.
This study investigates the eye movements of dyslexic children and their age-matched controls when reading Chinese. Dyslexic children exhibited more and longer fixations than age-matched control children, and an increase of word length resulted in a greater increase in the number of fixations and gaze durations for the dyslexic than for the control readers. The report focuses on the finding that there was a significant difference between the two groups in the fixation landing position as a function of word length in single-fixation cases, while there was no such difference in the initial fixation of multi-fixation cases. We also found that both groups had longer incoming saccade amplitudes while the launch sites were closer to the word in single fixation cases than in multi-fixation cases. Our results suggest that dyslexic children's inefficient lexical processing, in combination with the absence of orthographic word boundaries in Chinese, leads them to select saccade targets at the beginning of words conservatively. These findings provide further evidence for parafoveal word segmentation during reading of Chinese sentences.
TEST is a novel taxonomy of knowledge representations based on three distinct hierarchically organized representational features: Tropism, Embodiment, and Situatedness. Tropic representational features reflect constraints of the physical world on the agent's ability to form, reactivate, and enrich embodied (i.e., resulting from the agent's bodily constraints) conceptual representations embedded in situated contexts. The proposed hierarchy entails that representations can, in principle, have tropic features without necessarily having situated and/or embodied features. On the other hand, representations that are situated and/or embodied are likely to be simultaneously tropic. Hence, although we propose tropism as the most general term, the hierarchical relationship between embodiment and situatedness is more on a par, such that the dominance of one component over the other relies on the distinction between offline storage versus online generation as well as on representation-specific properties.
Purpose: Work-related anxieties are frequent and have a negative effect on the occupational performance of patients and absence due to sickness. Most important is workplace phobia, that is, panic when approaching or even thinking of the workplace. This study is the first to estimate the prevalence of workplace phobia among primary care patients suffering from chronic mental disorders and to describe which illness-related or workplace-specific context factors are associated with workplace phobia.
Methods: A convenience sample of 288 primary care patients with chronic mental disorders (70% women) seen by 40 primary care clinicians in Germany were assessed using a standardized diagnostic interview about mental disorders and workplace problems. Workplace phobia was assessed by the Workplace Phobia Scale and a structured Diagnostic and Statical Manual of Mental Disorders-based diagnostic interview. In addition, capacity and participation restrictions, illness severity, and sick leave were assessed.
Results: Workplace phobia was found in 10% of patients with chronic mental disorders, that is, approximately about 3% of all general practice patients. Patients with workplace phobia had longer durations of sick leave than patients without workplace phobia and were impaired to a higher degree in work-relevant capacities. They also had a higher degree of restrictions in participation in other areas of life.
Conclusions: Workplace phobia seems to be a frequent problem in primary care. It may behoove primary care clinicians to consider workplace-related anxiety, including phobia, particularly when patients ask for a work excuse for nonspecific somatic complaints.
Capacity-Oriented Behavior Therapy in Mental Disorders Mental disorders come along with the impairment of activities and capacities of daily live. Behavior therapy often uses capacity trainings for improving compensatory behavior, beside symptom reduction as such. This article gives an overview on how behavior therapy techniques can be used to improve compensatory behavior in different capacity domains that were conceptually derived from the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and which are often impaired in mental disorders.
Workplaces contain by their very nature different anxiety-provoking characteristics. When workplace-related anxieties manifest, absenteeism, long-term-sick leave, and even disability pension can be the consequences. In medical-vocational rehabilitation about 30-60 % of the patients suffer from workplace-related anxieties that are often a barrier for return to work. Even in mentally healthy employees, 5 % said that they were prone to ask for a sick leave certificate due to workplace-related anxieties. Future research should focus on workplace-related anxieties not only in rehabilitation, but more earlier, i. e. in the workplace. The concept of workplace-related anxieties offers ideas which can be useful in mental-health-oriented work analysis, employee-workplace-fit, and job design.
Neuroscientific studies have shown that brain activity correlated with a decision to move can be observed before a person reports being consciously aware of having made that decision (e.g., Libet, Gleason, Wright, & Pearl, 1983; Soon, Brass, Heinze, & Haynes, 2008). Given that a later event (i.e., conscious awareness) cannot cause an earlier one (i.e., decision-related brain activity), such results have been interpreted as evidence that decisions are made unconsciously (e.g., Libet, 1985). We argue that this interpretation depends upon an all-or-none view of consciousness, and we offer an alternative interpretation of the early decision-related brain activity based on models in which conscious awareness of the decision to move develops gradually up to the level of a reporting criterion. Under this interpretation, the early brain activity reflects sub-criterion levels of awareness rather than complete absence of awareness and thus does not suggest that decisions are made unconsciously.
Data derived from a nationwide consumer survey of 986 mothers with children between 5 and 36 months of age in Germany.
78.3 % reported that they ever breastfed their children, and 55.6 % of the mothers exclusively breastfed for at least 4 months. Mothers who did not breastfeed were less likely to be informed by their paediatrician or midwife and were more often not informed at all; 27.8 % of mothers used DHA supplements during pregnancy, 16.8 % postnatal. DHA supplementation was more common in women with a high versus a low fish intake. The social status was the major determinant of breastfeeding initiation and exclusivity and also DHA supplementation.
Breastfeeding initiation and duration of exclusive breastfeeding in Germany need to be improved. Professional counselling and support, with a focus on mothers from lower social classes, appears necessary to increase current rates of breastfeeding initiation, duration, and exclusiveness, but also to ensure a sufficient supply with DHA in pregnant and lactating women, particularly in women with low fish consumption.
Previous proactivity research has predominantly assumed that proactive personality generates positive environmental changes in the workplace. Grounded in recent research on personality development from a broad interactionist theoretical approach, the present article investigates whether work characteristics, including job demands, job control, social support from supervisors and coworkers, and organizational constraints, change proactive personality over time and, more important, reciprocal relationships between proactive personality and work characteristics. Latent change score analyses based on longitudinal data collected in 3 waves across 3 years show that job demands and job control have positive lagged effects on increases in proactive personality. In addition, proactive personality exerts beneficial lagged effects on increases in job demands, job control, and supervisory support, and on decreases in organizational constraints. Dynamic reciprocal relationships are observed between proactive personality with job demands and job control. The revealed corresponsive change relationships between proactive personality and work characteristics contribute to the proactive personality literature by illuminating more nuanced interplays between the agentic person and work characteristics, and also have important practical implications for organizations and employees.
The serial reaction time task (SRTT) is a standard task used to investigate incidental sequence learning. Whereas incidental learning of motor sequences is well-established, few and disputed results support learning of perceptual sequences. Here we adapt a motion coherence discrimination task (Newsome & Pare, 1988) to the sequence learning paradigm. The new task has 2 advantages: (a) the stimulus is presented at fixation, thereby obviating overt eye movements, and (b) by varying coherence a perceptual threshold measure is available in addition to the performance measure of RT. Results from 3 experiments show that action relevance of the sequence is necessary for sequence learning to occur, that the amount of sequence knowledge varies with the ease of encoding the motor sequence, and that sequence knowledge, once acquired, has the ability to modify perceptual thresholds.
Two experiments examined the effects of dispositional optimism and attributions on feelings of success in a performance setting. In Experiment 1, participants successfully solved three cognitive tasks and attributed the success either internally (i.e., to themselves) or externally (i.e., to a teammate). We found no effect of optimism, but a significant effect of the attribution: Internal attribution predicted an increase in feelings of success. In Experiment 2, we replicated the design and adopted an extreme groups approach in order to include the extremes of the optimism dimension. Only optimism affected feelings of success in this sample: Pessimistic participants showed higher increases in feelings of success than optimistic participants. We conclude that optimism, if disentangled from attribution, may have an effect on affect, with pessimism showing potential affective benefits. However, this association may be concealed if samples with a restricted range of the optimism dimension are studied.
Three studies examined the effect of information form on choice deferral in consumer choice and explored the moderating role of knowledge about the product domain. Two theoretical approaches were contrasted: (1) The process approach predicting that choice deferral varies as a function of information form, and (2) the communication approach predicting an interaction of information form and domain-specific knowledge. Participants were presented with different laptops described in an absolute (e.g. '300 GB hard disc'), evaluative-numerical (e.g. 'hard disc with 30 out of 100 points in an expert rating') or evaluative-verbal (e.g. 'bad hard disc') information form, and they could choose to buy one of the laptops or defer. Domain-specific knowledge was also assessed. In Study 1, evaluative-numerical and evaluative-verbal values led to more deferral in people with high domain-specific knowledge. The pattern for evaluative-numerical and evaluative-verbal values was replicated for a different information organization in Study 2. Study 3 showed that absolute values led to more deferral the less knowledgeable participants were and demonstrated that domain-specific knowledge and deferral were unrelated when absolute and evaluative-verbal values were presented in combination. In sum, the results support the communication approach and have methodological implications for decision research and theoretical implications for understanding choice deferral in real-life decisions. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A dominant hypothesis on how the brain processes numerical size proposes a spatial representation of numbers as positions on a "mental number line." An alternative hypothesis considers numbers as elements of a generalized representation of sensorimotor-related magnitude, which is not obligatorily spatial. Here we show that individuals' relative use of spatial and nonspatial representations has a cerebral counterpart in the structural organization of the posterior parietal cortex. Interindividual variability in the linkage between numbers and spatial responses (faster left responses to small numbers and right responses to large numbers; spatial-numerical association of response codes effect) correlated with variations in gray matter volume around the right precuneus. Conversely, differences in the disposition to link numbers to force production (faster soft responses to small numbers and hard responses to large numbers) were related to gray matter volume in the left angular gyrus. This finding suggests that numerical cognition relies on multiple mental representations of analogue magnitude using different neural implementations that are linked to individual traits.
Expyriment is an open-source and platform-independent lightweight Python library for designing and conducting timing-critical behavioral and neuroimaging experiments. The major goal is to provide a well-structured Python library for script-based experiment development, with a high priority being the readability of the resulting program code. Expyriment has been tested extensively under Linux and Windows and is an all-in-one solution, as it handles stimulus presentation, the recording of input/output events, communication with other devices, and the collection and preprocessing of data. Furthermore, it offers a hierarchical design structure, which allows for an intuitive transition from the experimental design to a running program. It is therefore also suited for students, as well as for experimental psychologists and neuro-scientists with little programming experience.