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Yiddish in the Andes
(2019)
This article elucidates the efforts of Chilean-Jewish activists to create, manage and protect Chilean Yiddish culture. It illuminates how Yiddish cultural leaders in small diasporas, such as Chile, worked to maintain dialogue with other Jewish centers. Chilean culturists maintained that a unique Latin American Jewish culture existed and needed to be strengthened through the joint efforts of all Yiddish actors on the continent. Chilean activists envisioned a modern Jewish culture informed by both Eastern European influences and local Jewish cultural production, as well as by exchanges with non-Jewish Latin American majority cultures.
Previous research informs us about facilitators of employees’ promotive voice. Yet little is known about what determines whether a specific idea for constructive change brought up by an employee will be approved or rejected by a supervisor. Drawing on interactionist theories of motivation and personality, we propose that a supervisor will be least likely to support an idea when it threatens the supervisor’s power motive, and when it is perceived to serve the employee’s own striving for power. The prosocial versus egoistic intentions attributed to the idea presenter are proposed to mediate the latter effect. We conducted three scenario-based studies in which supervisors evaluated fictitious ideas voiced by employees that – if implemented – would have power-related consequences for them as a supervisor. Results show that the higher a supervisors’ explicit power motive was, the less likely they were to support a power-threatening idea (Study 1, N = 60). Moreover, idea support was less likely when this idea was proposed by an employee that was described as high (rather than low) on power motivation (Study 2, N = 79); attributed prosocial intentions mediated this effect. Study 3 (N = 260) replicates these results.
It is well established in language acquisition research that monolingual children and adult second language learners misinterpret sentences with the universal quantifier every and make quantifier-spreading errors that are attributed to a preference for a match in number between two sets of objects. The present Visual World eye-tracking study tested bilingual heritage Russian–English adults and investigated how they interpret of sentences like Every alligator lies in a bathtub in both languages. Participants performed a sentence–picture verification task while their eye movements were recorded. Pictures showed three pairs of alligators in bathtubs and two extra objects: elephants (Control condition), bathtubs (Overexhaustive condition), or alligators (Underexhaustive condition). Monolingual adults performed at ceiling in all conditions. Heritage language (HL) adults made 20% q-spreading errors, but only in the Overexhaustive condition, and when they made an error they spent more time looking at the two extra bathtubs during the Verb region. We attribute q-spreading in HL speakers to cognitive overload caused by the necessity to integrate conflicting sources of information, i.e. the spoken sentences in their weaker, heritage, language and attention-demanding visual context, that differed with respect to referential salience.
Previous research has shown that high phonotactic frequencies
facilitate the production of regularly inflected verbs in English-learning
children with specific language impairment (SLI) but not with typical
development (TD). We asked whether this finding can be replicated
for German, a language with a much more complex inflectional
verb paradigm than English. Using an elicitation task, the production
of inflected nonce verb forms (3 rd person singular with -t suffix)
with either high- or low-frequency subsyllables was tested in
sixteen German-learning children with SLI (ages 4;1–5 ;1), sixteen
TD-children matched for chronological age (CA) and fourteen TD-
children matched for verbal age (VA) (ages 3;0–3 ;11). The findings
revealed that children with SLI, but not CA- or VA-children, showed
differential performance between the two types of verbs, producing
more inflectional errors when the verb forms resulted in low-frequency
subsyllables than when they resulted in high-frequency subsyllables,
replicating the results from English-learning children.
This article examines two so-far-understudied verb doubling constructions in Mandarin Chinese, viz., verb doubling clefts and verb doubling lian…dou. We show that these constructions have the same internal syntax as regular clefts and lian…dou sentences, the doubling effect being epiphenomenal; therefore, we classify them as subtypes of the general cleft and lian…dou constructions, respectively, rather than as independent constructions. Additionally, we also show that, as in many other languages with comparable constructions, the two instances of the verb are part of a single movement chain, which has the peculiarity of allowing Spell-Out of more than one link.
Using behavioral observation for the longitudinal study of anger regulation in middle childhood
(2017)
Assessing anger regulation via self-reports is fraught with problems, especially among children. Behavioral observation provides an ecologically valid alternative for measuring anger regulation. The present study uses data from two waves of a longitudinal study to present a behavioral observation approach for measuring anger regulation in middle childhood. At T1, 599 children from Germany (6–10 years old) were observed during an anger eliciting task, and the use of anger regulation strategies was coded. At T2, 3 years later, the observation was repeated with an age-appropriate version of the same task. Partial metric measurement invariance over time demonstrated the structural equivalence of the two versions. Maladaptive anger regulation between the two time points showed moderate stability. Validity was established by showing correlations with aggressive behavior, peer problems, and conduct problems (concurrent and predictive criterion validity). The study presents an ecologically valid and economic approach to assessing anger regulation strategies in situations.
Background: Although the benefits for health of physical activity (PA) are well documented, the majority of the population is unable to implement present recommendations into daily routine. Mobile health (mHealth) apps could help increase the level of PA. However, this is contingent on the interest of potential users.
Objective: The aim of this study was the explorative, nuanced determination of the interest in mHealth apps with respect to PA among students and staff of a university.
Methods: We conducted a Web-based survey from June to July 2015 in which students and employees from the University of Potsdam were asked about their activity level, interest in mHealth fitness apps, chronic diseases, and sociodemographic parameters.
Results: A total of 1217 students (67.30%, 819/1217; female; 26.0 years [SD 4.9]) and 485 employees (67.5%, 327/485; female; 42.7 years [SD 11.7]) participated in the survey. The recommendation for PA (3 times per week) was not met by 70.1% (340/485) of employees and 52.67% (641/1217) of students. Within these groups, 53.2% (341/641 students) and 44.2% (150/340 employees)—independent of age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and level of education or professional qualification—indicated an interest in mHealth fitness apps.
Conclusions: Even in a younger, highly educated population, the majority of respondents reported an insufficient level of PA. About half of them indicated their interest in training support. This suggests that the use of personalized mobile fitness apps may become increasingly significant for a positive change of lifestyle.
Do properties of individual languages shape the mechanisms by which they are processed? By virtue of their non-concatenative morphological structure, the recognition of complex words in Semitic languages has been argued to rely strongly on morphological information and on decomposition into root and pattern constituents. Here, we report results from a masked priming experiment in Hebrew in which we contrasted verb forms belonging to two morphological classes, Paal and Piel, which display similar properties, but crucially differ on whether they are extended to novel verbs. Verbs from the open-class Piel elicited familiar root priming effects, but verbs from the closed-class Paal did not. Our findings indicate that, similarly to other (e.g., Indo-European) languages, down-to-the-root decomposition in Hebrew does not apply to stems of non-productive verbal classes. We conclude that the Semitic word processor is less unique than previously thought: Although it operates on morphological units that are combined in a non-linear way, it engages the same universal mechanisms of storage and computation as those seen in other languages.
Background:
Deception can distort psychological tests on socially sensitive topics. Understanding the cerebral
processes that are involved in such faking can be useful in detection and prevention of deception. Previous research
shows that faking a brief implicit association test (BIAT ) evokes a characteristic ERP response. It is not yet known
whether temporarily available self-control resources moderate this response. We randomly assigned 22 participants
(15 females, 24.23
±
2.91
years old) to a counterbalanced repeated-measurements design. Participants first com-
pleted a Brief-IAT (BIAT ) on doping attitudes as a baseline measure and were then instructed to fake a negative dop
-
ing attitude both when self-control resources were depleted and non-depleted. Cerebral activity during BIAT perfor
-
mance was assessed using high-density EEG.
Results:
Compared to the baseline BIAT, event-related potentials showed a first interaction at the parietal P1,
while significant post hoc differences were found only at the later occurring late positive potential. Here, signifi-
cantly decreased amplitudes were recorded for ‘normal’ faking, but not in the depletion condition. In source space,
enhanced activity was found for ‘normal’ faking in the bilateral temporoparietal junction. Behaviorally, participants
were successful in faking the BIAT successfully in both conditions.
Conclusions:
Results indicate that temporarily available self-control resources do not affect overt faking success on
a BIAT. However, differences were found on an electrophysiological level. This indicates that while on a phenotypical
level self-control resources play a negligible role in deliberate test faking the underlying cerebral processes are markedly different.
Previous research offers equivocal results regarding the effect of
social networking site use on individuals’ self-esteem. We con-
duct a systematic literature review to examine the existing litera-
ture and develop a theoretical framework in order to classify the
results. The framework proposes that self-esteem is affected by
three distinct processes that incorporate self-evaluative informa-
tion: social comparison processes, social feedback processing,
and self-reflective processes. Due to particularities of the social
networking site environment, the accessibility and quality of self-
evaluative information is altered, which leads to online-specific
effects on users’ self-esteem. Results of the reviewed studies
suggest that when a social networking site is used to compare
oneself with others, it mostly results in decreases in users’ self-
esteem. On the other hand, receiving positive social feedback
from others or using these platforms to reflect on one’s own self is
mainly associated with benefits for users’ self-esteem.
Nevertheless, inter-individual differences and the specific activ-
ities performed by users on these platforms should be considered
when predicting individual effects.
Ultraschall Berlin
(2014)
Two of a kind?
(2014)
School attacks are attracting increasing attention in aggression research. Recent systematic analyses provided new insights into offense and offender characteristics. Less is known about attacks in institutes of higher education (e.g., universities). It is therefore questionable whether the term “school attack” should be limited to institutions of general education or could be extended to institutions of higher education. Scientific literature is divided in distinguishing or unifying these two groups and reports similarities as well as differences. We researched 232 school attacks and 45 attacks in institutes of higher education throughout the world and conducted systematic comparisons between the two groups. The analyses yielded differences in offender (e.g., age, migration background) and offense characteristics (e.g., weapons, suicide rates), and some similarities (e.g., gender). Most differences can apparently be accounted for by offenders’ age and situational influences. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and the development of preventative measures.
Many studies demonstrated interactions between number processing and either spatial codes (effects of spatial-numerical associations) or visual size-related codes (size-congruity effect). However, the interrelatedness of these two number couplings is still unclear. The present study examines the simultaneous occurrence of space- and size-numerical congruency effects and their interactions both within and across trials, in a magnitude judgment task physically small or large digits were presented left or right from screen center. The reaction times analysis revealed that space- and size-congruency effects coexisted in parallel and combined additively. Moreover, a selective sequential modulation of the two congruency effects was found. The size-congruency effect was reduced after size incongruent trials. The space-congruency effect, however, was only affected by the previous space congruency. The observed independence of spatial-numerical and within magnitude associations is interpreted as evidence that the two couplings reflect Different attributes of numerical meaning possibly related to orginality and cardinality.
In Germany, active bat rabies surveillance was conducted between 1993 and 2012. A total of 4546 oropharyngeal swab samples from 18 bat species were screened for the presence of EBLV-1- , EBLV-2- and BBLV-specific RNA. Overall, 0 center dot 15% of oropharyngeal swab samples tested EBLV-1 positive, with the majority originating from Eptesicus serotinus. Interestingly, out of seven RT-PCR-positive oropharyngeal swabs subjected to virus isolation, viable virus was isolated from a single serotine bat (E. serotinus). Additionally, about 1226 blood samples were tested serologically, and varying virus neutralizing antibody titres were found in at least eight different bat species. The detection of viral RNA and seroconversion in repeatedly sampled serotine bats indicates long-term circulation of the virus in a particular bat colony. The limitations of random-based active bat rabies surveillance over passive bat rabies surveillance and its possible application of targeted approaches for future research activities on bat lyssavirus dynamics and maintenance are discussed.
Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a frequent comorbidity among elderly patients and those with cardiovascular disease. CKD carries prognostic relevance. We aimed to describe patient characteristics, risk factor management and control status of patients in cardiac rehabilitation (CR), differentiated by presence or absence of CKD.
Design and methods: Data from 92,071 inpatients with adequate information to calculate glomerular filtration rate (GFR) based on the Cockcroft-Gault formula were analyzed at the beginning and the end of a 3-week CR stay. CKD was defined as estimated GFR <60 ml/min/1.73 m(2).
Results: Compared with non-CKD patients, CKD patients were significantly older (72.0 versus 58.0 years) and more often had diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension, and atherothrombotic manifestations (previous stroke, peripheral arterial disease), but fewer were current or previous smokers had a CHD family history. Exercise capacity was much lower in CKD (59 vs. 92Watts). Fewer patients with CKD were treated with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), but more had coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. Patients with CKD compared with non-CKD less frequently received statins, acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), clopidogrel, beta blockers, and angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, and more frequently received angiotensin receptor blockers, insulin and oral anticoagulants. In CKD, mean low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), total cholesterol, and high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) were slightly higher at baseline, while triglycerides were substantially lower. This lipid pattern did not change at the discharge visit, but overall control rates for all described parameters (with the exception of HDL-C) were improved substantially. At discharge, systolic blood pressure (BP) was higher in CKD (124 versus 121 mmHg) and diastolic BP was lower (72 versus 74 mmHg). At discharge, 68.7% of CKD versus 71.9% of non-CKD patients had LDL-C <100 mg/dl. Physical fitness on exercise testing improved substantially in both groups. When the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) formula was used for CKD classification, there was no clinically relevant change in these results.
Conclusion: Within a short period of 3-4 weeks, CR led to substantial improvements in key risk factors such as lipid profile, blood pressure, and physical fitness for all patients, even if CKD was present.
Background and Objectives: Low back pain is a worldwide health problem. An early diagnosis is required to develop personalized treatment strategies. The Risk Stratification Index (RSI) was developed to serve the purpose. The aim of this pilot study is to cross-culturally translate the RSI to a French version (RSI-F) and evaluate the test-retest reliability of RSI-F using a French active population. Materials and Methods: The RSI was translated from German to French (RSI-F) based on the guidelines of cross-cultural adaptation of self-report measures. A total of 42 French recreational athletes (age 18–63 years) with non-specific low back pain were recruited and filled in the RSI-F twice. The test-retest reliability was examined using intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC1,2) and Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: Finally, 33 questionnaires were analyzed (14 males and 19 females, age 31 ± 10 years, 9.5 ± 3.2 h/week of training). The test-retest of RSI-F CPI and DISS were excellent (CPI: ICC1,2 = 0.989, p < 0.001; r = 0.989, p < 0.001; DISS: ICC1,2 = 0.991, p < 0.001; r = 0.991, p < 0.001), as well as Korff pain intensity (ICC1,2 = 0.995, p < 0.001; r = 0.995, p < 0.001) and disability (ICC1,2 = 0.998, p < 0.001; r = 0.998, p < 0.001). Conclusion: The RSI-F is linguistically accurate and reliable for use by a French-speaking active population with non-specific low back pain. The RSI-F is considered a tool to examine the evolution of psychosocial factors and therefore the risk of chronicity and the prognostic of pain. Further evaluations, such as internal, external validity, and responsiveness should be evaluated in a larger population.
The aim of the present study was to examine how different types of tracking— between-school streaming, within-school streaming, and course-by-course tracking—shape students’ mathematics self-concept. This was done in an internationally comparative framework using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). After controlling for individual and track mean achievement, results indicated that generally for students in course-by-course tracking, high-track students had higher mathematics self-concepts and low-track students had lower mathematics self-concepts. For students in between-school and within-school streaming, the reverse pattern was found. These findings suggest a solution to the ongoing debate about the effects of tracking on students’ academic self-concept and suggest that the reference groups to which students compare themselves differ according to the type of tracking.
With its transparent orthography, Standard Indonesian is spoken by over 160 million inhabitants and is the primary language of instruction in education and the government in Indonesia. An assessment battery of reading and reading-related skills was developed as a starting point for the diagnosis of dyslexia in beginner learners. Founded on the International Dyslexia Association’s definition of dyslexia, the test battery comprises nine empirically motivated reading and reading-related tasks assessing word reading, pseudoword reading, arithmetic, rapid automatized naming, phoneme deletion, forward and backward digit span, verbal fluency, orthographic choice (spelling), and writing. The test was validated by computing the relationships between the outcomes on the reading-skills and reading-related measures by means of correlation and factor analyses. External variables, i.e., school grades and teacher ratings of the reading and learning abilities of individual students, were also utilized to provide evidence of its construct validity. Four variables were found to be significantly related with reading-skill measures: phonological awareness, rapid naming, spelling, and digit span. The current study on reading development in Standard Indonesian confirms findings from other languages with transparent orthographies and suggests a test battery including preliminary norm scores for screening and assessment of elementary school children learning to read Standard Indonesian.
It is a common finding across languages that young children have problems in understanding patient-initial sentences. We used Tagalog, a verb-initial language with a reliable voice-marking system and highly frequent patient voice constructions, to test the predictions of several accounts that have been proposed to explain this difficulty: the frequency account, the Competition Model, and the incremental processing account. Study 1 presents an analysis of Tagalog child-directed speech, which showed that the dominant argument order is agent-before-patient and that morphosyntactic markers are highly valid cues to thematic role assignment. In Study 2, we used a combined self-paced listening and picture verification task to test how Tagalog-speaking adults and 5- and 7-year-old children process reversible transitive sentences. Results showed that adults performed well in all conditions, while children's accuracy and listening times for the first noun phrase indicated more difficulty in interpreting patient-initial sentences in the agent voice compared to the patient voice. The patient voice advantage is partly explained by both the frequency account and incremental processing account.
Using the eye-movement monitoring technique in two reading comprehension experiments, this study investigated the timing of constraints on wh-dependencies (so-called island constraints) in first- and second-language (L1 and L2) sentence processing. The results show that both L1 and L2 speakers of English are sensitive to extraction islands during processing, suggesting that memory storage limitations affect L1 and L2 comprehenders in essentially the same way. Furthermore, these results show that the timing of island effects in L1 compared to L2 sentence comprehension is affected differently by the type of cue (semantic fit versus filled gaps) signaling whether dependency formation is possible at a potential gap site. Even though L1 English speakers showed immediate sensitivity to filled gaps but not to lack of semantic fit, proficient German-speaking learners of English as a L2 showed the opposite sensitivity pattern. This indicates that initial wh-dependency formation in L2 processing is based on semantic feature matching rather than being structurally mediated as in L1 comprehension.
We report findings from psycholinguistic experiments investigating the detailed timing of processing morphologically complex words by proficient adult second (L2) language learners of English in comparison to adult native (L1) speakers of English. The first study employed the masked priming technique to investigate -ed forms with a group of advanced Arabic-speaking learners of English. The results replicate previously found L1/L2 differences in morphological priming, even though in the present experiment an extra temporal delay was offered after the presentation of the prime words.
The second study examined the timing of constraints against inflected forms inside derived words in English using the eye-movement monitoring technique and an additional acceptability judgment task with highly advanced Dutch L2 learners of English in comparison to adult L1 English controls. Whilst offline the L2 learners performed native-like, the eye-movement data showed that their online processing was not affected by the morphological constraint against regular plurals inside derived words in the same way as in native speakers. Taken together, these findings indicate that L2 learners are not just slower than native speakers in processing morphologically complex words, but that the L2 comprehension system employs real-time grammatical analysis (in this case, morphological information) less than the L1 system.
Background The prognostic effect of multi-component cardiac rehabilitation (CR) in the modern era of statins and acute revascularisation remains controversial. Focusing on actual clinical practice, the aim was to evaluate the effect of CR on total mortality and other clinical endpoints after an acute coronary event.
Design Structured review and meta-analysis.
Methods Randomised controlled trials (RCTs), retrospective controlled cohort studies (rCCSs) and prospective controlled cohort studies (pCCSs) evaluating patients after acute coronary syndrome (ACS), coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) or mixed populations with coronary artery disease (CAD) were included, provided the index event was in 1995 or later.
Results Out of n=18,534 abstracts, 25 studies were identified for final evaluation (RCT: n=1; pCCS: n=7; rCCS: n=17), including n=219,702 patients (after ACS: n=46,338; after CABG: n=14,583; mixed populations: n=158,781; mean follow-up: 40 months). Heterogeneity in design, biometrical assessment of results and potential confounders was evident. CCSs evaluating ACS patients showed a significantly reduced mortality for CR participants (pCCS: hazard ratio (HR) 0.37, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.20-0.69; rCCS: HR 0.64, 95% CI 0.49-0.84; odds ratio 0.20, 95% CI 0.08-0.48), but the single RCT fulfilling Cardiac Rehabilitation Outcome Study (CROS) inclusion criteria showed neutral results. CR participation was also associated with reduced mortality after CABG (rCCS: HR 0.62, 95% CI 0.54-0.70) and in mixed CAD populations.
Conclusions CR participation after ACS and CABG is associated with reduced mortality even in the modern era of CAD treatment. However, the heterogeneity of study designs and CR programmes highlights the need for defining internationally accepted standards in CR delivery and scientific evaluation.
A particular form of social pain is invalidation. Therefore, this study (a) investigates whether patients with chronic low back pain experience invalidation, (b) if it has an influence on their pain, and (c) explores whether various social sources (e.g. partner and work) influence physical pain differentially. A total of 92 patients completed questionnaires, and for analysis, Pearson's correlation coefficients and hierarchical linear regression analyses were conducted. They indicated a significant association between discounting and disability due to pain (respective =.29, p>.05). Especially, discounting by partner was linked to higher disability (=.28, p>.05).
Experimental studies on polysemy have come to contradictory conclusions on whether words with multiple senses are stored as separate or shared mental representations. The present study examined the semantic relatedness and semantic similarity of literal and non-literal (metonymic and metaphorical) senses of three word classes: nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Two methods were used: a psycholinguistic experiment and a distributional analysis of corpus data. In the experiment, participants were presented with 6-12 short phrases containing a polysemous word in literal, metonymic, or metaphorical senses and were asked to classify them so that phrases with the same perceived sense were grouped together. To investigate the impact of professional background on their decisions, participants were controlled for linguistic vs. non-linguistic education. For nouns and verbs, all participants preferred to group together phrases with literal and metonymic senses, but not any other pairs of senses. For adjectives, two pairs of senses were often grouped together: literal with metonymic, and metonymic with metaphorical. Participants with a linguistic background were more accurate than participants with non-linguistic backgrounds, although both groups shared principal patterns of sense classification. For the distributional analysis of corpus data, we used a semantic vector approach to quantify the similarity of phrases with literal, metonymic, and metaphorical senses in the corpora. We found that phrases with literal and metonymic senses had the highest degree of similarity for the three word classes, and that metonymic and metaphorical senses of adjectives had the highest degree of similarity among all word classes. These findings are in line with the experimental results. Overall, the results suggest that the mental representation of a polysemous word depends on its word class. In nouns and verbs, literal and metonymic senses are stored together, while metaphorical senses are stored separately; in adjectives, metonymic senses significantly overlap with both literal and metaphorical senses.
According to recent literature sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) has been proposed as a performance enhancing aid by reducing acidosis during exercise. The aim of the current review is to investigate if the duration of exercise is an essential factor for the effect
of NaHCO3. To collect the latest studies from electronic database
of PubMed, study publication time was restricted from December 2006 to December 2016. The search was updated in July 2018. The studies were divided into exercise durations of > 4 or ≤ 4 minutes for easier comparability of their effects in different exercises. Only randomized controlled trials were included in this review. Of the 775 studies, 35 met the inclusion criteria. Study design, subjects, effects as well as outcome criteria were inconsistent throughout the studies. Seventeen of these studies reported
performance enhancing effects after supplementing NaHCO3. Eleven of twenty studies with exercise duration of ≤ 4 minutes showed positive and four diverse results after supplementing NaHCO3. On the other hand six of fifteen studies with an exercise duration of >4 minutes showed performance enhancing and two studies showed diverse results. Consequently, the duration of exercise might be influential for inducing a performance enhancing effect when supplementing NaHCO3, but to which extent, remains unclear due to the inconsistencies in the study results.
The semantics of focus particles like only requires a set of alternatives (Rooth, 1992). In two experiments, we investigated the impact of such particles on the retrieval of alternatives that are mentioned in the prior context or unmentioned. The first experiment used a probe recognition task and showed that focus particles interfere with the recognition of mentioned alternatives and the rejection of unmentioned alternatives relative to a condition without a particle. A second lexical decision experiment demonstrated priming effects for mentioned and unmentioned alternatives (compared with an unrelated condition) while focus particles caused additional interference effects. Overall, our results indicate that focus particles trigger an active search for alternatives and lead to a competition between mentioned alternatives, unmentioned alternatives, and the focused element.
The girls set the tone
(2015)
In a four-wave longitudinal study with N = 1,321 adolescents in Germany, we examined the impact of class-level normative beliefs about aggression on aggressive norms and behavior at the individual level over the course of 3 years. At each data wave, participants indicated their normative acceptance of aggressive behavior and provided self-reports of physical and relational aggression. Multilevel analyses revealed significant cross-level interactions between class-level and individual-level normative beliefs at T1 on individual differences in physical aggression at T2, and the indirect interactive effects were significant up to T4. Normative approval of aggression at the class level, especially girls’ normative beliefs, defined the boundary conditions for the expression of individual differences in aggressive norms and their impact on physically and relationally aggressive behavior for both girls and boys. The findings demonstrate the moderating effect of social norms on the pathways from individual normative beliefs to aggressive behavior in adolescence.
Women are strongly underrepresented at top positions in research, with some research suggesting the postdoctoral career stage is a critical stage for female researchers. Drawing on role congruity theory and social cognitive career theory, we tested the gender-differential impact of work values (extrinsic rewards-oriented work values and work-life balance values) on subjective career success and supports from supervisors (leader-member exchange) and team members. We conducted an online survey with male and female postdoctoral scientists (N = 258). As hypothesized, the positive relationship between extrinsic rewards-oriented work values and subjective career success and supports was stronger for male researchers than for female researchers. Results on work-life balance values were less conclusive. These findings support the idea that gendered appraisal processes may affect career-relevant outcomes.
Fluid intelligence (fluid IQ), defined as the capacity for rapid problem solving and behavioral adaptation, is known to be modulated by learning and experience. Both stressful life events (SLES) and neural correlates of learning [specifically, a key mediator of adaptive learning in the brain, namely the ventral striatal representation of prediction errors (PE)] have been shown to be associated with individual differences in fluid IQ. Here, we examine the interaction between adaptive learning signals (using a well-characterized probabilistic reversal learning task in combination with fMRI) and SLES on fluid IQ measures. We find that the correlation between ventral striatal BOLD PE and fluid IQ, which we have previously reported, is quantitatively modulated by the amount of reported SLES. Thus, after experiencing adversity, basic neuronal learning signatures appear to align more closely with a general measure of flexible learning (fluid IQ), a finding complementing studies on the effects of acute stress on learning. The results suggest that an understanding of the neurobiological correlates of trait variables like fluid IQ needs to take socioemotional influences such as chronic stress into account.
The effect of implicitly incentivized faking on explicit and implicit measures of doping attitude
(2015)
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) aims to measure participants' automatic evaluation of an attitude object and is useful especially for the measurement of attitudes related to socially sensitive subjects, e.g. doping in sports. Several studies indicate that IAT scores can be faked on instruction. But fully or semi-instructed research scenarios might not properly reflect what happens in more realistic situations, when participants secretly decide to try faking the test. The present study is the first to investigate IAT faking when there is only an implicit incentive to do so. Sixty-five athletes (22.83 years +/- 2.45; 25 women) were randomly assigned to an incentive-to-fake condition or a control condition. Participants in the incentive-to-fake condition were manipulated to believe that athletes with lenient doping attitudes would be referred to a tedious 45-minute anti-doping program. Attitudes were measured with the pictorial doping brief IAT (BIAT) and with the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale (PEAS). A one-way MANOVA revealed significant differences between conditions after the manipulation in PEAS scores, but not in the doping BIAT. In the light of our hypothesis this suggests that participants successfully faked an exceedingly negative attitude to doping when completing the PEAS, but were unsuccessful in doing so on the reaction time-based test. This study assessed BIAT faking in a setting that aimed to resemble a situation in which participants want to hide their attempts to cheat. The two measures of attitude were differentially affected by the implicit incentive. Our findings provide evidence that the pictorial doping BIAT is relatively robust against spontaneous and naive faking attempts. (B) IATs might be less prone to faking than implied by previous studies.
Consonants have been proposed to carry more of the weight of lexical processing than vowels. This consonant bias has consistently been found in adults and has been proposed to facilitate early language acquisition. We explore the origins of this bias over the course of development and in infants learning different languages. Although the consonant bias was originally thought to be present at birth, evidence suggests that it arises from the early stages of phonological and (pre-)lexical acquisition. We discuss two theories that account for the acquisition of the consonant bias: the lexical and acoustic-phonetic hypotheses.
The closer the better
(2012)
A growing literature has suggested that processing of visual information presented near the hands is facilitated. In this study, we investigated whether the near-hands superiority effect also occurs with the hands moving. In two experiments, participants performed a cyclical bimanual movement task requiring concurrent visual identification of briefly presented letters. For both the static and dynamic hand conditions, the results showed improved letter recognition performance with the hands closer to the stimuli. The finding that the encoding advantage for near-hand stimuli also occurred with the hands moving suggests that the effect is regulated in real time, in accordance with the concept of a bimodal neural system that dynamically updates hand position in external space.
The social context plays a decisive role in the formation of the academic self-concept (ASC) and has been widely studied as the big-fish-little-pond-effect (BFLPE). This effect describes that comparable talented students in high-achieving school settings have a lower ASC compared to equally talented students attending low-achieving settings. Past research has focused on students' domain-specific ASC, while little is known about the relation of achievement-related classroom compositions and the various facets of ASC. Additionally, BFLPE-research has been critiqued to build its theoretical frame on social comparison theory, without providing sufficient empirical support. To address this gap, we analyzed how the single student's social, criterial, absolute, and individual ASC relate to class-level achievement of 8th graders. Applying Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (MLSEM) we found that all facets of ASC were significantly related to average-class achievement, while student's social ASC revealed the strongest associated. The results reveal explicitly that average-class achievement is strongly related to social comparison processes.
Concrete-operational thinking depicts an important aspect of cognitive development. A promising approach in promoting these skills is the instruction of strategies. The construction of such instructional programs requires insights into the mental operations involved in problem-solving. In the present paper, we address the question to which extent variations of the effect of isolated and combined mental operations (strategies) on correct solution of concrete-operational concepts can be observed. Therefore, a cross-sectional design was applied. The use of mental operations was measured by thinking-aloud reports from 80 first- and second-graders (N = 80) while solving tasks depicting concrete-operational thinking. Concrete-operational thinking was assessed using the subscales conservation of numbers, classification and sequences of the TEKO. The verbal reports were transcribed and coded with regard to the mental operations applied per task. Data analyses focused on tasks level, resulting in the analyses of N = 240 tasks per subscale. Differences regarding the contribution of isolated and combined mental operations (strategies) to correct solution were observed. Thereby, the results indicate the necessity of selection and integration of appropriate mental operations as strategies. The results offer insights in involved mental operations while solving concrete-operational tasks and depict a contribution to the construction of instructional programs.
This research was designed to adapt and investigate the psychometric properties of the Short Dark Triad measure (Jones and Paulhus Assessment, 21(1), 28-41, 2014) in a German sample within four studies (total N = 1463); the measure evaluates three personality dimensions: narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. The structure of the instrument was analysed by Confirmatory Factor Analyses procedure. It indicated that the three-factor structure had the best fit to the data. Next, the Short Dark Triad measure was evaluated in terms of construct, convergent and discriminant validity, internal consistency (≥ .72), and test-retest reliability during a 4-week period (≥ .73). Concurrent validity of the SD3 was supported by relating its subscales to measures of the Big Five concept, aggression, and self-esteem. We concluded that the Short Dark Triad instrument presented high cross-language replicability. The use of this short inventory in the investigation of the Dark Triad personality model in the German language context is suggested.
The regular monitoring of physical fitness and sport-specific performance is important in elite sports to increase the likelihood of success in competition. This study aimed to systematically review and to critically appraise the methodological quality, validation data, and feasibility of the sport-specific performance assessment in Olympic combat sports like amateur boxing, fencing, judo, karate, taekwondo, and wrestling. A systematic search was conducted in the electronic databases PubMed, Google-Scholar, and Science-Direct up to October 2017. Studies in combat sports were included that reported validation data (e.g., reliability, validity, sensitivity) of sport-specific tests. Overall, 39 studies were eligible for inclusion in this review. The majority of studies (74%) contained sample sizes <30 subjects. Nearly, 1/3 of the reviewed studies lacked a sufficient description (e.g., anthropometrics, age, expertise level) of the included participants. Seventy-two percent of studies did not sufficiently report inclusion/exclusion criteria of their participants. In 62% of the included studies, the description and/or inclusion of a familiarization session (s) was either incomplete or not existent. Sixty-percent of studies did not report any details about the stability of testing conditions. Approximately half of the studies examined reliability measures of the included sport-specific tests (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = 0.43–1.00). Content validity was addressed in all included studies, criterion validity (only the concurrent aspect of it) in approximately half of the studies with correlation coefficients ranging from r = −0.41 to 0.90. Construct validity was reported in 31% of the included studies and predictive validity in only one. Test sensitivity was addressed in 13% of the included studies. The majority of studies (64%) ignored and/or provided incomplete information on test feasibility and methodological limitations of the sport-specific test. In 28% of the included studies, insufficient information or a complete lack of information was provided in the respective field of the test application. Several methodological gaps exist in studies that used sport-specific performance tests in Olympic combat sports. Additional research should adopt more rigorous validation procedures in the application and description of sport-specific performance tests in Olympic combat sports.
Syntactic priming is known to facilitate comprehension of the target sentence if the syntactic structure of the target sentence aligns with the structure of the prime (Branigan et al., 2005; Tooley and Traxler, 2010). Such a processing facilitation is understood to be constrained due to factors such as lexical overlap between the prime and the target, frequency of the prime structure, etc. Syntactic priming in SOV languages is also understood to be influenced by similar constraints (Arai, 2012). Sentence comprehension in SOV languages is known to be incremental and predictive. Such a top-down parsing process involves establishing various syntactic relations based on the linguistic cues of a sentence and the role of preverbal case-markers in achieving this is known to be critical. Given the evidence of syntactic priming during comprehension in these languages, this aspect of the comprehension process and its effect on syntactic priming becomes important. In this work, we show that syntactic priming during comprehension is affected by the probability of using the prime structure while parsing the target sentence. If the prime structure has a low probability given the sentential cues (e.g., nominal case-markers) in the target sentence, then the chances of persisting with the prime structure in the target reduces. Our work demonstrates the role of structural complexity of the target with regard to syntactic priming during comprehension and highlights that syntactic priming is modulated by an overarching preference of the parser to avoid rare structures
Symptoms of anxiety and depression in young athletes using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale
(2018)
Elite young athletes have to cope with multiple psychological demands such as training volume, mental and physical fatigue, spatial separation of family and friends or time management problems may lead to reduced mental and physical recovery. While normative data regarding symptoms of anxiety and depression for the general population is available (Hinz and Brahler, 2011), hardly any information exists for adolescents in general and young athletes in particular. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess overall symptoms of anxiety and depression in young athletes as well as possible sex differences. The survey was carried out within the scope of the study "Resistance Training in Young Athletes" (KINGS-Study). Between August 2015 and September 2016, 326 young athletes aged (mean +/- SD) 14.3 +/- 1.6 years completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HAD Scale). Regarding the analysis of age on the anxiety and depression subscales, age groups were classified as follows: late childhood (12-14 years) and late adolescence (15-18 years). The participating young athletes were recruited from Olympic weight lifting, handball, judo, track and field athletics, boxing, soccer, gymnastics, ice speed skating, volleyball, and rowing. Anxiety and depression scores were (mean +/- SD) 4.3 +/- 3.0 and 2.8 +/- 2.9, respectively. In the subscale anxiety, 22 cases (6.7%) showed subclinical scores and 11 cases (3.4%) showed clinical relevant score values. When analyzing the depression subscale, 31 cases (9.5%) showed subclinical score values and 12 cases (3.7%) showed clinically important values. No significant differences were found between male and female athletes (p >= 0.05). No statistically significant differences in the HADS scores were found between male athletes of late childhood and late adolescents (p >= 0.05). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report describing questionnaire based indicators of symptoms of anxiety and depression in young athletes. Our data implies the need for sports medical as well as sports psychiatric support for young athletes. In addition, our results demonstrated that the chronological classification concerning age did not influence HAD Scale outcomes. Future research should focus on sports medical and sports psychiatric interventional approaches with the goal to prevent anxiety and depression as well as teaching coping strategies to young athletes.
This study investigates phenomena that have been claimed to be indicative of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in German, focusing on subject-verb agreement marking. Longitudinal data from fourteen German-speaking children with SLI, seven monolingual and seven Turkish-German successive bilingual children, were examined. We found similar patterns of impairment in the two participant groups. Both the monolingual and the bilingual children with SLI had correct (present vs. preterit) tense marking and produced syntactically complex sentences such as embedded clauses and wh-questions, but were limited in reliably producing correct agreement-marked verb forms. These contrasts indicate that agreement marking is impaired in German-speaking children with SLI, without any necessary concurrent deficits in either the CP-domain or in tense marking. Our results also show that it is possible to identify SLI from an early successive bilingual child's performance in one of her two languages.
Purpose: Psychosocial variables are known risk factors for the development and chronification of low back pain (LBP). Psychosocial stress is one of these risk factors. Therefore, this study aims to identify the most important types of stress predicting LBP. Self-efficacy was included as a potential protective factor related to both, stress and pain.
Participants and Methods: This prospective observational study assessed n = 1071 subjects with low back pain over 2 years. Psychosocial stress was evaluated in a broad manner using instruments assessing perceived stress, stress experiences in work and social contexts, vital exhaustion and life-event stress. Further, self-efficacy and pain (characteristic pain intensity and disability) were assessed. Using least absolute shrinkage selection operator regression, important predictors of characteristic pain intensity and pain-related disability at 1-year and 2-years follow-up were analyzed.
Results: The final sample for the statistic procedure consisted of 588 subjects (age: 39.2 (± 13.4) years; baseline pain intensity: 27.8 (± 18.4); disability: 14.3 (± 17.9)). In the 1-year follow-up, the stress types “tendency to worry”, “social isolation”, “work discontent” as well as vital exhaustion and negative life events were identified as risk factors for both pain intensity and pain-related disability. Within the 2-years follow-up, Lasso models identified the stress types “tendency to worry”, “social isolation”, “social conflicts”, and “perceived long-term stress” as potential risk factors for both pain intensity and disability. Furthermore, “self-efficacy” (“internality”, “self-concept”) and “social externality” play a role in reducing pain-related disability.
Conclusion: Stress experiences in social and work-related contexts were identified as important risk factors for LBP 1 or 2 years in the future, even in subjects with low initial pain levels. Self-efficacy turned out to be a protective factor for pain development, especially in the long-term follow-up. Results suggest a differentiation of stress types in addressing psychosocial factors in research, prevention and therapy approaches.
The genesis of chronic pain is explained by a biopsychosocial model. It hypothesizes an interdependency between environmental and genetic factors provoking aberrant long-term changes in biological and psychological regulatory systems. Physiological effects of psychological and physical stressors may play a crucial role in these maladaptive processes. Specifically, long-term demands on the stress response system may moderate central pain processing and influence descending serotonergic and noradrenergic signals from the brainstem, regulating nociceptive processing at the spinal level. However, the underlying mechanisms of this pathophysiological interplay still remain unclear. This paper aims to shed light on possible pathways between physical (exercise) and psychological stress and the potential neurobiological consequences in the genesis and treatment of chronic pain, highlighting evolving concepts and promising research directions in the treatment of chronic pain. Two treatment forms (exercise and mindfulness-based stress reduction as exemplary therapies), their interaction, and the dose-response will be discussed in more detail, which might pave the way to a better understanding of alterations in the pain matrix and help to develop future prevention and therapeutic concepts
Strategic sexual signals
(2016)
The color red has special meaning in mating-relevant contexts. Wearing red can enhance perceptions of women's attractiveness and desirability as a potential romantic partner. Building on recent findings, the present study examined whether women's (N = 74) choice to display the color red is influenced by the attractiveness of an expected opposite-sex interaction partner. Results indicated that female participants who expected to interact with an attractive man displayed red (on clothing, accessories, and/or makeup) more often than a baseline consisting of women in a natural environment with no induced expectation. In contrast, when women expected to interact with an unattractive man, they eschewed red, displaying it less often than in the baseline condition. Findings are discussed with respect to evolutionary and cultural perspectives on mate evaluation and selection.
Drawing on phonology research within the generative linguistics tradition, stochastic methods, and notions from complex systems, we develop a modelling paradigm linking phonological structure, expressed in terms of syllables, to speech movement data acquired with 3D electromagnetic articulography and X-ray microbeam methods. The essential variable in the models is syllable structure. When mapped to discrete coordination topologies, syllabic organization imposes systematic patterns of variability on the temporal dynamics of speech articulation. We simulated these dynamics under different syllabic parses and evaluated simulations against experimental data from Arabic and English, two languages claimed to parse similar strings of segments into different syllabic structures. Model simulations replicated several key experimental results, including the fallibility of past phonetic heuristics for syllable structure, and exposed the range of conditions under which such heuristics remain valid. More importantly, the modelling approach consistently diagnosed syllable structure proving resilient to multiple sources of variability in experimental data including measurement variability, speaker variability, and contextual variability. Prospects for extensions of our modelling paradigm to acoustic data are also discussed.
The Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT) is effective in measuring dynamic postural control (DPC). This research aimed to determine whether DPC measured by the SEBT in young athletes (YA) with back pain (BP) is different from those without BP (NBP). 53 BP YA and 53 NBP YA matched for age, height, weight, training years, training sessions/week and training minutes/session were studied. Participants performed 4 practice trials after which 3 measurements in the anterior, posteromedial and posterolateral SEBT reach directions were recorded. Normalized reach distance was analyzed using the mean of all 3 measurements. There was no statistical significant difference (p > 0.05) between the reach distance of BP (87.2 ± 5.3, 82.4 ± 8.2, 78.7 ± 8.1) and NBP (87.8 ± 5.6, 82.4 ± 8.0, 80.0 ± 8.8) in the anterior, posteromedial and posterolateral directions respectively. DPC in YA with BP, as assessed by the SEBT, was not different from NBP YA.
Objectives: The use of simulated and standardized patients (SP) is widely accepted in the medical field and, from there, is beginning to disseminate into clinical psychology and psychotherapy. The purpose of this study was therefore to systematically review barriers and facilitators that should be considered in the implementation of SP interventions specific to clinical psychology and psychotherapy. Methods: Following current guidelines, a scoping review was conducted. The literature search focused on the MEDLINE,PsycINFO and Web of Science databases, including Dissertation Abstracts International. After screening for titles and abstracts,full texts were screened independently and in duplicate according to our inclusion criteria. For data extraction, a pre-defined form was piloted and used. Units of meaning with respect to barriers and facilitators were extracted and categorized inductively using content-analysis techniques. From the results, a matrix of interconnections and a network graph were compiled. Results: The 41 included publications were mainly in the fields of psychiatry and mental health nursing, as well as in training and education. The detailed category system contrasts four supercategories, i.e., which organizational and economic aspects to consider, which persons to include as eligible SPs, how to develop adequate scenarios, and how to authentically and consistently portray mental health patients.Conclusions: Publications focused especially on the interrelation between authenticity and consistency of portrayals, on how to evoke empathy in learners, and on economic and training aspects. A variety of recommendations for implementing SP programs,from planning to training, monitoring, and debriefing, is provided, for example, ethical screening of and ongoing support for SPs.
From a health and performance-related perspective, it is crucial to evaluate subjective symptoms and objective signs of acute training-induced immunological responses in young athletes. The limited number of available studies focused on immunological adaptations following aerobic training. Hardly any studies have been conducted on resistance-training induced stress responses. Therefore, the aim of this observational study was to investigate subjective symptoms and objective signs of immunological stress responses following resistance training in young athletes. Fourteen (7 females and 7 males) track and field athletes with a mean age of 16.4 years and without any symptoms of upper or lower respiratory tract infections participated in this study. Over a period of 7 days, subjective symptoms using the Acute Recovery and Stress Scale (ARSS) and objective signs of immunological responses using capillary blood markers were taken each morning and after the last training session. Differences between morning and evening sessions and associations between subjective and objective parameters were analyzed using generalized estimating equations (GEE). In post hoc analyses, daily change-scores of the ARSS dimensions were compared between participants and revealed specific changes in objective capillary blood samples. In the GEE models, recovery (ARSS) was characterized by a significant decrease while stress (ARSS) showed a significant increase between morning and evening-training sessions. A concomitant increase in white blood cell count (WBC), granulocytes (GRAN) and percentage shares of granulocytes (GRAN%) was found between morning and evening sessions. Of note, percentage shares of lymphocytes (LYM%) showed a significant decrease. Furthermore, using multivariate regression analyses, we identified that recovery was significantly associated with LYM%, while stress was significantly associated with WBC and GRAN%. Post hoc analyses revealed significantly larger increases in participants’ stress dimensions who showed increases in GRAN%. For recovery, significantly larger decreases were found in participants with decreases in LYM% during recovery. More specifically, daily change-scores of the recovery and stress dimensions of the ARSS were associated with specific changes in objective immunological markers (GRAN%, LYM%) between morning and evening-training sessions. Our results indicate that changes of subjective symptoms of recovery and stress dimensions using the ARSS were associated with specific changes in objectively measured immunological markers.
The development of phonological awareness, the knowledge of the structural combinatoriality of a language, has been widely investigated in relation to reading (dis)ability across languages. However, the extent to which knowledge of phonemic units may interact with spoken language organization in (transparent) alphabetical languages has hardly been investigated. The present study examined whether phonemic awareness correlates with coarticulation degree, commonly used as a metric for estimating the size of children’s production units. A speech production task was designed to test for developmental differences in intra-syllabic coarticulation degree in 41 German children from 4 to 7 years of age. The technique of ultrasound imaging allowed for comparing the articulatory foundations of children’s coarticulatory patterns. Four behavioral tasks assessing various levels of phonological awareness from large to small units and expressive vocabulary were also administered. Generalized additive modeling revealed strong interactions between children’s vocabulary and phonological awareness with coarticulatory patterns. Greater knowledge of sub-lexical units was associated with lower intra-syllabic coarticulation degree and greater differentiation of articulatory gestures for individual segments. This interaction was mostly nonlinear: an increase in children’s phonological proficiency was not systematically associated with an equivalent change in coarticulation degree. Similar findings were drawn between vocabulary and coarticulatory patterns. Overall, results suggest that the process of developing spoken language fluency involves dynamical interactions between cognitive and speech motor domains. Arguments for an integrated-interactive approach to skill development are discussed.