Refine
Has Fulltext
- no (44) (remove)
Year of publication
- 2016 (44) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (41)
- Other (2)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
Language
- English (44) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (44)
Keywords
- Childhood (3)
- Eye movements (3)
- aggression (3)
- Adolescence (2)
- Aggression (2)
- Chile (2)
- Externalizing behavior (2)
- Longitudinal study (2)
- MAOA (2)
- alcohol (2)
Institute
- Department Psychologie (44) (remove)
Previous research indicates that infants’ prediction of the goals of observed actions is influenced by own experience with the type of agent performing the action (i.e., human hand vs. non-human agent) as well as by action-relevant features of goal objects (e.g., object size). The present study investigated the combined effects of these factors on 12-month-olds’ action prediction. Infants’ (N = 49) goal-directed gaze shifts were recorded as they observed 14 trials in which either a human hand or a mechanical claw reached for a small goal area (low-saliency goal) or a large goal area (high-saliency goal). Only infants who had observed the human hand reaching for a high-saliency goal fixated the goal object ahead of time, and they rapidly learned to predict the action goal across trials. By contrast, infants in all other conditions did not track the observed action in a predictive manner, and their gaze shifts to the action goal did not change systematically across trials. Thus, high-saliency goals seem to boost infants’ predictive gaze shifts during the observation of human manual actions, but not of actions performed by a mechanical device. This supports the assumption that infants’ action predictions are based on interactive effects of action-relevant object features (e.g., size) and own action experience.
Several personality dispositions with common features capturing sensitivities to negative social cues have recently been introduced into psychological research. To date, however, little is known about their interrelations, their conjoint effects on behavior, or their interplay with other risk factors. We asked N = 349 adults from Germany to rate their justice, rejection, moral disgust, and provocation sensitivity, hostile attribution bias, trait anger, and forms and functions of aggression. The sensitivity measures were mostly positively correlated; particularly those with an egoistic focus, such as victim justice, rejection, and provocation sensitivity, hostile attributions and trait anger as well as those with an altruistic focus, such as observer justice, perpetrator justice, and moral disgust sensitivity. The sensitivity measures had independent and differential effects on forms and functions of aggression when considered simultaneously and when controlling for hostile attributions and anger. They could not be integrated into a single factor of interpersonal sensitivity or reduced to other well-known risk factors for aggression. The sensitivity measures, therefore, require consideration in predicting and preventing aggression.
Although many behavioral studies have investigated the effect of processing fluency on subsequent recognition memory, little research has examined the neural mechanism of this phenomenon. The present study aimed to explore the electrophysiological correlates of the effects of processing fluency on subsequent recognition memory by using an event-related potential (ERP) approach. The masked repetition priming paradigm was used to manipulate processing fluency in the study phase, and the R/K paradigm was utilized to investigate which recognition memory process (familiarity or recollection) was affected by processing fluency in the test phase. Converging behavioral and ERP results indicated that increased processing fluency impaired subsequent recollection. Results from the analysis of ERP priming effects in the study phase indicated that increased perceptual processing fluency of object features, reflected by the N/P 190 priming effect, can hinder encoding activities, reflected by the LPC priming effect, which leads to worse subsequent recollection based recognition memory. These results support the idea that processing fluency can influence subsequent recognition memory and provide a potential neural mechanism underlying this effect. However, further studies are needed to examine whether processing fluency can affect subsequent familiarity.
Fragestellung: Es soll die Qualität der Berichterstattung über Suizide und Suizidversuche in deutschsprachigen Jugendmagazinen näher untersucht werden und Veränderungen der Suizidzahlen unter Jugendlichen in Österreich nach dem Erscheinen von Berichten erfasst werden. Methodik: Suizidberichte aus fünf großen deutschsprachigen Jugendmagazinen wurden mithilfe qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse im Hinblick auf Geschlecht, dargestellte Motive, Suizid(versuchs)methoden, positive und negative Darstellungsweisen, Schuldzuweisungen und Abweichungen von Medienempfehlungen zur Berichterstattung über Suizid analysiert. Die Suizidzahlen 2 Wochen vor und nach dem Erscheinen von Suizidberichten wurden verglichen. Ergebnisse: 59 Berichte wurden identifiziert. Die häufigste Berichterstattung zum Thema Suizid fand sich in der Zeitschrift Bravo, wobei es zu einer leichten Überrepräsentation weiblicher Suizide und insgesamt zu einer Unterrepräsentation von Suizidversuchen kam. Entsprechend der Epidemiologie suizidalen Verhaltens wurde Sturz in die Tiefe am häufigsten bei Mädchen und Erhängen bei den Jungen beschrieben. Bei den dargestellten Motiven zeigte sich, dass wichtige Faktoren wie psychiatrische Erkrankungen kaum Erwähnung fanden. Während Suizidentinnen häufig positiv dargestellt wurden, wurden Suizidenten häufiger negativ dargestellt. Implizite Schuldzuweisungen wurden vorwiegend den Eltern zugeschrieben. Es zeigte sich kein Hinweis auf einen Werther-Effekt nach Berichterstattung. Schlussfolgerungen: Die weitgehende Divergenz zwischen der Epidemiologie von Suizidalität Jugendlicher und im deutschsprachigen Raum derzeit vorherrschenden Mediendarstellungen verdeutlicht wichtige Ansatzpunkte für Präventions- und Aufklärungsarbeit in der Bevölkerung.
Visuospatial attention and gaze control depend on the interaction of foveal and peripheral processing. The foveal and peripheral regions of the visual field are differentially sensitive to parts of the spatial frequency spectrum. In two experiments, we investigated how the selective attenuation of spatial frequencies in the central or the peripheral visual field affects eye-movement behavior during real-world scene viewing. Gaze-contingent low-pass or high-pass filters with varying filter levels (i.e., cutoff frequencies; Experiment 1) or filter sizes (Experiment 2) were applied. Compared to unfiltered control conditions, mean fixation durations increased most with central high-pass and peripheral low-pass filtering. Increasing filter size prolonged fixation durations with peripheral filtering, but not with central filtering. Increasing filter level prolonged fixation durations with low-pass filtering, but not with high-pass filtering. These effects indicate that fixation durations are not always longer under conditions of increased processing difficulty. Saccade amplitudes largely adapted to processing difficulty: amplitudes increased with central filtering and decreased with peripheral filtering; the effects strengthened with increasing filter size and filter level. In addition, we observed a trade-off between saccade timing and saccadic selection, since saccade amplitudes were modulated when fixation durations were unaffected by the experimental manipulations. We conclude that interactions of perception and gaze control are highly sensitive to experimental manipulations of input images as long as the residual information can still be accessed for gaze control. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Coupling of attention and saccades when viewing scenes with central and peripheral degradation
(2016)
Degrading real-world scenes in the central or the peripheral visual field yields a characteristic pattern: Mean saccade amplitudes increase with central and decrease with peripheral degradation. Does this pattern reflect corresponding modulations of selective attention? If so, the observed saccade amplitude pattern should reflect more focused attention in the central region with peripheral degradation and an attentional bias toward the periphery with central degradation. To investigate this hypothesis, we measured the detectability of peripheral (Experiment 1) or central targets (Experiment 2) during scene viewing when low or high spatial frequencies were gaze-contingently filtered in the central or the peripheral visual field. Relative to an unfiltered control condition, peripheral filtering induced a decrease of the detection probability for peripheral but not for central targets (tunnel vision). Central filtering decreased the detectability of central but not of peripheral targets. Additional post hoc analyses are compatible with the interpretation that saccade amplitudes and direction are computed in partial independence. Our experimental results indicate that task-induced modulations of saccade amplitudes reflect attentional modulations.
Conflict is a ubiquitous feature of interpersonal relationships, yet many of these relationships preserve their value following conflict. Our ability to refrain from punishment despite the occurrence of conflict is a characteristic of human beings. Using a combination of behavioral and neuroimaging techniques, we show that prosocial decision-making is modulated by relationship closeness. In an iterated social exchange, participants were more likely to cooperate with their partner compared to an unknown person by accepting unfair exchanges. Importantly, this effect was not influenced by how resources were actually being shared with one’s partner. The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) was activated when the partner, rather than the unknown person, behaved unfairly and, in the same context, the MPFC demonstrated greater functional connectivity with the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (DACC). MPFC–DACC connectivity was inversely associated with participants’ tendency to “forgive” their partner for unfairness as well as performance outside the scanner on a behavioral measure of forgiveness. We conclude that relationship closeness modulates a neural network comprising the MPFC/DACC during economic exchanges.