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Anti-fat bias is widespread and is linked to the internalization of weight bias and psychosocial problems. The purpose of this study was to examine the internalization of weight bias among children across weight categories and to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Weight Bias Internalization Scale for Children (WBIS-C). Data were collected from 1484 primary school children and their parents. WBIS-C demonstrated good internal consistency (alpha = .86) after exclusion of Item 1. The unitary factor structure was supported using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (factorial validity). Girls and overweight children reported higher WBIS-C scores in comparison to boys and non-overweight peers (known-groups validity). Convergent validity was shown by significant correlations with psychosocial problems. Internalization of weight bias explained additional variance in different indicators of psychosocial well-being. The results suggest that the WBIS-C is a psychometrically sound and informative tool to assess weight bias internalization among children.
Die langfristigen Auswirkungen von Frühgeburtlichkeit auf kognitive Entwicklung und Schulerfolg
(2017)
In einer prospektiven Längsschnittstudie wurde der Zusammenhang zwischen früher Responsivität der Mutter und kognitiver Entwicklung ihrer früh- bzw. reifgeborenen Kinder untersucht. Im Alter von drei Monaten wurde dafür die Mutter-Kind-Interaktion mittels Verhaltensbeobachtung erfasst. Bei n=351 der teilnehmenden Kinder (101 frühgeboren) wurde die allgemeine Intelligenz (IQ) im Alter von 11 Jahren und bei n=313 (85 frühgeboren) zusätzlich der höchste erreichte Schulabschluss bis 25 Jahren erhoben. Frühgeborene wiesen mit 11 Jahren einen signifikant niedrigeren IQ als Reifgeborene auf, nachdem für mögliche konfundierende Faktoren kontrolliert worden war. Nur bei Früh-, nicht aber bei Reifgeborenen zeigte sich ein signifikanter positiver Zusammenhang zwischen mütterlicher Responsivität und IQ. Für die Wahrscheinlichkeit einen höheren Schulabschluss (mind. Fachabitur) zu erreichen, fand sich weder ein signifikanter Effekt von Frühgeburtlichkeit noch von mütterlicher Responsivität.
In einer prospektiven Längsschnittstudie wurden Auswirkungen früher psychosozialer Risiken bis ins junge Erwachsenenalter untersucht und dabei die Rolle von affektiver und behavioraler Dysregulation im Kindesalter als vermittelndem Faktor überprüft. Drei Monate nach der Geburt wurde das Vorliegen von 11 psychosozialen Belastungsfaktoren erfasst. Im Alter von 8 – 15 Jahren wurde dreimal das Child Behavior Checklist-Dysregulationsprofil (CBCL-DP) erhoben. Mit 25 Jahren wurde ein Strukturiertes Klinisches Interview durchgeführt und 309 der Teilnehmer füllten den Young Adult Self-Report aus. Frühe psychosoziale Risiken gingen mit einem erhöhten Risiko für das Vorliegen eines Substanzmissbrauchs im jungen Erwachsenenalter sowie mit erhöhtem externalisierendem und internalisierendem Problemverhalten einher. Der Zusammenhang zwischen frühen psychosozialen Risiken und späterem externalisierendem bzw. internalisierendem Problemverhalten wurde durch das CBCL-DP vermittelt.
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.
Background: Cannabis is the most commonly used illegal substance among adolescents and young adults. Problematic cannabis use is often associated with comorbid psychopathological problems. The purpose of the current study was to elucidate the underlying developmental processes connecting externalizing and internalizing psychopathology in childhood and adolescence with problematic cannabis use in young adulthood. Methods: Data were drawn from the Mannheim Study of Children at Risk, an ongoing epidemiological cohort study from birth to adulthood. For n = 307 participants, symptom scores of conduct/oppositional defiant disorder, attention problems, hyperactivity/impulsivity, and internalizing disorders were available for the periods of childhood (4.5-11 years) and adolescence (15 years). At age 25 years, problematic cannabis use was assessed via clinical interview and a self-rating questionnaire. Results: At age 25 years, problematic cannabis use was identified in n = 28 participants (9.1%). Childhood conduct/oppositional behavior problems were predictive of problematic cannabis use during young adulthood when comorbid symptoms were controlled for. No such effect was found for childhood attention, hyperactivity/impulsivity or internalizing problems. With respect to psychopathological symptoms during adolescence, only attention problems were significantly related to later problematic cannabis use when controlling for comorbidity. Conclusions: The current study highlights the role of conduct/oppositional behavior problems during childhood and attention problems during adolescence in later problematic cannabis use. It sheds more light on the developmental sequence of childhood and adolescence psychopathology and young adult cannabis use, which is a prerequisite for effective prevention approaches. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
The all-female Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa) is the result of a hybridization of the Atlantic molly (P. mexicana) and the sailfin molly (P. latipinna) approximately 120,000 years ago. As a gynogenetic species, P. formosa needs to copulate with heterospecific males including males from one of its bisexual ancestral species. However, the sperm only triggers embryo genesis of the diploid eggs. The genetic information of the sperm donor typically will not contribute to the next generation of P. formosa. Hence, P. formosa possesses generally one allele from each of its ancestral species at any genetic locus. This raises the question whether both ancestral alleles are equally expressed in P. formosa. Allele-specific expression (ASE) has been previously assessed in various organisms, e.g., human and fish, and ASE was found to be important in the context of phenotypic variability and disease. In this study, we utilized Real-Time PCR techniques to estimate ASE of the androgen receptor alpha (ara) gene in several distinct tissues of Amazon mollies. We found an allelic bias favoring the maternal ancestor (P. mexicana) allele in ovarian tissue. This allelic bias was not observed in the gill or the brain tissue. Sequencing of the promoter regions of both alleles revealed an association between an Indel in a known CpG island and differential expression. Future studies may reveal whether our observed cis-regulatory divergence is caused by an ovary-specific trans-regulatory element, preferentially activating the allele of the maternal ancestor.
This study investigated how touching and being touched by a humanoid robot affects human physiology, impressions of the interaction, and attitudes towards humanoid robots. 21 healthy adult participants completed a 3 (touch style: touching, being touched, pointing) x 2 (body part: hand vs buttock) within-subject design using a Pepper robot. Skin conductance response (SCR) was measured during each interaction. Perceived impressions of the interaction (i.e., friendliness, comfort, arousal) were measured per questionnaire after each interaction. Participants' demographics and their attitude towards robots were also considered. We found shorter SCR rise times in the being touched compared to the touching condition, possibly reflecting psychological alertness to the unpredictability of robot-initiated contacts. The hand condition had shorter rise times than the buttock condition. Most participants evaluated the hand condition as most friendly and comfortable and the robot-initiated interactions as most arousing. Interacting with Pepper improved attitudes towards robots. Our findings require future studies with larger samples and improved procedures. They have implications for robot design in all domains involving tactile interactions, such as caring and intimacy.
Mimicking non-verbal emotional expressions and empathy development in simulated consultations
(2018)
Objective: To explore the feasibility of applying an experimental design to study the relationship between non-verbal emotions and empathy development in simulated consultations.
Method: In video-recorded simulated consultations, twenty clinicians were randomly allocated to either an experimental group (instructed to mimic non-verbal emotions of a simulated patient, SP) or a control group (no such instruction). Baseline empathy scores were obtained before consultation, relational empathy was rated by SP after consultation. Multilevel logistic regression modelled the probability of mimicry occurrence, controlling for baseline empathy and clinical experience. ANCOVA compared group differences on relational empathy and consultation smoothness.
Results: Instructed mimicry lasted longer than spontaneous mimicry. Mimicry was marginally related to improved relational empathy. SP felt being treated more like a whole person during consultations with spontaneous mimicry. Clinicians who displayed spontaneous mimicry felt consultations went more smoothly.
Conclusion: The experimental approach improved our understanding of how non-verbal emotional mimicry contributed to relational empathy development during consultations. Further work should ascertain the potential of instructed mimicry to enhance empathy development.
Practice implications: Understanding how non-verbal emotional mimicry impacts on patients’ perceived clinician empathy during consultations may inform training and intervention programme development.
During sentence reading, low spatial frequency information afforded by spaces between words is the primary factor for eye guidance in spaced writing systems, whereas saccade generation for unspaced writing systems is less clear and under debate. In the present study, we investigated whether word-boundary information, provided by alternating colors (consistent or inconsistent with word-boundary information) influences saccade-target selection in Chinese. In Experiment 1, as compared to a baseline (i.e., uniform color) condition, word segmentation with alternating color shifted fixation location towards the center of words. In contrast, incorrect word segmentation shifted fixation location towards the beginning of words. In Experiment 2, we used a gaze-contingent paradigm to restrict the color manipulation only to the upcoming parafoveal words and replicated the results, including fixation location effects, as observed in Experiment 1. These results indicate that Chinese readers are capable of making use of parafoveal word-boundary knowledge for saccade generation, even if such information is unfamiliar to them. The present study provides novel support for the hypothesis that word segmentation is involved in the decision about where to fixate next during Chinese reading.
BackgroundDisruptions of reading processes due to text substitutions can measure how readers use lexical information. MethodsWith eye-movement recording, children and adults viewed sentences with either identical, orthographically similar, homophonic or unrelated substitutions of the first characters in target words. To the extent that readers rely on orthographic or phonological cues, substitutions that contain such cues should cause less disruption reading than do unrelated substitutions. ResultsOn pretarget words, there was a reliable reduction in gaze duration due to homophonic substitution only for children. On target words, we observed reliable recovery effects due to orthographic similarity for adults. On post-target words, adults had better orthographic-based and phonological-based recovery abilities than children. ConclusionsThe combination of eye movement recording and the error detection paradigm offers a novel implicit paradigm for studying reading development: during sentence reading, beginning readers of Chinese may rely on phonological mediation, while skilled readers have more direct access to semantics from orthography.
Parafoveal semantic processing has recently been well documented in reading Chinese sentences, presumably because of language-specific features. However, because of a large variation of fixation landing positions on pretarget words, some preview words actually were located in foveal vision when readers' eyes landed close to the end of the pretarget words. None of the previous studies has completely ruled out a possibility that the semantic preview effects might mainly arise from these foveally processed preview words. This case, whether previously observed positive evidence for parafoveal semantic processing can still hold, has been called into question. Using linear mixed models, we demonstrate in this study that semantic preview benefit from word N+1 decreased if fixation on pretarget word N was close to the preview. We argue that parafoveal semantic processing is not a consequence of foveally processed preview words.
Many studies have suggested that emotional stimuli orient and engage attention. There is also evidence that animate stimuli, such as those from humans and animals, cause attentional bias. However, categorical and emotional factors are usually mixed, and it is unclear to what extent human context influences attentional allocation. To address this issue, we tracked participants' eye movements while they viewed pictures with animals and inanimate images (i.e., category) as focal objects. These pictures had either negative or neutral emotional valence, and either human body parts or nonhuman parts were near the focal objects (i.e., context). The picture's valence, arousal, position, size, and most of the low-level visual features were matched across categories. The results showed that nonhuman animals were more likely to be attended to and to be attended to for longer times than inanimate objects. The same pattern held for the human contexts (vs. nonhuman contexts). The effects of emotional valence, category, and context interacted. Specifically, in images with a negative valence, focal animals and objects with human context had comparable numbers of gaze fixations and gaze duration. These results highlighted the attentional bias to animate parts of a picture and clarified that the effects of category, valence, and picture context interacted to influence attentional allocation.
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.
Semantic processing from parafoveal words is an elusive phenomenon in alphabetic languages, but it has been demonstrated only for a restricted set of noncompound Chinese characters. Using the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm, this experiment examined whether parafoveal lexical and sublexical semantic information was extracted from compound preview characters. Results generalized parafoveal semantic processing to this representative set of Chinese characters and extended the parafoveal processing to radical (sublexical) level semantic information extraction. Implications for notions of parafoveal information extraction during Chinese reading are discussed.
The present study explored the perceptual span (i.e., the physical extent of an area from which useful visual information is extracted during a single fixation) during the reading of Chinese sentences in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested whether the rightward span can go beyond 3 characters when visually similar masks were used. Results showed that Chinese readers needed at least 4 characters to the right of fixation to maintain a normal reading behavior when visually similar masks were used and when characters were displayed in small fonts, indicating that the span is dynamically influenced by masking materials. In Experiments 2 and 3, we asked whether the perceptual span varies as a function of font size in spaced (German) and unspaced (Chinese) scripts. Results clearly suggest perceptual span depends on font size in Chinese, but we failed to find such evidence for German. We propose that the perceptual span in Chinese is flexible; it is strongly constrained by its language-specific properties such as high information density and lack of word spacing. Implications for saccade-target selection during the reading of Chinese sentences are discussed.
The present study sets out to address two fundamental questions in the reading of continuous texts: Whether semantic and phonological information from upcoming words can be accessed during natural reading. In the present study we investigated parafoveal processing during the reading of Korean sentences, manipulating semantic and phonological information from parafoveal preview words. In addition to the first evidence for a semantic preview effect in Korean, we found that Korean readers have stronger and more long-lasting phonological than semantic activation from parafoveal words in second-pass reading. The present study provides an example that human mind can flexibly adjust processing priority to different types of information based on the linguistic environment.
Despite the well-known influence of emotional meaning on cognition, relatively less is known about its effects on reading behavior. We investigated whether fixation behavior during the reading of Chinese sentences is influenced by emotional word meaning in the parafovea. Two-character target words embedded into the same sentence frames provided emotionally positive, negative, or neutral contents. Fixation durations on neutral pretarget words were prolonged for positive parafoveal words and for highly frequent negative parafoveal words. In addition, fixation durations on foveal emotional words were shorter than those on neutral words. We also found that the role of emotional words varied as a function of their valence during foveal and parafoveal processing. These findings suggest a processing advantage for emotional words relative to emotionally neutral stimuli in foveal and parafoveal vision. We discuss implications for the notion of attention attraction due to emotional content.
Preview fixation duration modulates identical and semantic preview benefit in Chinese reading
(2012)
Semantic preview benefit from parafoveal words is critical for proposals of distributed lexical processing during reading. Semantic preview benefit has been demonstrated for Chinese reading with the boundary paradigm in which unrelated or semantically related previews of a target word N + 1 are replaced by the target word once the eyes cross an invisible boundary located after word N (Yan et al., 2009); for the target word in position N + 2, only identical compared to unrelated-word preview led to shorter fixation times on the target word (Yan et al., in press). A reanalysis of these data reveals that identical and semantic preview benefits depend on preview duration (i.e., the fixation duration on the preboundary word). Identical preview benefit from word N + 1 increased with preview duration. The identical preview benefit was also significant for N + 2, but did not significantly interact with preview duration. The previously reported semantic preview benefit from word N + 1 was mainly due to single- or first-fixation durations following short previews. We discuss implications for notions of serial attention shifts and parallel distributed processing of words during reading.
Dyslexic children are known to be slower than normal readers in rapid automatized naming (RAN). This suggests that dyslexics encounter local processing difficulties, which presumably induce a narrower perceptual span. Consequently, dyslexics should suffer less than normal readers from removing parafoveal preview. Here we used a gaze-contingent moving window paradigm in a RAN task to experimentally test this prediction. Results indicate that dyslexics extract less parafoveal information than control children. We propose that more attentional resources are recruited to the foveal processing because of dyslexics' less automatized translation of visual symbols into phonological output, thereby causing a reduction of the perceptual span. This in turn leads to less efficient preactivation of parafoveal information and, hence, more difficulty in processing the next foveal item.
The present study explored the age-related changes of eye movement control in reading-that is, where to send the eyes and when to move them. Different orthographies present readers with somewhat different problems to solve, and this might, in turn, be reflected in different patterns of development of reading skill. Participants of different developmental levels (Grade 3, N = 30; Grade 5, N = 27 and adults, N = 27) were instructed to read sentences for comprehension while their eye movements were recorded. Contrary to previous findings that have been well documented indicating early maturation of saccade generation in English, current results showed that saccade generation among Chinese readers was still under development at Grade 5, although immediate lexical processing was relatively well-established. The distinct age-related changes in eye movements are attributable to certain linguistic properties of Chinese including the lack of interword spaces and word boundary uncertainty. The present study offers an example of how human eye movement adapts to the orthographic environment.
During the reading of alphabetic scripts and scene perception, eye movements are programmed more efficiently in horizontal direction than in vertical direction. We propose that such a directional advantage may be due the overwhelming reading experience in the horizontal direction. Writing orientation is highly flexible for Traditional Chinese sentences. We compare horizontal and vertical eye movements during reading of such sentences and provide first evidence of a text-orientation effect on eye-movement control during reading. In addition to equivalent reading speed in both directions, more fine-grained analyses demonstrate a tradeoff between longer fixation durations and better fixation locations in vertical than in horizontal reading. Our results suggest that with extensive reading experience, Traditional Chinese readers can generate saccades more efficiently in vertical than in horizontal direction.
In the present study, we manipulated different types of information available in the parafovea during the reading of Chinese sentences and examined how deaf readers make use of the parafoveal information. Results clearly indicate that although the reading-level matched hearing readers make greater use of orthographic information in the parafovea, parafoveal semantic information is obtained earlier among the deaf readers. In addition, a phonological preview benefit effect was found for the better deaf readers (relative to less-skilled deaf readers), although we also provide an alternative explanation for this effect. Providing evidence that Chinese deaf readers have higher efficiency when processing parafoveal semantics, the study indicates flexibility across individuals in the mechanisms underlying word recognition adapting to the inputs available in the linguistic environment.
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.
As Chinese is written without orthographical word boundaries (i.e., spaces), it is unclear whether saccade targets are selected on the basis of characters or words and whether saccades are aimed at the beginning or the centre of words. Here, we report an experiment where 30 Chinese readers read 150 sentences while their eye movements were monitored. They exhibited a strong tendency to fixate at the word centre in single-fixation cases and at the word beginning in multiple-fixation cases. Different from spaced alphabetic script, initial fixations falling at the end of words were no more likely to be followed by a refixation than initial fixations at word centre. Further, single fixations were shorter than first fixations in two-fixation cases, which is opposite to what is found in Roman script. We propose that Chinese readers dynamically select the beginning or centre of words as saccade targets depending on failure or success with segmentation of parafoveal word boundaries.
As a contribution to a theoretical debate about the degree of high-level influences on saccade targeting during sentence reading, we investigated eye movements during the reading of structurally ambiguous Chinese character strings and examined whether parafoveal word segmentation could influence saccade-target selection. As expected, ambiguous strings took longer to process. More critically there were theoretically relevant interactions between ambiguity and launch site when first-fixation location and saccade amplitude served as dependent variables: Ambiguous strings in the parafovea triggered longer saccades and more rightward fixations for close launch sites than unambiguous ones; the reverse result was obtained for far launch sites. These crossover interactions indicate that parafoveal word segmentation influences saccade generation in Chinese and provide support of the hypothesis that high-level information can be involved in the decision about where to fixate next.
This study investigates the effect of foveal load (i.e., processing difficulty of currently fixated words) on parafoveal information processing. Contrary to the commonly accepted view that high foveal load leads to reduced parafoveal processing efficiency, results of the present study showed that increasing foveal visual (but not linguistic) processing load actually increased the amount of parafoveal information acquired, presumably due to the fact that longer fixation duration on the pretarget word provided more time for parafoveal processing of the target word. It is therefore proposed in the present study that foveal linguistic processing load is not the only factor that determines parafoveal processing; preview time (afforded by foveal word visual processing load) may jointly influence parafoveal processing. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
BACKGROUND: The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is implicated in depression. The hypothesis investigated was whether the OFC sensitivity to reward and nonreward is related to the severity of depressive symptoms.
METHODS: Activations in the monetary incentive delay task were measured in the IMAGEN cohort at ages 14 years (n = 1877) and 19 years (n = 1140) with a longitudinal design. Clinically relevant subgroups were compared at ages 19 (high-severity group: n = 116; low-severity group: n = 206) and 14.
RESULTS: The medial OFC exhibited graded activation increases to reward, and the lateral OFC had graded activation increases to nonreward. In this general population, the medial and lateral OFC activations were associated with concurrent depressive symptoms at both ages 14 and 19 years. In a stratified high-severity depressive symptom group versus control group comparison, the lateral OFC showed greater sensitivity for the magnitudes of activations related to nonreward in the high-severity group at age 19 (p = .027), and the medial OFC showed decreased sensitivity to the reward magnitudes in the high-severity group at both ages 14 (p = .002) and 19 (p = .002). In a longitudinal design, there was greater sensitivity to nonreward of the lateral OFC at age 14 for those who exhibited high depressive symptom severity later at age 19 (p = .003).
CONCLUSIONS: Activations in the lateral OFC relate to sensitivity to not winning, were associated with high depressive symptom scores, and at age 14 predicted the depressive symptoms at ages 16 and 19. Activations in the medial OFC were related to sensitivity to winning, and reduced reward sensitivity was associated with concurrent high depressive symptom scores.
BACKGROUND: The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is implicated in depression. The hypothesis investigated was whether the OFC sensitivity to reward and nonreward is related to the severity of depressive symptoms.
METHODS: Activations in the monetary incentive delay task were measured in the IMAGEN cohort at ages 14 years (n = 1877) and 19 years (n = 1140) with a longitudinal design. Clinically relevant subgroups were compared at ages 19 (high-severity group: n = 116; low-severity group: n = 206) and 14.
RESULTS: The medial OFC exhibited graded activation increases to reward, and the lateral OFC had graded activation increases to nonreward. In this general population, the medial and lateral OFC activations were associated with concurrent depressive symptoms at both ages 14 and 19 years. In a stratified high-severity depressive symptom group versus control group comparison, the lateral OFC showed greater sensitivity for the magnitudes of activations related to nonreward in the high-severity group at age 19 (p = .027), and the medial OFC showed decreased sensitivity to the reward magnitudes in the high-severity group at both ages 14 (p = .002) and 19 (p = .002). In a longitudinal design, there was greater sensitivity to nonreward of the lateral OFC at age 14 for those who exhibited high depressive symptom severity later at age 19 (p = .003).
CONCLUSIONS: Activations in the lateral OFC relate to sensitivity to not winning, were associated with high depressive symptom scores, and at age 14 predicted the depressive symptoms at ages 16 and 19. Activations in the medial OFC were related to sensitivity to winning, and reduced reward sensitivity was associated with concurrent high depressive symptom scores.
5-Jahres-Verlauf der LRS
(2017)
Fragestellung: Untersucht wird der Verlauf von Kindern mit Lese-Rechtschreibstörungen (LRS) über gut 5 Jahre unter Berücksichtigung des Einflusses des Geschlechts der Betroffenen. Außerdem werden Auswirkungen der LRS auf das spätere Schriftsprachniveau und den Schulerfolg überprüft. Methodik: Eingangs wurden 995 Schüler zwischen 6 und 16 Jahren untersucht. Ein Teil dieser Kinder ist nach 43 sowie 63 Monaten nachuntersucht worden. Eine LRS wurde diagnostiziert, wenn für das Lesen bzw. Rechtschreiben das doppelte Diskrepanzkriterium von 1.5 Standardabweichungen zur nonverbalen Intelligenz und dem Mittelwert der Klassenstufe erfüllt war und gleichzeitig keine Minderbegabung vorlag. Ergebnisse: Die LRS weist über einen Zeitraum von 63 Monaten eine hohe Störungspersistenz von knapp 70 % auf. Der 5-Jahres-Verlauf der mittleren Lese- und Rechtschreibleistungen wurde nicht vom Geschlecht beeinflusst. Trotz durchschnittlicher Intelligenz blieben die LRS-Schüler in der Schriftsprache mindestens eine Standardabweichung hinter durchschnittlich und etwa 0.5 Standardabweichungseinheiten hinter unterdurchschnittlich intelligenten Kindern zurück. Der Schulerfolg der LRS-Schüler glich dem unterdurchschnittlich intelligenter Kinder und fiel deutlich schlechter aus als bei durchschnittlich intelligenten Kontrollkindern. Schlussfolgerungen: Eine LRS stellt ein erhebliches Entwicklungsrisiko dar, was frühzeitige Diagnostik- und Therapiemaßnahmen erfordert. Dafür sind reliable und im Hinblick auf die resultierenden Prävalenzraten sinnvolle, allgemein anerkannte Diagnosekriterien essenziell.
Is a specific disorder of arithmetic skills as common as reading/spelling disorder?Background: Referring to the prevalence rates of learning disorders in the research literature, the numbers of mathematics disorder and reading/ spelling disorder are often reported to be identical. However, the correlation between intelligence level and reading/ spelling skills is much weaker than between intelligence and arithmetic skills. If the same definition criterion is applied to both disorders, a lower prevalence rate for mathematics disorder should be expected. Objective: Are there differences in the prevalence estimates for learning disorders depending on the definition criterion? Method: A large representative sample of German students (N = 1970) was used to review the hypothesis. Results: Depending on the definition criterion, we could show a prevalence range of mathematics disorder between 0.1% and 8.1% in the same sample. Using the same definition criterion for both learning disorders, there are two to three times as many students with reading/spelling disorder than those with mathematics disorder. Discussion: Whenever children with reading/spelling disorder are compared to children with mathematics disorder, the same definition criterion has to be applied.
Not much is known about how bystanders' emotional reactions after not intervening in cyberbullying might impact their health issues. Narrowing this gap in the literature, the present study focused on examining the moderating effects of emotional reactions (i.e., guilt, sadness, anger) after not intervening in cyberbullying on the longitudinal relationship between cyberbullying bystanding and health issues (i.e., subjective health complaints, suicidal ideation, non-suicidal self-harm). Participants were 1,067 adolescents between 12 and 15 years old included in this study (M-age = 13.67; 51% girls). The findings showed a positive association between Time 1 cyberbullying bystanding and Time 2 health issues. Guilt moderated the positive relationships among Time 1 cyberbullying bystanding, Time 2 subjective health complaints, suicidal ideation, and non-suicidal self-harm. Time 1 sadness also moderated the relationship between Time 1 cyberbullying bystanding and Time 2 suicidal ideation and non-suicidal self-harm. However, anger did not moderate any of the associations.
Task demands and individual differences have been linked reliably to word skipping during reading. Such differences in fixation probability may imply a selection effect for multivariate analyses of eye-movement corpora if selection effects correlate with word properties of skipped words. For example, with fewer fixations on short and highly frequent words the power to detect parafoveal-on-foveal effects is reduced. We demonstrate that increasing the fixation probability on function words with a manipulation of the expected difficulty and frequency of questions reduces an age difference in skipping probability (i.e., old adults become comparable to young adults) and helps to uncover significant parafoveal-on-foveal effects in this group of old adults. We discuss implications for the comparison of results of eye-movement research based on multivariate analysis of corpus data with those from display-contingent manipulations of target words.
Psychometric evaluation of the German version of the Variety Seeking Tendency Scale (VARSEEK)
(2021)
As part of a healthy diet, guidelines recommend eating a variety of foods to reduce risks associated with malnutrition. However, whether people follow this recommendation substantially depends on their willingness to try unfamiliar foods, also referred to as food neophilia. This study aimed at comprehensively validating the German version of the Variety Seeking Tendency Scale (VARSEEK), a common instrument to assess food neophilia. Two independent sub-studies were conducted to examine the German VARSEEK's psychometric properties. Study 1 (N = 532, aged 18-91 years) and Study 2 (N = 468, aged 18-73 years) each comprised a German community sample. Data were collected both online and via a paper-pencil version. Whereas Study 1 included an EFA, Study 2 comprised a CFA, analyses of the VARSEEK's reliability and construct validity, and different explorative group comparisons. EFA and CFA results supported the original scale's unidimensionality. Internal consistency (alpha = .93) and test-retest reliability (r = .87) of the scale were high. VARSEEK scores were positively associated with openness, sensation seeking, and extraversion and negatively associated with food neophobia, general neophobia, and trait anxiety. Construct validity was further established by showing positive associations with ratings of familiarity with and willingness to try familiar and unfamiliar foods. Whereas group comparisons revealed no significant differences for sex, age, and weight status, analyses showed that people who belonged to the upper class were more food neophilic than those assigned to the lower and middle class. Findings further underscore that the German VARSEEK is a reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of food neophilia in the German population.
There has been increasing interest in the spatial mapping of various perceptual and cognitive magnitudes, such as expanding the spatial-numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect into domains outside of numerical cognition. Recently, De Tommaso and Prpic (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82, 2765-2773, 2020) reported in this journal that only fast tempos over 104 beats per minute have spatial associations, with more right-sided associations and faster responses for faster tempos. After discussing the role of perceived loudness and possible response strategies, we propose and recommend methodological improvements for further research.
Trait emotional intelligence (TEI) is an important individual difference variable that is related to the quality of romantic relationships. The present study investigated the associations between TEI, dyadic coping, and relationship satisfaction. A convenience sample of N = 136 heterosexual couples was recruited online. When the actor-partner interdependence model was applied to the data, TEI showed a positive actor effect and a positive partner effect on relationship satisfaction. The actor effect and partner effect of TEI on relationship satisfaction were partially mediated through positive dyadic coping and common dyadic coping, respectively. A small total indirect actor effect was also found for negative dyadic coping. Controlling for potential content overlap between TEI and relationship satisfaction did not alter the results. However, removing variance from the TEI score that was shared with the Big Five trait factors attenuated TEI's actor and partner effects on relationship satisfaction and rendered all but one actor effect for TEI on dyadic coping and all but one indirect effect nonsignificant. The results underline the importance of TEI for the quality of romantic relationships and they shed light on underlying mechanisms. Implications for theory, research, and applications in counseling contexts will be discussed.
Background:
Mother-infant interaction provides important training for the infant’s ability to cope with stress and the development of resilience. Prenatal stress (PS) and its impact on the offspring’s development have long been a focus of stress research, with studies highlighting both harmful and beneficial effects. The aim of the current study was to examine the possible influence of both psychological stress and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity during pregnancy with mother-child dyadic behavior following stress exposure.
Methods:
The behavior of 164 mother-infant dyads during the still-face situation was filmed at six months postpartum and coded into three dyadic patterns: 1) both positive, 2) infant protesting-mother positive, and 3) infant protesting-mother negative. PS exposure was assessed prenatally according to psychological measures (i.e., psychopathological, perceived and psychosocial PS; n = 164) and HPA axis activity measures (maternal salivary cortisol, i.e., cortisol decline and area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg); n = 134).
Results:
Mother-infant dyads in both the high- and low-stress groups showed decreasing positive and increasing negative dyadic behavior in the reunion episode, which is associated with the well-known “still-face” and “carry-over” effect. Furthermore, mother-infant dyads with higher psychosocial PS exhibited significantly more positive dyadic behavior than the low psychosocial PS group in the first play episode, but not in the reunion episode. Similarly, mother-infant dyads with high HPA axis activity (i.e. high AUCg) but steeper diurnal cortisol decline (i.e. cortisol decline) displayed significantly less negative behavior in the reunion episode than dyads with low HPA axis activity. No significant results were found for psychopathological stress and perceived stress.
Conclusions:
The results suggest a beneficial effect of higher psychosocial PS and higher prenatal maternal HPA axis activity in late gestation, which is in line with “stress inoculation” theories.
Interindividual variability in the regulation of the human stress system accounts for a part of the individual's liability to stress-related diseases. These differences are influenced by environmental and genetic factors. Early childhood adversity is a well-studied environmental factor affecting an individual's stress response which has been shown to be modulated by gene environment interaction (GxE). Neuropeptide Y (NPY) plays a role in stress regulation and genetic variation in NPY may influence stress responses. In this study, we analyzed the association of a common variant in the NPY gene promoter, rs16147, with cortisol and ACTH responses to acute psychosocial stress in young adults from the Mannheim Study of Children at Risk (MARS), an ongoing epidemiological cohort study following the outcome of early adversity from birth into adulthood. We found evidence of a GxE interaction between rs16147 and early adversity significantly affecting HPA axis responses to acute psychosocial stress. These findings suggest that the neurobiological mechanisms linking early adverse experience and later neuroendocrine stress regulation are modulated by a gene variant whose functional relevance is documented by increasing convergent evidence from in vitro, animal and human studies.
Diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer is a very emotionally aversive and stressful life event, which can lead to impaired cognitive functioning and mental health. Breast cancer survivors responding with repressive emotion regulation strategies often show less adaptive coping and adverse outcomes. We investigated cognitive functioning and neural correlates of emotion processing using ERPs. Self-report measures of depression, anxiety, and fatigue, as well as hair cortisol as an index of chronic stress, were assessed. Twenty breast cancer survivors (BCS) and 31 carefully matched healthy controls participated in the study. After neuropsychological testing and subjective assessments, participants viewed 30 neutral, 30 unpleasant, and 30 pleasant pictures, and ERPs were recorded. Recognition memory was tested 1 week later. BCS reported stronger complaints about cognitive impairments and more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and fatigue. Moreover, they showed elevated hair cortisol levels. Except for verbal memory, cognitive functioning was predominantly in the normative range. Recognition memory performance was decreased in cancer survivors, especially for emotional contents. In ERPs, survivors showed smaller late positive potential amplitudes for unpleasant pictures relative to controls in a later time window, which may indicate less elaborative processing of this material. Taken together, we found cognitive impairments in BCS in verbal memory, impaired emotional picture memory accuracy, and reduced neural activity when breast cancer survivors were confronted with unpleasant materials. Further studies and larger sample sizes, however, are needed to evaluate the relationship between altered emotion processing and reduced memory in BCS in order to develop new treatment strategies.
Chronic stress and emotion: Differential effects on attentional processing and recognition memory
(2019)
Previous research indicates that acute stress around the time of learning facilitates attention and memory for emotionally salient information. Despite accumulating evidence for these acute stress effects, less is known about the role of chronic stress. In the present study, we therefore tested emotional and neutral scene processing and later recognition memory in female participants using hair cortisol concentrations as a biological marker for chronic stress. Event-related potentials recorded during picture viewing indicated enhanced late positive potentials (LPPs) for emotional, relative to neutral contents. These brain potentials varied as a function of long-term hair cortisol levels: hair-cortisol levels were positively related to overall LPP amplitudes. Results from recognition memory testing one week after encoding revealed better memory for emotional relative to neutral scenes. Hair-cortisol levels, however, were related to poorer memory accuracy. Taken together, our results indicate that chronic stress enhanced attentional processing during encoding of new stimuli and impaired later recognition memory. Results are discussed with regard to putatively opposite effects of chronic stress on certain brain regions (e.g., amygdala and hippocampus).
DOES AGE INFLUENCE BRAIN POTENTIALS DURING AFFECTIVE PICTURE PROCESSING IN MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN?
(2017)
Southeast Asia is one of the most dynamic regions in the world. It is experiencing rapid socioeconomic change that may influence the level of sexual aggression, but data on the scale of sexual aggression in the region remain sparse. The aim of the present article was to systematically review the findings of studies available in English on the prevalence of self-reported sexual aggression and victimization among women and men above the age of 12 years in the 11 countries of Southeast Asia (Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam). Based on four scientific databases, the search engine Google, Opengrey database, and reference checking, 49 studies were found on sexual victimization. Of those, 32 included only women. Self-reported perpetration was assessed by only three studies and included all-male samples. Prevalence rates varied widely across studies but showed that sexual victimization was widespread among different social groups, irrespective of sex and sexual orientation. Methodological heterogeneity, lack of representativeness of samples, imbalance of information available by country, missing information within studies, and cultural differences hampered the comparability between and within countries. There is a need for operationalizations that specifically address sexual aggression occurring after the age of consent, based on detailed behavioral descriptions of unwanted sexual experiences and allied to a qualitative approach with cultural sensitivity. Data on sexual aggression in conflict settings and in human trafficking are also limited. Recommendations for future research are presented in the discussion.
A large number of experimental findings from neuroscience and experimental psychology demonstrated interactions between spatial cognition and numerical cognition. In particular, many researchers posited a horizontal mental number line, where small numbers are thought of as being to the left of larger numbers. This review synthesizes work on the mental association between space and number, indicating the existence of multiple spatial mappings: recent research has found associations between number and vertical space, as well as associations between number and near/far space. We discuss number space in three dimensions with an eye on potential origins of the different number mappings, and how these number mappings fit in with our current knowledge of brain organization and brain-culture interactions. We derive novel predictions and show how this research fits into a general view of cognition as embodied, grounded and situated. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A study with 114 young adults investigated the correlations of intelligence factors and working-memory capacity with reaction time (RT) tasks. Within two sets of four-choice RT tasks, stimulus-response compatibility was varied over three levels: compatible, incompatible, and arbitrary mappings. Two satisfactory measurement models for the RTs could be established: A general factor model without constraints on the loadings and a nested model with two correlated factors, distinguishing compatible from arbitrary mappings, with constraints on the loadings. Structural models additionally including factors for working memory and intelligence showed that the nested model with correlated factors is superior in fit. Working-memory capacity and fluid intelligence were correlated strongly with the nested factor for the RT tasks with arbitrary mappings, and less with the general RT factor. The results support the hypothesis that working memory is needed to maintain arbitrary bindings between stimulus representations and response representations, and this could explain the correlation of working-memory capacity with speed in choice RT tasks
Visual search paradigms have provided evidence for the enhanced capture of attention by threatening faces. Especially in social anxiety, hypervigilance for threatening faces has been found repeatedly across behavioral paradigms, whose reliability however have been questioned recently. In this EEG study, we sought to determine whether the detection of threat (angry faces) is specifically enhanced in individuals with high (HSA) compared to low social anxiety (LSA). In a visual search paradigm, the N2pc component of the event-related brain potential was measured as an electrophysiological indicator of attentional selection. Twenty-one HSA and twenty-one LSA participants were investigated while searching for threatening or friendly targets within an array of neutral faces, or neutral targets within threatening or friendly distractors. Whereas no differences were found in reaction times, HSA showed significant higher detection rates for angry faces, whereas LSA showed a clear ‘happiness bias’. HSA also showed enhanced N2pc amplitudes in response to emotional facial expressions (angry and happy), indicating a general attentional bias for emotional faces. Overall, the results show that social anxiety may be characterized not only by a spatial attentional bias for threatening faces, but for emotional faces in general. In addition, the results further demonstrate the utility of the N2pc component in capturing subtle attentional biases.
Previous research on the interplay between static manual postures and visual attention revealed enhanced visual selection near the hands (near-hand effect). During active movements there is also superior visual performance when moving toward compared to away from the stimulus (direction effect). The "modulated visual pathways" hypothesis argues that differential involvement of magno- and parvocellular visual processing streams causes the near-hand effect. The key finding supporting this hypothesis is an increase in temporal and a reduction in spatial processing in near-hand space (Gozli et al., 2012). Since this hypothesis has, so far, only been tested with static hand postures, we provide a conceptual replication of Gozli et al.'s (2012) result with moving hands, thus also probing the generality of the direction effect. Participants performed temporal or spatial gap discriminations while their right hand was moving below the display. In contrast to Gozli et al (2012), temporal gap discrimination was superior at intermediate and not near hand proximity. In spatial gap discrimination, a direction effect without hand proximity effect suggests that pragmatic attentional maps overshadowed temporal/spatial processing biases for far/near-hand space.
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.
Is more always up?
(2017)
It has been argued that the association of numbers and vertical space plays a fundamental role for the understanding of numerical concepts. However, convincing evidence for an association of numbers and vertical bimanual responses is still lacking. The present study tests the vertical Spatio-Numerical-Association-of-Response-Codes (SNARC) effect in a number classification task by comparing anatomical hand-based and spatial associations. A mixed effects model of linear spatial-numerical associations revealed no evidence for a vertical but clear support for an anatomical SNARC effect. Only if the task requirements prevented participants from using a number-hand association due to frequently alternating hand-to-button assignments, numbers were associated with the vertical dimension. Taken together, the present findings question the importance of vertical associations for the conceptual understanding of numerical magnitude as hypothesised by some embodied approaches to number cognition and suggest a preference for ego-over geocentric reference frames for the mapping of numbers onto space.