Activation of distractor names in the picture-picture interference paradigm

In four experiments, participants named target pictures that were accompanied by distractor pictures with phonologically related or unrelated names. Across experiments, the type of phonological relationship between the targets and the related distractors was varied: They were homophones (e.g., bat [animal/baseball]), or they shared word-initial segments (e.g., dog-doll) or word-final segments (e.g., ball-wall). The participants either named the objects after an extensive familiarization and practice phase or without any familiarization or practice. In all of the experiments, the mean target-naming latency was shorter in the related than in the unrelated condition, demonstrating that the phonological form of the name of the distractor picture became activated. These results are best explained within a cascaded model of lexical access--that is, under the assumption that the recognition of an object leads to the activation of its name.     

The relationship between confidence and self-concept — Towards a model of response confidence

According to Stankov [Stankov, L. (2000). Complexity, metacognition and fluid intelligence. Intelligence, 28, 121–143.] response confidence in cognitive tests reflects a trait on the boundary of personality and abilities. However, several studies failed in relating confidence scores to other known traits, including self-concept. A model of response confidence is proposed which predicts that confidence judgements do reflect self-concept, but only to the extent that they do not reflect a calibration process based on task-inherent cues. In the current study, 101 students completed various tests of cognitive abilities and skills as well as scales of the SDQ III measuring general academic and problem-solving self-concept. As expected, self-concept predicts a significant proportion of variance in the confidence factor that is over and above the influence of test scores.     

Das chinesische Selbst

The author has been teaching psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy in mainland China for 20 years. The paper focuses on the problem of transferring an individual-centered therapeutic theory and technique to a culture with a collectivistic and Confucian tradition. The different structures of the Western and Asian selves with their specific styles to communicate are described as well as the tendency of the Chinese to be more prone to shamefulness. Basic psychoanalytic concepts such as abstinence, therapeutic ego-splitting, the capacity for introspection and transference, as well as the traditional Confucian longing for harmony, can meet culturally immanent therapeutic problems. A specific defense constellation, the Ah-Q mentality as a result of Daoist thinking is presented. Finally, the question is raised whether technical modifications make sense in less individualized cultures.     

The Human Body as Corpus Absconditum

ABSTRACT

One of the most compelling scientific issues of our generation is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. The question of whether we are alone in the universe has long fascinated the media and the public and has received fresh momentum in the discovery of exoplanets, a small minority of which have Earth like characteristics. The discovery of life elsewhere in the universe, especially if it is intelligent, asks major but fruitful questions of the Christian tradition in areas such as creation, incarnation, redemption and the nature of what it means to be human. Theological work is needed now rather than being left as a future possibility.     

On the visual span during object search in real-world scenes

The current study investigated from how large a region around their current point of gaze viewers can take in information when searching for objects in real-world scenes. Visual span size was estimated using the gaze-contingent moving window paradigm. Experiment 1 featured window radii measuring 1, 3, 4, 4.7, 5.4, and 6.1°. Experiment 2 featured six window radii measuring between 5 and 10°. Each scene occupied a 24.8 × 18.6° field of view. Inside the moving window, the scene was presented in high resolution. Outside the window, the scene image was low-pass filtered to impede the parsing of the scene into constituent objects. Visual span was defined as the window size at which object search times became indistinguishable from search times in the no-window control condition; this occurred with windows measuring 8° and larger. Notably, as long as central vision was fully available (window radii ≥ 5°), the distance traversed by the eyes through the scene to the search target was comparable to baseline performance. However, to move their eyes to the target, viewers made shorter saccades, requiring more fixations to cover the same image space, and thus more time. Moreover, a gaze-data based decomposition of search time revealed disruptions in specific subprocesses of search. In addition, nonlinear mixed models analyses demonstrated reliable individual differences in visual span size and parameters of the search time function.