Stimulus control in the experimental study of cooperation

The cooperative responses of pairs of human subjects were reinforced under several stimulus conditions in two settings designed to require a "social" response, i.e., where at least one of the two persons is responding to the behavior of the other. The first task, designed by Lindsley and Cohen, required individual responses within 0.5 sec of one another for reinforcement. The second (modified) task required a delay of 3 sec between individual responses. To determine dependence of cooperation on social stimuli, rates of cooperative behavior on these tasks were compared in the presence and absence of a stimulus indicating to each subject the other's response and a stimulus which indicated the duration of the timeout after reinforcement. The results indicated that only in the modified task was a high rate of cooperation always contingent upon the presence of the social stimuli.     

Encouraging prediction during production facilitates subsequent comprehension: Evidence from interleaved object naming in sentence context and sentence reading

Many studies have shown that a supportive context facilitates language comprehension. A currently influential view is that language production may support prediction in language comprehension. Experimental evidence for this, however, is relatively sparse. Here we explored whether encouraging prediction in a language production task encourages the use of predictive contexts in an interleaved comprehension task. In Experiment 1a, participants listened to the first part of a sentence and provided the final word by naming aloud a picture. The picture name was predictable or not predictable from the sentence context. Pictures were named faster when they could be predicted than when this was not the case. In Experiment 1b the same sentences, augmented by a final spill-over region, were presented in a self-paced reading task. No difference in reading times for predictive versus non-predictive sentences was found. In Experiment 2, reading and naming trials were intermixed. In the naming task, the advantage for predictable picture names was replicated. More importantly, now reading times for the spill-over region were considerable faster for predictive than for non-predictive sentences. We conjecture that these findings fit best with the notion that prediction in the service of language production encourages the use of predictive contexts in comprehension. Further research is required to identify the exact mechanisms by which production exerts its influence on comprehension.     

Procedural injustice at work,justice sensitivity,job satisfaction and psychosomatic well‐being

In a field study with 295 factory employees, three hypotheses were tested: (1) Procedural injustice at work is correlated negatively with job satisfaction and psychosomatic well‐being. (2) The perception of procedural injustice depends on the person's chronic justice sensitivity. (3) Justice sensitivity moderates the correlation of procedural injustice with satisfaction and well‐being, the correlation becoming larger with increasing justice sensitivity. Procedural injustice was defined as the discrepancy between desired (ought) and perceived (is) procedures. Justice sensitivity and procedural fairness according to Leventhal's criteria (consistency, nonpartiality, accuracy, correctability, representativeness) and one additional criterion (open information) were measured via questionnaire. Job satisfaction, number of sick days during the last six months and number of days a person felt sick at work during the last six months served as indicators of psychosomatic well‐being. The first and second hypotheses were supported by the data. Partial support was also obtained for the third hypothesis: Justice sensitivity moderated the correlation of procedural unfairness with (a) the number of days the person felt sick at work and (b) the sum of this variable with the number of sick days. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Need for a Theology of Resilience,Coexistence, and Hope

In many countries of the world, people are drinking a dangerous cocktail of poisonous ingredients all starting with the letter P: polarization, populism, protectionism, post‐truth, and patriarchy. As Christians, we cannot do other than work against this. In order to do so, we need to make use of the resources we have in spirituality and theology. This article reflects on these resources in the Lutheran tradition, asking how we, together, are church in this world.     

Rules? Role Model? Relationship? The Impact of Parents on Their Children’s Problematic Mobile Phone Involvement

Parents can influence their children’s problematic mobile phone involvement (PMPI) by engaging in parental mediation activities, such as restrictions or co-use, by being a role model, and by their general and domain-unspecific parenting style that facilitates more or less attachment security of the child. This study tested the associations between these different routes of influence—parental mediation of the mobile phone, parental PMPI, and secure child-parent attachment—with children’s PMPI. Data was acquired from a quota-sample survey with 500 children, between 8 and 14 years of age, and one of their parents. Results point to the importance of open and empathic parent-child-communication, as well as a positive relationship quality, and demonstrate the detrimental effects of parents’ own PMPI on children’s PMPI.     

Fixation durations in scene viewing: Modeling the effects of local image features,oculomotor parameters,and task

Scene perception requires the orchestration of image- and task-related processes with oculomotor constraints. The present study was designed to investigate how these factors influence how long the eyes remain fixated on a given location. Linear mixed models (LMMs) were used to test whether local image statistics (including luminance, luminance contrast, edge density, visual clutter, and the number of homogeneous segments), calculated for 1° circular regions around fixation locations, modulate fixation durations, and how these effects depend on task-related control. Fixation durations and locations were recorded from 72 participants, each viewing 135 scenes under three different viewing instructions (memorization, preference judgment, and search). Along with the image-related predictors, the LMMs simultaneously considered a number of oculomotor and spatiotemporal covariates, including the amplitudes of the previous and next saccades, and viewing time. As a key finding, the local image features around the current fixation predicted this fixation’s duration. For instance, greater luminance was associated with shorter fixation durations. Such immediacy effects were found for all three viewing tasks. Moreover, in the memorization and preference tasks, some evidence for successor effects emerged, such that some image characteristics of the upcoming location influenced how long the eyes stayed at the current location. In contrast, in the search task, scene processing was not distributed across fixation durations within the visual span. The LMM-based framework of analysis, applied to the control of fixation durations in scenes, suggests important constraints for models of scene perception and search, and for visual attention in general.     

The effects of colour and valence on news evaluation

Research across different fields of psychology has reported effects of colour cues on a variety of cognitive processes. Especially, the colour red has been shown to have striking influences. In the context of media reception, however, colour effects have been widely neglected so far. This study made a first step in this direction by investigating the effects of the colour red (compared with blue and grey) on the way news articles are evaluated. Two types of news were framed by a coloured border while the valence of the news content additionally varied. Based on 369 participants who read and evaluated the news articles online, we observed effects for colour cues and news valence in the absence of an interaction effect, indicating that the colour red induced approach motivation. However, only the contrast between red and grey reached statistical significance, indicating that chromatic and achromatic colours may differ in their perceived visual saliency. Overall, these results provide an important complement to previous studies and have practical implications for media researchers and producers.     

WHAT IS “SECULAR”? TECHNO‐SECULARISM AND SPIRITUALITY

Abstract. I argue that there is no “roaring reality of rampant secularism” with “technological application as its chief agent,” as claimed by John Caiazza (2005). Two phenomena, techno‐religion and a spirituality of technology, suggest a different picture of reality: Technology may be an alternative spirituality rather than an ally of a secularism that makes “nutcrackers of the soul” out of people who should be “dancers” (Nietzsche). An analysis of secularism and its manifold causes indicates that secularism is a fruit of both science and religion. The secular is a companion of religion rather than its enemy. Hence, I recommend a heuristic instead of an ontological use of the concept of secularism. In a technological age, religion is changing rather than being displaced. These changes are illustrated by the increase of private religiosity, megachurches, and cyber‐spirituality. Energized by the tension between finitude and creativity, technology shares in the marks of spirituality (Philip Hefner) and in the potential for good and evil. In this situation, fundamentalism and dogmatism in religion, science, and technology are a greater threat than secularism.