Construct validity of the bem sex role inventory (BSRI): Does the BSRI distinguish between gender-schematic and gender-aschematic individuals?

Factor analyses were performed on the masculine, feminine, and neutral items of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) for gender-schematic and gender-aschematic individuals separately. The analyses revealed bipolar masculinity/femininity factors for the gender-schematic group and two unipolar “aschematicity” factors for the gender-aschematic group. The results support gender schema theory's claim that the two types of individuals respond differently to the items of the BSRI. Thus, the BSRI is a valid measure for distinguishing gender-schematic from gender-schematic individuals.     

„Ist eine Allgemeine Psychotherapie notwendig, sinnvoll und machbar”?

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The effects of ingroup and outgroup homogeneity on ingroup favouritism,stereotyping and overestimation of relative ingroup size

An experiment (n = 61) investigated the effects of ingroup and outgroup homogeneity on ingroup favouritism, stereotyping and the overestimation of relative ingroup size. As predicted, outgroup homogeneity was conducive to ingroup favouritism. Ingroup homogeneity, however, failed to influence ingroup favouritism. Also unexpectedly, asymmetry in group homogeneity — irrespective of whether the ingroup or the outgroup was the more homogeneous group — led to pronounced stereotyping of both groups and to the overestimation of relative ingroup size.     

Pilfering ravens, Corvus corax, adjust their behaviour to social context and identity of competitors

Like other corvids, food-storing ravens protect their caches from being pilfered by conspecifics by means of aggression and by re-caching. In the wild and in captivity, potential pilferers rarely approach caches until the storers have left the cache vicinity. When storers are experimentally prevented from leaving, pilferers first search at places other than the cache sites. These behaviours raise the possibility that ravens are capable of withholding intentions and providing false information to avoid provoking the storers' aggression for cache protection. Alternatively, birds may refrain from pilfering to avoid conflicts with dominants. Here we examined whether ravens adjust their pilfer tactics according to social context and type of competitors. We allowed birds that had witnessed a conspecific making caches to pilfer those caches either in private, together with the storer, or together with a conspecific bystander that had not created the caches (non-storer) but had seen them being made. Compared to in-private trials, ravens delayed approaching the caches only in the presence of storers. Furthermore, they quickly engaged in searching away from the caches when together with dominant storers but directly approached the caches when together with dominant non-storers. These findings demonstrate that ravens selectively alter their pilfer behaviour with those individuals that are likely to defend the caches (storers) and support the interpretation that they are deceptively manipulating the others' behaviour.This contribution is part of the special issue “Animal Logics” (Watanabe and Huber 2006).     

Konzeptualisierung in inkrementell-integrativer Sprachverarbeitung

Conceptualization in incremental-integrative\hb language processing Summary. Language is a versatile instrument in co-operatively solving a construction task. In order to understand instructions given during such a task, objects have to be identified and the type of action to be performed has to be determined. The experiments presented show that the way in which objects and actions are conceptualized depends on the linguistic and the non-linguistic, visually available context. Both kinds of information are processed incrementally in an integrative way. The impact of relevant factors, such as the specificity of verbs and object namings, object properties such as color, size, location and the dynamically determined class to which the object belongs was studied. Conclusions for models of language understanding and language production are drawn and requirements for a grammatical formalism suitable for incremental and integrative processing are formulated. Zusammenfassung. Sprache ist ein wichtiges Instrument bei der kooperativen Lösung einer Konstruktionsaufgabe. Zum Verstehen von Handlungsanweisungen im Rahmen dieser Aufgabe müssen Objekte identifiziert und die Art der Handlung erkannt werden. Es werden empirische Untersuchungen vorgestellt, die zeigen, daß die Konzeptualisierung der Objekte und Handlungen vom sprachlichen und nichtsprachlichen, visuell verfügbaren Kontext abhängt. Beide Arten von Kontextinformation werden inkrementell und integrativ verarbeitet. Dazu wurde der Einfluß einzelner Faktoren wie die Spezifität von Verben und Objektbezeichnungen, Objekteigenschaften wie Farbe, Größe und Position sowie die dynamisch zugewiesene Objektklasse und die Wortstellung der benutzten Sprache untersucht. Es werden Folgerungen für die Modellierung von beiden Richtungen der Sprachverarbeitung, Rezeption und Produktion, gezogen und Anforderungen an einen Grammatikformalismus zur inkrementell-integrativen Satzverarbeitung dargestellt.