„Bei den Seepferdchen bekommen die Väter die Kinder“: Verwirrende Realitäten bei der Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit-und-Hyperaktivitäts-Störung

Considering the in-patient diagnostics and treatment of an 11-year-old child with a complex attention disturbance who was treated before in an out-patient setting for many years with methylphenidat and behavioral therapy, we first point out the great variety of attention, cognitive and sensomotorical disorders. Such a comprehensive disorder should rather be considered as a complex neurotical developmental disorder (MCDD – Multiple Complex Development Disorder) and requires treatments in more than one field (psychotherapy, body therapy, training in learning etc.). The individual therapy presented here in detail is based on a developmentally oriented psychodynamic approach involving the latest results of infant, attachment and biomedical research. It is shown how the boy succeeds to develop mechanisms for self-regulation and to experience the therapist as a person who survives his attacks.     

Preference-based escalation: A new interpretation for the responsibility effect in escalating commitment and entrapment

A prominent finding in escalating commitment and entrapment research is the “responsibility effect”: people invest more in a losing course of action or persist with it for longer if they themselves initiated this action (responsibility) as opposed to if it was assigned to them. We argue that this effect is driven by participants’ preferences. Responsible participants usually prefer the chosen alternative since they have chosen it themselves. Non-responsible participants, in contrast, represent a mix of persons who either favor or disfavor the chosen alternative. In two experiments, we demonstrate that responsible participants favor the chosen course of action more strongly than non-responsible participants do, that these preferences facilitate reinvestment in and persistence with the chosen course of action, and that responsibility has no effect over and above this effect of preferences. Non-responsible participants preferring the chosen course of action made similar reinvestments and exhibited similar persistence as responsible participants.     

Human frontal midline theta and its synchronization to gamma during a verbal delayed match to sample task

The involvement of oscillatory activity, especially at theta and gamma frequency, in human working memory has been reported frequently. A salient pattern during working memory is electroencephalographic frontal midline theta activity which has been suggested to reflect monitoring functions in order to deal with a task. In general, theta activity has been credited with integrative functions of distributed activity. In the present study, we focused on electroencephalographic power analyses and cross-frequency phase synchronization in order to test whether frontal midline theta activity is linked to more locally generated gamma oscillations during the performance of a verbal delayed match to sample task. The task consisted of two different conditions where subjects either had to reorganize three consonant letters in alphabetical order (manipulation condition) or where they merely had to retain the three consonant letters (retention condition). Results revealed higher frontal midline theta activity for the manipulation of maintained stimulus material compared to pure retention of stimulus material. Interestingly, power differences between conditions were most pronounced during the second half of the delay period. Cross-frequency phase synchronization between frontal midline theta activity and distributed gamma activity, on the other hand, was predominant during the first half of the delay period and was stronger for manipulation compared to retention. We suggest that coupling of frontal midline theta to gamma activity reflects monitoring functions on the temporal segregation of memory items, whereas higher frontal midline theta power in the second half of the delay period might be associated with rehearsal processes. Rehearsal processes in the manipulation condition are likely more pronounced, because rehearsal of a new letter string in a limited time window requires higher mental effort compared to pure retention where rehearsal processes may already start at the beginning of the delay period.     

Emergent Goal-Anticipatory Gaze in Infants via Event-Predictive Learning and Inference

From about 7 months of age onward, infants start to reliably fixate the goal of an observed action, such as a grasp, before the action is complete. The available research has identified a variety of factors that influence such goal-anticipatory gaze shifts, including the experience with the shown action events and familiarity with the observed agents. However, the underlying cognitive processes are still heavily debated. We propose that our minds (i) tend to structure sensorimotor dynamics into probabilistic, generative event-predictive, and event boundary predictive models, and, meanwhile, (ii) choose actions with the objective to minimize predicted uncertainty. We implement this proposition by means of event-predictive learning and active inference. The implemented learning mechanism induces an inductive, event-predictive bias, thus developing schematic encodings of experienced events and event boundaries. The implemented active inference principle chooses actions by aiming at minimizing expected future uncertainty. We train our system on multiple object-manipulation events. As a result, the generation of goal-anticipatory gaze shifts emerges while learning about object manipulations: the model starts fixating the inferred goal already at the start of an observed event after having sampled some experience with possible events and when a familiar agent (i.e., a hand) is involved. Meanwhile, the model keeps reactively tracking an unfamiliar agent (i.e., a mechanical claw) that is performing the same movement. We qualitatively compare these modeling results to behavioral data of infants and conclude that event-predictive learning combined with active inference may be critical for eliciting goal-anticipatory gaze behavior in infants.     

When forewarning backfires: Paradoxical effects of elaborating social feedback on entrapment in a losing course of action

Entrapment occurs if people persist with losing courses of action. In two experiments, we show how elaborating social feedback (i.e., premature praise or forewarning regarding the chosen course of action) can have paradoxical effects on entrapment. The participants acted as head of a translation department and had to choose one out of four possible translation strategies for their employees. After choosing, they read four arguments (presumably written by former participants) which were either all in favor of the strategy chosen, all against it, or mixed. Half of the participants only read these arguments, whereas the other half elaborated on them by providing written comments (Experiment 1). The results showed that elaborating on other persons' arguments led to stronger entrapment, independently of whether the arguments were positive or negative. This pattern was due to biased argument processing: Whereas confirming thoughts were generated for positive arguments, negative arguments were refuted. Experiment 2 confirmed that this biased argument processing caused subsequent entrapment. These results indicate that elaborating any type of argument can lead to heightened entrapment and, hence, forewarning can backfire. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Weird World of Cross-Cultural False-Belief Research: A True- and False-Belief Study Among Samoan Children Based on Commands

Previous cross-cultural research using false-belief tasks has explored whether children's theory of mind develops synchronously across cultures. Success on false-belief tasks is usually interpreted as an important indicator of children's mental state understanding, but inconsistent findings have led to questions regarding the interpretation of children's success and failure. Based on the assumptions of perceptual access reasoning (Hedger & Fabricius, 2011 Hedger, J. A., & Fabricius, W. V. (2011). True belief belies false belief: Recent findings of competence in infants and limitations in 5-year-olds, and implications for theory of mind development. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2, 429–447.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and reflecting on inconsistencies in cross-cultural false-belief research, we argue for the advantages of the additional use of true-belief tasks, which can help to differentiate between different levels of children's reasoning. Consequently, a false-belief task and a true-belief task were derived from typical Samoan adult–child interactions. The performance of 40 Samoan children aged 5 to 7 years old was compared to the performance of 40 age-matched German children. While German children passed both tasks, Samoan children failed the false-belief task and did not reply above chance level in the true-belief task. According to our knowledge, this is the first study using both a false-belief task and true-belief task in a cross-cultural setting. Our results reveal additional patterns of reasoning that are neither in line with perceptual access reasoning nor with a representational understanding of false beliefs. The study is discussed in terms of a more general problem of experimental research in non-Western settings.     

Olfactory recognition of individual competitors by means of faeces in horse (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Equus caballus</Emphasis>)

Living in complex social systems requires perceptual and cognitive capacities for the recognition of group membership and individual competitors. Olfaction is one means by which this can be achieved. Many animals can identify individual proteins in urine, skin secretions, or saliva by scent. Additionally, marking behaviour in several mammals and especially in horses indicates the importance of sniffing conspecifics’ faeces for olfactory recognition. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two separate experiments: Experiment 1 addressed the question of whether horses can recognise the group membership of other horses by sniffing their faeces. The horses were presented with four faecal samples: (1) their own, (2) those of other members of their own group, (3) those of unfamiliar mares, and (4) those of unfamiliar geldings. Experiment two was designed to assess whether horses can identify the group member from whom a faecal sample came. Here, we presented two groups of horses with faecal samples from their group mates in random distribution. As controls, soil heaps and sheep faecal samples were used. In experiment one, horses distinguished their own from their conspecifics’ faeces, but did not differentiate between familiarity and sex. In experiment two, the horses from both groups paid most attention to the faeces of the horses from which they received the highest amount of aggressive behaviours. We therefore suggest that horses of both sexes can distinguish individual competitors among their group mates by the smell of their faeces.     

The Depressive Attributions Questionnaire (DAQ): Development of a Short Self-Report Measure of Depressogenic Attributions

A depressogenic attributional style, i.e., internal, stable and global causal interpretations of negative events, is a stable vulnerability factor for depression. Current measures of pessimistic attributional style can be time-consuming to complete, and some are designed for specific use with student populations. We developed and validated a new short questionnaire suitable for the measurement of depressogenic attributions in clinical settings, the Depressive Attributions Questionnaire (DAQ). The 16-item DAQ, and measures of depression and related cognitive concepts were completed by three samples of depressed patients and matched controls, or depressed and non-depressed participants who had been exposed to a recent uncontrollable stressful life event (total N = 375). The DAQ had high (i) internal reliability, (ii) test-retest reliability, (iii) convergent, discriminant and construct validity. It predicted a diagnosis of major depression at 6 months after an uncontrollable stressor, over and above what could be predicted from initial depression severity. Depressed patients rated the scale as acceptable. The DAQ may be a useful short measure of depressogenic attributions, which is easy to administer, and predicts concurrent and future depression. It has possible applications as a screening measure for risk of depression, or as a treatment process measure.