In Search of Gender Recency: Evidence from the Production of Pronouns

This study investigated whether retrieval of a noun's grammatical gender benefits from having retrieved that information recently. In response to picture stimuli, participants produced gender-marked pronouns under various priming conditions. The primes differed in that they either necessitated retrieval of grammatical gender (indefinite noun phrase/pronoun) or did not (noun); when they required gender retrieval, they varied in whether they involved access to the same morpheme (pronoun) or a different morpheme (indefinite noun phrase). Relative to an unprimed condition, faster responses were obtained in each condition. Pronoun primes facilitated pronoun naming more than the other prime types, but no difference was observed between noun primes and indefinite noun phrase primes. Thus, although the experiment was sensitive to priming processes, there was no evidence for morpheme-independent gender priming.     

Is Grossarth-Maticek's coronary-prone type II an independent predictor of myocardial infarction?

Biomedical factors (hypertension, abnormal lipid metabolism, clotting factors) and behavioural factors (cigarette smoking, alcohol, fat intake) are established risk factors for ischaemic heart disease (IHD). Accumulating evidence suggests that psychosocial factors (e.g. type A behaviour, interpersonal relations and personality) also exert some influence. These factors seem to account for about 3% of the variance in IHD over and above the traditional risk factors [[Reference to Amelang, M. (1997)]. Using personality variables to predict cancer and heart disease. European Journal of Personality, 11, 319–342.] Grossarth-Maticek and colleagues have, in three prospective longitudinal studies, found that a particular type of coping in interpersonal relations (type II) predicted death from IHD over 10–15 years. The effect sizes have been of a magnitude far exceeding those reported in similar studies. This paper reports results from a cross-sectional, population-based, mailed questionnaire survey (N=5014). Using logistic regression, we did not find a significant relation between type II and myocardial infarction, when controlling for age, IHD in the family, diet, job stress and health complaints. Type II, however, had an effect on health complaints when controlling for age, IHD in the family, and job stress. A path model including an indirect effect from type II to IHD via health complaints explained 23 and 44% of the variance in health complaints and IHD, respectively. A possible explanation for results showing that type II significantly affects IHD may be that smoking is the core factor in such a way that type II is related to health complaints and smoking.     

Repeated Interrogations –Stretching the Deception Detection Paradigm

In real life, suspects are often subjected to repeatedinterrogations. Psycho-legal research on deception has neglectedthis fact. To remedy this mismatch a series of studies wasconducted mapping how repeated interrogations affectlie-catchers' judgemental processes, deception detectionperformance, and meta-assessments. In two experiments we foundthat lie-catchers given access to consecutive statements from onesuspect did not perform better than lie-catchers given access toone statement only. In addition, access to repeatedinterrogations inflated the lie-catchers' confidence in thecorrectness of their veracity judgement, which had a detrimentaleffect on the accuracy-confidence relation. As the basis forassessing veracity was changed from one to several statements thelie-catchers, to a large extent, seemed to trust the `consistencyheuristic'. The assumption underlying this heuristic is thatinconsistency implies deception and consistency implies truth.The data show that (a) people tend to disagree as to whether aparticular set of consecutive statements is consistent or not,and (b) deceptive statements are at least equally consistent astruthful statements. In order to explain the latter finding a`repeat vs. reconstruct' hypothesis was suggested, assuming thatliars try to repeat their initial statement, whereastruth-tellers try to reconstruct a previously experienced event.The low predictive accuracy found for the `consistency heuristic'strongly questions beliefs held by professional lie-catchers,opinions expressed in the psycho-legal literature andrecommendations found in applied interrogation manuals.     

Somatovisceral interactions in visceral perception: Abdominal masking of colonic stimuli

Clinical and experimental evidence on referred pain and spinal-afferent convergence demonstrates a close relationship between visceral and somatosensory perception, which is important for current models of symptom perception and central body representation. The study uses a psychophysical approach to quantify these interactions at the perceptual level, taking into account problems of comparable intermodal scaling and the role of awareness. An experiment on somatosensory masking of distension stimuli in the colon is reported in which a multiple staircase method of forced choice discrimination with concurrent sensation ratings was employed. Results showed perceptual masking of visceral by abdominal stimuli but not vice versa. The masking effect was not enhanced by intratomal placement of the abdominal stimulus in the lower left quadrant. This contradicts the spinal sensory convergence model and points to perceptual interactions at higher brain levels. Loglinear analysis of relations between discrimination and subjective sensation revealed qualitative differences of somatovisceral perception at the preconscious as compared to the conscious level. This argues for a two-process model of integrative body perception.     

Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie: Philosophia perennis in der krise der europäischen kultur

Ohne ZusammenfassungVortrag, gehalten auf der Gedenkfeier für Edmund Husserl zum 50. Todestag am 27. April 1988 an der Universität Freiburg     

Sex differences in physical,verbal, and indirect aggression: A review of recent research

In the present article, recent research on sex differences in aggressive styles is reviewed. The concept of indirect aggression is particularly presented and discussed. It is argued that it is incorrect, or rather, nonsensical, to claim that males are more aggressive than females. A theory regarding the development of styles of aggressive behavior is presented.     

The dual-conception view reexamined: attentional demands and the encoding of verbal and physical information in action events

In two experiments the influence of attentional demands at encoding on recall of different features of subject-performed tasks (SPTs) was studied. In Experiment 1, memory of verbs and colors of objects was tested, with object names serving as cues. In Experiment 2, object and color memory were tested, with verbs serving as cues. Results from both experiments indicated that SPTs were affected by divided attention at encoding. In contrast to previous research, verbal and physical properties of SPTs were not differently affected by the requirements of dual-task performance (i. e., the combination of an SPT task and a secondary task). The results are discussed in terms of the nature of the secondary task.     

Extending the temporal range of psychometric prediction by optimal linear filtering of mental test scores

Incorporating temporal decline in predictive validity into mental testing theory is outlined. Starting from multivariate regression of criterion on repeated measurements, an analytic extension results in a weighting function for repeated measurements, replacing the beta weights. Besides optimizing, the procedure permits an evaluation of any particular prognosis setting: In cases of exponentially declining predictive validity, prognostic range can be extended if concurrent validity is nonperfect by optimal weighting (predictive filtering) of repeated measurements. Considerable gain in prognostic range over the traditional approach can be achieved if predictive validity declines concavely downwards.This work was supported by grant Dr 58/3 from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.     

Acquisition of phobias and anxiety response patterns in clinical patients

The ways in which phobic patients (N = 106; animal-, social- and claustrophobics) acquired their phobias were investigated in the present study. The results showed that a large majority (58%) of the patients attributed their phobias to conditioning experiences, while 17% recalled vicarious experiences, 10% instructions/information and 15% could not recall any specific onset circumstances. There was no clearcut relationship between the ways of acquisition and anxiety components (subjective, behavioral, physiological), nor did the conditioning and indirectly acquired phobias differ in severity. However, some interesting trends emerged in the data, showing that animal phobics who recalled conditioning experiences to a larger extent also responded physiologically. For patients with indirect onset experiences (for all three types of phobias) the reverse was true, i.e. they responded to a larger extent in a cognitive-subjective way, rather than with increased physiological arousal.