Correction to: Exploring Latent Profiles of Psychopathology in a Sample of Lonely People Seeking Treatment

Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment -     

Turning it Upside Down: Areas of Preserved Cognitive Function in Schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia demonstrate marked impairments on most clinical neuropsychological tests. These findings suggest that patients suffer from a generalized form of cognitive impairment, with little evidence of spared performance documented in several large meta-analytic reviews of the clinical literature. In contrast, we review evidence for relative sparing of aspects of attention, procedural memory, and emotional processing observed in studies that have employed experimental approaches adapted from the cognitive and affective neuroscience literature. These islands of preserved performance suggest that the cognitive deficits in schizophrenia are not as general as they appear to be when assayed with clinical neuropsychological methods. The apparent contradiction in findings across methods may offer important clues about the nature of cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. The documentation of preserved cognitive function in schizophrenia may serve to sharpen hypotheses about the biological mechanisms that are implicated in the illness.     

Achievement and self-concept of students with learning disabilities

The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model by Marsh (Am Educ Res J 23:129–149, 1986) assumes that, besides social comparisons with their classmates, students engage in intraindividual, dimensional comparisons, comparing their own achievement in one subject with their achievement in other subjects. These dimensional comparison processes are assumed to result in negative paths from achievement in one subject (e.g., math) to self-concept in another (e.g., the verbal domain). In a study with N = 270 students, we investigated the generalizability of the I/E model to students with learning disabilities. Analyses showed positive correlations between math and German achievement and positive effects of achievement in both subjects on the corresponding domain-specific self-concept. Verbal and math self-concepts were almost uncorrelated. Moreover, there were negative effects of achievement in one domain on self-concept in the other. Our results therefore indicate that the I/E model can be generalized to students with learning disabilities.     

Forecasting outcomes of the World Cup 2006 in football: Performance and confidence of bettors and laypeople

ObjectivesMotivated by a paucity of research on sports forecasting, this paper examines how well individuals with varying degrees of relevant knowledge predict football (soccer) and how much confidence they have in their predictions.Design and procedureThree groups of participants (110 art students, 81 sports students, and 85 bettors) representing three levels of knowledge (poor, moderate, and expert) performed five forecasting tasks with relation to the outcome of the first round of the World Cup 2006. The tasks were assumed to reflect different degrees of complexity. About half of the participants obtained relevant information (world rankings). The participants stated their confidence in connection to conducting those tasks.ResultsWhereas the groups had roughly similar levels of performance in three tasks (i.e., predicting the teams qualifying for the second round as well as two types of match statistics), the knowledgeable and expert participants were better at predicting scores and percentage of ball possession in the matches than the naïve participants. Relatively few participants performed better than the simple rule that followed world rankings. Regardless of task complexity, the knowledgeable and expert participants were found to be significantly more confident about their forecasts than the naïve participants. Access to information had limited influence on forecasting performance and confidence.ConclusionThe present study shows that the forecasting performance of football experts and laypeople varies dependent on task. For easy tasks, they tend to predict equally well, partly because laypeople might use well-adapted heuristics. Once the prediction tasks become more difficult, the experts may take advantage of their domain-specific skills and produce forecasts that excel those of the laypeople.     

The challenge of measuring immigrant origin and immigration-related ethnicity in Europe

Different European nation-states use the most diverse statistical constructions of foreign origin or ethnic minority populations. Several countries traditionally even shun from producing such data. This makes international comparison a very difficult endeavour. Anyone wanting to perform comparative research on immigrants or (immigrant origin) ethnic minorities in Europe is unavoidably confronted with the most diverse types of national statistical data and has to opt for ad hoc solutions. Attempts at international comparison can thus be very tricky due to data characteristics. It is important that researchers are aware of these problems and do not simply accept data (especially in comparisons) at face value. In this article we embark on a comparative explorative study of the way in which immigrant background and immigration related ethnicity is taken stock of by national statistical institutes in a set of European nation-states.     

One algorithm to rule them all? An evaluation and discussion of ten eye movement event-detection algorithms

Almost all eye-movement researchers use algorithms to parse raw data and detect distinct types of eye movement events, such as fixations, saccades, and pursuit, and then base their results on these. Surprisingly, these algorithms are rarely evaluated. We evaluated the classifications of ten eye-movement event detection algorithms, on data from an SMI HiSpeed 1250 system, and compared them to manual ratings of two human experts. The evaluation focused on fixations, saccades, and post-saccadic oscillations. The evaluation used both event duration parameters, and sample-by-sample comparisons to rank the algorithms. The resulting event durations varied substantially as a function of what algorithm was used. This evaluation differed from previous evaluations by considering a relatively large set of algorithms, multiple events, and data from both static and dynamic stimuli. The main conclusion is that current detectors of only fixations and saccades work reasonably well for static stimuli, but barely better than chance for dynamic stimuli. Differing results across evaluation methods make it difficult to select one winner for fixation detection. For saccade detection, however, the algorithm by Larsson, Nyström and Stridh (IEEE Transaction on Biomedical Engineering, 60(9):2484–2493,2013) outperforms all algorithms in data from both static and dynamic stimuli. The data also show how improperly selected algorithms applied to dynamic data misestimate fixation and saccade properties.     

Information Retrieval in Tip of the Tongue States: New Data and Methodological Advances

Research on Tip of the Tongue (ToT) states has been used to determine whether access to syntactic information precedes access to phonological information. This paper argues that previous studies have used insufficient analyses when investigating the nature of seriality of access. In the first part of this paper, these complex issues are discussed and suitable analyses proposed. In the second part, new experimental data are presented. In Experiment 1, English speakers were asked to give information about mass/count status and initial phoneme of nouns, when in a ToT state. In Experiment 2, German speakers were asked to report grammatical gender and initial phoneme of nouns, when in a ToT state. Evidence that syntactic and phonological information are accessed independently was obtained for both languages. Implications for models of language production and further methodological issues in ToT research are discussed.     

Consciousness about own and others' affects: a study of the validity of a revised version of the Affect Consciousness Interview

This study presents a modified version of the affect consciousness interview ( Monsen, Eilertsen, Melgård & Ödegård, 1996 ), intended to capture the individual's affective consciousness. The aim of the modified version – The Affect Consciousness Interview – Revised (ACI‐R) – is to measure consciousness about own and others’ affects. Three groups of patients (with eating disorder, relational and social problems or stress‐related problems), and one non‐clinical group were included in the study (N= 95). The results indicated that it was possible to achieve adequate interrater reliability, that the scores correlated meaningfully with other measures of mental functioning, and that the interview discriminated between different clinical groups and non‐clinical participants. In conclusion, the results of this study suggest that the ACI‐R is a promising instrument and that it should be explored further in order to study the organization of self‐experiences and the ability to be emotionally present in interactions with others.