Determinants of Scanpath Regularity in Reading

Scanpaths have played an important role in classic research on reading behavior. Nevertheless, they have largely been neglected in later research perhaps due to a lack of suitable analytical tools. Recently, von der Malsburg and Vasishth (2011) proposed a new measure for quantifying differences between scanpaths and demonstrated that this measure can recover effects that were missed with the traditional eyetracking measures. However, the sentences used in that study were difficult to process and scanpath effects accordingly strong. The purpose of the present study was to test the validity, sensitivity, and scope of applicability of the scanpath measure, using simple sentences that are typically read from left to right. We derived predictions for the regularity of scanpaths from the literature on oculomotor control, sentence processing, and cognitive aging and tested these predictions using the scanpath measure and a large database of eye movements. All predictions were confirmed: Sentences with short words and syntactically more difficult sentences elicited more irregular scanpaths. Also, older readers produced more irregular scanpaths than younger readers. In addition, we found an effect that was not reported earlier: Syntax had a smaller influence on the eye movements of older readers than on those of young readers. We discuss this interaction of syntactic parsing cost with age in terms of shifts in processing strategies and a decline of executive control as readers age. Overall, our results demonstrate the validity and sensitivity of the scanpath measure and thus establish it as a productive and versatile tool for reading research.     

The Impact of Analogies on Creative Concept Generation: Lessons From an In Vivo Study in Engineering Design

Research on innovation often highlights analogies from sources outside the current problem domain as a major source of novel concepts; however, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are not well understood. We analyzed the temporal interplay between far analogy use and creative concept generation in a professional design team's brainstorming conversations, investigating the hypothesis that far analogies lead directly to very novel concepts via large steps in conceptual spaces (jumps). Surprisingly, we found that concepts were more similar to their preceding concepts after far analogy use compared to baseline situations (i.e., without far analogy use). Yet far analogies increased the team's concept generation rate compared to baseline conditions. Overall, these results challenge the view that far analogies primarily lead to novel concepts via jumps in conceptual spaces and suggest alternative pathways from far analogies to novel concepts (e.g., iterative, deep exploration within a functional space).     

Editorial Approaches to Wittgenstein's Nachlass: Towards a Historical Appreciation

Building on the unpublished correspondence between Ludwig Wittgenstein's literary executors Rush Rhees, Elizabeth Anscombe and Georg Henrik von Wright, this paper sketches the historical development of different editorial approaches to Wittgenstein's Nachlass. Using the metaphor of a ladder, it is possible to distinguish seven significant “rungs” or “steps” in the history of editing Wittgenstein's writings. The paper focuses particularly on the first four rungs, elucidating how Rhees, Anscombe and von Wright developed different editorial approaches that resulted in significant differences in their editions. The paper sheds light on how these editorial differences are grounded in the editors' divergent understandings of their task. It is suggested that future research may investigate the development of editorial approaches to Wittgenstein's Nachlass as a human story of philosophical inheritance.     

Extraversion and job performance: How context relevance and bandwidth specificity create a non-linear,positive, and asymptotic relationship

The personality factor of extraversion has been associated with performance in some occupations (e.g., sales), and it has been one of the most consistent personality predictors of leadership. Recent research indicates that extraversion could have a non-linear relation with performance. At the same time, many researchers have contended that scholars should utilize measures of personality narrower than factors and that the bandwidth and relevance of personality should fit both the criterion and the context of a study. We argue and find that by examining an aspect of extraversion (i.e., social potency) in a particular vocational context (i.e., enterprising job demands), non-linear, asymptotic (diminishing marginal benefits) effects will be demonstrated on a relevant type of performance (i.e., enterprising job performance). We review implications, limitations, and avenues for future research.     

“Übereinstimmung in den Hauptpunkten”: Max Adler über das Verhältnis von kritischer und phänomenologischer Transzendentalphilosophie. Am Beispiel des Problems transzendentaler Intersubjektivität

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Stress management: a randomized study of cognitive behavioural therapy and yoga

In this study, a stress management program based on cognitive behavioural therapy principles was compared with a Kundaliniyoga program. A study sample of 26 women and 7 men from a large Swedish company were divided randomly into 2 groups for each of the different forms of intervention; a total of 4 groups. The groups were instructed by trained group leaders and 10 sessions were held with each of groups, over a period of 4 months. Psychological (self-rated stress and stress behaviour, anger, exhaustion, quality of life) and physiological (blood pressure, heart rate, urinary catecholamines, salivary cortisol) measurements obtained before and after treatment showed significant improvements on most of the variables in both groups as well as medium-to-high effect sizes. However, no significant difference was found between the 2 programs. The results indicate that both cognitive behaviour therapy and yoga are promising stress management techniques.     

Effect of temporal constraints on hemispheric asymmetries during spatial frequency processing

Studies on functional hemispheric asymmetries have suggested that the right vs. left hemisphere should be predominantly involved in low vs. high spatial frequency (SF) analysis, respectively. By manipulating exposure duration of filtered natural scene images, we examined whether the temporal characteristics of SF analysis (i.e., the temporal precedence of low on high spatial frequencies) may interfere with hemispheric specialization. Results showed the classical hemispheric specialization pattern for brief exposure duration and a trend to a right hemisphere advantage irrespective of the SF content for longer exposure duration. The present study suggests that the hemispheric specialization pattern for visual information processing should be considered as a dynamic system, wherein the superiority of one hemisphere over the other could change according to the level of temporal constraints: the higher the temporal constraints of the task, the more the hemispheres are specialized in SF processing.     

Task-order coordination in dual-task performance and the lateral prefrontal cortex: an event-related fMRI study

A crucial demand in dual tasks suffering from a capacity limited processing mechanism is task-order scheduling, i.e. the control of the order in which the two component tasks are processed by this limited processing mechanism. The present study aims to test whether the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) is associated with this demand. For this, 15 participants performed a psychological refractory paradigm (PRP) type dual task in an event-related functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) experiment. In detail, two choice reaction tasks, a visual (response with right hand) and an auditory (response with left hand), were presented with a temporal offset of 200 ms, while the participants were required to respond to the tasks in the order of their presentation. Importantly, the presentation order of the tasks changed randomly. Based on previous evidence, we argue that trials in which the present task order changed as compared to the previous trial (different-order trials) impose higher demands on task coordination than same-order trials do. The analyses showed that cortical areas along the posterior part of the left inferior frontal sulcus as well as the right posterior middle frontal gyrus were more strongly activated in different-order than in same-order trials, thus supporting the conclusion that one function of the LPFC for dual-task performance is the temporal coordination of two tasks. Furthermore, it is discussed that the present findings favour the active scheduling over the passive queuing hypothesis of dual-task processing.