The cognitive representation of political personalities. A cross-cultural comparison(1)

The cognitive representation of salient political personalities was studied in a British and a German student sample, using a multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) procedure. Separate MDS analyses for the two samples yielded a readily interpetable three dimensional stimulus space in each case. These cognitive spaces for political figures were interpreted as reflecting the attributes of political potency, evaluation and intelligence in the case of the British sample, and evaluation, conservatism and political potency in the case of the German sample. An additional joint analysis of data from both subject groups indicated significant cross-cultural differences in the cognitive representations of political leaders. The results were discussed in terms of the socio-cultural differences between the two subsamples, and the utility of a multi-dimensional approach to political perception and behaviour.     

Reactions to success and failure in public and in private conditions

It was shown that the reaction to success and failure differs when it is communicated publicly or privately and when the reaction to success and failure is measured publicly or privately. Participants took an intelligence test and received fictitious results which were positively or negatively discrepant from the average. The dependent variable was the evaluation of the intelligence test. It was found that when the subject's evaluation of the test was private, the test was evaluated more positively under public than under private success. However, it was evaluated more negatively under public than under private failure. Under public success feedback the test was evaluated more positively under private than under public evaluation, whereas under public failure feedback the effect was reversed. The results are interpreted in terms of a self-presentation model and were discussed in the context of earlier research within the field of interpersonal relations.     

Visual search for singleton feature targets within and across feature dimensions

Three experiments investigated visual search for singleton feature targets. The critical dimension on which the target differed from the nontargets was either known in advance or unknown—that is, the critical difference varied eitherwithin a dimension oracross dimensions. Previous work (Treisman, 1988) had shown that, while the search reaction time (RT) functions were flat in both conditions, there was an intercept cost for the cross-dimension condition. Experiment 1 examined whether this cost would disappear when responses could be based on the detection ofany (target—nontarget) difference in the display (by requiring a “heterogeneity/homogeneity” decision). The cost remained. This argues that pop-out requires (or involves) knowledge of the particular dimension in which an odd-one-out target differs from the nontargets; furthermore, that knowledge is acquired through the elimination of dimensions not containing a target. In Experiment 2, the subjects had to eliminate (or ignore) one potential source of difference in order to give a positive response (displays could contain a “noncritical” difference requiring a negative response). The result was a comparatively large cost in the within-dimension (positive) condition. This can be taken to indicate that popout as such does not make available information as to the particular feature value in which the target differs from the nontargets. Experiment 3 examined whether search priorities can be biased in accordance with advance knowledge of the likely source of difference. The subjects were found to have a high degree of top-down control over what particular dimension to assign priority of checking to. The implication of the results for models of visual search and selection are discussed.     

Individual and social network predictors of the short‐term stability of bullying victimization in the United Kingdom and Germany

Background. There is still relatively little research on the social context within which bullying develops and remains stable. Aim. This study examined the short‐term stability of bullying victimization among primary school students in the United Kingdom and Germany (mean age, 8.9 years) and the individual and social network factors that contributed to remaining a victim of bullying. Sample. The sample consisted of 454 children (247 males and 207 females). Methods. Participants completed questionnaires on bullying victimization at three assessment points over a 9‐week period. Other measures consisted of self‐reported demographic, peer, and family relationship characteristics. Social network indices of density, reciprocity, and hierarchy were constructed using friendship and peer acceptance nominations. Results. Relative risk analyses indicated a six‐fold increased risk of remaining a victim at consequent follow‐ups, compared to a child not victimized at baseline becoming a victim over the follow‐up period. Individual characteristics explained substantially more variance in the stability of bullying victimization than class‐level factors. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses revealed that being victimized by siblings and being rejected by peers predicted remaining a victim over a 9‐week period. Conclusions. Bullying victimization among primary school students proved moderately stable over a 9‐week period. Individual characteristics were more influential in predicting the stable victim role than class‐level factors. Our findings have implications for the identification of stable victims in primary school and early preventative bullying programs.     

The activation of word class information during speech production

In 5 picture-word interference experiments the activation of word class information was investigated. The first experiment, in which subjects used bare nouns to describe the pictures, failed to reveal any interference effect of noun distractor words as opposed to closed-class distractor words. In the next 4 experiments the pictures were named by using a definite determiner and the noun completing a sentence fragment. The data demonstrate that noun distractors interfere more strongly with picture naming than do non-noun distractors. This held for both visual and auditory presentation of the distractor words. The interference effect showed up in a time window where semantic interference can usually be observed, supporting the assumption that at an early stage of lexical access semantic and syntactic activation processes overlap.     

Posttraumatic growth: why do people grow from their trauma?

In two experimental studies we found that participants who recalled a highly traumatic autobiographical event (trauma recall) compared with a lesser traumatic event (stress recall) reported having increasingly grown (posttraumatic growth, PTG). Moreover, participants who recalled a traumatic (vs. stressful) event perceived more death-related thoughts (Study 1) and reported coping with this event in a more emotion-focused and in a less problem-focused way (Study 2). Mediation analyzes revealed that the effect of trauma versus stress recall on PTG was mediated by emphasizing the positive, a subscale of emotion-focused coping. These results imply that growth resulting from traumatic events can be traced back to an illusion. No evidence was found that real PTG took place or that the effects shown resulted from death-related thoughts (terror management theory).     

Orthographic regularity gradually modulates saccade amplitudes in reading

The present research tested the hypothesis that variations in the orthographic regularity of word beginnings influence landing positions and amplitudes of interword saccades in continuous reading. Participants were asked to read sentences including target words of low, medium, and high frequency of initial quadrigrams that were either single‐root nouns or noun‐noun compounds. Saccades landed further into words with more regular beginnings, irrespective of whether the target was a compound word or not. Critically, the orthographic landing site effect was graded, suggesting that orthographic information continuously modulates saccade amplitude before and after the decision to move has been made.